25 September 2002, 1580 words
Without the independence movement, Caribbean literature would probably not have flourished as it did in the 1960s. On the other hand, it is not unreasonable to assume that, if the Caribbean islands didn't become independent, Caribbean literature probably wouldn't be in the doldrums it is experiencing today.
By the 1950s, it was becoming clear that Britain would be letting go her colonies. It wasn't only because a new generation of leaders in Africa and the Caribbean had made political independence their rallying cry, but also because, ideologically, the idea of Empire was passé. Colonisation had also become politically embarrassing to the British government after World War One, and the first nail in imperialism's coffin would be hammered in by World War Two.
The situation in the 1960s was thus perfect for the emergence of Third World literature. Ideologically, writers from the Third World had themes that informed strong fiction: oppression, the triumph of the underdog, the search for identity, the creation of a new society and culture. Pragmatically, some British publishers geared themselves for the flowering of a new kind of literature with huge potential markets in Africa and India and the Caribbean.
Firms like Macmillan and Heinemann set up departments to publish African and Caribbean textbooks and novels. Andre Deutsch, who was to publish most of VS Naipaul's books, sought out Third World writers and even set up an office in Africa. The excitement was such that Diana Athill, Naipaul's editor at Andre Deutsch Limited, notes in her memoir Stet that in those days it was far easier for a young non-white author to get published than a young British one. And, since most of these writers were actually living in London, there was a network which made it relatively easy for Caribbean-born authors to find publishers.
Of the Caribbean novelists who emerged in the 1960s, the outstanding ones were all from Trinidad. From the start, Naipaul stood head and shoulders over everyone else, although critics initially put he and Sam Selvon in the same class. But Selvon never had Naipaul's sharp sensibility, and by the end of his career had produced only three books of superior quality (The Lonely Londoners, A Brighter Sun, and Ways of Sunlight). Michael Anthony's A Year in San Fernando and The Games Were Coming were well-received, and the Trinidad-based Earl Lovelace had begun to make a name for himself with his first novel, The Schoolmaster, which was the winner in a novel-writing competition sponsored by a British oil company in Trinidad.
By the early 70s, the British publishers who had supported this emergence began to realise that they had miscalculated. The newly independent African nations were crumbling rapidly under rapacious and oppressive leaders. Even in the more stable Caribbean islands, the powers-that-be in politics and academia never made any real effort to promote literature or even to woo the region's writers back home.
But it wasn't only the politicians who were at fault. The writers themselves didn't produce the kind of work which would have generated excitement in the islands. There were several reasons for this. One was insecurity: needing to overcome the stigma of Black intellectual inferiority, nearly all Caribbean novelists wrote books of high seriousness. There was never any real attempt to write popular literature. Another factor was distance. Because they wrote mainly for a metropolitan audience, the novels never addressed the current concerns of the people who were the subject of the books.
In The Middle Passage, Naipaul also points out a key shortcoming of Caribbean novelists. "Most have so far only reflected and flattered the prejudices of their race or colour groups," he wrote. "The insecure wish to be heroically portrayed. Irony and satire, which might help moe, are not acceptable and no writer wishes to let down his group."
Relatedly, the writers' absence from the place they were writing about ensured that the populace never made the kind of personal contact which helps sustain interest in - and sales of - books. That absence also ensured that individuals who wanted to be writers either didn't pursue their dream or also ended up going away, since networking is as essential in publishing as in all other businesses.
Naipaul's superiority was shown by the fact, that although he lived in Britain from age 18, he wrote novels which are still relevant to us 40 years later. His early works, such as Miguel Street and The Suffrage of Elvira, are accessibly written and very funny. But, thanks in large part to the intellectual backlash from UWI academics (many of whom are now full of praise for him), Naipaul has remained a literary pariah in the land of his birth.
