Out of idleness and a little blah blah off the cuff, it's me, it's not meant to be a mini dissertation, or the synopsis of one, ama just airing some air, blowing off some dust from the shelf, so to speak. Actually at this moment thinking of La Vonda who I think I understood so well. Well I understand all African Americans, very well and wish that there were more such active members of this forum. N. B: I understand myself too and where I'm coming from and all that jazz.
Re - A "dissertation on what the previous generation of african intellectuals and writers had been reading when they were young" should be very interesting indeed, especially if you are thinking of "African intellectuals and writers" as a special/exceptional privileged or not so privileged breed who do not share a common literate, pre-literate or ill-literate background/ ancestry with those contemporaries of theirs who did not evolve to be part of the so called "generation of African intellectuals and writers" and readers.
I don't suppose that we are necessarily talking about the exception (e.g. Amos Tutuola) rather than the rule e.g. Wellesley-Cole, Cyprian Ekwensi, everybody's Chinua Achebe, Alan Paton who certainly brought a tear or two to my eyes.
I guess ambition should be made of sterner stuff…
How does the prospective PhD student go about collecting his material for his thesis? An inventory of the young as yet to be African writers and intellectuals' reading habits, ages 6- to 18?
Age 1-6 Fullah / Fulani was my first language - I suppose along with Broken, but mainly Fullah, because I played mostly with Fulani kids, for which reason I presume my Father took me off to London – a dramatic change of the linguistic environment, elite culture in those colonial days, he did not want his son to become "a Fullah man" not when I could be like Danny Kaye…
Before I was eleven, I had already read a few dozen war novels and in 1961 when in the third form in the heat of the obscenity controversy - ( it was on the BBC and in the UK newspapers which arrived by air or the Mv Apapa / Mv Aureole ) I read "Lady Chatterley's Lover" soon after my stepfather finished reading it and then jumped on Joyce's "Portrait Of the Artist as a Young Man" and from there had graduated to the relevant sections of Ulysses under cover of darkness…
A good place to start would be the school curriculum and in the case of colonial West Africa the required reading from forms 1-5 between the ages of 11- 15) and after the GCE "O" levels the two years of sixth form studies leading to the GCE "A" levels (16-18) the usual English syllabus; in French it was Andre Gide's "La porte etroite", in the third form it was" Le Roi de la Montagne" by Edmond About and Conrad's " Youth" and "Gaspar Ruiz" with Mr. Chapman strictly MA (Oxon).
It's something terrible when a lad discovers the joy of reading – especially if the well-stocked British Council Library is just round the corner. In my case that library was right next door to my grandfather Louis' abode – he later on moved the abode to Tower Hill, a house perched on the highest point in the center of Freetown. I think of him sometimes when I hear or read about land disputes - he had leased the land and built a house on top of the hill – the lease period was eventually over and he was told to kindly remove the house from the person's land. I don't know exactly what happened next since that is where my Better Half and I visited him in June, 1969…
The British Council Library was my hangout, especially during the rainy season. In the rainy season of 1960 I zapped through all of Charles Dickens; the year before it was all of Sir Walter Scott - as for biographies, autobiographies and poetry – that has been unendingly continuous, a continuum sometimes, quite literally to the neglect of everything else. The Almighty has been so kind to me, giving me, sometimes, such unlimited leisure reading time and a voracious appetite; I'm talking about three to four books per week, every week. And sometimes, special interests such as Hinduism (many years) other civilizations, country literatures, Russian, German etc. Sadly, I have yet to read Harrow, Pablo, Pius Adesanmi, Moses Ochonu, Ikhide, Mbaku & Co. But enough of this...
Even before the start of secondary school, pupils of whatever cultural background are already proficient in their indigenous mother tongues and have most certainly been inducted into the moral teachings conveyed through various African folktales and in some cases this probably includes versions of wisdom and history conveyed through the translations called the King James Version of the Bible : it's part of what's their erudition - the then Sierra Leone Creoles certainly had no catching up to do with the Igbos of Eastern, Western or any other part of Nigeria such a notion would have been preposterous causing unfathomable indignation in those creoles who believed that they were indeed the light – the first light! Much of Sierra Leone Creoledom/ Creole society's reservoir of wisdom and pithy sayings certainly derive from that source and the stiff upper lip Victorian Creole language is loaded with proverbs, sayings, verses from the King James version, for the moral edification of the youngsters– along with other indigenous sources - the Yoruba, Igbo, Mandinka , Temne – for Freetown and the Western Area the colony was situated in what was William Bangura's Temne land ( but that's another long story/ colonial history featuring King Naimbana) - and some of the non- Creole indigenes of Freetown had gone through some bonding via Secret Societies like the Poro Society or the Wende which is supposed to have navigated them through certain rites of passage via circumcision etc. quite late at about twelve years of age - and thus into manhood and early womanhood after spending a few weeks in "the bush", jungle or forest.
