Fiction continues to flourish in Nigerian literature. An enthusiastic explorer will harvest a variety of products, from the worst to the best, in Nigerian literary industry. I have in my study a number of novels ' most of them are those that have had misadventure into the NLNG Nigerian Prize for Literature ' and collections of short stories that my reading spirit repulses. And there are others that I would like to read (and read again) because of their artistic maturity and the great hopes that live through their authors.

            The Nigerian literary scene, thus, still possesses a womb for begetting great fictionists of our time against the self-important stands of listserve-popular critics like Olu Oguibe that a great writer is not in sight in the third generation of Nigerian writers. Or against the my-generation-is-better-than-yours stands of Niyi Osundare, Femi Osofisan, Charles Nnolim and other actors of the other generations. Their theory of writing apprenticeship is indeed ridiculous as none of them has come out to say for how long he was apprenticed (and to whom) so that we can compare such a period to the period of self-development of a good writer of this generation. Writing, if it should be once again stressed, is a personal intellectual venture and the writer engages in self-governed apprenticeship (if at all we must use the misnomer, 'apprenticeship'). Good writing or bad writing is not a matter of generation, but that of the individual. Which is why every generation has its own handful of good writings and measure of bad writings.

            This article is a critic's attempt to point a finger at one of the major weaknesses of Nigerian fiction today. But in doing this, the critic does not conclude that this generation lacks qualitative fiction. Let it be pointed out that the literary laxity seen in the language of our fiction today is a carryover of the Marxism-virus that came to infect Nigerian literature during the terrific years of the second generation writings. How often does the Marxist writer tell you: 'I'm being simple without being simplistic because I want to reach the masses.' He, in fact, lies. And Kolawole Ogugbesan, a critic of that generation, in his highly enriching articles collected by David Ker, has pointed out the danger of thingifying simplicity or 'simpleness' in literary enterprise which was the fashion among the second generation of writers.

            Recently, during his self-sponsored tour of reading in Makurdi, Emman Usman Shehu, the guitar-carrying poet, dismissed Christopher Okigbo's 'Heavensgate' as a poem that has no meaning beyond its first stanza. After knowing that the prodigal son is standing before the goddess, what next? Such is Shehu's, as well as other numerous toilers' stand concerning tautened artistry. Yet I doubt if Shehu, himself, can boast of having produced poetry as artistic as Okigbo's. I have wheeled in this example to show the suicidal attitude that many writers (not only in the new generation) have toward the strengths and energies of literary language. The vogue is to jettison anything complex, anything profound, anything deeply philosophical, anything sublime, and anything that requires deep exegetical thinking in the bid to soften metaphors and symbols toward the sheer laziness of our readers. The result of this audience prostitution is that in Nigerian fiction of both the present and the past, thrillers are paraded as serious of works fiction and are even entered into serious literary competitions.

            Serious fiction ought to be taken as a product of literary language. It is the maturity, sublimity and philosophical breath that comes out of a language that makes a work of fiction a serious one. Fictionists and other creative writers are in the business of treating language as an elastic medium of expression. The writer displays his skills in stretching or expanding the language. This is the crux of Shklovsky's defamliarization. When Odia Ofeimun says, in an interview, that 'Language ought to move and the poet 'is in a better position to help it move?' (Prism, 24), one should see beyond his chauvinism and know that not only the poet, but also other creative writers as well have to move the language. What Geoffrey Leech calls 'linguistic unorthoxy' belongs to the creative writer and is bound to distort the normal locutionary trend of language in the society. The language of literature must exert violence upon the ordinary language through the formalistic enterprise of figures of speech, imagery and symbolism.

            The violence of literary language on ordinary language has been taken as unwanted complexity since the heyday of Marxism. Suddenly mysticism or mystification is seen in literary language and enthusiastic Marxist writers or masses' writers (even though most of their works do not qualify as Marxist works) assume the vicarious duty of demystifying the literary language. The task is that of unburdening the language of tough metaphorization and the kind of imagery Chinweizu et al dismisses as 'obscurantist.'

            Beyond the Marxist infection, we are faced with another self-destructive disease which is the unthoughtful Americanization of our literary language. You may have noticed that Nigerian writers are not just enthusiastic about hopping into the United States of America under the disguise of self-exile or the search for greener pasture, they are also quick in surrendering to the watery diction of American literature. (I pray that Osundare does not fall victim). Anything American is supreme to them. American literature has lazy literary language because the Americans, in their fastness, prefer what they can understand on the surface. Nigerian writers living in America today (and there are many of them, cutting across all generations) put the substances of their fiction in American literary language.