Happy Birthday, Charles Dickens

Yesterday was Charles Dickens' 200th Birthday. There have been lots of celestial birthdays recently. For example, we recently remembered my paternal Grandfathership on what would have been his 98th birthday. In celebration, there was lots of Handel and Dvorak and Debussy all round. But I digress... It was so great to see Dickens so fondly remembered decades after the time he inhabited, by other authors, the general public, and even the clergy of Westminster Abbey where he is buried.

Apparently he had asked to be buried in the yard of a sweet little village church somewhere, a place he associated with serenity and rest, but his eminence at the time of his death was such that he was instead upgraded to the rather more fancy Westminster Abbey. He is therefore now posthumous flat mates with the likes of Charles Darwin; not because he asked for it but because the honour was conferred on him by virtue of his contribution to society.

For me, Charles Dickens will always be the author who got to grips with the metropolitan/cosmopolitan subculture way before it was deemed so achingly cool to do so. His documentation of Victorian London is second to none. His ability to evoke the putrid smells, the pungent squalor, his keen observation of social disparities, and the sheer mastery of human motive make for great reading every time. And he is still very much alive in modern Literature.

About 5 years ago, I had to read the first Harry Potter book for one of my Creative Writing seminars (I do not subscribe to Pottermania so I treated it as a transactional exchange of sorts, a bit like taking cough mixture). It struck me then, that the old Dickens appeared to be reaching through the ages and signing off on fiction with his trademark flourish. I'll explain. Now I don't know whether JK Rowling esteems him as one of her inspirations, but there seemed (to me anyway) to be a certain Dickensian rendering of names going on. What I mean is that Dickens' characters names are generally fantastically onomatopaeic and Rowling captured this in names like 'Voldemort' for instance, who was the big bad deathly baddie, and 'Hermione' the goody goody gosh goody two shoes, etc etc. Not to say that every onomatopaeic name is attributable to Dickensian influence, but you know what I mean.

So hey ho for old Dickens. Thanks for all the inspiration and hilarity, and I hope that in these disgraceful times where young people are unable to read or digest any information over 140 characters long, that the work of great authors like him will not pale into obscurity.

Bitter Chocolate and Business

I just finished reading Bitter Chocolate by Lesley Lokko, who is one of my favourite authors of the moment. I read Sundowners, on the recommendation of my sister, and loved it so much that I know I will be reading her books for as long as she continues to write them.

Anyway, what I love most about her books is the way she weaves such intricate storylines. She takes seemingly unconnected characters and brings them together through deliciously unpredictable twists and turns. She is always surprising and believable at the same time. My favourite thing though, is that the heroines always have their fair share of woe. They get taken down to rock bottom, and we journey with them as they fight their way up to triumph.

I am trying to channel that fighting spirit now as I get ready to launch a new business idea I’m working on…I’m really hoping it catches on as it’s to do with food (and who doesn’t love food?). I will be launching a separate blog for it (soonish) and will let you know when it’s up and running. Wish me luck!!

P. S. My sister (who loves to read but is mortally afraid of bookshops, bookselling websites like Amazon and anything to do with buying books) goes to the shops and buys Lesley Lokko’s books. Doesn’t that say something? That someone who would rather maim herself than face what she thinks is the sensory overloaded world of book-buying would leave her house, get on a bus, enter a bookshop and endure the experience until the chip and pin machine has confirmed that her transaction is OK?

Another Gem of a Book

First of all, huge apologies for not updating! This is me grovelling, rubbing my palms together…

E jo
Emabinu
Iweliwe o!

And now that we’re cool…






I’ve just finished reading Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga. What a book! Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m behind. It’s been around since 1988 and I’m only just getting to it. Well, to use a cliché…actually, I won’t use a cliché! I find it weird though, the pattern that my reading seems to have taken on in the last couple of months, since I started working in Publishing. I’m either going way back to read the all-important, groundbreaking books I’ve always wanted to read, and have never quite got round to, or I’m reading way, way, way ahead, to titles that won’t be out until March/April next year. Kinda cool, huh.

