THE LITBLOG CO-OP

Thank You

The LBC discussion is over for the most part for this quarter - if you'd care to add a comment to any of the book discussions of the past three weeks, feel absolutely free - and we'd like to thank many a person.

Thanks to the trio of nominators for finding such excellent work for us to read; thanks to the three writers for taking the time to participate in podcasts, interviews and/or guest blogging;  thanks to the publicists at Little, Brown, MacAdam/Cage, and Pantheon for providing some copies for contest winners; and thanks to those of you who have spent time here the past four weeks, chiming in on discussions, entering contests, or even just silently reading along.

Lastly, thank to Michael of the Literary Saloon, who moves on to the Member Emeritus status as this quarter finishes up.  His contributions will be missed around here, but be sure to wander over to his site to find the best coverage around of literature from around the world.

More coming later on in regards to the forthcoming quarter. 

Q&A: Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Ngugi has just returned from traveling, but was kind enough to answer a few questions about his work, his ideas, and Wizard of the Crow:

Q: How did you settle on the structure and design of Wizard of the Crow?  It is such a large, rich, all-encompassing book ... how did you decide what to put in, what to leave out, and which characters' stories to tell at particular times?

Ngugi:  The writing of Wizard of the Crow was more of a possession than conscious plotting.  The structure developed with the story. As they dawned on me, many incidents were a surprise to me too, often eliciting laughter. However editing later does allow for reduction of redundancies.

Q: Much has changed in Kenya, in Africa, in the world since you began work on Wizard of the Crow -- did those changes affect how the book progressed when you wrote it or translated it?

Ngugi:  No, no, because the essence of globalization within Africa and between Africa and the West remains the same despite surface changes. That is why I call it a global epic from Africa.

Q: What are the attractions for you of myth and fantasy in storytelling?  Is there a difference between how such things are used in orature versus literature?

Ngugi:  I am fascinated by how myths are made and how they grow. A person witnesses an event, say a car accident. In order to to convey the essence  and reality of the horror to another who was not present, he exaggerates. The recipient of the slightly exaggerated adds his own exggeration when telling the story to somebody else. And soon the story becomes almost larger than the actual event but it retains the essential truth.

Q: Has your approach to translating your work from Gikuyu to English changed since Devil on the Cross?

Ngugi: Slightly. In Devil on the Cross I tried to stay fairly close to the sytanx of the original, or rather tried to capture the feel of the original syntax. In Wizard of the Crow,  I just tried to capture the imagery, rhythm, and spirit of the original story.

Q: You have in the past noted the importance of translation between African languages (e.g. from Gikuyu to Kiswahili and vice versa).  Is such translation happening now?  Is its importance the same?

Ngugi:  Yes, I believe there should be more translations between African languages and  also between African languages and those of Asia, Latin America, Native America.  Unfortunately, not much is happening in that area.

Q: Who are writers whose work you would like to see gain a larger audience?

Ngugi:  I would like to see more translations from works written in the original languages of Asia, Africa, Native South American and Native America. I am always curious as to what treasures are hidden in those languages.

Q: You have studied film and made films, and I'm curious if any films recently have captured your attention, either for better or worse.

Ngugi: I recently saw The Last King of Scotland and I was very impressed by the story and the acting. I thought it captured the horror of the Idi Amn dictatorship quite well. But they could have shown a bit more of its linkages to the West.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o In His Own Words

I'm going to post soon a brief Q&A I did with Ngugi, but before I do, I want to give some context to his thoughts by sharing some excerpts from interviews collected in the excellent book Ngugi wa Thiong'o Speaks edited by Reinhard Sander & Bernth Lindfors.

Some things to know: Wizard of the Crow, like all of Ngugi's novels since Devil on the Cross, was originally written and published in Gikuyu.  (He wrote Devil on the Cross on toilet paper while imprisoned in Kenya in 1978.)  Ngugi has done most, though not all, of the translations of his Gikuyu novels into English.  For an explanation of Ngugi's name, see the last quote here.

