What is nonsense? One answer to this perennially and frequently asked question is that nonsense is a genre of literature that is much maligned and yet much enjoyed. It is easy to spot, given a little intelligence, that
this is no answer at all, since it could just as easily be a definition of hard' boiled detective fiction, pornography or period romance. As a practitioner of the art, I have often felt the need for a definition of nonsense which will once and for all end confoundment, silence dissent and serve as a foolproof defence of nonsense against solemn sceptics and carping critics. Hence, although my colleagues have already waxed as eloquent as candles about the genre and its many subtleties, I will attempt once again to define it for the confused reader, and defend it for the honour and glory of nonsense and its many practitioners.
As with all philosophical inquiry, we must begin this exploration into nonsense with the fundamental question: is it? To answer this question, the questioner has to first ask himself or herself another fundamental question: am I? If the answer to the latter question is in the affirmative, then we must select a random sample of such questioners, who will then proceed to ask each other: are you? Once the incontrovertible fact of the questioners’ respective existences is established, the question the questioners must ask themselves, each other, and anyone else who might care to listen is: does it automatically follow that genres of literature exist? In other words: are they? If this is answered in the affirmative, then and only then do we have necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of nonsense as a genre.
After this is proved beyond doubt, we can go to the next, self'evident step, the question of what nonsense is. Because if it is not, then it is nothing. However, since nonsense is a negation of reality, its nothingness is of great significance, and defines it with precision. Whereas if it is, then it is something else. This is the quintessential nature of nonsense— the ability to be nothing and something at the same time. The Hamletian dilemma does not apply to nonsense, because there is a simultaneity of is'ness and is-not-ness in it which is unparalleled in any other field of human endeavour. In fact, even in the world of plants, famous botanists have been known to have commented again and again on the impossibility of finding a parallel to the nomHamletian nature of nonsense. Besides, nonsense also defies Aristotelian dialectics, Darwinian evolution, Hitchcockian suspense and Heisenbergian uncertainty. It does, however, find a resonance in Godell’s formulation of the Unprovable Proposition.
The moment GodelPs famous theorem is understood, it is easy to comprehend that nonsense is the unprovable axiom upon which the whole epistemological system, that is to say, all of literature, philosophy, carpentry, zoology, pottery and even some parts of meteorology and cosmetology stand. Nonsense, therefore, is the very foundation upon which the edifice of modern knowledge has been painstakingly built over the centuries. Remove nonsense and you are left with nothing. Which is to say, more nonsense.
Hence it would not be an exaggeration to state that without nonsense, life as we know it would cease to exist, and nobody could doubt the tautology that life as we do not know it is no life at all. Thus, with meticulous logic and careful analytical inference, we have established that nonsense is the very stuff of which life is made. No further defence of the genre is required.
If you are still not convinced of the crying need for the appreciation and pursuit of nonsense, then, dear reader, you need to read this book, because your education has, as it is wont to do, addled your brain with too many facts and too little wisdom. If you are convinced, then you hardly need encouragement. Pursue nonsense as assiduously as Lewis Carroll’s Baker pursued the Snark and you will softly and suddenly vanish away. But you will leave in your place a wiser, happier and more enlightened human being.
A nushka Ravishankar