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 ?obscurnatist.?

            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.

Other novels from the United States like Sefi Ata?s Everything Good Will Come and Unoma Azuah?s Sky-High Flames have followed the tradition of the girl?s life story with little or no craft in the language.

            Back home we have writers like Wale Okediran and Chim Newton who have had achievements as prolific novelists who write actively with stories that are quite intriguing. But beyond the intrigues of the stories, which are often draped in excessive, unwanted sensationalism, their language is so stark, barren of figures, images and symbols and a reader can hardly learn anything new from the flowing sentences.

            Such is the language you encounter in most of the short stories collected in Beyond Gold and Other Stories edited by David Ker and Cramped Rooms and Open Spaces edited by Ibrahim Sheme. The language is so banal, unexciting with few or no fresh expressions to hold a conscious reader?s interest. Of what striking edge are the stories? The stories ? like most stories today ? cannot hold much originality and thus need to be dressed in outstanding, experimental literary language to make a conscious reader go through them with some interest.

            Is it not worrying that we belittle the language of literature with reasons that betray our mediocrity? ?A story has to be an easy read? or ?The language of your work should be simple so that you get wider audience.? I ask, How wide is the wider audience that writers yearn for? To what extent do we continue to lower literary language to accommodate the mediocrity of the audience since we are all aware of the devaluation in language skills that is a common ache with Nigerian intellectualism today? Is it not pitiable that the prose you encounter in some newsmagazine in Nigeria today is better than what you see in Nigerian fiction which is wrongly tilted toward the simplicity of the masses / audience? How damaging it is to semanticize ?complex? and ?experimental? as derogatory and thus dismiss writers who attempt to move out of the mainstream as too complex and experimental?

            But our best works in African literature (which may not even carry the kind of literary language you see in the novels of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy) are works that are not written in language that is simplistic in the disguise of being simple and audience-friendly. Where do the novels (to begin with the worst) of Cyprian Ekwensi, Flora Nwapa, T. M. Aluko, Elechi Amadi, Abubakar Gimba, Chukwuemeka Ike, Kole Omotoso, Festus Iyayi, Buchi Emecheta, and the post-military pamphleteers who see themselves as novelists end today? They are novels of culture and ideology with no language and styles. Except for Helon Habila?s Waiting for An Angel and Okey Ndibe?s Arrows of Rain, post-military political novels in Nigeria are critiques of oppression by the military dictators without craft. For lack of style and tautened literary language, a novel can perish. Which is why apart from the excess of themes we have for studying in African literature, there are hardly stylistic studies of the formal properties of the language in African literature. Lewis Nkosi, after accusing South Africans of grinding out ?third-rate novels? because of their unimaginative stories (as is also the case with post-military Nigerian fiction) of the apartheid, predicted that after the apartheid, the South African novelist would possibly have nothing to write about. What is the fate of the South African fiction today? We enslave our literature too readily in the enclave of theme and do forget that it is the literary language that is in fact literature.

            There are few hopes, however, in this stagnant age for literary language. Maik Nwosu, Okey Ndibe, Helon Habila (Toni Kan, as his Ballad of Rage has shown, is yet to be totally weaned of the Hints magazine cheap prose) and Akachi-Adimora Ezeigbo. I read Alpha Song by Nwosu some months ago and yet such clever phrases and expressions as ?life is a terminal disease?, ?the burden of being and memories?, ?Taneba the spirit who descanted [night?s] mysteries? and many more others especially from the highly philosophical utterances of Bantu, continue to surface on my mind. The imaginative strength that Nwosu puts in his language certainly makes him the best literary language ??vaganza? (to use one of his recurrent words in Alpha Song) that the recent Nigerian fiction has produced. These are expressions that you want to jot down because of their freshness and beauty.

            Such expressions can also be seen in Ndibe?s political novel, Arrows of Rain: ?the dead don?t envy the living? and ?speech is the mouth?s debt to a story.? They are profound expressions without carrying jaw-breaking words. How many of such expressions do we see in most of our works of fiction?

            It is natural ? as is seen in our oral literature ? that a work of literature is characteristically profound and the more profound (what many people prefer to derogatorily call complex) the richer it is. When African traditional musicians use proverbs, it is not that there are no plain words that can express the meanings of those proverbs. Why must a work of literature be understood at the first reading? Is it because the modern reader is so lazy (and has no time) that he cannot attempt to go between the lines or behind the words in search of meanings which is the normal literary activity of the conscious readers? Must we follow the steps of the Americans and demean the literary language of our literature which ought to be evolved from the language of wisdom used by our forefathers?