On my retro book menu, still waiting to be devoured, are Perfume by Patrick Suskind and The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. The old skool greats I’ve just read and come to love are The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born by Ayi Kwei Armah and Nervous Conditions.

Back to Nervous Conditions…what a book! For something that was written over 18 years ago, I’m amazed at how aptly it captures things, how advanced and perceptive its treatment of the cultural miscellany of the individuals in a colonised country are. Those are issues that are still being faced now. Whether that means nothing has changed since 1988 (which is very worrying indeed) or that Dangarembga saw so well to the heart of the matter all those years ago (which is a sure sign that it’s the truth) I feel I’ve discovered a gem of a book. Rather than being polemic, it’s an exploration of the cultural identity and displacement in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

The characters were all so alive, and the language was just…mmm…I don’t know…juicy. You could tell it was in direct translation from a native dialect, and that gave it a weighty, sincere, beautiful dynamic. I loved Tambudzai’s lightening sharp mind, and the hunger, deep down in her belly, to better herself and overcome her disadvantaged beginnings so she could take care of her little siblings. I loved Nyasha’s intellectual enquiry, and how her being slightly avant-garde made her question many of the native traditions of her parents’ people, and how at the same time, quite unpredictably, she championed the causes of local practises, when it seemed the western ones (brought in by missionaries) were just thinly veiled ways of manipulating her people. Babamukuru, the benevolent but grumpy, patriarch, who said “Er” before everything, and his wife Maiguru, who worshipped her husband, called him her "daddy-sweet" and pretended to be stupid even though she had a Masters in Philosophy just so he wouldn’t think she was undermining his authority; the four of them, placed side by side, created a robust framework in which the theme of the book could operate.

Nyasha’s character posed the most thought provoking questions of all. Will the day ever come when the worldwide model of civilisation is not built solely on Western paradigms? Will the levels of personal development to which we aspire ever be independent of a desire to, for instance, a)sound more and more anglicised b)own a foreign passport c) know the intricacies of the Battle of Waterloo but nothing about the Benin Empire?

Or has the standard been set? Is it damage control from here on in? There’s a song called Beautiful Struggle by Talib Kweli. This is what Nyasha encapsulates in the pastoral setting of 1960s Rhodesia. The only problem is, as beautiful as the struggle was, as noble as her intentions were, the oxymoron of being a Westernised Local was at the very core of her existence. The book ended with Nyasha going mad….

Is there an answer to cultural miscellany?


Many times, I felt like getting a pencil and underlining whole chapters, because the observations were so clear eyed and so damn right, but my mind overruled. Besides, Auntie Jackie says it’s wrong to scribble in books! The humour was there, but controlled. The kind that made you do a knowing smile and shake your head. The kind that made me stop reading for a while on the train to work, think about what I had just read, agree with what I had just read, identify with what I had just read. It was expertly rendered humour, because it wasn’t far out or fantastic – it was uncluttered, simple, the wryness of everyday life.

On a lighter note, I’m really fascinated by sadza, which is what the characters ate a lot of in the book. I really want to try it so if anyone knows a good place in London to try Zimbabwean food, please let me know.

If you don’t already own a copy of Nervous Conditions, please I beg you, sort yourself out!

And Tsitsi Dangarembga you’re a star.

Dumb Ventures Promote Dumb Lectures

...dumb is the new smart...

There was an article in The Independent on Tuesday 28th August 2007 called 'The Comic-Book Bard'. Here's how the first paragraph reads: 'Depending on your point of view, these pictures either mark a bold attempt to bring Shakespeare to the masses, or the latest sad example of dumbing down in the British education system.'


'These pictures' refers to the atrocious sketches of the three witches in Macbeth which Classical Comics publishing in early 2008. As you've probably guessed, I agree with the latter part of the introductory paragraph. This move to turn great pieces of literature into comics is sad, very sad, and I'll tell you why.

