Literary writing is basically a story of two halves; one part mechanics, one part creativity. Call it craft and art. Call it whatever. The fact is undeniable. One can’t escape the simple truth that creativity alone is not good enough without a structured form, just like an impressive body is useless without creativity running through its arteries and veins. Enmeshed with deft execution, the two elements create a whole that is as fulfilling for the reader as it is for the writer.

Tested on this time-honoured touchstone, Surkhaab, a collection of pen sketches of a dozen leading characters by Irfan Javed, would leave the reader a little less than fulfilled. And there is one simple reason for that. Just one... and no more.

In attempting a new approach to writing pen portraits, which — unlike in other global literature — happen to be a literary form of genuine merit in Urdu, Javed has taken it beyond the scope of a single personality. What happens when you do a portrait in a group setting? It doesn’t remain a portrait which needs focus and detailing. In the current case, there are way too many deviations and transitions, both forward and backward, to allow the reader to settle down.

A fresh and exciting approach to pen portraits attempts to include the milieu of the subjects, but only manages to distract the reader already burdened by the laboured diction

Spread over some 40 pages, the portrait of Amjad Islam Amjad, a poetic genius as much as celebrated playwright, is a case in point. It deals — and deals in detail — with an array of subjects: Ashfaq Ahmed and Bano Qudsia, Qudratullah Shahab, Ahmed Rafiq Akhtar, some tales from Austria and the United States, the creative difference between Nasir Kazmi and Muneer Niazi, Sadequain, life in Karachi during the 1970s, the Pakistani establishment — the list is just about endless. Amjad surely does not need these embellishments for he himself is such a refreshingly enlightened craftsman.

Worse is the case with Saadat Hasan Manto. With Amjad, the writer at least had the occasion to interact personally and produce some original bits here and there. With Manto, Javed naturally had no such occasion, which left him dependent entirely on what has been published already. And so much has been written about him that there is hardly anything left except perhaps for the academic researchers or for those few among us today who had the good fortune to interact with Manto. In Javed’s portrait of the man, the only casualty is Manto himself. Javed would be well within his rights, however, to seek redemption with the concluding lines that suggest taking a fresh look at Manto from his wife’s perspective. It’s a pity that he himself could not do that.

In its current form, the portrait naturally does no harm at all to Manto, for he was, and remains, above such blips, but it reflects rather poorly on the writer. It is a disjointed narrative and adds nothing to the massive amount of literature available on the man. In piecing together information from various sources, Javed has struggled to keep it flowing.

The mechanics of writing, essential as they are, need to work backstage to create and sustain momentum upfront. In the domain of professional writing, spontaneity has to be manufactured but equally important, if not more, is the necessity of it being all latent. It is analogous to having the essential services running in any architectural structure without letting the underground and overhead cables and conduits be visible. Everyone knows they are there, everyone wants them to be there, but nobody likes to see them being there. In Surkhaab, all those cables and conduits are right where they should not have been and the ambience is worse for it.

The narratives were initially penned for and serialised in a weekly magazine which has its own episodic rhythm. But when collected as a single read, they need to be taken good care of at the editing table.

What probably explains all this is the fact that the narratives were initially penned for and serialised in a weekly magazine which has its own episodic rhythm. But when such narratives are collected as a single read, they need to be taken good care of at the editing table. That has not been done and the slip is showing rather glaringly. There is no other way to rationalise the anomaly that the most potent character coming out of the dozen portraits is of a person who has not been written about: Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi. His detailed presence in most of the narratives — Amjad, Parveen Shakir, Gulzar, Manto, Iftikhar Bokhari and Ayub Khawar to name a few — is only diluting the focus. If the 13th character stands out taller than the 12 one has actually sketched, then there is a definite problem with the text.

Like manufactured spontaneity, created chaos is a good thing in literature. But Surkhaab, just because it has not been edited properly, has a touch of miscreated chaos, which is unfortunate because the concept of enlarging the scope of conventional pen portraits is refreshing and original for which Javed must get due credit. But for it to take root, Javed would do himself a world of good by consciously converting the current armchair ramble into an art form. And while doing so, he may perhaps rethink his laboured approach to writing where similes and metaphors sound a bit too forced. It is not about the choice of words, which is fine and cannot be accused of verbosity, but the search for a cute phrase is clearly touching desperate proportions.

The words are heavyweight in the writings of, say, Shamsur Rahman Faruqi and Mukhtar Masood as well, but they come to them naturally or, at least, the writers make them sound as if that were the case. Consistency of diction was the key which is the missing element in Surkhaab where the text is consistently inconsistent.

In doing so, it is natural that there are some very decent phrases and crafted lines, such as the opening line of the chapter on Parveen Shakir or the finishing touch in the case of Tasadduq Sohail or the odd description about Mohammad Ilyas’s struggle with his son’s fatal illness. They jump out of the text and shine. But there are a hundred others which jump out of the text, distract and fade away. A reader unsettled is a reader unfulfilled. Simple.

That would surely not have been Javed’s intention. If he can do something about his laboured and meandering text, the novelty he has introduced has the potential for something better and bigger.

The reviewer is a member of staff

Surkhaab
By Irfan Javed
Sang-e-Meel, Lahore
ISBN 969-3531469
248pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 21st, 2018