1967:

I am very suspicious about writing about universal values.  If there are universal values, they are always contained in the framework of social realities.  And one important social reality in Africa is that ninety percent of the people cannot read or speak English.  The problem is this: I know whom I write about, but whom do I write for?

1969:

The African writer emerged as a reaction to what I might call the white presence in Africa or rather this simplistic European response to the African experience.  For a long time African writers were seen -- or Africans as a whole -- were seen as having no vital culture and having no history.  So the African writer's first job was, I think, to see the African society in the perspective of history.

1977:

Fiction cannot be the agent of change.  The people are the agent of change.  All writers can do is really try to point out where things went wrong.  They can do no more than that.  But fiction should be firmly on the side of the oppressed.  Fiction should firmly embody the aspirations and hopes of the majority -- of the peasants and workers.

1979:

...the real importance of my studying at Makerere [University] lay in this: that for the first time, I cam into contact with African and West Indian writers.  I remember three authors and books as being particularaly important to me: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, George Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin, and Peter Abrahams's Tell Freedom.  At Alliance [High School] I had seen Tell Freedom held by one of the teachers, and I can remember literally trembling when I saw the title.  When I found the book in the library as Makerere, I was overjoyed.  I read it avidly and later I read virtually all the books by Peter Abrahams -- that was the beginning of my interest in South African literature.  Achebe's Things Fall Apart started me on West African writers; from then on I followed closely the growth of West African literature.  I used to go to the library and look up every item of fiction in West African journals and magazines, especially work by Cyprian Ekwensi (who, I came to learn, was also an admirer of Peter Abrahams).  As for George Lamming, his work introduced me to West Indian writers, and this was the beginning of my interest in the literature of the African people in the Third World.

1980:

So what happens when you write in an African language?  First, you create a positive attitude to that language.  The reader, when he feels that this language can carry a novel with philosophical weight or a novel which totally reflects his environment, will develop a positive attitude to that language, to the people who created that language, and to the culture and traditions carried by it.  And if he begins to have respect for his immediate language, by extension he will also have a respect for all the other languages that are related to his language and to the hsitory and culture related to that language.

...A further point I would like to add is this: For a long time African languages and cultures have not been communicating with one another, but have been communicating via English; in other words, I have a sense of Igboness in Achebe's novels through his use of English.  The moment African writers start writing in African languages some of the novels will be translated into other African languages as well as English.  The moment you get an Igbo novel translated into Kikuyu or a Yoruba novel translated in Hausa you are getting these languages and cultures talking and communicating directly and mutually enriching one another.  So far from these languages being a divisive force, they become an integrative force, because they will be enhancing a respect for each other's languages and cultures as well as showing the similarities between the various cultures and their concerns.

1984:

Art cannot be outside that which affects human beings.  Art, literature, is about life, about the quality of human lives, about human relationships.  Therefore whatever affects the quality of human life, whatsoever affects the changing pattern of human relationships is connected with a legitimate area of art.  As such, any art which divorces itself from those social forces that impinge on human lives can only be an art which is denying itself its real life-force.  So politics, economics -- everything which has to do with the struggle of human beings -- is a legitimate concern of art.

1988:

Literature is indeed a powerful weapon.  I believe that we in Africa or anywhere else for that matter have to use literature deliberately and consciously as a weapon of struggle in two ways: a) first, by trying as much as possible to correctly reflect the world of struggle in all its stark reality, and b) secondly, by weighting our sympathies on the side of those forces struggling against national and class oppression and exploitation, say, against the entire system of imperialism in the world today.  I believe that the more conscious a writer is about the social forces at work in his society and in the world, the more effective he or she is likely to be as a writer.  We writers must reject the bourgeois image of a writer as a mindless genius.

1999, explaining his statement "The goal of human society is the reign of art on earth":

I associate my concept of art with creativity, movement, change, and renewal.  I'm thinking of a much more ethical society than what we have now.  This "reign of art" would subsume or transcend the coercive nature of the state: a more ethical, more human society that is constantly renewing itself; art embodies this.  I remember, historically speaking, a time when there was no state because I grew up in a society where literally there wasn't a state, at least in its centralized form.  Art precedes the formation of the state.  The state embodies a static concept of conservation, holding back.  Of course, when the state is also controlled by a class, it is an instrument for much more holding back of society.  Creativity, art embodies the principle of what our hands do anyway: change.

