"From part of you that's neither flesh nor bone,
in a sleep before your last and longest, I come
to say what I say."
- George Lamming, In The Castle Of My Skin
His books appeared in bookstores or on the public library shelf. Back in
those days in Georgetown, Guyana readers purchased, borrowed and
devoured any and every printed thing.
Caribbean authors – in their prime then, residing in England and elsewhere
– had no way of knowing what readers back home thought about them,
their work.
About writers today, it might have crossed George Lamming’s mind that –
as Bogart now @ Miguel Street might observe – Dem writer fellas have it
easy now, eh. The almost instant stardom of the book launch; web
platforms for “readings”; applause for the writers’ hyphenated links to
the islands. No need to ask how many new faces eager for display have at
least dipped toes in Lamming’s fiction.
In The Castle of My Skin Castle (1953) was greeted with quieter
astonishment. The novel still attracts the attention of scholars, though
it’s reasonable to assume it might struggle to generate interest today.
Reputations aren’t all durable and reading habits, like molecules or breast
display, are subject to change.
His appearances on the UWI Mona campus in the 70s were occasions for
passionate reminders about the after effects of colonial rule. Students
were advised to keep the “pen” active but be ready to reach for
“the sword” when resistance was required. Literary endeavours came
with responsibilities.
He tied Caribbean development to unresolved plantation issues – social
divisions and resentments, continuing core extraction. Readers and thinkers
should stay alert – for opportunist empire builders, for new governors
who confine and amateur performers who contort public attention. And
the patch-eyed scribblers who simplify issues and hide signs of active
skin typing.
*
There were limits to this reader’s response to his fiction. In Georgetown –
with time enough, and no television stations (until 1988) – readers
consumed every line in Castle – its 300 + pages packed with people who
suddenly “mattered”; their village lives minutely observed, their (what
now feels like) over-extended conversations.
The novels that followed – with alluring titles, Of Age and Innocence (1958),
Season of Adventure (1960), Natives of My Person (1970) – sent many
searching the shelves. The result was not always overwhelming. Books of
probing, foundational value they remain, but readers could be forgiven for
wandering away at this stage from Lamming’s fiction.
Besides, there were other Caribbean writers – just as compelling, with
mesmerizing or everyday like prose. Carew, Naipaul, Selvon, Harris. So many
story-telling styles; the variety of frames for experiences past and present.
And characters made more memorable; so sharply imagined, they could
mark a generation for life. Donne in Palace. Mohun Biswas.
*
To "revisit" Lamming’s fiction is not an easy proposition. In the 2001 reprint
of Castle a Foreword and an Introduction occupy the first 50 pages as if
acknowledging its classic old age.
The moving clarity of the opening lines still catch and wrap you, pulling
you into the fermenting humanity of that colonial time as if it was just
last week.
“Rain, rain, rain…my mother put her head through the window to let the
neighbour know that I was nine, and they flattered me with the consolation
that my birthday had brought showers of blessing. The morning laden with
cloud soon passed into noon, and the noon neutral and silent into the
sodden grimness of an evening that waded through water.”
Gradually Lamming’s authorial devices (which intrigued readers back then)
take control; the stage play set pieces, for instance, that interweave his
ornate narrative flow. It is anyone’s guess how students, with Twitter
accounts and grievous language deficits, might respond if asked to read
Castle – from beginning to end – and be ready for the test.
*
Georgetown, Guyana, once a centre of literary expression and cultural
capital, has sunk to a level of narrow philistinism. Mainly on its own –
a barren place for literature and writing, it is feared; home to fate
contractors and helpless native souls.
Writers with George Lamming’s dedication to his work have for all
purposes moved away to platforms of deeper promise offshore; the way
the narrator in Castle who ‘had seen the last of something’ says ‘farewell,
farewell to the land’.
It is left to the islands to sustain interest – to celebrate excellence, cultivate
new readership, offer achievement rewards. And stage official closing
ceremony – for Derek Walcott (St Lucia), Kamau Brathwaite and now George
Lamming (Barbados); past illuminators for our Caribbean ways in the world.
– Wyck Williams
[ In mem. George Lamming . 1927 – 2022 ]
~ …………………………………………… ~
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 