Dead, white, European males

I wondered whether the emphasis in DWEM was to being dead, white, European or male. I asked around to find there was no unanimity

I ran into a unicorn a few months ago: A female in her mid-30s who reads this newspaper. Not just that. She also reads my monthly articles on books.

 “Why do you write about DWEMs,” she asked. DWEM stands for Dead White European Males.

Because, I said, despite my youthful looks I am actually very old, or at least quite old. But her question rankled.

Why was I writing about foreign writers whose creative abilities had peaked in the 1960s, plateaued in the 1970s, and begun to decline in the 1980s?

I also wondered whether the emphasis in DWEM was to being dead, white, European or male. I asked around to find there was no unanimity.

The seven women that I asked objected to the “domination of thought” by men.

The 18 men that I asked objected to it by Europeans. Five of them said European and white meant the same thing.

But, and here’s the answer to the unicorn reader, no one objected to “dead”. Being dead was not a very big disqualification which means at least one dead white European man —William Shakespeare — was dead wrong. 

The good stuff that men — and, I daresay, women — write does not get interred with their bones. It lives on. But you have to look for it, especially when there is so much bad writing being promoted as good.

This is the reason why I had promised last week to write about someone who, let alone India, even in England was not acknowledged as a “great” writer. But everyone did think he was a “great” critic, whatever that means.

I think his being a “great” critic prevented those whom he critiqued from giving him his due as a “great” novelist. Or, if I may, it is like me sneering at economists.

You don’t shit in your nest and expect mercy.

Prolific variety

Anyhow, the writer was Burgess, Anthony Burgess. He wrote 33 novels all of which I have read and scores of other stuff, like screenplays, music, and literary criticisms, which I have not. 

His writing was incredibly good: Fresh themes, inventive styles for each book, baroque when needed, witty, sardonic and always precise in the choice of words. 

This was probably because he was also a linguist and wrote a book about English called Language Maid/Made Plain in which one of the things he said was that the English accent made popular by the BBC was actually the “East Anglian” one. 

I learnt many new words from him, including “proleptically” which, Burgess said, meant “in pleasant anticipation”. Another was "micturition" which means to piss painfully. Isn’t it odd that one should recall words with such opposite meanings?

Burgess, like Amis, came to India in the early 1970s via the remaindered book trade that used to thrive on the pavements of all the major cities. Again, like with Amis, we bought him because the books were there and were cheap. 

I don’t know where to even begin with his novels. The range of topics — from the exit of the British from Malaya to Somerset Maugham’s allegorical life to the four Enderby novels to his three biblical novels to Shakespeare to Russians to ex-Empire Englishmen to Napoleon — was wider than a 70 mm screen. 

And, oh, could he write! To use a very worn cliché, the language was like putty in his hands.

In the end, though, as often happens he achieved fame for the wrong reasons. Stanley Kubrick decided to make film of his book The Clockwork Orange which was based on Burgess’s personal experience.The famous sexual molestation scene was from what had happened to his wife at the hands of some US Army deserters during the second world war.

Burgess said he had written the book in three weeks. It is full of gobbledygook language. You can watch the movie on YouTube.

Each Burgess story was unique. The characters were totally different. Much of it was improvisation as he went along. One admirer/critic once said that he just wrote one page after another without anything more than a rough idea of a plot.

And women were almost completely absent. In those days no one noticed this but today this feature stands out. Whence DWEM, I guess.

Which is the book I would recommend if someone put a gun to my head? Well, what do you know, I think I will take the bullet instead.