It's the idea behind the publisher's comics that dooms the venture from the start. What they are trying to do, is make famous works of literature available to the masses, which is fair enough, but the way in which they're going about it is questionable. They're actually re-writing books like Frankenstein, Jane Eyre and Great Expectation in 'bite-size chunks of quick text'. This is not just abridging, but completely minimising, changing the format, turning into cartoons (and not even sophisticated ones like The Simpsons!)

Somehow, the publishers seem to think that 'Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, and disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage: Then lend the eye a terrible aspect...' is translatable into 'Get a fierce look in your eyes.' BUT IT'S NOT.

Call me whatever name you like, but learning is supposed to be aspirational. Not to say it needs always to be difficult, but the reason for education is to attain something higher than we currently posses. If everything is constantly brought down to basic levels, then it makes mockery of mental discipline, intellectual curiousity, creative enquiry. How are people ever going to learn new ways of expression or thought if even their prescribed reading is handed to them all perfectly pureéd? It's perfectly stupid. It's sacrilege.

For me, one of the attractions of reading the old literary classics is the language. I mean, take the quote above: 'lend the eye a terrible aspect' - it's beautiful, and so gallant. Because English has evolved so much since the time Macbeth (for example) was written, we get the pleasure of engaging with familiar words in unfamiliar usage. The language in which the old classics were written is also a massive key to understanding the dominant modes of thought at the time, from which the work itself is likely to have sprung. Take that away, and you rob the work of its context. What depth/meaning/importance does artistic or literary work have, without context?

That said, I'm glad it's a pokey little press, and not one of the larger publishing houses that has decided to desecrate literature - that gives me a little hope. But next time a kid tells me they got an A in literature in this country, I'll just smirk. If all it takes to pass exams is flick through comics, then...

People can't keep complaining that the education system is suffering, and then endorse ventures like this. Microwaved Macbeth, greatly reduced Great Expectations, and barely there Jane Eyre are adding to the problem of people who've been through school and still don't know a damn thing.

In my first week of university, my literature prof gave me a D on my first paper, a literary appreciation of Caedmon's Hymn. Her reason was that she 'couldn't believe that a child born and bred in Africa could write this well, and demonstrate such a strong understanding of literary techniques.' She concluded that I must have plagiarised, and threatened to report me to the disciplinary board. According to her, 'even the kids in her class who went through the Canadian school system, had never come up with such promising stuff in a first assignment, so how could someone from Africa possibly do it?' She said that if she weren't so sure I had plagiarised, she would have given me an A*. She also found it hard to believe that I had heard of Chaucer and and enjoyed Metaphysical poetry so much that I had commited a couple to memory. Did you notice I was quoting? This is all true and I won't waste time telling you that I didn't plagiarise, because I'm sure you know that already.

But I'd like to answer her question now - the reason 'a child born and bred in Africa' could excel at her homework is because we still hold education in the highest regard. You may look at satellite pictures of the world, and find that Africa's still the dark continent because we have energy issues. You may judge us by our politicians. You may judge us for the state of our economies. But at the end of the day, through everything, we would never compromise the integrity of works that we learn from or en masse, discredit handed down wisdom. I don't anticipate the day when the works of Wole Soyinka, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Leopold Senghor, Lenrie Peters, J. P. Clark, Kwesi Brew, Lesley Lokko, Alan Paton, Camara Laye, Beverly Naidoo, Chinua Achebe, Buchi Emecheta, and others would be mutilated into comicery. It's because we still recognise that knowledge is power, and superior knowledge is superior power.

While we commit verse after verse of tedious text to memory, in another part of the world, the authorities are pre-chewing the very same text and feeding it to kids through a rubber teet. Is it any surprise then, that when I came out tops in a class execrise, I got insulted for it?

