THE LITBLOG CO-OP

Spring 2007: our nominees!

After hours of snowfall in Pittsburgh it's hard to imagine that spring will ever come. But we here at the LitBlog Coop are so confident that it will arrive that we've nominated three excellent books, one of which will be the Spring 2007 Read This! pick.

The Cottagers by Marshall Klimasewiski (W.W. Norton)

Sacco and Vanzetti Must Die! by Mark Binelli (Dalkey Archive Press)

Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead by Alan DeNiro (Small Beer Press)

Because of current weather conditions, I can't tell you exactly when spring will arrive. We'll have real live dates for discussion posted here eventually. In the meantime, please join us in reading these wonderful nominees.

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. 

LBC Podcast #3: Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Nominator: Carrie A.A. Frye

Nominee: Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Subjects Discussed: Satirical plausibility, Wordsworth's willing suspension of disbelief, narrative explanation and interconnectedness, queuing, The Wizard of the Crow as a history of Africa and a global epic, poverty, truth vs. fiction, metamorphosis in nature, comic literary references, Jonathan Swift, how dialogue carries the narrative, theatrical metaphors, Tajirika as charming villain, writing in Kikuyu and translating in English, Kenyan cultural politics in the 1960s, and being imprisoned for writing in an African language.

Backup Link: (MP3)

(A co-production of the LBC, Pinky's Paperhaus and The Bat Segundo Show)

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Thiong'o: Getting a character mentioning, or the narrator mentioning, something in passing, which may look very almost -- if a reader is not careful, he may actually miss it.  But then as you go on, the small thing mentioned at the beginning becomes larger and larger, and more and more significant.  For instance, the issue of queuing.  The way it begins is almost offhand and then, as it goes on, it increasingly becomes more and more important, more and more central, connecting the various events.

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.

One of my favorite reads in months . . .

I'd just like to jump in here and say how much I enjoyed reading this book. As some have noted, it's size is intimidating. I definitely noted the size, as I had just finished reading Pynchon's 1200-page Against the Day, and a couple of 600-page books right before I started Wizard. At that point I really wouldn't have minded a nice short read, but duty calls.

My worries proved completely unfounded, as I raced through Wizard in under a week. What really distinguishes this book for me is that Thiong'o continually sets up high narrative expectations, and then he delivers. Time after time he set me up for a big plot twist, or a big revelation of the kind that usually happens only once or twice in a novel. What truly impressed me about Wizard was that after setting me up time and time again, I can honestly say that Thiong'o almost never let me down throughout the course of this 780-page book.

This tracks back to Thiong'o's interest in oral storytelling, because an oral storyteller needs to meet different needs than a novelist. She is face to face with  her audience, and if she fails to deliver, then she is in trouble. In contrast, a novelist can write complete drivel, and never have to come face-to-face the ire of fans. Thiong'o wrote his book as though he was one the spot, 100% accountable for his story, and it shows. This book is entertianing from start to finish.

But what's more, Thiong'o's storytelling isn't just for the sake of entertaining us. By filling his fable-like story with many, many twists and revelations, he gives it great depth--although this book is told like a fable, it's morality is very nuanced and complex. Similarly, the symbols in this book take on many, many meanings over the course of the novel, and interact in very interesting ways. So Wizard is as much of an intellectual pleasure as it is an entertainment.

And to cap off all this, Thiong'o's book is laying bare before our eyes the way an African dictatorship works. Wizard of the Crow is a very ambitious book, and I think it succeeds in almost everything it sets out to do. It's easily one of my favorite Read This! selections yet.

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?     

LBC Podcast #2: Stephen Graham Jones

Nominator: Scott McKenzie

Nominee: Stephen Graham Jones

Subjects Discussed:  Approachable authors in the frozen food section, the implementation of pre-2000 references into narrative, the lineage of horror films, screenplay terminology, the relationship between Demon Theory's top text story and the footnotes, movie references, protagonists vs. ensemble casts, horror novels, drafting vs. editing, the influence of real-life horror, girls in bras, Jones' unintentional academic life, trepidations towards New York, refraction and contemporary "science" novels, Against the Day, small town writing communities, Jones' influences, how the trilogy structure changed the footnotes, the difficulties of writing screenplays, drive-by urinals, and the major stylistic difference between the Demon Theory hardcover and paperback.

Backup Link: (MP3)

(A co-production of the LBC, Pinky's Paperhaus and The Bat Segundo Show)

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Jones: I just discovered that footnote function in my Microsoft Word, I guess.  And I was writing Demon Theory and having a ball with the screenplay terminology and all that.  But then maybe, I guess fifteen pages into it, if that, I started dropping footnotes.  They were meant to be deleted later. I was dropping them.  Like I was calling myself names.  Like "You obviously stole this from Halloween."  "You stole this from here."  You know.  But then they just kept snowballing and snowballing until everything was stolen from something.  And that kind of just became one of Demon Theory's conceits, I guess.