Why Ben Okri should read Wole Soyinka’s Season of Anomy

To have African writers achieve mental paradigm shift, to become creative beyond their usual concerns with brutalities in African history and crudeness in African culture.

And instead venture in areas of art and literature devoid of themes on African suffering. It was a nice read, given its economy of language and beauty of its structure. Kudos, Mr Okri.

But I have a different view. My difference is based on the culture of literature and literary discourse. Literary discourses are all about affirmation and negation of literary theories.

I first affirm greatness and superb capability of Ben Okri as a poet and a writer in general, especially when I remember his wonderful book The Famished Road. In contrast, I do negate his stand on the tyranny of mentalities over freedom of thought among African writers.

I ask Okri to read Wole Soyinka’s novel The Season of Anomy written in 1984. Mirroring brutality and moral decadence of Nigerian political society of that time. This is the book that earned Wole Soyinka the accolade in the name of a titan of literature. It poised him for the Nobel Prize two years later in 1986.

And just like in all of his other works, Soyinka’s wholesome focus has never been beyond the real. It has been purely on mirroring actual conditions of African and Nigerian Politics.

Obviously, African conditions have been substantially human suffering and political brutality. Clearly displayed in Soyinka’s play, The Man Died.

What influences a writer’s work?
Rene Wellek’s Theory of Literature reveals a special fact that there is always a relation between general history of the writer and the nature of literature or oracy produced by the writer.
That historical background and general present conditions determine human psychology.

And in turn psychology determines literature. This is a rudimentary position which justifies African writers concern with slavery in the version of Alex Haley in Roots, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s concern with colonialism and cult of African dictatorship exposed in Wizard of the Crow and Okot B’Pitek’s concern with crudeness of African culture like the torturous Gulu dowry system narrated in his prose work White Teeth.

Common functions of literature are to entertain, to mirror the society, to correct the society, to educate and express culture.
Literature is also a channel of history of any given community. William Shakespeare used his poetry and rama to communicate past brutalities and human suffering experienced by the European community.

Hamlet, King Lear, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra are nothing else other than Shakespeare’s dramatisation of European history.

They were not works of metaphysical, pataphysical or Dadaistic disposition. This mindset, which of course was tyrannical over Shakespeare’s freedom of literary choice extolled him to unmatched greatness as a classical writer.

It never undermined him as Ben Okri presupposes. Thus, logic of analogy must therefore permit us to affirm to a position that concern with suffering and human bondage by African writers is not any reason to prevent African writers from achieving pedestal of literary greatness.

An undeniable fact is that entertainment function of literature is commercially critical. And this is the main concern of Ben Okri.

Which we all agree to, especially when we understand the fact that Okri has stayed for more than two decades in the western world.

He must have been emotionally converted to a strong market sense through his regular encounter with commercially successful literary cases like that of J K Rowling, the writer of Harry Porter series.

Yes, this is a virtue so fashionable in the democratically smoothened societies such as London, Toronto and New York.

But when it comes to societies tortured by their own active history and politics like the ones in Africa, Latin America and Asia, the literary function of mirroring the society becomes more virtuous than carrying the consumers of literature beyond the real into the cosmetic imaginations for the sake of entertainment and commercial success.

Thus, it is to be appreciated that literature in poor societies is an outcome of soul labour but not bread labour.

Evidence from history
History of world literature also pins down Okri’s hypothesis about writer’s greatness being impeached by the writer’s focus on suffering. History reveals that all great writers dwelled most on the human suffering in the society.

Leo Tolstoy in his book War and Peace dwelled on the Russia fighting war with France. The first sentence in chapter one of Tolstoy’s Anne Karenina is about human agony and suffering.

Tolstoy’s short stories Sevastopol, Felling the Wood, Snow Storm, Billiad Markers’ notes and Two Hussars are all about suffering of Russian people during the pre-Leninist days.

The same to Richard Wright, he achieved literary greatness by dwelling on hard conditions and suffering of black Americans. Racism. His main theme in the narrations of the Native Son. Same to Achebe in Things fall Apart and Sembene Ouasmane in God’s bits of Wood.