The National Association for the Teaching of English, who is backing this trivialisation project, could learn a few things or two from our perspective of learning. Making it incredibly easy doesn't guarantee that the masses will latch on. In fact, their minds may yet wonder because it holds nothing solid enough to intrigue them...

Wow, I didn't mean to get all venty, that just came out at the end, but it is what it is. As usual, comments and contributions are very welcome, whether you happen to agree or disagree. xx

On Books That Challenge You

I was in a bit of a reading rut, recently. You know when that happens, it's like you can't concentrate, you really want to read but you're intensely bored etc. So anyway, I started reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (thanks Uncle Geoff!) and The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid and have now finished both. It's unforgivable to descend to banal platitudes when talking about great books and literature, but oh my God! They were amazing. Please drop whatever you're doing, scrape together your last pennies and go out and buy these books. The Reluctant Fundamentalist, I'm proud to announce has made it onto the Booker Longlist. I haven't read Gifted by Nikita lalwani yet, which is the other Penguin title on the list so I'm not sure exactly which one I'll be rooting for, but it will definately be one of those. I know The Grumpy Old Bookman isn't overly enamoured of these literary prizes, and neither was I for a while, but I really feel Hamid's book deserves some major recognition.


Anyway, back to Kingsolver and Hamid. I think what I enjoyed most about their books is that they've done something different with first person narration. The prose was beautiful but not contrived, poetic without being ridiculous. Kingsolver narrated the story of the undoing of an American Baptist family in the Belgian Congo, by giving each of her characters their own unique voice with which to tell their story. The overall effect was of sitting round a table at some family's reconciliation meeting, getting their different perspectives on what they went through. Because each of them used their own lingo, and explained their thoughts and feelings, we got valuable insights into the character's motivations, which as I've mentioned before, is very important.


Hamid's book appealed to me simply because I have a particular fondness for eavesdropping on stranger's conversations. I love sitting on the bus, in a restaurant, on a plane listening to what the people around me are talking about, how they're saying it and guessing at why they're saying it to whom they're saying it to. (You don't get to judge me, by the way!) So we see Changez, the protagonist sitting at dinner with someone, telling him about his life in America, how came to fall out of love with the country, or possibly, how the country fell out of love with him. It felt like I was sitting at the table next to them, listening. The setting is Lahore, the two are eating dinner, but at the same time, it's New York, because the stories of his youth (which he's telling) transport us back there with confidence, mastery, and a little bit of nostalgia. It's a brilliant twist at the end, when the talk turns to secret plots and conspiracies, that the unnamed dinner guest pops off Changez. Everything is implied of course, it's all very poetically done, but I felt awed and excited at the end at how it all worked together.


Another theme that ran through both books, was the concept of 'otherness' in societies; what constitutes it, what perpetuates it, whether it can be overcome, and if so, how. The Price family kids in The Poisinwood Bible were set apart from their peers at school because they were labelled the preacher's kids. In Kilanga, in the Belgian Congo, they were set apart because they were the only white family for miles around. The local people of Kilanga and the Prices found each other equally strange until they learnt to identify common factors in culture: love, respect, generosity, patience, and use those to guide their relationship. In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Changez was one of a few non-white students in his class at Princeton. When he was headhunted by the valuation company Underwood Sam, there was him from Pakistan, and Wainwright, from Jamaica, both trying to navigate the balance between who they were as proud young men from elsewhere, and how that fitted into the cosmos of work life, New York, and America after September 11.


Both books, without making a song and dance about it, tackle what it means to be a stranger in societies other than one's own, how extended abscence from one's place of birth and prolonged residence as a foreigner changes one's perspectives, and by default, allocates psychological/emotional energy to seeking out exactly who one is, what one believes and why. In the light of how the world is today, the Global Village, for lack of a better term, things like this are worth thinking about, and not just in a token, flippant way.


