Si­mon Lee

As An­glo­phone Caribbean pub­lish­ing and lit­er­a­ture fi­nal­ly be­gins to se­cure a slot in the World Lit­er­a­ture mar­ket, re­leas­ing more au­thors from ob­scu­ri­ty (though pos­si­bly not penury) in the last decade than the pre­vi­ous 50 years, Roy­don Sal­ick's re­cent­ly pub­lished Ismith Khan: The Man & His Work, alerts read­ers, crit­ics and cul­tur­al the­o­rists alike to a sem­i­nal fig­ure of an ear­li­er gen­er­a­tion, who missed the boat which took Mit­tel­holz­er, Lam­ming, Naipaul and Selvon to fame and vary­ing de­grees of for­tune in Eng­land.

Sal­ick spec­u­lates that the crit­i­cal ne­glect Khan has en­dured to date may be par­tial­ly at­trib­ut­able to his re­lo­ca­tion to Amer­i­ca rather than Lon­don, which func­tioned as the Eng­lish Caribbean's lit­er­ary cap­i­tal from the 1930s (with the ar­rival of Learie Con­stan­tine and CLR James) cer­tain­ly up to the end of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

While Khan may not have ben­e­fit­ed from the in­for­mal sup­port net­work of­fered by the BBC's Caribbean Voic­es pro­gramme which helped nur­ture and es­tab­lish the 1950s co­hort, or the en­cour­age­ment of Lon­don-based Tri­ni John La Rose and his New Bea­con press, he did re­main in con­tact with one of the ear­ly stars Sam Selvon, who he was re­lat­ed to by mar­riage and who was to be, ac­cord­ing to Sal­ick's in­sid­er in­for­ma­tion, "the sin­gle most pow­er­ful in­flu­ence in his be­com­ing a writer."

Iron­i­cal­ly it is Peepal Tree, the same UK press which has al­most sin­gle-hand­ed­ly been re­spon­si­ble for the up­surge in Caribbean pub­lish­ing over the last 20 years, res­cu­ing the ne­glect­ed and in­tro­duc­ing new voic­es, which pub­lished Khan's third nov­el The Cru­ci­fix­ion (writ­ten as an MFA the­sis in 1970 but gath­er­ing dust un­til 1987), his fi­nal col­lec­tion of short sto­ries A Day in the Coun­try (1994) and now Sal­ick's time­ly study.

The val­ue of this slim "prepara­to­ry work" far sur­pass­es its brevi­ty. Dr Sal­ick is an unashamed old school lit­er­ary crit­ic, with lit­tle time (and I sus­pect even less re­spect) for the­o­ret­i­cal fash­ions which in every area of the Lib­er­al Arts have tend­ed to ob­scure rather than elu­ci­date texts, alien­at­ing read­ers and stu­dents alike.

In con­trast, Sal­ick comes to the page with more than 30 years teach­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and one has on­ly to en­quire among the ex­ten­sive body of his past and present stu­dents (at UWI Cave Hill and St Au­gus­tine, now at Costaatt) to re­alise his ped­a­gog­ic mis­sion is to in­spire and il­lu­mi­nate rather than sim­ply im­press (or in­tim­i­date) young and even ma­ture minds with in­tel­lec­tu­al ac­ro­bat­ics. His mo­ti­va­tion for res­cu­ing Khan from crit­i­cal ne­glect demon­strates a com­mit­ment to the in­tel­lec­tu­al de­vel­op­ment of the re­gion, now sore­ly lack­ing in my­opic post­mod­ern Trinidad: "a self-im­posed oblig­a­tion of fill­ing an ob­vi­ous gap in West In­di­an crit­i­cism."

Sim­i­lar­ly, de­spite the fig­ure of the au­thor be­ing dis­missed from the crit­i­cal round­table in favour of the text about the same time as Roland Barthes was de­con­struct­ing wrestling and Cit­roen cars, Sal­ick's friend­ship with Khan al­lows the still-cu­ri­ous read­er both bi­o­graph­i­cal and crit­i­cal in­sights, which a rig­or­ous cul­tur­al the­o­rist would es­chew.

Not to know that Khan's grand­fa­ther Kale was the life mod­el for the epony­mous pro­tag­o­nist of The Jumbie Bird and that the en­tire­ty of this first nov­el is se­mi-au­to­bi­o­graph­i­cal would sure­ly meet with con­dem­na­tion from ad­her­ents of one of the lat­est gen­res now de­clared fash­ion­able–life writ­ing.

Sal­ick's "prepara­to­ry work" in elu­ci­dat­ing Khan's "ma­jor the­mat­ic con­cerns" and his "struc­tur­al, styl­is­tic and nar­ra­tive strate­gies" may hope­ful­ly meet with con­tro­ver­sy rather than con­sen­sus, in which case it will ful­fil the book's self-de­clared pur­pose: "to en­cour­age oth­er stud­ies...more spe­cialised and search­ing, and to gen­er­ate an on­go­ing crit­i­cal di­a­logue on the fic­tion of Ismith Khan."