2003:

I wrote Weep Not, Child; A River Between; and A Grain of Wheat and published the three novels under the name James Ngugi.  James is the name which I acquired when I was baptized into Christianity in primary school, but later I came to reject the name because I Saw it as part of the colonial naming system when Africans were taken as slaves to America and were given the names of the plantation owners.  Say, when a slave was bought by Smith, that slave was renamed Smith.  This meant that they were the property of Smith or Brown and the same thing was later transferred to the colony.  It meant that if an African was baptized, as evidence of his new self or the new identity he was given an English name.  Not just a biblical, but a biblical and English name.  It was a symbolical replacing of one identity with another.  So the person who was once Ngugi is now James Ngugi, the one who was once owned by his people is now owned by the English, the one who was owned by an African naming system is now owned by an English naming system.  So when I realized that, I began to reject the name James and to reconnect myself to my African name which was given at birth, and that's Ngugi wa Thiong'o, meaning Ngugi, son of Thiong'o.

For some online interviews with Ngugi, see here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Contest - Win a Copy of Wizard of the Crow

The nice folks at Pantheon have decided to sponsor a couple of contests for a free copy of Wizard of the Crow, mailed to the address of your choice.

For contest number one, we'd like to hear about what you have found to be your favorite story - fiction or non-fiction - about dictatorial excess?

Contestants must respond in the comments section of this post by 9 p.m. PST, Friday, February 9th.  We will notify the winner via email and then post their name at the end of the comments string sometime early next week.

Read This! - a Wizard of the Crow Discussion - part II

Matt Cheney:
      
      I'm curious what people make of the narrative structure of the book, the way it sometimes introduces ideas and stories in one narrative strand, then later works backward to bring in more explanation (for instance, exactly what the women did to so offend The Ruler and the cabinet in front of the people from the Global Bank is not revealed until we've seen the reaction to it all).  I thought this contributed to the suspense of the book and added as well to the feeling of it as a story told to an audience that has experienced it all already -- the sense of us being in on the tale, and the tale being something narrated by a particular narrator.

Dan Wickett:

      I thought the usage of this type of narrative was a great idea, especially with a book of this length.  I think it added to the suspense, and also added to my own interest level as a reader – realizing how things might just be resolved at different times than when I might generally expect them to. 

Sam Jones:

      We’re talking about the choices that Thiongo made in constructing the narrative, but I was really more impressed by how well he executes on the choices he makes.  Like any big book, WIZARD has its minor longueurs and repetition, but faults are so trivial and there’s so much to enjoy here in terms of language, character, and ideas.  And I think you’re right, Matt – as a reader, your incomplete knowledge at different points make you feel like you’re almost hearing the story from the perspective of the characters.

      Jessica Stockton:
      
      One of the things I personally loved about this book was that tension between, say, Dostoyevsky and Tolkien: the exhaustively deep and detailed study of characters and motivations and the nuances of events, and the highly symbolic, over-the-top magic and strangeness of fantasy.  Aside from the fun weirdness of the enlarged body parts and the fantastical Babel-like project of Marching to Heaven itself, it allows the author to create the iconic contrasts and symbols that are available to fantasy writers: the nature-paradise where Kamiti and Nyawira retreat in order to return equipped to the urban world of men (a la Midsummer Night's Dream, maybe?), the "castle" (Rapunzel style) where the Ruler has bound his defiant wife (and by implication all women), the shrine of the Wizard itself, a place of confrontation and resolution and safety. 
      
      Sam Jones: 
      
      The magical realism label has been so overused that I almost hate to bring it up, but I did find a lot in WIZARD that reminded me as much of Latin American novels as any African novel I’ve read.  That combination you mention, Jessica, of the fantastic events and ordinary characters – that reminds me a lot of Garcia Marquez.   The way Tajirika and Vinjinia come to simply accept a flock of birds frozen in flight – and then all the animals in the “Museum of Arrested Motion” – is a nice example.  The name they give the magical valley, and the magical properties of words throughout the novel – not only words, but words in all their forms: names, titles, signs, songs, incantations.