On that note, I'd like ot hear what you all think about issues to do with diaspora, otherness, and culture, in whatever form they occur. Also, what role do you see books/literature/creative arts playing in such issues? Should they tackle those issues full on, as a stated premise, or should it be done more subtley?

Love at First Sight, A Few Years Later

It takes someone who knows what they’re doing to incorporate aspects of travel writing and flanneurism with chic lit so seamlessly. This is my ooh, let’s see, third Lisa Jewell, and I’m impressed with her portrayal of London yet again. Not only does it reflect a keen sense of observation, an engagement with setting, it incorporates theoretic concepts that deal with city living.

What G. E. Debord described tediously as the Theory of the Dérive, and the natural influx and out flux release points of a city (or psycho geographical points) Lisa Jewell captures perfectly in this book, when her characters find themselves drawn inexplicably to Covent Garden Market or to The British Library or coasting along Piccadilly Circus. Her sense of place is very much real; each location in the novel symbolic in itself and it’s real life reputation, of a plot movement.

I especially like punchy dialogue between the characters, and the synergy between all the individual character’s plot lines and the larger context of the story. The result was right up Laughter Street; the book is hilarious! Considering that I picked this up in search of some good reading that wasn’t connected in any way to course work, I found it was the best thing I could have picked up…my sides are still aching!

While I was reading, it took a while for me to accept what she was doing with the story, even though I understood. She was telling a love story, but from the perspective of real life where people make mistakes, where signs kick people in the butt and they still flounder/make the wrong choices, where people regress many times before they progress, where love doesn’t make everything syrupy and perfect until it’s (almost) too late. Despite the candyfloss coloured love at first sight story line, the book is loaded with a quiet, soulful resonance – those characters were real people!

Nevertheless, after nearly 18 years of mixed messages, doomed marriages, dysfunctional families, and passed up opportunities, Vince Mellon and Joy Downer finally rediscover the love that began between them that summer in Huntstanton…

Vince & Joy is published by Penguin Books £7.99.

Exploring Erotica

Image from: http://www.citypaper.com/sb/91778/books_erotica.jpg

I was recently introduced to Black erotic fiction by a friend of mine at university and it started off a chain reaction of thought processes. I was curious. As a writer, I feel I have a responsibility to know what’s out there, so I read a chapter. She was reading The Sex Chronicles, and was so impressed by it that she ordered four more titles off Amazon when we went into the library to study. While this is in no way a criticism of people who enjoy this sort of literature, or indeed, of the genre’s authors, I think we have to think very carefully about the significance of such books.In the library, she showed me the corresponding website, Erotica Noir, where a prominent author of Black erotic fiction interacts with her readers, answering their sexual queries and also creates a forum where they can share their own real life erotic experiences. Although, admittedly, there was only one sexual image, the descriptions were vivid, each detail of every sexual act minutely described. And for all the protestations by the author on the sexual repression that women have suffered over the years needing to be challenged, I couldn’t help but think that this erotic fiction, while it may be liberating Black women sexually, also corroborates the historical (and media) image of the Black woman as a solely sexual being, a wench, a whore.

There is a fine line between sexual liberation and impropriety. Personally, there is nothing wrong with sex, except when it is turned into an exhibitionist movement. As I read the chapter of my friend’s book, it struck me that this was the textual cousin of traditional pornography. She was quick to assure me however, that this wasn’t porn at all. It was merely an expression of alternative creativity, linking her argument back to the concept of erotica as art. But how far can this go? Would that mean then, that such stories, or other images of the said erotica, if they were to involve children, would be absolved of all accusations of paedophilia? Also, how does the production and consumption of these stories stand up against what we would call our moral fabric? Are they a good behavioural manual for young Black women? What attitudes and mindsets do they sublimally assimilate from repeatedly reading these books? What ideas do they form about themselves, their sisters, their mothers and aunties within the greater context of society? Are these books not creating a multi-faceted dichotomy - a mass confusion between sexual liberation and endorsed baseness.

