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From: New Gong <thenewgong@yahoo.com>
Date: 27 December 2010 00:01
Subject: [WoleSoyinkaSociety] A Peculiar Tragedy, a new biography of JP Clark by Adewale Maja-Pearce
To: WoleSoyinkaSociety@yahoogroups.com
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From: New Gong <thenewgong@yahoo.com>
Date: 27 December 2010 00:01
Subject: [WoleSoyinkaSociety] A Peculiar Tragedy, a new biography of JP Clark by Adewale Maja-Pearce
To: WoleSoyinkaSociety@yahoogroups.com
| In A Peculiar Tragedy, Adewale Maja-Pearce, uses his biography of JP Clark-Bekederemo as a lens to look at the larger picture of the post-colonial history of Nigeria. How did a writer, so rich in precocious talent, fail to attain the rich promise he hinted at in his early works? How could a country, so rich and promising at independence from Britain in 1960, disappoint expectations to become one of the major development failures of Africa? Is there any connection between the two? Maja-Pearce seems to think so and goes to great length, all of 400 plus pages in this book, to try and make his case. Clark was among the Nigerian literary elite (including Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka and Christopher Okigbo) who were educated at the University College, Ibadan in the 1950s. Achebe went on to write Things Fall Apart, Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Okigbo died fighting for Biafra - a cause he believed in. Clark ended up becoming the least known of them all ( the least successful) despite showing more early talent as a poet and dramatist than Soyinka, according to this book. Much of the reasons for Clark's failure to live up to his early promise are sought in the Nigerian civil war of 1967-70 and the choices the various writers made about it. While Achebe was on the side of Biafra, campaigning its cause in capitals around the world and Soyinka was in jail for his activism aimed at ending the war, Clark was working for the Nigerian federal government. Of course, Okigbo was an early casualty. Maja-Pearce believes that Clark's literary instincts should have thrown him on the same side with his friends and fellow writers but he chose an embrace with the government that was to drain his literary talent while leaving him rich. Much of this book is the product of research conducted in Nigeria and the U.K., interviews from time spent with Clark over two years in Lagos and his country home of Kiagbodo, the setting for most of his early writings, and access to the writer's personal papers. It throws new light on the famous quarrel between Achebe, Soyinka and Clark, and brings forth new responses from some of the actors themselves. It is a must read for anyone interested in knowing the workings on the literary and artistic circle that formed in Ibadan in the 1950s and 60s, and how it led to the emergence of modern Nigerian literature. Available on amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Peculiar-Tragedy-Clark-Bekederemo-Beginning-Literature/dp/1453813217 as well as other U.S. online retailers, bookstores, academic institutions and libraries. |
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