By Vincent Barry -
These days, political writing has been clarified as an art form, whether that be a dark art or otherwise. In an information-saturated modern world, the former style often dominates. What distinguishes political writing from other art forms is its purpose to affect people’s thoughts and feelings on some social issue. In George Orwell’s words, who Coates likens himself to, the goal is to ‘push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after’. Ironically, political writing is increasingly reductive, pragmatic, and even algorithmic in our Orwellian present. It is more often read to confirm rather than challenge. Coates aspires to something more in The Message. He is writing politically – to pitch his ideas on race, censorship and, of course, Israel and Palestine – but he is also trying to reflect on his personal journey as a writer and proffer his own conception of humanity’s complex relationship with writing, stories and myths. In many ways, it’s a bid to transcend the corruption of language for political ends. However, although many of his political ideas land impactfully, his deeper designs lack the grace and self-insight of the likes of Orwell and James Baldwin, who he strives to emulate.
The Message is a message to Coates’ writing students at Howard University. It takes the form of an essay-cum-memoir in which he recounts three transformative experiences while interlacing factual premise with ruminations on how those experiences resonate with his own mythology. The resulting lecture on why and how to write politically is as didactic as it is poetic. First, we are taken to Senegal – the home of Coates’ forebears – on an exploration of its slave trade history and African American romanticism of their ancestral home. Next, we go to South Carolina, where Coates’ book, Between the World and Me, is caught in the furore over ‘critical race theory’ and is facing a ban from the State’s curriculum. This backdrop depicts his schooling and his view that the US schooling system discourages critical thinking and individual thought. Unfortunately, these two recounts aren’t compelling for the broader narrative Coates is trying to construct. They are too entwined with his own myth to represent anything greater. In both instances, the veneration of his writing capstones his reflections rather than something new. Senegal and South Carolina seem like token, undercooked characters that simply enable the protagonist on his hero’s journey.
When Coates gets to the Levant, things get a lot more interesting. He describes a 10-day tour of the occupied West Bank and Israel with technicolour detail and context – although frustratingly lacking references. He interacts with various vivid people and relays an assortment of potent experiences. They lead to the persuasive arguments and conclusions that are the heart of this book: Israel is an apartheid state; it postures as a democracy; descriptions of the conflict as ‘complex’ are often cynical euphemisms, to name a few. Of course, those points have led many to label this book as antisemitic and unbalanced. It’s true that, although his experience was prior, there is no mention of October 7. When asked in interviews why he isn’t more measured, Coates simply says the truth of what he saw – a reincarnation of Jim Crow, of apartheid South Africa – is what it is, no matter the other perspective. Why did this resonate with me? Because I had a similar experience. I took two trips to the Levant that transformed my personal mythology. I saw much of what Coates did and more. This forced me to confront the veracity of a mass-produced story that I had inherited, and ultimately, I think I emerged from that process with a deeper understanding of mythmaking.
But that’s where Coates stuffs his landing: he jumps off one myth and onto another and, in the process, conflates himself with literary giants that are not so binary nor overwritten. The Message opens with an Orwell quote from ‘Why I Write’ on political purpose as a motive for writing. In that essay, Orwell also spoke of sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm and historical impulse (that being a ‘desire to see things as they are’) as motives for writing. Coates reads like he is compensating for his lack of the last two. His prose can be compelling – and there are kernels of beauty and insight throughout – but it too often betrays his desire to seem genius or profound, to be counted amongst the likes of Orwell and Baldwin. His revelations on myth – its tendency for weaponisation, its destiny to reduce, its inherited romanticism, its political power – don’t lead to an earnest discussion about the nature of truth and political writing. Instead, they lead to a hasty, perhaps even desperate, justification of himself and his career, which left me wanting more from him. I do admire much in Coates’ attempt to elevate the art form of political writing, especially at the moment in history we find ourselves in. But, ultimately, it left much unsaid and many questions begging for anyone writing or reading under a prevailing paradigm.
