IRA MATH­UR

In 2020, be­fore the pan­dem­ic, I was among sev­er­al writ­ers to at­tend a work­shop run by Earl Lovelace. The ar­rival to his home in the af­ter­noon stand­ing on a pitch-hot road at his gate, to be ush­ered past a dog that feels fierce, and fi­nal­ly, to sit at his ta­ble on his porch, dap­pled and green as a rain­for­est. To hear him read out loud, feel your ham­mer­ing heart as he gives a sen­tence you have writ­ten his full at­ten­tion, you feel like you have been ad­mit­ted in­to a holy space of es­sen­tial work.

Amidst the crack­ing of bam­boo, crea­tures dart­ing, here a but­ter­fly, there a bright bird, Lovelace’s pierc­ing gaze, look­ing past the words in­to who you are, ask­ing what your writ­ing is do­ing here, now, for us Lovelace gives you the feel­ing that writ­ing about our is­lands is as close to the work of the Gods as we can get.

The weeks passed as if in an al­ter­nate re­al­i­ty. His books were around us in our fold­ers, on the ta­ble lit up by bounc­ing day­light, and by lamp­light by our own beds at night.

I reread his book Salt then (which won the Com­mon­wealth Writ­ers Prize in 1996 and 2022 and was in­clud­ed in the Big Ju­bilee Read among 70 books by Com­mon­wealth au­thors to cel­e­brate Queen Eliz­a­beth II plat­inum ju­bilee).

Salt cen­tres around Al­ford George, the son of a poor farm labour­er in Trinidad who does not speak till age six and whose an­ces­tor Guinea John led an 1805 slave re­bel­lion be­fore fly­ing back to Africa. The oth­er slaves could not fly with him as they had eat­en too much salt.

Of Salt, The Times (UK) de­clared that Lovelace’s lan­guage is “a car­ni­val of Cre­ole sounds ... the deep­est ide­ol­o­gy of the nov­el, the dis­play of the pow­er of West In­di­an speech, the eman­ci­pa­tion of the West In­di­an tongue from the shack­les of the Eng­lish sen­tence”.

Salt brought to mind what Lovelace is to us: salt of this earth, salt of our sea, salt of our breeze–To­co born, To­ba­go, Bel­mont, and Mor­vant bred.

I did what any as­pir­ing writer would do. I in­ter­viewed him. I wrote down what he said.

When Lovelace was a child, he lived with his grand­par­ents in To­ba­go in the 1940s.

“My grand­fa­ther was strict, a planter who loved the land and we were self-suf­fi­cient. We had goats, cows, man­goes, av­o­ca­dos, chen­nets, gua­va, and cashews. My grand­moth­er made things for sale–sweet­bread and pone. My grand­par­ents were Methodists. My moth­er was Bap­tist. My back­ground pro­vid­ed a moral sense of right and wrong, jus­tice and in­jus­tice, al­so re­lat­ed to the church.”

As a child, Lovelace read a lot, went to church, and through his grand­fa­ther, got in­ter­est­ed in pol­i­tics which in­ter­twined with his sense of jus­tice.

“My peo­ple were what Lam­ming would call peas­ants and farm­ers. These were my peo­ple who had to have a voice in my writ­ing. I didn’t know all this then. I would see peo­ple I en­counter along the way as help­ing to shape a voice, who am I speak­ing to, and to whose be­half I am speak­ing. The pol­i­tics was there in my writ­ing, but al­so in my be­ing. I won­dered what, as a so­ci­ety, large or small ideas we all want­ed to ad­dress, what it meant to be African, In­di­an, Eu­ro­pean, Chi­nese, Arab. Apart from the usu­al vi­su­als of crick­et and Car­ni­val, it was chal­leng­ing to find any one thing we all want­ed to­geth­er.”

As I do now, I thought then that Lovelace is the rarest streak of fiery bril­liance among us, a man who grew and spread his sparkle here amidst the rain, the heat, the rough bak­ing roads in re­mote places. Born in 1935, he is three years younger than VS Naipaul and five years younger than Wal­cott. Like them, he worked briefly for the Trinidad Guardian. Un­like them, he nev­er left. His books were born here, lived here, and flew from here.

His first nov­el, While Gods Are Falling, pub­lished in 1965 just three years af­ter T&T be­came an in­de­pen­dent coun­try, was met with ac­co­lades from CLR James, who called his writ­ing a “new type of prose”, and Lovelace, “a new type of writer”.

