In Search of a Plethora of Critics...

By O Bolaji

Savour these comments on a trio of world class, renowned writers:

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

"That king Shakespeare - does not he shine, in crowned sovereignty, over us all as the noblest, gentlest yet strongest of rallying signs; indestructible..."

- Thomas Carlyle.

SAUL BELLOW

"Nature does not owe us perfection. Novelists don't, either...(Bellow is) an author who as Randall Jarrell once wrote of Walt Whitman, is a world, a waste with here and there, systems blazing at random out of the darkness - those systems as beautifully and astonishingly organised as the rings and satellites of Saturn..."

- Sam Tanenhaus. 

T.S ELIOT

"(He) seemed pure zenith, a colossus, nothing less than a permanent luminary, fixed in the firmament like the sun and the moon..."

- Cynthia Ozick.   

A fair amount of people might feel that there is a touch of hyperbole and the use of superlatives in these references or allusions to these writers. But this does not mean that critics are united in singing the praises of these writers. Over the years many other critics were not too enamoured with this trio.         

Hundreds of critics would ineluctably have their say in respect of a surfeit of writers; but imagine a situation where writers or their books are largely ignored for one reason or the other.  Pertinently and relatively, in Africa few of our creative works are comprehensively and rigorously analysed by critics and reviewers to the extent that we can endeavour to sift the wheat from the chaff as it were.

A great deal of books, including novels, has now been published in Africa mainly in the last 50 to 70 years. But it still took some time for critics around the world to start focusing on such works. Eustace Palmer, a formidable academic from Sierra Leone, was one of the first African critics in this wise. Recently he looked back on his first celebrated book, An Introduction to the African Novel (published in the 70s):    

"When I started teaching at Fourah Bay College (in Sierra Leone) modern African literature was just coming to the fore, and we African literary academics were therefore expected to take an interest in it, and not merely leave it to British and American enthusiasts like Bernth Lindfors and Gerald Moore.

"So I developed an interest in African literature and decided to apply some of the skills I had acquired at Edinburgh University, with some modifications to its study. After teaching one or two texts I decided to write a book on the African novel, giving my frank views about a selection of African novels. I called it simply An Introduction to the African novel. It was published by Heinemann and soon became something of a classic...". 

(Pix above: Eustace Palmer)

Nowadays the number of critics writing on African literature has multiplied, but so also has the number of books being published by African writers in our modern era. What usually happens is that critics would focus on a few celebrated works/authors, whilst many good writers and books are essentially ignored. 

Positive reviews (and the opposite) are feasible only when diverse readers and critics join the fray or crucible - and focus on as many published works as possible. Books written in African indigenous languages are the ones that suffer most with a general paucity of literary-critical material in this sphere. What price a plethora of perspicacious critics as regards African writing?