They respectively dwelled on colonial tyranny and crudeness of African culture. The themes among those highly disgusted by Okri and cited as the raison d’être for Africa’s failure to achieve literary glory at a global level.

By way of finishing, I want to share out that the most interesting and en joyful book I have read in the past two years is Life of Mr Pi by Yan Martel.

This book has also been praised for its thrilling power by Barrack Obama, Vladimir Putin and Ng’ang’a Mbugua as revealed by different newspapers.

Surprisingly, this book discusses crudeness of religion, both Islam and Christianity, slavery, racism, poverty, and other versions of human suffering.

On the basis of my experience with this book, I am still convinced that African writers can equally achieve greatness by dealing with above subjects in their writings. As long as the style of writing, use of language and standard of art is properly managed.

Who is Ben Okri?

Biography: Born March 15, 1959, Minna, Nigeria, Ben Okri is a Nigerian novelist, shorts story writer, and poet who used magic realism to convey the social and political chaos in the country of his birth.
Okri attended Urhobo College in Warri, Nigeria, and the University of Essex in Colchester, England.

According to The Guardian newspaper Okri did not complete his degree in Comparative Literature, “due to lack of funds”. His first novels, Flowers and Shadows (1980) and The Landscapes Within (1981), employ surrealistic images to depict the corruption and lunacy of a politically scarred country.

Two volumes of short stories, Incidents at the Shrine (1986) and Stars of the New Curfew (1988), portray the essential link in Nigerian culture between the physical world and the world of the spirits.
Okri won the Booker Prize for his novel The Famished Road (1991), the story of Azaro, an abiku (“spirit child”), and his quest for identity.

The novels Songs of Enchantment (1993) and Infinite Riches (1998) continue the themes of The Famished Road, relating stories of dangerous quests and the struggle for equanimity in an unstable land.

Okri’s other novels include Astonishing the Gods (1995); Dangerous Love (1996), about “star-crossed” lovers in postcolonial Nigeria; In Arcadia (2002); and Starbook (2007). An African Elegy (1992) is a collection of poems that urges Africans to overcome the forces of chaos within their countries, and Mental Flight (1999) is a long poem. A Way of Being Free (1997) is a collection of Okri’s essays.

Although typically not overtly political, Okri’s works nevertheless convey clear and urgent messages about the need for Africans to reforge their identities.
The Guardian critical verdict. Okri is considered one of the finest African writers within the postcolonial tradition. His books are written in English but draw heavily on myths, stories and local beliefs from Yoruba culture.

His mix of realism, modernism and the reworking of an African oral storytelling tradition sets him apart from the earlier generation of social realist Nigerian writers, while he has won praise for his experiments with new literary forms.

His talent arguably reached its peak in 1991 with The Famished Road, which was acclaimed for its masterful blending of European and African literary traditions. Okri’s two follow-ups (or, as he describes them, the “continuation of the dream”) developed his mythical vision but on a diminished scale.

Okri’s 2002 novel In Arcadia , follows a television documentary crew on a train journey through Europe, and was panned as “thin and mean”. This may or may not have influenced his outburst in January 2003 when he criticised Britain for not being sufficiently appreciative of its writers.

Other awards. OBE, Premio Palmi (Italy), Dangerous Love, Crystal Award (World Economic Forum),
Premio Grinzane Cavour (Italy), The Famished Road, Chianti Ruffino-Antico Fattore International Literary Prize, The Famished Road, Booker Prize for Fiction, The Famished Road, Guardian Fiction Prize, Stars of the New Curfew, shortlist, Paris Review/Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, Incidents at the Shrine, Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region, Best Book), Incidents at the Shrine.

Other jobs. Clerk in paint store; BBC broadcaster.
Quoted by the Guardian newspaper. “The greatest stories are those that resonate our beginnings and intuit our endings, our mysterious origins and our numinous destinies, and dissolve them both into one.”

britannica.com, theguardian.com and
britishcouncil.org

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