Black women everywhere are constantly fighting for respect, and are attempting to distance themsleves from the sex crazed image I mentioned before, which we see perpetrated mostly in music videos, but also deeply embedded in media semiotics. But how far are we actually getting?Are we not shooting ourselves in the foot by voicing our video-vixen dissent, and insisting on our respectability, only to write, publish and endorse this type of fiction? What image are we giving ourselves, especially as these books are plentiful in the Black Interest sections of book stores. If the adage about figuring someone out by the books they read were to be applied, then what should people deduce from looking at our shelves? What statement is our literary sub-culture making about us? Why should rampant sex be key to our literary manifesto?

This is not to say that all Black fiction is erotic, nor that all erotic fiction is Black. Neither is it to say that sex, or thinking through sexuality is wrong, but I find it hard to accept that erotica is any less objectionable than pornography. We really need to think about this, and make sure that our professions of decency are congruent across all areas of our lives.

It is entirely possible to say that I'm placing too great an importance on the image of Black women from the perspective of our reading material, and that after all, it's just sex; everyone does it as some point or other. What I'd like to know is this: what exactly do we mean by sexual liberation, and are we not, in all our methods of achieving this, overstating the point? What would sexual liberation look like? Even this erotic fiction which claims to libearate Black women plays charmingly into the very image we're trying to fight i. e. Black people don't read, but when they do, all they read is sex. Isn't true sexual liberation being a sexual being, among, not over and above, other things? Would true liberation not discredit the current definition of Black women as one of the synonyms of the word sex? I am not advocating censorship, I'm not accusing the Black eroticists of ruining society. I'm just saying we need to think, really think about what it means.

Comments and insights very welcome.

Potato Cider Anyone?

Potatoes from: http://www.umassvegetable.org/images/soils_crops_pest_mgt/crop/potato1.jpg

Bottles of wine from: http://blog.lightninglabels.com/blog/images/wine_5.jpg

A bottle of potato wine, made by an astral travelling old eccentric talks, quite legitimately, to Jay Mackintosh, who drinks too much, writes too little, and hallucinates a lot. Personally, I might have been inclined to diagnose malaria, except he hadn’t been to the tropics. But there isn’t just one bottle of wine talking. There are six, and unlike The Big Six (the men who fought to secure Ghana’s independence from British rule in 1957) the six bottles are called The Specials. Except the most special of all, the Fleurie ‘76 was actually made from potatoes. Fancy that!

I’ve never seen talking wine fictionalized in all my life, and it’s impressive. It’s really crass isn’t it, when an alkie says ‘I drank because the drink told me to’, but here, it works. The Specials rattle and talk to Jay from the cellar, they solve his problems, they tatse of magic and far away lands, and of the cosy kitchen of his youth; they contain layman’s alchemy.

It’s a really good book set between metropolitan London and rural Lansquenet. Apart from Jay’s status as a one hit wonder author and the power tussles with his media barbie girlfriend, it’s a touching story of the unravelling of a man’s past, and the congruence between his past and his future. Jay’s relationship with Jackapple Joe, and the love of gardening and wine making that he got from the old man, are an intersting way of showing us what the main character would become, and most importantly, why. I think it’s one of thos major considerations that many authors take for granted these days; why a character is the way they are, and Harris did a brilliant job with this.

The characterizatione? Spot on. Setting? Ditto. Narrative style and dialogue? Perfect. Needless to say, I truly wish I had written this!

P. S. There were blackberries in the supermarkets not too long ago. Perhaps I’ll try to make some actual blackberry wine, with fruit, not spuds. I’m sure there’s bound to be a recipe I can get hold of. That said, perhaps the bosses at Spuds’u’like should take a cue from this and explore a new business area – collecting the unsold potatoes at all their outlets, and brewing them into a special in-house ale. Layman’s alchemy, afterall!

Blackberry Wine (£6.99) is published by HarperCollins