Being a literary critic and a writer

Tanaka Chidora Literature Today
I am widely regarded as a writer in many circles. Even my business card, blog site, Facebook page, Instagram page and many other pages, state, first and foremost, that I am a writer and literary critic. But my CV so far does not contain a single creative writing project. Rather, it contains a list of critical works.

For some time now, I have been plodding along in “Magamba Hostels”.
On June 15, I wrote these words: “Nodza suddenly sprang forward and unleashed his trademark wicked right, but Jedza ducked and made for the door which he wisely flung open and rushed into the corridor.

“Nodza followed with arrogant bravado. I knew the kind of ordeal that would disturb Jedza’s quiet life. We all followed, eager to be witnesses to the swift conclusion of a fight. In Magamba, it is wise to see things for yourself because second and third parties are wont to embellish an incident, especially if the said second or third party narrates the incident while clutching a small brown bottle of some stuff that we usually sip when fighting a serious cough, or while the fingers of the said party are wrapped around a fat joint that looks like it has a life of its own.

“By the time Njada exited the corridor, many of the denizens of the A floor had sniffed a fight in the air. So each of them was taking their customary positions as spectators. Petso and MaRhino, the usual commentary experts, were already telling everyone the outcome of the fight.

“Mufana Nodza chibaba guys. Nodza chikhule waiziva? Chi grandfather pamaoko.”
The amount of creative exertion that I had to dispense with to conjure those few words into life is short of extraterrestrial.
Sometimes, I perform self-diagnosis and conclude that I am suffering from a disease that is fashionable among writers – writers’ block.

But then I ask myself, kuti mwana weTopora ungahwa zvunhu zvakadai here?
My recent diagnosis has to do with schizophrenia. I think I live in many worlds.

I have always lived in multiple worlds ever since the monolithic narrative of my village life was cut short by a Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew invasion, at which point I strove to see Chet Morton in his jalopy (whatever that was) munching a hamburger (whatever that was, again).

It was no mean feat, especially when you were herding cattle atop the Chiriga Mountain to the south of Mutirikwi Dam.
Then fortune provided me with an aunt who whisked me away to the city, for the first time since my born day, to study A-Level.

I woke up in Magamba Hostels in the morning to spend the day in Mt Pleasant.
It was like crossing the boundary fence. Sometimes I ask myself, should I write about Magamba Hostels or my village?
But even recreating my village is no mean feat. Many times I go there, I feel like Lucifer, like I am just passing by.

This has been exacerbated by the recent lantana camara invasion that has turned the once familiar plains into unfamiliar spaces.

So, I go back to Charles Mungoshi’s “If you don’t stay angry and bitter for too long” in the hope of gleaning something that can help me write about my village in a more meaningful way.

The thing with being a literary critic and a writer is that the heightened and blatant self-consciousness that you wield as a literary critic keeps interfering with you every time you try to write.

When I wrote “The Mountain” soon after writing my O-Levels, I was an innocent young fellow with little experience of the world of books.

Years later, after reading and critiquing many short stories from the likes of Anton Chekhov, Ernest Hemingway, Luis Bernado Honwana, Memory Chirere, NoViolet Bulawayo and others, I feel ashamed of “The Mountain”. I do not regret losing the short story.

I am a writer, yes, because I have written some critical works, but right now my obsession with writing creatively has made me think that to be a writer is to be a novelist, a poet or a short story writer.

As a critic, I have heard so much about what others say concerning so-and-so’s work – the syntax, the themes, the worldview, the intention, etc – and I have even contributed my own share of such critical views by saying so-and-so should have written like this, or so-and-so failed to see that, or so-and-so could have depicted this phenomenon like this.

So, when I attempt to write creatively, I hear all these voices, mine included, laughing in the background at my failure to see this or that.

If there is one character I have struggled with in “Magamba Hostels”, it’s Nodza. This hostel bully, I tell myself, sometimes vacillates between being NoViolet Bulawayo’s Bastard or Richard Wright’s Bigger Thomas (before the crime).

That’s where the struggle comes in. I want a Nodza who is fresh from the oven, someone never seen before except in my “Magamba Hostels”.
I don’t know if I am going to pull this off, but I will try.

Then there is this busload of theories that I have been using to critique other people’s works: feminism, Afrocentricity, post-coloniality, queer theories, post-modernism, etc.

All of them are clamouring for my attention and causing, in the process, a din that continuously saps my creative energies.
The recipe of instructions on how to, and how not to, that sits before me destroys my impulsive creativity.

The tyrannical voice of theory keeps taking my mind for a walk down corridors of theory when the only thing I want is to write my stories and not give a damn about what so-and-so said.

When the critic is also a writer, which identity, if I may ask, is central? Which one is tucked into the other? The truth is, when people read “Magamba Hostels” (that is, if I finally manage to lay down this critical garbage that is slowing me down), I want them to understand me as a writer and not a critic, and when they read my critical works, I want them to understand me as a critic, because we can only give to criticism what belongs to criticism and to narrative what belongs to narrative.