“Read!” say the snobbish literati. Their noses see-saw between musty books and the air as they raise their nostrils in disdain whenever they contemplate or chance upon people who do not wish to wile their hours away doing what they do. They lick index fingers and flip pages as they indulge in tall tales or cogitations of people who have made a vocation of daydreaming.
They are not hard to spot, these literati. The first sign is usually an indication of poor sight in the form of visual aids like thick-rimmed spectacles. Their eye capillaries are bursting, a trend that began from high school where they read after lights out by the aid of a Tiger head powered torch. By their twentieth year, these voracious readers have hit a certain number of books. Their craniums, now heavy, reel with the knowledge of the human condition, which world literature overwhelmingly agrees is the on the brink, and almost done for. They become disillusioned, pendulating between the deep abyss and states of hallucinogen-induced reveries.
Rejecting all forms of the convention (because what’s the point?), they become social outcasts either by choice or the choice of society.
The literati find society grossly apathetic to the putrid brine in which it is immersed; society finds the literati hard to stand with their incessant belly-aching. Cast out, they stand out like sores in their bad ill-fitting clothes, unkempt hair, and sad eyes, eyes that have seen things. Soon they find their way to each other and convene in poorly lit rooms, regarding each other with loving sadness through thick plumes of marijuana smoke and ennui. They swap sorrows and flasks of liquor and plan guerilla wars and revolutions to redeem humanity from whatever foe assails it. Capitalism. Yurugu. Woman. Zionists. The Gays and their agenda. Then they plot to write it all down: an expose, or some salvaging solution. They dedicate their lives to this cause only to realize that they have no audience but their fellow enlightened friends. They come to the dim realization that there will be no audience to their pains nor will anyone indulge their panaceas. They realise that society would rather have their eyes extracted with a three-pronged fork from a sigiri than pore over a book. At a loss of how to solve the human condition with the mutton heads who refuse to acknowledge their impending demise, they sink deeper.
Our literati, who have seen so much and are now plunged into unspeakable misery, occasionally buoy to the top because they have things to say. They don’t care whether you will listen, they won’t take time to understand why you won’t listen, our literati become snobs.
The snobbery of the literati is legitimate. Literature is a full-length mirror offering both introspection and enlightenment and it’s difficult to deal with a society that is averse to these things. Socializing with folks who don’t read can also be tedious, deflating and is a task with low rewards. With a few exceptions to the rule, most non-readers are equipped with perception as narrow as the girth of a drinking straw, the attention span of a fruit fly and a mind only matched by the depth of tequila shot glass. It is difficult, extremely difficult to not be a snob.
However, this snobbery of the literati- albeit well-founded- is ironically evidence of their myopia and perhaps they need thick-rimmed specs after all.
Firstly, it’s foolhardy to expect the entire world to share the pleasure of reading. It would not be the world if we weren’t different.
Secondly, the literati fail to note that reading itself is a result of privilege. To enjoy literature and hence its fruits, one has to be literate, possess money, have time to expend or peace of mind. If books have taught the literati anything, they should comprehend that these are luxuries that only a handful can afford.
People who have developed a habit of reading have only done so because they have been cushioned by a privilege that many are yet to acknowledge. You read because fate dealt you an education that came with a home library, or enjoyed the company of kids who were wealthy enough to possess books. You discovered books because they orbited around you in your upper or middle-class family that could afford to have books and still meet the responsibility of providing meals.
You discovered books because you were bored out of your mind with few chores to do at home: reading was an alternative to being forced into afternoon naps. Other kids couldn’t have had a similar privilege. Their hides would be the object of numerous lashings if they were caught in a moment of languid idleness, lounging as if the pots of water would levitate to and from the well. In these homes chores must be attended to: cows don’t milk themselves and the chickens and goats are not potty-trained to clean up after themselves.
It’s likely that if one belonged to those households where the menu perennially featured sleep for dinner, one never met a copy of Nancy Drew. With a noose of poverty closing in around the pharynx, they are in survival mode, they have to answer the great question of dinner.
You still read because you are not gathering berries and non-poisonous fungi to eat and are not crawling at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy. You can afford to go to Aristoc and buy Khaled Hosseini’s book whose cost is the annual food budget of a household in Kivulu.
Once I decried the price of books on the internet rooftops, and literati, in typical Antoinette style said:” Why? Buy a kindle so you can access E-Books.” I cracked up with mirth, amused at the level of detachment and the severity of cataracts that ailed my kin. Buy a kindle? You would think they dish them out for free like alms to the literary poor, or they slip them into your outstretched palms without discrimination like the Holy Eucharist at mass.
Modern-day let them eat cake.
If you read, you would know the nature of poverty, as a generational thing, as a thing that gnaws not only on stomach walls but the soul as well. You would know poverty deprives one of food, clothes, dignity, serenity, and the pleasure of time to read.
If you truly read you would understand why people don’t read. And that’s the problem with the snobbery of literati: it doesn’t do justice to the reason behind reading. Instead of lifting your face from the book and immersing yourself in life, you insist on consuming life in garnished forms of art detached from the reality around.
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