Seems my previous post got filtered by the Philistines that run this site. Anyway you should check your email. I think the mortals are getting tired of our literary shenanigans perhaps we should stop antagonising them.

Sorry folks!!

” no writer worth his salt can boast of a functioning liver (or kidney or lung)! This may have much to say about your character and (perhaps) your talent.”

I am falling in love with this guy!

As far as owning the world’s finest thesaurus, the same book has been used by some with tragic results. Are you familiar with a guy called Lumumba? He’s a Kenyan politician known to string words together whether they make sense or not just as long as they sound Greek.

Yes, I did submit a short story to Kwani? I will reserve my faith in them until they give me a reason not to.

So you are indeed a high school kid? Very impressive. Even when you say “reeking havoc” it does at least tell me that you can pronounce “wreaking havoc” without “wrecking” the language.

I am a writer, a student of literature, among other things. A struggling writer. Struggling against a literary world littered with mediocrity and struggling to figure out the relevance of a writer in the world we live in. It might be an intellectually fulfilling exercise to write a Spenserian Sonnet but I am not sure the last time that fed a starving kid or built a bridge. A character called Bazarov in Ivan Turgenev’s “Fathers and Sons” blurts outs in a fit of frustration against romanticism and sentimental idealism, “a good Chemist is twenty times more useful than the best poet.”

To me, there therefore exists that struggle, to a point of leading me to take on maths years after I thought we had parted ways for life. The key word in what Bazarov says is “USEFUL.” What if Sir Isaac Newton, like Wordsworth would have, decided to to pen an ode to an apple tree instead of questioning why the apple had fallen downwards and not upwards? We would be doing bungee jumps without chords because the concept of gravity would be alien to us…ok may be not!

What I am saying is not that writers are useless, I am just questioning their usefulness in a continent whose priorities are dealing with the most elementary of human needs. Like food, water, malaria etc.

I hate whining (don’t let my deteriorating liver fool you) but I entertain “obstinate questionings” (tell me whose quote that is…you owe me one from Dylan).

Don’t even get me started on Shakespeare and my lost childhood at the expense of a politically correct curriculum that purposely seeks to keep kids away from the best words ever imagined by man. I am actually reading a book by Harold Bloom of Yale about the dangers of letting ideology and not aesthetics determine what is and what is not good literature. Are we supposed to hate Shakespeare because he created a character called Prospero? That is what the older Marxist generation tells us…mind you, all after having imbibed and mastered Shakespeare and thereby improved their thoughts and writings in the process since reading the best invariably makes you better. But they want to limit the literary resources of the young generation to just “provincial” products so as to shield them from “mental colonization.” Is there any wonder then that in 40+ years we have only had one Ngugi?

I can go on and on…email me at this address I just made up (I respect the tenacity of internet weirdos) kwanisprometheus@gmail.com.

Having speculated on a possible correlation between liver damage and writing talent, I would be happy to let you judge whether my withering liver is as a result of what statisticians call “lurking variables,” or if there’s a positive association with my ability to create.

Cheers!

I am not Philip Ochieng, far from it (as far as ethnicity is concerned). Prometheus no writer worth his salt can boast of a functioning liver (or kidney or lung)! This may have much to say about your character and (perhaps) your talent.

I cannot reiterate strongly enough that I am a high school aged; sour-faced youth, proof of age notwithstanding. If you think I sound (somewhat) intelligent you should meet the rest of my over-achieving, over-worked, over-sexed, under-nourished, over-intoxicated peers here in posh-high-school-topia. They’re more frightening than Banquo’s ghost; damned children of the corn!

We seem to share common interest so I shall ask what is it that you do, in a professional capacity or otherwise? And the million-dollar question, are you going to subject yourself (and perhaps your work) to the uber-critical eye of the omniscient Kwani editors or are you like me, an anti anti-establishment fiend bent on reeking havoc in cyber-space and crushing the hopes of countless tactless, talentless Kenyans with one swoop of the mouse click?

Perhaps my feigned tone of voice and diction lead to the ambiguity of my age but I am once again (and as always) a high-schooler when all pretentions are stripped away.

P.s. I happen to own the world’s finest thesaurus, it even doubles up as an encyclopedia!

I know you meant “may my liver regenerate eternally” and to that I say, Amen…especially given that certain drinks I partake of are likely to cause it more harm than any of Zeus’ eagles could.

Still, I insist, you are not a high school student.

You could be in high school in a different capacity such as a teacher (still unlikely), but not as a student. I just don’t see a high schooler being steeped in Greek mythology and generally being as keenly perceptive (for aptly diagnosing the malaise we call Kenyan journalism) as you are. If I were to guess your name I would probably say Philip Ochieng.

I hope that you meet a fate much more pleasant than the wrath of Zeus (or any present-day Olympian).

The present state of Kenyan journalism is incompetent and amateurish to a fault. The Standard is little more than tabloid (nuff said), the Nation though somewhat conservative and centrist is still written by the same half-wit journalists and crack-pot editors. Mr. Ohaga is simply a propagation of this bastardization of Kenyan Writing. This is unfortunate and cannot be allowed to go on. It is thus my personal mission to root out all of this inadequacy, this ineptitude that is so inherently Kenyan.

You may think that I am petty and arrogant but a lot must be done before we can get to where we should be as a country.

So here I stand upon proverbial soap box!

I assure you I’m in high-school, as my facebook account clearly proves. If people weren’t so cut-throat (and out for my blood and pounds of flesh) I would have given you my name.

Good luck with your submission, I’m yet to submit mine and at this rate it seems unlikely that I ever will for as long as people like Mr. Ohaga are what qualify as Kenyan Writing.

Take care.

May your kidney regenerate eternally, may your fire burn continually.

May Kwani grow a pair and end this god-damned illusion.

P.s. You’d be surprised at what one can achieve with an overseas high school experience. Dylan was (is) a molder of words so profound they are the essence of all that we are.

one thing i can tell you about the kenya I live in is that we could win an award for procrastination. first time i heard of the competition was when Kwani? announced the extension. That was about a month ago. i had all the intention to write, i purposed to write, honestly i did. But somehow the days just flew by and vaguely, at the back of my mind i kept bumping into the reminder that i was meant to submit a story somewhere… where was that again?… i would get round to it, yes i would….

with under ten days left to the new deadline, what am i to do?

maybe i should pull an amazing theatrical stunt like our ‘beloved’ politicians and convince Kwani? that the new deadline was never appropriate.

Hey Kwani?! If you do not extend the deadline to when am good and ready… I will call in the International Criminal Court, and the FBI, CIA, Moussad. That would be discrimination of the highest order. I need to form a tribunal to look into this. Unyanyasaji!

Fuck! Am doomed.