To my embarrassment at the Institute of African studies seminar room at Legon, Ghana I had to read a paper about the Poro society in the presence of Professor Kenneth Little – an authority on the Mende - prior to which I knew next to nothing about the Poro Society and at the time had no sources from which to obtain the necessary information - Poro was only something that I had heard about in hushed whispers the essay was due before I met Major Sandy Jumu (Mende) who was a political refugee in Ghana and eventually became a friend. Coming to think of it at no time whatsoever did we talk about or discuss the Poro - partly because those who have been processed through the Poro are very sensitive about discussing such issues with non- initiates – such as I am today reluctant to discuss the Rifai etc. of which I am an initiate
Although I do not yet belong to the category under discussion (intellectual or writer) I should just like to reminisce that as a pupil in the first form which included a few English pupils ( such as my friend Richard Fairweather whose father was a captain in the army) - the first book that we read in our first term was " Lorna Doone" - this was simultaneous with our learning Latin (and in my case I used to take private lessons in Latin with Winston Forde who was in the Upper Sixth form when I was in Form 1 . Winston later joined the RAF (is now one of my Facebook friends) and Winston is a writer mostly of books for children.
But this still puzzles me: in Sierra Leone even among the intelligentsia and the literati, such as my former classmate Joseph Carpenter, the popularity of Peter Cheney 's Lemmy Caution and in Nigeria, James Hadley Chase along with Don Williams country music where there is Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey and Chief Osita Osadebe. I still can't understand it
Check this out : it appeared in the 1.2015 issue of bif : Teju Cole on how he became a writer
Maybe, to be continued since I gotta go now….
Cornelius
On Sunday, 3 May 2015 11:41:07 UTC+2, Kenneth Harrow wrote:
one day someone is going to write a dissertation on what the previous generation of african intellectuals and writers had been reading when they were young. i never heard of james hadley chase, and now he is everywhere in people's recollections of what they read in high school and college in nigeria. why is that?? i still don't know who is he.
and years ago, i was completely blown away when i saw a film by mahatma "johnson" traore in the french cultural center in dakar; guess what, it was an adaptation of The Inspector General. of course i recognized it, not just from the gogol, but from one of the funniest comedians of my youth, the wonderful danny kaye, who made a movie version of the Real Inspector General. traore's version was brilliant, and went back probably to the 1970s or late 60s.
now here is ikhide again calling up the name of gogol.
there has to have been some circuits where these texts were being introduced to the continent. what were they?
the african writers series, that's different. i remember a bookstore in bamenda, back in the early 70s, that had the entire series stocked.
now??
what is left of the archive of literature that young people read then?
ken
On 5/2/15 9:46 PM, 'Ikhide' via USA Africa Dialogue Series wrote:
"Like a drift of quail, I had remained in the literary doldrums until I laid my hands on No Longer at Ease, authored by the eclectic blessed memory and patriarch of the African Novel Chinua Achebe.He brought out the stark difference between the artistic prowess in me and the rudderless school boy of yester-years when he conjured up images and motivations through its chief protagonist Obi Okonkwo.
Strange enough, this left me with a deeper and more rewarding appreciation of the place of challenges in the lives of mortals. It further stirred up the literary eye in me to see the unseen and to think the unthought-of.
Nikolai Gogol's' comic and political genius in his satire, The Government Inspector came in calling and left me with an insatiable hunger for more of literary nuggets when he humorously depicted Mayor, the chief protagonist as an honest fool in furthering the theme of corruption in a hierarchical and imperialistic Russian society of the 1850s.
But still, No Longer At Ease remained perched at my highest echelon, while I intermingled my reading with the James Hadley Chase concoction."
My favourite book : Chinua Achebe's 'No Longer at Ease' - http://www.nation.co.ke/lifestyle/weekend/Chinua- Achebes-No-Longer-at-Ease/-/ 1220/2703310/-/tpds40/-/index. html --
- Ikhide
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index. html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com .
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout .
-- kenneth w. harrow faculty excellence advocate professor of english michigan state university department of english 619 red cedar road room C-614 wells hall east lansing, mi 48824 ph. 517 803 8839 har...@msu.edu
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDialogue+subscribe@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialogue+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
No comments:
Post a Comment