Forty years after Independence, what is the state of Trinidadian literature? Well, with the sole exception of myself, every single one of the younger generation (i.e. 45-and-under) of Trinidad-born novelists lives in the metropolitan countries, just as our writers had to do before Independence. Nowadays, though, Canada rather than Britain is the main home to aspiring Caribbean writers. Rabindranath Maharaj (The Interloper and Other Stories, Homer in Flight, The Lagahoo's Apprentice) has been the most successful, and Shani Moottoo (Cereus Blooms at Night) is also becoming well-known.
It is true to say, however, that there is nothing like new Trinidadian fiction - i.e. fiction which deals exclusively with our experience here in the island. The exceptions are my own two novels (The Autobiography of Paras P, Virgin's Triangle), and I doubt I could find a publisher for them today. They were published in 1996 and 1997 respectively, when Heinemann was in the process of resurrecting its Caribbean Writers Series. But the company's new authors' guideline emphasises that their focus is now on CXC titles and says "manuscripts should appeal to both genders of 14-16 upwards" and "be relatively conservative in nature": so if I submitted those same manuscripts now, Heinemann would reject them.
The metropolitan publishers have no interest in the Caribbean experience anymore. Mind you, new Caribbean writers can still get published, if their themes are ethnicity and/or women's issues. Maharaj writes on a Naipaulian theme, alienation, updated now to describe the experience of the immigrant in Canada. Mootoo's themes are ethnicity and homosexuality.
This means that we need a Caribbean publishing house. Trinidadian publishers like Ken Jaikaransingh of Lexicon Trinidad Ltd and Jeremy Taylor of Media and Editorial Projects (MEP) have expressed interest in publishing fiction, but are constrained by the paucity and quality of manuscripts, as well as the financial challenges. The Caribbean Association of Publishers, in existence for only a couple of years now, has not made any concrete difference yet.
The situation doesn't seem likely to improve. In Trinidad and Tobago, there is little institutional support for aspiring writers. The University of the West Indies has never felt any duty to support local writers, although even in the metropolitan nations novelists rely on teaching posts to make a living. The Government has never offered a subsidy to publishers for fiction, as is done in Canada, and has long cancelled the annual literary competion of the Ministry of Culture (in which I won second prize for a short story at age 14). The country's newspaper publishers, with typical Third World myopia, have never felt any need to get into book publishing, not even to bring out collections of their own articles. (The Express has been especially guilty in this respect, since a collection of Keith Smith's best columns would not only be an invaluable cultural record, but also make a profit.)
Only the Cropper Foundation has had an annual writing workshop over the past two years. Two years ago, also, Wesley Gibbings resurrected the literary journal The New Voices with the intention of publishing every two months, but since Gibbings' media work keeps him out of the country so often that project is on indefinite hiatus. The National Drama Association and the Trinidad Theatre Workshop has had playwrighting competitions but, in typical Third World fashion, defaulted on the clause which promised that winning plays would be staged. This lackadaisical attitude has helped stymie the careers of talented young writers like Luke Jorsling, who has won several playwrighting prizes but never had his work staged.
As far as lending support to writers goes, money is not the problem. The Culture Ministry could sponsor an annual literary competition with a $25,000 budget. An annual government subsidy to local publishers to publish novels should cost no more than $100,000. UWI could budget a similar amount for local authors, paying them to tutor or give occasional lectures. And the newspapers could easily publish annual collections of their best articles as a commercial venture.
The sums involved here are relatively trivial, so clearly the only reason such programs don't happen is because the powers-that-be do not consider creative writing a valuable part of the Trinidad project: an attitude that again reflects our Third World perspectives. Without such measures, any individual with the desire and talent to be a novelist will probably opt for a profession in advertising or journalism instead, or go away to a developed country. So Trinidadian literature, in any sense that the term is meaningful, seems to have a bleak future indeed. Had we not become independent, though, literature might be flourishing since there would still have been institutional support from the Mother Country: but the ironies of that are better left unstated.
Copyright ©2002 Kevin Baldeosingh