I have this dream sometimes where I meet this perfect guy, and after a suitable amount of time, I marry him and proceed to have perfect children while I balance a perfect career. In the dream, I reach a ripe old age of eighty and then I die.
Not bad, right? At least, my dreams are perfect. Reality is much more problematic. Reality is dull and tedious and scary and DIFFICULT. Fantasy is so much more fun. Which begs the question, if fantasy is fun then why are all the Nigerian literature realist fiction? Why are they all set in troubled times within our nation? Why are all the books that have deep family themes set during a terrible political regime and why don’t we have good antasy literature floating around?
I can almost hear the outrage from the snobby literary critics now? Fantasy literature? That’s not REAL literature, they are saying. And to that I can only reply, says who?
Who decided what is and what is not great literature. Is it the millions of people who read them or the few snotty literary critics who turn up their noses at them?
I read everything. I love everything. This is why I find it offensive that some people get to sit on their pedestals and decide that the sweat and blood of those wonderful few (writers) should be termed as unserious.
I’m aware that my position is an unpopular one. Mainly because now regular folks are deciding that they too want to join the ranks of the literarily refined and criticize books that they could not begin to write.
What I want to know, my friends is this- is it such an unforgivable mistake for a an ordinary Nigerian to want to read something other than the usual type of book that we are bombarded with? And instead of sticking to our usual little box, would it not be more beneficial to our publishing industry if we were to branch out and write something new, something different, something that has nothing to with the reality we face but perhaps about the one that we imagine?
Do the western countries have monopoly on genres like Science fiction, fantasy, memoirs, and indeed, almost everything outside realist fiction. I hope not.
What do you think?
