Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

A few years ago, in a dis­cus­sion about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a Caribbean lit­er­a­ture prize, I pro­posed that it wasn't a good idea, as the pol­i­tics would make it in­to a lit­er­ary Spe­cial Olympics (no in­sult in­tend­ed to the Spe­cial Olympics). Now the OCM Bo­cas prize is here, and to take noth­ing from the win­ners, a def­i­nite pol­i­tics and aes­thet­ic are vis­i­ble. (Here is where I dis­close one of my books was en­tered a cou­ple of years ago and was nev­er seen again.)

Pol­i­tics aside, I had oth­er trep­i­da­tions about Bo­cas from ex­pe­ri­ence with lo­cal/in­ter­na­tion­al cul­tur­al en­ter­pris­es, like CCA7 (Caribbean Con­tem­po­rary Arts). They tend to start with grandiose aims and end up giv­ing what­ev­er re­sources they mulct to a few peo­ple. In this re­gard, Bo­cas has proven me wrong.

While the usu­al par­a­sites have at­tached them­selves, Bo­cas founder Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown has made ad­mirable ef­forts to en­sure broad-based par­tic­i­pa­tion.

There's a chil­dren's sto­ry­telling car­a­van, which stops in Ma­yaro, Ch­agua­nas, San Fer­nan­do, Ce­dros, To­ba­go, and oth­er ar­eas which Port-of-Spain usu­al­ly doesn't no­tice. She's al­so no­ticed that there's a whole oth­er pop­u­la­tion in Trinidad with a lit­er­ary tra­di­tion of its own (whose Ur-text is the Ra­mayana) which "na­tion­al cul­ture" and its agents seem not to no­tice. Bo­cas is less than ten years old, and has al­ready at­tract­ed pos­i­tive in­ter­na­tion­al no­tice, and helped as­pir­ing writ­ers in Trinidad & To­ba­go, and the re­gion.

Again, more praise.

Okay, enough with the praise, let's get back to the pol­i­tics and aes­thet­ics. Ms Sa­landy-Brown has no con­trol over this. The ad­ju­di­ca­tion pan­els are in­de­pen­dent, and some of the peo­ple on them are schol­ars and artists whose tal­ent and in­tegri­ty are be­yond re­proach. So this isn't any­one's "fault" so much as a man­i­fes­ta­tion of an ide­o­log­i­cal drift which has been swirling for some time, to re­colonise the term "Caribbean."

The "Caribbean" in this it­er­a­tion is a trope of ex­oti­cism. Palm trees, colour­ful, vi­o­lent na­tives, mu­sic, Car­ni­val and the beach, and sim­ple, hon­est brutes who can on­ly stare in won­der at Amer­i­ca and Eng­land, speak­ing a cu­ri­ous but de­light­ful Cre­ole.

This no­tion is as old as Cal­iban, but now cu­ri­ous­ly thrives among the West In­di­an clerisy which seems to agree it's not a bad thing any­more. But it is, and a few peo­ple have point­ed it out–our three No­bel lau­re­ates (in­clud­ing Sir W Arthur Lewis) and some writ­ers over the last few decades.

Edgar Mit­tel­holz­er summed it up pre­scient­ly in 1945 (No­vem­ber 13), in this news­pa­per: "Ex­cept for one or two rare stu­dents and trav­ellers, the Eng­lish and Amer­i­cans con­sid­er us West In­di­ans to be noth­ing more than a pack of 'na­tives' with 'quaint' cus­toms...we are de­pict­ed as a back­ward peo­ple of the Trop­ics...they see us as pos­sessed of strange su­per­sti­tions and ig­no­rant, pa­gan be­liefs. To them, it is ridicu­lous to sug­gest that we could be pos­si­bly in­ter­est­ed in Bach or Beethoven, or Shake­speare...".

(In­ci­den­tal­ly, Zo­ra Neale Hurston's icon­ic 1950 es­say, What White Pub­lish­ers Won't Print, makes the iden­ti­cal ob­ser­va­tion about African Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture. It's worth not­ing that Mit­tle­holz­er pre­dat­ed her.)

I've raised this is­sue (of be­com­ing that tourist brochure card­board cut-out will­ing­ly) be­fore, but am in the hap­py sit­u­a­tion to now il­lus­trate it us­ing one of the books short­list­ed for the Bo­cas fic­tion cat­e­go­ry. This is Trinida­di­an/Cana­di­an An­dre Alex­is's 15 Dogs, which won the Giller Prize in Cana­da, among oth­er awards. This book throws in­to re­lief what Wil­son Har­ris called the re­gion­al il­lit­er­a­cy of the imag­i­na­tion–the con­fine­ment of the cre­ative imag­i­na­tion to a few inane, self-im­mo­lat­ing top­ics, which are ap­proved of by met­ro­pol­i­tan pub­lish­ers and pro­duc­ers, and now the lo­cal cul­turati–which af­fects en­tire so­ci­eties for the worse.

Alex­is's nov­el pro­vides a good ex­am­ple of a lit­er­ate, vig­or­ous imag­i­na­tion. It be­gins with 15 dogs in a ken­nel in Toron­to be­ing giv­en speech and con­scious­ness by two Greek gods out on a ben­der in a Toron­to bar. Us­ing this de­vice of chang­ing per­spec­tive, Alex­is cre­ates a mul­ti­lay­ered sto­ry which works as post­colo­nial para­ble, sec­u­lar hu­man­ist fa­ble, and a very mov­ing and en­ter­tain­ing sto­ry. Yes, it's been done be­fore–from An­i­mal Farm to Plan­et of the Apes–but an­oth­er of Alex­is's achieve­ments is to have car­ried out Pound's dic­tum: to take the fa­mil­iar and "make it new."

Of course, it be­hooved Alex­is to im­pli­cate the ac­tu­al ge­og­ra­phy of Toron­to in­to his imag­i­na­tive ge­og­ra­phy, but the nar­ra­tive and force of its ideas don't re­ly up­on it. This is a uni­ver­sal sto­ry, and could hap­pen any­where. But, I won­der, could it hap­pen in Port-of-Spain? First of all the dogs are gift­ed with Eng­lish, not Cre­ole, and while there is a brief ex­cur­sion in­to the idea of "dogg-itude," the is­sue of "dog-ness" is worked out ear­ly in the nar­ra­tive and it doesn't sub­vert the sto­ry. The dogs re­alise their dif­fer­ence from oth­er dogs, and there aris­es a con­flict: how to re­main "au­then­tic" dogs? One an­swer is that the new lan­guage must be ban­ished, un­der threat of vi­o­lence.

In the dogs' jour­neys are fa­mil­iar cog­i­ta­tions on hi­er­ar­chy, sta­tus and in­di­vid­ual pur­pose. These ex­cur­sions are al­so fa­mil­iar, from Lord of the Flies, Brave New World, and even The Tem­pest, but 15 Dogs adds enough to be re­mark­able.

There's so much in here that it hard­ly does the book jus­tice to write a half-a-col­umn about it. All I can say is read it.

Bo­cas is bring­ing An­dre Alex­is to Trinidad for this year's edi­tion. Since there's al­ways a great de­sire for ex­em­plars in our mis­er­able state, Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans should take great pride in the fact that 15 Dogs was writ­ten by one of us. The more pre­co­cious might then sur­vey the ex­ist­ing lit­er­a­ture and see if any­thing past or present com­pare for imag­i­na­tive and in­tel­lec­tu­al breadth, skill and won­der­ful light­ness of touch. I doubt an hon­est ob­serv­er would be im­pressed by the con­trast.