      Jessica Stockton:
      
      What amazes me about WIZARD OF THE CROW is that it forces the reader to live with the troubles of Africa (much) longer, and while not soft-peddling anything or letting anyone off the hook, makes them liveable.  Because even though Nyawira and Kamiti and the Ruler and his bizarre ministers are in some ways part of a complex, strange folk tale, they're also people who continue to live in this African world, with joys and sorrows in different measures.  As Anne mentions, even the hopeless corrupt Tajirika is a loveable character, because he's fully human, and his motivations are so painfully, hilariously clear.  It's certainly a bit of a literary cliché, but Ngugi wa Thiongo accomplishes that writerly task: to make a foreign world one that we can live in for the space of a story, so that we come out of it with our own experience broadened.

      I love that way Thiongo allows some tensions to remain tensions, like that between the Christianity of Maritha and Mariko and the Wizard's magic, or Nyawira's privileged background and her leftist ideals, or Kamiti's insistence on transcendence and Nyawira's insistence upon action.  Actually, these are tensions hardly exclusive to Africa – they're pretty obviously part of our contemporary scene as well.  Watching them play out in this foreign, magical context both defamiliarizes and highlights them.
      
      Levi Asher:

      Another tension that energizes this great book is that between satire and beauty.  I naturally thought of “Catch-22” often when reading this book, but I don’t remember Joseph Heller ever coming up with exquisite, surprising moments like the love scene between the Kamiti and Nyawira, or the completely unexpected frozen world that Tajirika and Vinjinia stumble into (this last touch is, to me, completely bewildering, in that I have no idea how the author thinks it fits into the overall story, and yet somehow it does!).  I would call this magical realism, yes, as Sam does above – but even magical realism can be mundane, but Ngugi clearly has a special talent for it.
      
      I have a question for Matt – why do you say that it’s wrong to read this novel as specifically about the Daniel arap Moi regime in Kenya?  I agree of course that we should always look for broad and universal interpretations, but in this case Ngugi seems to point at a literal interpretation with the “Acknowledgements”, in which he tells us that the book is based on a specific period of struggle.  Matt, I know you were in Kenya (and I wasn’t) so I’m inclined to think you know more about this than me, but doesn’t the evidence show that the Ruler is based very much on Moi?  I guess I took the obfuscation to be a satirist’s necessary device, rather than an indication that the book’s focus is not very specific.  But I certainly may be wrong.

Read This! - a Wizard of the Crow Discussion

As mentioned before, Wizard of the Crow, by Ngugi wa Thiong'o, has been selected by the LBC as the Winter 2006 Read This! title.  This week will see posts by individual LBC members, a podcast interview of the author, and a roundtable discussion of the book by several LBC members.  There is always the possibility of more, such as a contest or two, as in past weeks, and who knows what else.   The following is the beginning of the roundtable discussion:

     Anne Fernald:

      I loved this book so much that it’s hard for me to start talking about it: I really think it’s a masterpiece, but I am going to try to actually talk about it, rather than just jumping up and down and exclaiming that it’s amazing and fun and funny and moving.

      Just by chance, I read Book One, Power Demons twice. That really helped me “get” the story. I began Wizard of the Crow and then had to leave it aside for a few weeks. When I returned, I was only a little ways in, so I just started over. The five theories of the origin of the Ruler’s illness serve as a key to the whole book, so I was really grateful to have that bit resonating strongly in my head. Since the Ruler doesn’t really become ill until much later in the book, I liked having the preview of some of the arc of the story. But I was really surprised to find that all of the characters in the prologue of this many-charactered book are important. Gloss over the name of the security guard, forget that we first encounter the Wizard of the Crow in the company of some garbage collectors, and you’ll be jogging your memory later. I’m curious how others kept the whole cast in their heads.

