Si­mon Lee

If mu­si­cians make the most in­tractable in­ter­vie­wees, (be­cause what they have to say is in the mu­sic) then writ­ers run a close sec­ond, as some of those who at­tempt­ed to ques­tion VS Naipaul at a UWI func­tion ho­n­our­ing him af­ter his No­bel award, dis­cov­ered to their cha­grin. Last Sat­ur­day UWI once again played host to two more di­as­poric writ­ers from the re­gion: Yale Pro­fes­sor of Eng­lish, Kit­tit­ian-British Caryl Phillips and Trinida­di­an Robert An­toni, in what was billed as A Lit­er­ary Con­ver­sa­tion with a fo­cus on Writ­ing Caribbean Lives in­to Colo­nial His­to­ry.

The soir�e was a joint ven­ture or­gan­ised by the Ansa Caribbean Awards Foun­da­tion, UWI, UTT and the Bo­cas Lit­er­ary Fes­ti­val, al­though as prog­en­i­tor of the event and mod­er­a­tor for the evening Dr Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar in­ferred, both writ­ers paid their trav­el ex­pens­es.

Once again the writ­ers proved their un­will­ing­ness, or in­abil­i­ty to be con­strained–ei­ther by the ques­tions posed by the mod­er­a­tor, or by the sup­posed fo­cus–which re­sult­ed in frus­tra­tion for some in the packed Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre au­di­to­ri­um, while for oth­ers it pro­vid­ed com­ic re­lief.

What might have been more pro­duc­tive would have been to al­low a re­al con­ver­sa­tion be­tween the two writ­ers to de­vel­op, which was sure­ly the orig­i­nal in­ten­tion, but the for­mat was de­railed in­to a se­ries of re­spons­es from each writer to the mod­er­a­tor's ques­tions.

That said, some of those re­spons­es proved in­valu­able to those seek­ing in­sights in­to the pro­duc­tion and func­tions of lit­er­a­ture. The evening got un­der­way with read­ings from the writ­ers' lat­est works, both his­tor­i­cal nov­els. Caz Phillips (amongst whose awards was the 2004 Com­mon­wealth Writ­ers Prize for his nov­el (A Dis­tant Shore) be­gan with an ex­cerpt from his re­cent­ly-pub­lished nov­el The Lost Child, which re­vis­its a Caribbean-Eng­lish in­ter­tex­tu­al­i­ty, es­tab­lished by Jean Rhys' rewrit­ing of the Char­lotte Bronte canon­i­cal clas­sic Jane Eyre in her 1962 Wide Sar­gas­so Sea.

One of the pro­tag­o­nists in Phillips' nov­el is Heath­cliff, an­ti-hero of Emi­ly Bronte's equal­ly canon­i­cal Wuther­ing Heights (which has al­ready been re­worked, or Cre­olised in Guade­lou­pean nov­el­ist Maryse Cond�'s Wind­ward Heights).

A ma­jor theme which emerged through­out the con­ver­sa­tion, was im­me­di­ate­ly in­tro­duced by Phillips in his ini­tial gloss–the per­son­al and op­por­tunis­tic el­e­ments of cre­ative writ­ing. He ex­plained how af­ter mi­grat­ing to Eng­land with his par­ents in the 1950s he had grown up Leeds, in the north of Eng­land, ten miles from the West Rid­ing vil­lage of Ha­worth, where the Bronte sis­ters lived.

For 15 years a pic­ture of Emi­ly Bronte sat on Phillips' desk but there was no con­nec­tion for him un­til years lat­er he be­gan to won­der about the "sev­en-year-old child who shows up on the docks at Liv­er­pool," one of the British city-ports built on the prof­its of the slave trade.

It is es­ti­mat­ed that in the two decades pre­ced­ing the abo­li­tion of the trade in 1807, three-quar­ters of all Eu­ro­pean slav­ing ships left from Liv­er­pool. Over­all, Liv­er­pool ships trans­port­ed half of the three mil­lion Africans car­ried across the At­lantic by British slavers.

Phillips' in­tro­duc­to­ry read­ing fo­cused on the sev­en-year-old Heath­cliff to be and his des­ti­tute moth­er, "a for­mer Con­go slave from the West In­dies," def­i­nite­ly a case of in­sert­ing "Caribbean lives in­to colo­nial his­to­ry" and a pow­er­ful evo­ca­tion of the same em­pa­thy Phillips would claim lat­er in the pro­ceed­ings, to be one of lit­er­a­ture's fun­da­men­tal ob­jec­tives.

The name­less, bro­ken half-crazy woman is viewed against the back­drop of the pros­per­i­ty de­rived from her suf­fer­ing and while she's in­vis­i­ble to those bustling about their busi­ness on the dock, she is very much alive to her young con­cerned son.

The close­ness of their bond is more clear­ly de­fined by the in­dif­fer­ence sur­round­ing them and their hu­man­i­ty re­mains in­tact. De­spite the trau­ma of her past and present the for­mer slave, in a mo­ment of lu­cid­i­ty de­ter­mines "her son will nev­er walk be­hind a la­dy," that he will not suf­fer the same servi­tude she's en­dured.

Read in a melan­cholic mo­not­o­ne, this ex­tract com­pelled the au­di­ence (and will do the same for read­ers) to repo­si­tion their sen­si­bil­i­ty. Rather than fo­cus­ing on the slave ex­pe­ri­ence in the Caribbean, it brings the re­sults of that ex­pe­ri­ence back home to the bel­ly of the beast which cre­at­ed it, height­en­ing pathos but si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly in­duc­ing em­pa­thy for the moth­er and son whose lives have been shat­tered by the same ex­pe­ri­ence.

