Singaporean Lit

Some go to university to get an education. Some go to university to become a professional. Some go to university only to waste time. Of the people in all three categories those in the first are praiseworthy, those in the second are industrious, and those in the third are idiots, and such a one do I profess myself. Of all the subjects to study literature is certainly the most useless, and to give up so much time and energy and a proper social life to a study of uselessness is certainly indicative of some mental deficiency.

Some say that studying literature teaches you to write. It certainly does, but any literate person by definition can write. And in Singapore which has a 90+ percent literacy rate, it is hardly likely that the ability to write is going to be a sufficient recompense for three years of university study. Perhaps it teaches you to write well. Those who have seen my handwriting will be dispossessed of this fallacious notion. Perhaps it teaches you to produce creative writing and stuff which deepens and refreshes the imaginative life of people who read it. Unfortunately the study of literature teaches one to write only criticism and parody. The former is the lowest form of prose and the latter the lowest form of poetry. Even excellent criticism objectifies and pins literature on the wall for daws to peck at; if a piece of art has to be explained it has failed in its purpose, just as analysis rips the heart out of a joke. Mediocre criticism flings pearls to swine; bad criticism which is what I seem to excel in leads these swine by the nose-ring to the slaughter-house and out in Spam cans. A sniveling furtive prose is what a literary education has taught, and teaches, me to write.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, parody is the most insincere form of imitation. Gifted writers start out imitating the verses of masters and slowly pass into originality; writers like myself with no talent to boast of spit proudly on greatness and enviously trample it under sardonic iambic feet. The imitator learns; the parodist refuses to admit the concept of learning. And a parodist, not a poet, is what a literary education has allowed me to become.

So I go and dig up some old stuff that I have written in my first year of study, whenever I feel in the mood for a reality check. Much has been removed from my computer for reasons of decency; it appears that the anti-spyware program has far better literary taste than I. However, one sonnet seems to have escaped. I shamelessly and honestly reproduce it below:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
No lah Singapore where got summer one?
Use your brain and think before you write leh
Your girl is hot but where got like the sun?
Your England very powderful is it?
Later you kena teacher for your wife.
Your poem better go and do edit
Or girl see already run for her life.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Wah lau eh you still want to write like that!
Eternal mean what? She sure need first aid
After she read lor. Come lah, don’t be sad,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
Definitely can use dictionary.