In a past issue of Al-Raida, a journal published quarterly by the Lebanese American University▓s Institute for Women▓s Studies in the Arab World, Samira Aghacy buried an alarming statistic in her editorial: Lebanon▓s best-known writers rarely sell more than 200 to 300 copies of their books.
That was last winter. Last spring, at a lecture held for the Anis Khoury Makdisi Program in Literature at the American University of Beirut, LAU professor Ken Seigneurie added a telling comparison: Lebanon▓s population is roughly three million. Israel▓s is four and a successful book there sells at least 20,000 copies. The novelist Rabih Alameddine, who was a visiting professor at AUB last spring, chimed in during an interview this summer with another stark figure. W. W. Norton, his US publisher, routinely sends out 20,000 copies of his books to the press alone. And those are freebies.
If all this is true, and there are a few caveats to each statistic, then why does contemporary literature reach such a low audience in Lebanon? Why is success defined in such meager terms? And more crudely, why is it that no one really reads fiction here anymore?
⌠We don▓t have books here in Lebanon,■ says Alameddine definitely. ⌠There is a dearth of books in three languages.■ Alameddine has written two novels ­ ⌠Koolaids■ and ⌠I, the Divine■ ­ and a collection of short stories called ⌠The Perv.■ All sell better abroad than here. All are written in English but that should pose few problems in Lebanon, as most members of the educated class would claim to be trilingual. Still, Alameddine adds, ⌠If you▓re asking me, are there fewer potential writers here [in Lebanon], the answer is yes. As bad as the US and Europe are in their interest in the humanities, here it▓s worse. Even educated people are not educated. You walk into a writing class and all people want to talk about is The Matrix.
⌠No one in my class had read or ever heard of [Vladimir Nabokov▓s] Lolita. But they can all tell you about [the movie] A Beautiful Mind. Most of our culture here right now ­ the most viable is movies. Hollywood movies are where everything▓s at. It▓s the ease with which they arrive. [People here] can understand it. It is considered art and there▓s no one who comes up and disagrees. We have very little intellectual opposition here.■
Among Lebanese at home and abroad, there are an impressive number of daring and talented young novelists ­ brash stylists and gutsy storytellers tacking important issues  ­ but you▓d be hard pressed to find much of a fan club for them in Beirut. That Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh and Egyptian writer Nawal al-Sadawi are being taught in a civilization sequence class at AUB is a very fresh development. Previously, Lebanese literature seemed to begin and end with Gibran.
⌠It▓s a writers▓ problem,■ says Alammedine. ⌠It▓s a publishing problem, too ­ the covers here are so boring. It▓s a distribution problem. And it▓s an educational problem ­ the emphasis on grades, teachers who think that learning is about stuffing people with information and having them regurgitate it. It▓s rare that you have a class read and think.■
Novelist Rachid al-Daif also names a number of factors, cultural, economic and related to the binds of tradition. Daif writes in an unconventional, conversational style and his novels, such as This Side of Innocence and Dear Mr. Kawabata, often deal with controversial material and taboo subjects like sexuality and gender and postwar opportunism in Lebanon. He has written a total of 10 novels and three books of poetry, as well as a children▓s book. Three books have been translated into English and five into French.
⌠When I write a book I try to define the reader,■ he says. ⌠Is the receiver a bank employee, a militia man, my mother who is illiterate? I try to specify the receiver. It permits me to specify my level of style, the nature of my style. This is what I am interested in and not the number of readers.■ Then he pauses. ⌠To not be hypocritical,■ he says slowly ­ ⌠the number of readers is part of my concern.■
Daif is introspective. ⌠A big problem with the reception by readers is the reception of what writers write,■ he says. ⌠Normally, in the tradition of Arab writers, they are committed writers, politically committed. They want always to understand society and change toward progress. So why they are not read? Why?
⌠It▓s also the nature of what we write. What we write is very serious, too serious.■ After Adonis, there is a tendency in the Arab world to lionize the few literary figures who make it. ⌠Each writer considers himself as a prophet,■ says Daif. ⌠He gives himself a prophetic dimension. There is the idea that everything that is written is sacred ┘ It▓s the entire ambience, the cultural atmosphere, history, that permits this attitude on the part of the writers. But there is a tendency to oppose this, that the big writers of the past are not serious. ▒A Thousand and One Nights▓ is not considered a serious book but it is an eternal book.■
Daif points to regional issues as well: ⌠Political oppression, economies of import and export among Arab countries.■ Sometimes economic coherence is a problem too. Books are extremely cheap in Egypt but quite expensive here. As a result, the author explains, ⌠Lebanese books in Egypt have to sell for an outrageous price.■
But Daif▓s most trenchant observation is reserved for those who would presume to have read these authors all. ⌠Elite doesn▓t mean avant-garde,■ he says. ⌠There is a deep difference between the elite and the avant-garde. What we have, what is called the elite in Lebanon, they are prisoners of clichИ. They are not avant-gardists.■