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kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
harrow@msu.edu
Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2023 10:05 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Thought For Today
I had thought that you were being deliberately provocative.
On the other hand, unlike Scobie, Mr Greene, a lapsed Catholic, was perhaps guilty of un-American activity, but not necessarily for salvation.
BTW, in my humble opinion, for Mr Johnson's sake Joyce Cary
Should be tried posthumously and almost hanged ( like Salman Rushdie) .
Just kidding. I almost wrote "Salam Rushdie" Like the fatwa on poor Rushdie.
They would have loved to make some salami out of him.
Your good friend Sir Vidia described the death fatwa as "an extreme form of literary criticism" .
I suppose that must at least have endeared him ( Sir Vidia) to you.
Then the headline could have been ," Cary posthumously resurrected and hanged. For Crimes Against Humanity." The sort of crimes that should get Adepoju praying that humanism will overcome. Amor Vincit Omnia? Too late, what would PEN Int. been able to do about it? Sanctions? Bring Cray back to life?
Thinking associatively about the above, three things come to mind:
¤ The Islamic Revolution in Iran generated a spate of anti-Shia propaganda issuing from some of the Sunni publishing houses from which you were liable to read this kind of intention attributed to the leader of the Iranian Revolution: "When as a conqueror I arrive in Saudi Arabia, I will dig up these two idols, Abu Bakr and Umar and hang them"
¤ In 1991, when I finally visited/ made ziyaret to the Al-Hussain Mosque in Cairo
where a blessed hair of Imam Husayn - alaihi salaam , the Prince of Martyrs is housed
at exactly the same time that I stood at the foot of his mausoleum a man ,his head wrapped in a green turban, signs of hardship, signs of travel and desert dust written all over his forehead, came bursting in and addressing the Prince of Martyrs, as if he could hear him, I think it must have been in perfect Arabic :" Ya Aba Abdillah ! I have travelled hundreds of miles to come and see you!"
And then threw himself down at the feet of the mausoleum in prostration !
¤ The Sayyidina Ḥusayn Mosque // "Gemma Sayyidina Husayn" as it is known, is where the Sufis meet every Thursday evening. I was there on eight successive Thursday evenings. A person is not Cornelius Ignoramus by accident. Here's what a little ignorance can cause. On my second Thursday evening visit, I almost got into a fight with the beer seller that had his stall opposite the mosque. That evening, it was about 41 degrees hot, to date, the hottest I have ever experienced, and had ordered a cold bottle of Halal Beer, to cool my thirst. It was the very first time that I had ever sipped "Halal Beer" and lo - it tasted exactly like a Czech Pilsner Urquell @the usual 7.5 % al-cohol-ic content. So I almost got hold of the quite perplexed halal beer seller by the scruff of his neck - almost - and told him, "Aki, I asked for HALAL BEER, not for Al-COHOL - what the hell - do you want me to turn up at the mosque, DRUNK? He protested - But I gave you halal Beer !
It was after my second sip that I began to understand that halal beer tastes just like normal beer - and later on, the hypocrisy of those who consume so-called "halal bacon"
Hi cornelius, i was referring to the portrayal of africans by colonial european authors. Greene sets Heart of the Matter in Sierra Leone, but africans or scoundrels or servants. Scobie is the european protagonist. I don't know greene all that well; was only trying to summarize achebe's feelings about how africans were portrayed in european literature. Mr. johnson is perhaps a better example.Ken
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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2023 4:21:43 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Thought For TodayI come in peace and love: SHALOM
Re - "I took it that achebe was fed up with one-dimensional characters that typified european fiction-graham green or joyce cary, notably" ( Professor Kenneth Harrow )
Graham Greene????
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?
No matter, just lump them all together!
What saith Ken about " The Heart of the Matter " ?
One-dimensional characters ? Scobie?
No moral complexity?
Of course, no war between the good and /or the only ugly evil?
As if I didn't have a clue
I thought that for good measure you would have thrown in Conrad and you good friend
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul FRAS TC
Directly into the cannibal stew
Can it be true that one of the only reasons why Graham Greene was never awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature was that he was alleged to be more deeply anti-American than deeply anti--Something else….
--On Wednesday, 14 June 2023 at 18:42:47 UTC+2 Harrow, Kenneth wrote:
Hi chidi, well, as i said at the outset, i don't want to go back and pull the book off the shelf, so i am going by my memory of it. My impression is simply that achebe created this portrait of unoka as weak, in contrast with okonkwo. That he put marks of his debts on the wall to respond to one creditor, i will have to pay off those others before i get to you. This to indicate his moral failures; in contrast with his hardworking son who said "yes" to his chi, and succeeded in life.The flute and drum were continued markers of this difference. And most of all, it fit with my broader understanding of the goal of the novel, which was to create, in okonkwo, a human figure, great in some ways, but very flawed. I took it that achebe was fed up with one-dimensional characters that typified european fiction-graham green or joyce cary, notably—and wanted to show that igbos had a rich culture, as seen in the novel largely in the speech, the proverbs, and the multiform characters. Most important of course was okonkwo and his sons, but that troubled relation was prefigured in his own relation with his father.Weakness—strength. The latter was seen in masculinity; and that made him unbending, and stood for those in his culture who failed to bend when they sacrificed ikemefuna.So, not bending, they broke, and "things fell apart." The survivors, the pliable obierinka, mourned the loss.