      Matt Cheney:
      
      Reading Book One twice is a good strategy – I had to, because a few weeks and a few other books separated my beginning the book and finishing it.  Inside the front of the book I stuck a Post-It note with the names, government positions, and enhanced body part of Machokali, Sikiokuu, and Mambo, plus the names of The Ruler's sons, and this was helpful as the book went along -- after a while, of course, they were all clear to me, but in the beginning there is so much going on, so many different characters and situations introduced, that I needed a cheat sheet.

      Dan Wickett:
      
      I also think you were both wise to re-read that first section.  There were times I found myself flipping back to it to collect my bearings with people and places.  I think had I taken the time at any of those given flippings, to just have re-read the entire section, it might have reduced the remaining number of times I had to go back.
      
      Sam Jones: 
      
      I may be a good test of how easy or difficult the book is to follow, since I offer an extreme case:  I started the book on page 292.  I read from the middle to the end, and then from the beginning to the middle.  Although I made no special effort to keep the names straight, I didn’t have any trouble following the characters and events, and I enjoyed the heck out of the book. I don’t know, maybe it was more fun having to guess what “Queing Mania” was, and what could possibly be meant by “Marching to Heaven.” At any rate, it was nice to get to the last page and know that I had another 300 pages to enjoy.
      
      Anne Fernald:
      
      I’ve read and taught some African literature but am by no means an expert. And I remember learning great things about Jomo Kenyatta as a girl in school: the great liberator of Kenya, brave survivor of the Mau Mau Rebellion. I don’t imagine that now, after the Cold War, children are learning the same, to say the least. Still, that memory of America’s shift away from admiration for an African dictator helped put this novel in to focus. How much African history do you have? How much did you want? Did you find yourself seeing the fictional Aburiria as Kenya, where Ngugi is from, where he spent time in prison? Did you find yourself running to Wikipedia?     

WINTER 2007 READ THIS! — WIZARD OF THE CROW BY NGUGI WA THIONG’O

The Litblog Co-op is pleased to announce its Winter 2007 Read This! Selection: Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Pantheon, 2006). The weeks ahead will include a chat with the author and discussion of the novel by members of the LBC.

We will remind you of the other considered titles over the next two days, and have week-long discussions and posts by LBC members taking up the pros and cons of each title. Wizard of the Crow will be discussed the week of February 5, three weeks away, which you gives you plenty of time to find the book, read it, and join the discussion.

Now we present Carrie Frye, who nominated Wizard of the Crow, as she explains why you should Read This!

Appearances can be deceiving, observes a character midway in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s masterful, biting, and very funny novel, Wizard of the Crow.

Indeed, the line could serve as the motto for the “Free Republic of Aburiria,” the fictional African nation in which the novel is set. The country is under the control of a dictator, a man known simply as the Ruler, whose own political career owes something to an ability to dissemble: “He was first widely known during the colonial times for seeming meek and mild-mannered to every white man with whom he came into contact.”

Suffice it to say, the Ruler is neither meek nor mild-mannered, and Wizard of the Crow takes up at a post-colonial time where, having ascended “the mountaintop of power,” the Ruler presides over a topsy-turvy country where nothing is as it seems, a nation where the police are hard to distinguish from the thieves and crippled beggars can run when necessary.

In Wizard of the Crow, statesmanship looks a lot like stage craft. Rallies in support of the Ruler are choreographed with the care and precision of a large-scale theatrical production. However, the novel, instead of fighting the absurdity, revels in it, with story lines rife with mistaken identity, far-fetched coincidence, and characters in disguise (there is even a fake mustache or two).

This is a big, complex book — some 766 pages of story. All I hope to do here is introduce it, and I look forward to discussing it more fully with my LBC comrades — and with other readers — in a few weeks. I first heard of the novel last fall, from a New Yorker review by John Updike. Since nominating the book, Wizard of the Crow has shown up on numerous “best of the year”-type lists (including The Washington Post’s). Critical notice is wonderful, yet I worry that a book like Wizard of the Crow — a novel that is long, satirical, and set in a foreign nation that is not Ye Old Picturesque England (three strikes! ) — being more admired than read. And that would be a shame, because Wizard of the Crow is a book that deserves a large audience. I urge you to pick it up and read it.