Shiv­a­nee Ram­lochan

"Man of let­ters," "out­stand­ing pub­lic fig­ure," "ubiq­ui­tous Caribbean colos­sus": these were a hand­ful of the lau­rels used by Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of Eng­lish (UWI, St Au­gus­tine) Ken­neth Ram­c­hand, to de­scribe Trinida­di­an-Guyanese writer Ian Mc­Don­ald.

Ram­c­hand of­fered these re­marks as part of his in­tro­duc­to­ry pre­sen­ta­tion for "West In­di­an by con­vic­tion: Read­ings and con­ver­sa­tion by Ian Mc­Don­ald," joint­ly host­ed by the Friends of Mr Biswas and Nalis, held at the Na­tion­al Li­brary's AV Room on No­vem­ber 28.

The Friends of Mr Biswas is an NGO ded­i­cat­ed to the preser­va­tion and de­vel­op­ment of the Naipaul House Lit­er­ary Mu­se­um on Nepaul Street, St James.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion charges it­self with the es­tab­lish­ment of the Nepaul Street house as a func­tion­al lit­er­ary mu­se­um.

Al­so among their ob­jec­tives is the preser­va­tion of lo­cal lit­er­ary his­to­ry, and the ac­tive, on­go­ing sup­port of T&T and West In­di­an lit­er­a­ture.

Ram­c­hand func­tions as the group's chair­man.

Cit­ing Mc­Don­ald's mul­ti­ple ar­eas of ex­per­tise in writ­ing and cul­tur­al com­men­tary, which in­clude fic­tion, po­et­ry, es­says and sport lit­er­a­ture, Ram­c­hand glow­ing­ly de­scribed Mc­Don­ald as a "fu­sion man," one whose nu­mer­ous, criss­cross­ing streams of work have pro­duced "won­der­ful fruit." Ram­c­hand em­pha­sised that the roots of Mc­Don­ald's cre­ative de­vel­op­ment in Trinidad, the land of his birth, could not be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed.

"It was at QRC that the read­ing and writ­ing of po­et­ry took hold of him," Ram­c­hand said, paint­ing a por­trait of Mc­Don­ald's life in lit­er­a­ture and lan­guage.

Here, Ram­c­hand con­clud­ed, be­gan the au­thor's "fas­ci­na­tion in the un­spo­ken depths of the or­di­nary peo­ple of his is­land." Mc­Don­ald be­gan his own pre­sen­ta­tion by firm­ly avow­ing the strength of his con­nec­tion to this is­land.

"I have nev­er, ever for­got­ten or lost touch with Trinidad.

It has been ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly kind to me," he said, ref­er­enc­ing his hon­orary Doc­tor­ate of Let­ters from UWI, St Au­gus­tine, con­ferred in 1997.

In No­vem­ber 2014, Mc­Don­ald con­tributed his lit­er­ary archives to the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion of the Al­ma Jor­dan Li­brary at UWI, St Au­gus­tine.

"I on­ly briefly touched Vidya's life, and he would cer­tain­ly not re­mem­ber me," Mc­Don­ald said, de­scrib­ing the ten­u­ous con­nec­tion be­tween him­self and VS Naipaul.

Mc­Don­ald rem­i­nisced on episodes of Naipaul's "cut­ting crit­i­cisms and bril­liant in­sights," made when the lat­ter was a Form Six stu­dent at Queen's Roy­al Col­lege, and the for­mer was one year be­neath him.

Lat­er on, Mc­Don­ald said, Naipaul's books would be­come a fun­da­men­tal part of his read­ing life.

He end­ed his thoughts on Naipaul by call­ing A House for Mr Biswas one of the great­est Eng­lish-lan­guage nov­els writ­ten in the 20th cen­tu­ry.

On the sub­ject of his own work, Mc­Don­ald dis­cussed the writ­ing for which he is best known, the 1969 nov­el, The Hum­ming-Bird Tree.

Since its pub­li­ca­tion by Heine­mann, the book has nev­er been out of print, and has been used as a CSEC Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture syl­labus op­tion for sev­er­al years: Mc­Don­ald jok­ing­ly re­ferred to it as the "bane of many an Eng­lish stu­dent." Brief clips from the 1992 BBC-pro­duced film ver­sion of The Hum­ming-Bird Tree were shown at the event.

De­spite the over­whelm­ing suc­cess at­trib­uted to his nov­el, Mc­Don­ald said that he pre­dom­i­nant­ly con­sid­ered him­self a po­et.

Be­tween 1988 and 2009 he pub­lished four books of his po­ems and a se­lect­ed col­lec­tion of his po­et­ry, edit­ed by Ed­ward Baugh.

"Po­et­ry has been my great­est love," he told the Nalis au­di­ence, adding that his deep­est cre­ative urge has al­ways been to pro­duce po­ems.

Trac­ing the de­vel­op­ment of his "po­et­ry gene" from a many times-over great grand­fa­ther, Ed­ward Dacres Baynes, to his great-un­cle and grand­moth­er, Mc­Don­ald de­cid­ed that he, as well, had "in­her­it­ed the gene." He de­scribed his week­ly columns for Guyana's Stabroek News, since its in­cep­tion in 1986, as some of his most im­por­tant and well-con­sid­ered work.

These es­says of some 30-odd years, he re­flect­ed, rep­re­sent­ed a cu­mu­la­tive ef­fort that was "no less a child of my in­tel­lect, if not as much of my imag­i­na­tion." In his fi­nal analy­sis, Mc­Don­ald ex­pressed the di­vide that of­ten ac­com­pa­nies a cre­ative life, say­ing that be­tween "the full life, or the gift pur­sued to a per­fec­tion: you prob­a­bly can't have both." Ian Mc­Don­ald was of­fi­cial­ly in­duct­ed as a Dis­tin­guished Friend of Mr Biswas, by Dr Rodger Samuel, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Di­ver­si­ty and So­cial In­te­gra­tion.

This made him the sec­ond Dis­tin­guished Friend to be thus­ly recog­nised by the so­ci­ety, the first be­ing Brigham Young Uni­ver­si­ty's Aaron East­ley.

To be­come a mem­ber of the Friends of Mr Biswas, vis­it their Face­book Page or their Web site: www.friend­sofm­r­biswas.org