That's what i remember. If i were to make my response more convincing, i'd have to go back to that shelf, open that well-worn volume, and find the passages to support my claims. But….this is just us chatting, not at war over weakness and strength.The novel has stayed with us lo these many many years. It is truly a major marker for all of african literature.
A little hard to find an equivalent in francophone lit. There was Une vie de boy, l'enfant noir, and une aventure ambiguë. You need all three of those together to begin to get the impact of TFAKen
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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2023 9:43:31 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Thought For TodayKen,I am asking questions about fictional characters and situations created by a creative writer. I am fully conscious of that fact that the work under reference is a novel.
-CAO.
On Wednesday, June 14, 2023, Harrow, Kenneth <har...@msu.edu> wrote:
--Hi chidi,I was trying to convey what the novel seemed to be saying. Not my own thoughts on what weakness might mean. There is a certain ambivalence about the characters, or some anyway, that achebe catches. The issue of what unoka "really" was might miss the point that this is a novel, not a biography or ethnography.Ken
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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2023 6:41:51 AM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Thought For Today
Oluwatoyin,Presentation of the Unoka character nuances failure.
Is the economic yardstick the only index for measuring success?
Are people not economically wealthy necessarily unsuccessful?
Was playing the flute so well and thereby producing music that made the people happy not success?
Should the success of artistic productions be measured only by the monetary gain made therefrom?
Ken,If Unoka was lazy and weak, how come he played the flute from morning until late in the night, producing music that kept his society happy?
The flute, a weak instrument compared to the drum?
How did you come about this assessment? How do you define "weak" in the context of the situation under reference?
The drum and the flute play complementary roles in the production of music. By the way, the legendary Fela and Manu Dibango mainly played the saxophone(modern flute) for example and got their renown from that.
Finally, we should always bear in mind that Chinua Achebe was human and wrote "Things Fall Apart"when he was in his 20s in the 1950s.
Thanks.
-Chidi Anthony Opara (CAO)
On Tuesday, June 13, 2023, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:
I dont recall if Unoka was presented as a failure but he was a man living ahead of the time where he could have been economically successful.
He was successful as a great flutist but since his services were not required on a regular basis and his payment at those times could not cover the intervals and he did not want to farm, so he was often broke and in debt.
It would take the colonial encounter, the creation of Nigeria and the expansion of her economy and social complexity for an entertainer such as Unoko to achieve economic viability.
Today, singers and comedians are doing very well in Nigeria but its less likely to have been so in Unoka's time.
Unoka, Okonwo's father, if I recall correctly, is contrasted with Okonkwo by his own son, who strives not to be like him, and wonders why one of his sons seems to share his father's contemplative character.
I dont think Okonwo was presented as a failure. Okonwo and Ezeulu in Arrow of God are at the centre of Achebe's genius as an ironic narrative philosopher.
Both characters may be understood as projecting the Igbo expression, ''where one thing stands, another stands beside it'', a principle of the complementary of opposites, of relationships between constancy and flexibility.
They are both strong, unyielding men, great achievers. But did they discern correctly when to yield or not to yield?
Both of them were defeated by their approach to historical forces greater than themselves, forces that perhaps were better addressed through a degree of compromise.
Perhaps only Achebe can fully answer the last question. Female foregrounding Igbo novels had to wait for other writers, but Achebe seems to have moved in that direction with his short story Girls at War.
thankstoyin
--On Tue, 13 Jun 2023 at 13:26, Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM, CDOA <chidi...@gmail.com> wrote:
It is 65 years this year since the publication of Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" in 1958, a good literary work no doubt. There are however a few questions:
(1)Why was Unoka the flutist who was said to handle the flute with dexterity, producing pleasant notes that made the people happy presented as a failure? Does this connect with the Igbo philosophy of "Ezi aha ka ego"(translated in English to "good name is better than wealth")?
(2)Why was Okonkwo, a radical cultural activist also presented as a failure and his docile kinsman Obierika presented as a hero? This belies the Igbo philosophy of "a brave son rather than a cowardly one, even if the brave son die young".
(3)Why were the enormous influences of the womenfolk in Igboland as recorded in the activities of Umuada(daughters)and Ndi Ndom(wives)not highlighted?
Thanks.
-Chidi Anthony Opara (CAO)
--
Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, IIM Professional Fellow, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador and Editorial Adviser at News Updates (https://updatesonnews.substack.com)
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Chidi Anthony Opara is a Poet, IIM Professional Fellow, MIT Chief Data Officer Ambassador and Editorial Adviser at News Updates (https://updatesonnews.substack.com)
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