The four chap­ters, which fol­low an in­tro­duc­to­ry bi­o­graph­i­cal sketch, pro­vide even the most dila­to­ry or su­per­fi­cial read­er the crit­i­cal ap­pa­ra­tus for en­try to Khan's three nov­els and his one col­lec­tion of short sto­ries. In The Jumbie Bird chap­ter we learn that Khan in his char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of Kale was un­wit­ting­ly em­ploy­ing one of the strate­gies ad­vo­cat­ed in the de­coloni­sa­tion process: record­ing the sto­ries of the colonised Fanon (my read­ing rather than an ex­plic­it Sal­ick state­ment). Kale's ver­sion of the his­to­ry of Trinida­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers ful­fils Khan's own sense of the Caribbean writer's brief: "the writer from the Caribbean has to as­sume the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of 'teacher' and 'his­to­ri­an' in or­der to record pe­ri­ods of his­to­ry, not nor­mal­ly found in his­to­ry books."

Khan's sec­ond nov­el The Obeah Man al­though para­dox­i­cal­ly "the on­ly West In­di­an nov­el to have as its pro­tag­o­nist an obeah man and to treat obeah se­ri­ous­ly, in spite of...(of­fer­ing) no in­sights in­to the na­ture and prac­tice of obeah" is viewed by Sal­ick as a "cri­tique of West In­di­an cul­ture...which de­fines the role of the obeah man in an is­land emerg­ing from the womb of colo­nial­ism and ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the ini­tial pangs of in­de­pen­dence."

For Khan ap­par­ent­ly it was "a pure­ly sym­bol­ic nov­el" and Sal­ick oblig­ing­ly points to the var­i­ous hermeneu­ti­cal lev­els in­clud­ing lit­er­ary pas­toral, the ar­che­typ­al quest­ing hero and the iso­lat­ed artist. What will in­ter­est con­tem­po­rary read­ers more how­ev­er, is Khan's jux­ta­po­si­tion of car­ni­val and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty: "Car­ni­val is the en­e­my of man's in­cli­na­tion and urge to dis­cov­er a means of spir­i­tu­al cleans­ing and heal­ing." Sal­ick iden­ti­fies Zampi the obeah man's quest as 'the suc­cess­ful jour­ney of Caribbean man to achieve a mean­ing­ful in­de­pen­dence of mind, body and spir­it."

Khan's third nov­el The Cru­ci­fix­ion draws di­rect­ly on the Trinida­di­an oral tra­di­tion and a nar­ra­tive which has re­ceived lit­er­ary treat­ment by Naipaul, Selvon and Lovelace. Khan's ver­sion how­ev­er, goes be­yond vi­gnette to give the life sto­ry of Manko "the poor dev­il" who ma­nip­u­lates his own "mar­tyr­dom" on Laven­tille's now no­to­ri­ous Cal­vary Hill.

Sal­ick's as­sess­ment pro­duc­tive­ly high­lights Khan's use of dual nar­ra­tive voic­es which re­flects the di­choto­my of colo­nial so­ci­ety with its in­sid­er/out­sider per­spec­tives. He al­so con­tex­tu­alis­es The Cru­ci­fix­ion as an ex­am­ple of the Yard Lit­er­a­ture genre in­tro­duced by CLR James in Tri­umph and Minty Al­ley. In con­trast to James' ro­man­ti­cised ver­sion how­ev­er, Khan "presents yard life as a the­atre of squalor, of gra­tu­itous vi­o­lence, of theft, of jeal­ousy, of clan­des­tine sex­u­al­i­ty, and of will­ful test­ing."

Analysing the short sto­ry col­lec­tion A Day in the Coun­try, Sal­ick sug­gests that the uni­fy­ing theme of fa­ther/son re­la­tion­ship serves as a de­vice to ex­plore such is­sues as: "dis­place­ment from the coun­try to the city, the neg­a­tive ef­fects of colo­nial ed­u­ca­tion, the toll of un­em­ploy­ment...the old pas­toral de­bate...the es­tab­lish­ment through folk­lore of the ex­is­tence of a world be­yond sci­ence and rea­son, the need for an in­di­vid­ual to cre­ate a pri­vate ro­mance and mythol­o­gy as a means of sur­vival, the need to look back­ward and in­ward...and the con­di­tion and role of the artist..."

Here is the grist for any num­ber of post­grad­u­ate the­ses and a val­i­da­tion for Sal­ick's chal­lenge to crit­ics to ini­ti­ate "an on­go­ing di­a­logue on Khan's fic­tion." While we an­tic­i­pate this di­a­logue, we must al­so recog­nise Sal­ick's ef­forts to re­store the "pre­em­i­nent nov­el­ist of Port-of-Spain" to his de­served place in the Caribbean lit­er­ary canon and for pro­vid­ing ex­em­plary com­pre­hen­sive and lu­cid tex­tu­al crit­i­cism.