Bob­by An­toni in­tro­duced the read­ing from his 2014 Bo­cas win­ning nov­el As Flies to What­less

Boys by em­pha­sis­ing that this his­tor­i­cal nov­el set in Trinidad in 1845, was es­sen­tial­ly "the sto­ry of my moth­er's fam­i­ly the Tuck­ers," af­ter whom the west­ern val­ley is named.

Al­though much of the nar­ra­tive is shaped by the abortive at­tempt of Ger­man in­ven­tor/char­la­tan J Adol­phus Et­zler and his as­so­ciate CF Stollmey­er, to found an ex­per­i­men­tal Utopi­an com­mu­ni­ty in Trinidad, un­der the aus­pices of their Trop­i­cal Em­i­gra­tion So­ci­ety (TES), An­toni de­cid­ed he want­ed "to tell a small in­ti­mate fam­i­ly tale" rather than con­cen­trate on the ad­mit­ted­ly fas­ci­nat­ing char­ac­ter of Et­zler.

Af­ter read­ing part of the pro­logue (ex­tract­ed from the jour­nal of 15-year-old Willy Tuck­er, who along with his moth­er and sis­ters ac­com­pa­nied his for­mer Chartist fa­ther to Trinidad as mem­bers of the TES) An­toni was ques­tioned by mod­er­a­tor Ram­char­i­tar about choos­ing to in­tro­duce En­light­en­ment ideas (ex­per­i­men­tal Utopi­an com­mu­ni­ties util­is­ing ma­chines to trans­form na­ture, leav­ing mem­bers free for oth­er pur­suits than labour), rather than the ob­vi­ous tropes of slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship.

Re­ply­ing, An­toni stressed that the TES choice of Trinidad as a lo­ca­tion, was first­ly based on the fact that slav­ery had been abol­ished there.

He not­ed that both Et­zler and Stollmey­er (whose pro-abo­li­tion news­pa­per of­fice in Penn­syl­va­nia was burnt down and an at­tempt made to lynch him) along with the work­ing class Chartist fugi­tives from Lon­don all sub­scribed to En­light­en­ment ideals of uni­ver­sal free­dom and equal­i­ty.

But he al­so not­ed the syn­chronic­i­ty of the TES ar­riv­ing in the same year as the Fa­tal Roza­ck and the be­gin­ning of in­den­ture­ship.

From this point the fo­cus wob­bled. Maybe Caz Phillips didn't re­spond too well to the mod­er­a­tor's blunt: "What does the Lost Child sym­bol­ise?", the same kind of dead end ques­tion as ask­ing a com­pos­er what a piece of mu­sic means. Be­sides, Phillips is well aware that "pub­lish­ing is a busi­ness" and he's in the busi­ness of sell­ing his books and not re­veal­ing what can on­ly be ar­rived at af­ter care­ful read­ing. He par­ried by quot­ing William Faulkn­er's No­bel prize speech, that writ­ing is con­cerned with "the prob­lems of the hu­man heart in con­flict with it­self which alone can make good writ­ing be­cause on­ly that is worth writ­ing about, worth the agony and the sweat."

The next ques­tions about met­ro­pol­i­tan au­di­ences ex­pec­ta­tions about the Caribbean and "who are you writ­ing for, an au­di­ence or your­self" were side­stepped by Phillips who prag­mat­i­cal­ly not­ed that "any writer af­fil­i­at­ed to the Caribbean is re­gard­ed as a ex­ot­ic ad­junct to the Eng­lish canon."

How­ev­er, due to glob­al­i­sa­tion, in­creased trav­el and more cos­mopoli­tan au­di­ences for­mer ex­pec­ta­tions no longer per­tained.

"Peo­ple should be en­cour­aged to read, more than write," Phillips con­clud­ed.

Asked to com­ment about be­ing called The James Joyce of the Caribbean, An­toni ex­plained writ­ing is based on what you read and when he be­gan as grad­u­ate stu­dent he was read­ing Joyce, Faulkn­er and Vir­ginia Woolf.

He posed the chal­lenge to him­self: "How do I make a nov­el as dar­ing in terms of form and lan­guage?" With What­less Boys he was at­tempt­ing to make "my text as dar­ing and as out­ra­geous as Et­zler."

Which he did by "break­ing out of the text" with a web­site of ap­pend­ed films and doc­u­ments. He went on to con­fess: "My ob­ses­sion is with the ver­nac­u­lar.

"I'm look­ing for hy­brid lan­guage and form to ex­press that won­der­ful hy­brid Caribbean sen­si­bil­i­ty."

Phillips then em­pha­sised that for young writ­ers "you will write what you read" and that "too many peo­ple don't read or read the wrong stuff.

"Read­ing is like nour­ish­ment. If you eat Mc­Don­alds you can't be an ath­lete."

In the brief Q&A ses­sion that fol­lowed, re­spond­ing to a query about how to en­cour­age so­cial me­dia and dig­i­tal­ly-ob­sessed teenagers to read, Phillips re­mind­ed us all of lit­er­a­ture's uni­ver­sal func­tion–its fo­cus on "the is­sues of the hu­man heart," its re­quire­ment that "we read deeply and de­vel­op deep em­pa­thy for some­one who is not you," a cri­te­ri­on chill­ing­ly op­posed to the nar­cis­sism of so­cial me­dia.

Maybe not an in­sight on writ­ing Caribbean lives in­to colo­nial his­to­ry, but def­i­nite­ly a dis­turb­ing sound byte for our times.