M

by David Samuel Hudson

published by Horizons

Stephanie Xerri Agius

I’ll let you in on a secret. You can be both sides of something… You can be critical and agreeable at the same time. You can hate your country and love your country at the same time.

Ambitious writer Damian Theuma joins a posse of young poets and novelists who meet to discuss each other’s work. Like him, they are passionate yet self-absorbed, utopian yet naïve.

Vaguely reminiscent of Mona Awad’s Bunny, David Samuel Hudson’s debut novel M follows Damian and these aspiring writers as they attempt to etch their name in Malta’s literary scene, whether for fame or authenticity, or to escape family trauma.

Damian is bent on a feat that marks him as disingenuous if not a tad arrogant: to write the best Maltese novel in English. Is this a betrayal? Why not write in Maltese?

Writing in English rather than in the national language is one of the novel’s core issues, as is one’s identity as a Maltese writer. It is also a love story, as Damian and one of the protagonists embark on a relationship typical of young, innocent love but with its own dose of turbulence.

Beyond that, there is rivalry stemming from insularity and from the constraints of living in a small country like Malta, where writers take themselves too seriously but also pretend to be rebellious and bohemian. Very often those writers who are nonconformist in their blazing youth morph into models of propriety and triteness later on in life. The novel is also a reminder of the struggle against one of the ‘M’s its title stands for, a quality that at times leads certain writers to scapegoat and ostracise others.

In order to fight the culture, Damian undertakes a personal vendetta to expose a fellow writer who thirsts for a front-row seat among the next generation of Maltese literary figures. In doing so, he believes this can undermine the establishment. The irony is that whether or not he admits it, Damian too wants to be in. His reflections throughout the narrative hint at the need to belong to the cultural elite on the island.

There are other elements at play in the novel’s context. For instance, it is not unusual to conceal from other writers what one is working on; this is symptomatic of the fear of being copied or that other writers will cheat their way to the top. One might argue that this chicanery is endemic of insular states like Malta, almost to the point where it is institutionalised.

His reflections throughout the narrative hint at the need to belong to the cultural elite on the island.

However, this viewpoint can be somewhat challenged since copying other writers or outright cheating happen elsewhere too. For instance, in the American novel The Plot, the protagonist Jacob Finch Bonner stumbles upon and steals a storyline that could potentially catapult him back to literary success.

Finding a voice in the clouds of dust that choke Malta is as elusive as Damian trying to explain the lake metaphor he uses for the girl he falls for. The question of identity is best summed up when Rupert, one of the young writers in the group, states: “The country in which you are born doesn’t give you an identity. It steals it”. This raises the question of whether writers can escape being bound to their country of origin or if they are inexorably shackled to it.

Against this contradictory backdrop, Damian tries to prove to himself, to his family and to his artistic connections that he has what it takes. This urge to do something original and worthwhile, to carve one’s name on the nation’s collective consciousness, is perhaps more pronounced where a small island mentality abounds, conflated as it is with socio-political issues.

The question of language to which the novel keeps returning – “Why do we write in English?” – is answered unequivocally: “I write in English because I want a bigger audience. Ovvja”, as well as, “It is the language I just feel comfortable in”. Despite these seemingly superficial answers voiced by the young writers during one of their workshops, one can argue that language choice for a writer does not need to be justified in a bilingual country.

One can argue that language choice for a writer does not need to be justified in a bilingual country. Pictured is a red English telephone box in San Lawrenz, Gozo, in October 2019, with a library of books within. Photo: Tennessee Witney/ Shutterstock.com

Japanese essayist Kaori Fujimoto admits that English provided her with “shelter in the unfamiliar because I was unhappy with the familiar”. This is the opposite of Rupert’s experience when he says, “what inspires me is in English… I dream in English.” Both cases, however, connect language to validation. Fujimoto concludes: “I can always be authentic. I realised that being real, rather than flawless, is the best thing I can do for myself not just as a writer, but as a person.” 

Success and authenticity are what Damian seems to crave and wants to achieve through his writing. To a certain extent, he seeks recognition on a national scale but he believes he can accomplish this as a champion of the truth. Rupert sees right through Damian and challenges him: “Ammetiha… You want to be able to say that you’re the authority on the truth of who we are… There is no absolute truth.”

After a few encounters, discussions and mishaps, Damian deliberates the type of life he wants to shape for himself. An eye-opening volta leads him to the rea­lisation that “I lived so carefully that I hadn’t lived at all.” There is a sort of irony when he almost resigns himself to not being the writer he had aspired to be; the novel itself becomes his mouthpiece.

As for the truth, there is a very simple, albeit reductive, one for Damian and many like him: he wants to be seen, to be acknowledged by someone significant in his life. If and when that day comes, it will be glorious.

Stephanie Xerri Agius is a senior lecturer in English at the University of Malta Junior College.