On Writing and Risk
Dear Wags,
The day after Christmas, Hanif Kureishi went for a stroll. It ended badly. “I should like you to know that on Boxing Day, in Rome, after taking a comfortable walk to the Piazza del Popolo, followed by a stroll through the Villa Borghese, and then back to the apartment, I had a fall,” he wrote soon after. “I had just seen Mo Salah score against Aston Villa, sipped half a beer, when I began to feel dizzy. I lent forward and put my head between my legs; I woke up a few minutes later in a pool of blood, my neck in a grotesquely twisted position, my wife on her knees beside me.”
That spill got a lot of attention. Koureishi, 68, is a globally acclaimed novelist, playwright, and screenwriter with a vivid Substack presence. He survived his accident but was left unable to move his arms and legs. Since then, he’s updated the world on his progress via his platforms (loved ones help with the typing).
Last month, he sounded off about something that concerns many writers, though few speak about it. Kureishi is concerned about creative inhibition and cowardice in publishing. He’s hardly a reactionary. Growing up in Kent, Kureishi experienced the casual racism of 1960s Britain. He gained notice as a playwright and won a 1985 Academy Award for the screenplay of My Beautiful Launderette, about a gay Pakistani-British youth. His debut novel, The Buddha of Suburbia, won the Whitbread Prize. Things went up from there.
Kureishi rose to fame being fearless. Not long ago, big novelists were routinely controversial; Not for Everybody must be somewhere in the job description of Writer. In any case, he’s one more critic of creeping censorship culture in creative industries. We assume he hates right-wing book bans at least as much. But sometimes, it’s necessary to point out the trouble brewing in your own house.
Recently, a former student told Kureishi she had shown her manuscript to a sensitivity reader even before submitting it. She feared something she wrote might be construed as offensive. Anybody who's written a book can relate to this because something can quickly turn into anything. Her anxiety is understandable, but Kureishi was alarmed. He believes literary excellence can’t be achieved from a defensive crouch.
I’ve had a novel parsed by a sensitivity reader. The experience was not unhelpful; I have no quarrel with that nice person. If you invent a character unlike yourself, it’s a good idea to get the details right. But even if you and your editors are diligent, you might still get something wrong in the eyes of a shadowy critic. If that offense concerns issues of identity, it’s going to be unpleasant. One way to avoid this is to never write about anything or anyone outside your immediate experience. This doesn’t typically make for scintillating fiction.
Sensitivity reads first took hold in the YA genre, as a byproduct of social media and its most activated users. The intentions behind these efforts are mostly well-intentioned, though corporate ass-covering plays its part. To publish anything is to expose oneself, and, not infrequently, to piss somebody else off. In a fractious, wired society, hyper-attuned to controversy, the sensible steer clear of trouble.
Kureishi is having none of it. He has lived his messy, extraordinary life in public, and stardom affords some protection. “It has to be part of the writer’s job to be offensive, to blaspheme, to outrage and even to insult,” he wrote. “I don’t want to live in an atmosphere of fear and inhibition where writers are afraid of expressing their true selves for fear of offending someone or other. It is the work of great writers to turn the world upside down, to present opinions which go against the prevailing trends. It is not our job to please but to challenge, to make us think differently about our bodies, our sexuality, politics and normativity.”
In our cozy living rooms, most thoughtful people would agree. But then we have to go to work. Nobody wants to be the subject of a social media pile-on. Nobody wants to be labeled culturally insensitive (or worse). Nobody wants to lose a book deal or a job over a sentence. Writers, like anybody, simply want employment.
But what do we lose when keep our heads down and avoid creative risk, when we skip difficult subjects to keep the peace, when we blunt humor and ingenuity in favor of safety? If art cannot transgress or provoke, it is something else. Wallpaper, maybe.
When people say such things, they are bidden to list all the ways they are not politically or otherwise dreadful. That’s an unfair burden. Advocates for creative freedom shouldn’t apologize too much. It’s perfectly consistent to decry the censorship impulse wherever it crops up. It’s probably most helpful to identify it in your tribe, not just condemn it in those you despise. Still, it’s mostly been left to older, established, and irascible writers—Koureishi, Salman Rushdie, Lionel Shriver—to speak uncomfortable truths in the publishing world. They came of age without the benefit of sensitivity reads, and their work, however imperfect, still dazzles.
The job shouldn’t be left to them. Publishers should be the grown-ups in the room when controversies arise and defend writers who dare to offend. Not doing so costs us all something. There’s an element of committee work in creativity but great literature transcends it. It demands a singular vision and no small amount of risk. Koureishi, a battered and inconvenient soul, has the courage to say so.
Yours Ever,
Thomas Stockmann