It was new be­cause we, a small is­land na­tion of peo­ple, were new, long be­fore Au­gust 1, 1976, when we be­came a re­pub­lic. Be­fore it was de­cid­ed the day would be cel­e­brat­ed on Sep­tem­ber 24, when the first Par­lia­ment met un­der the new Re­pub­lic Con­sti­tu­tion.

Lovelace, who could have eas­i­ly, with his tal­ent, left for big pub­lish­ers or looked up­on our nascent coun­try with Naipaul-like con­tempt, with the eye of the colonis­er, wrote about things we had not even named yet in this strange new world per­co­lat­ing with in­hab­i­tants from far-flung con­ti­nents.

The Wine of As­ton­ish­ment (1982-Wave­land Press) deals with the strug­gle of a Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist com­mu­ni­ty from the pass­ing of the pro­hi­bi­tion or­di­nance un­til the ban.

Is Just a Movie, (2011, Faber and Faber) which won the 2012 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture was de­scribed by the pres­i­dent of the Roy­al So­ci­ety of Lit­er­a­ture, and Book­er Prize win­ner Berna­dine Evaris­to in The Guardian (UK) as a nov­el of a com­plex so­ci­ety where he peels back “the scabs of racial ten­sion” and “when things be­come too dif­fi­cult, there is al­ways the spir­it of car­ni­val that pre­sides over their lives: re­cu­per­a­tive, cathar­tic, com­mu­nal, cel­e­bra­to­ry”.

A se­ri­ous writer whose work has the hon­esty and in­ten­si­ty of a chron­i­cler whose his­to­ry is in dan­ger of sink­ing; Lovelace has nev­er played to the gallery of the West. He does the op­po­site. He writes for us, about us. No writer (No­bel prize win­ners Wal­cott and Naipaul are no ex­cep­tion) pass­es muster with­out many ques­tions be­ing asked. It is not just Lovelace’s tech­ni­cal grasp of writ­ing that must pass the test but the hon­esty of who the writer is and which gallery he plays to.

Are you West In­di­an? Are you Trinida­di­an and To­bag­on­ian? What does it mean to you to live in a place where you were brought in chains or in­den­tured, colonised? What does the com­mu­ni­ty, the spring of the cul­ture that emerged from this trau­ma, mean to you? Are you an up­start who un­con­scious­ly looks up to Yan­kee or colo­nial val­ues that bru­talised na­tions? Do you think about where you came from, your place in this place, and how you feel about your fel­low im­mi­grants? What lan­guage do you look up to? Do you no­tice the rhythms of our shared lan­guage? Do you feel ten­der­ness at the lan­guage of our grand­moth­ers, at the di­alect that car­ries the mem­o­ry of where you came from, or are you se­cret­ly con­temp­tu­ous of who we are?

There are so many lay­ers to what Lovelace is, but the true test of writ­ing about us is, do you love who you are, who we are? He will work with you if the an­swer is “yes” and your writ­ing is de­cent.

So, two years lat­er, when I de­liv­ered my man­u­script to him, I wor­ried for a month, think­ing if it did not pass muster, my life’s work would be dead. Back came the re­sponse, “A com­pelling mem­oir of the bind­ing pow­er of love and the lib­er­at­ing beau­ty of for­give­ness.” I wept be­cause, on that day, I felt like I be­longed here like I nev­er had be­fore. I re­alised then, that Lovelace’s work is about be­long­ing.

“This is dif­fi­cult for me to say. The im­pres­sion we give is we have one, all of us play­ing mass. We’ve all been run­ning on in­stinct. I am cu­ri­ous to know how Africans, In­di­ans, dif­fer­ent races, and our new world peo­ple deal with the sit­u­a­tion.” I as­sume he means en­slave­ment, in­den­ture, and a bru­tal ar­rival.

I asked Lovelace which of his books was dear­est to him.

“Every book has its own sto­ry. I’ve al­ways loved what I’ve been writ­ing. The Drag­on Can’t Dance (An­dre Deutsch 1979) is a good start­ing point. It seeks the whole coun­try, all the dif­fer­ent groups, and presents them in terms of their own prob­lems, each with a sense of good­will. There is no big vil­lain here.

“The Drag­on was try­ing to present re­bel­lion as a way of deal­ing with his­to­ry, and to say the ‘Drag­on can’t dance’ sug­gests re­bel­lion is not enough. In this nov­el, you see the lit­tle boy and Sylvia as peo­ple need­ing sup­port, trea­sur­ing, ap­pro­ba­tion, and self-love. It deals with the ques­tions we ne­glect and the com­plex­i­ties we try to es­cape. We must deal with our­selves–dif­fer­ent groups, each with their own po­si­tions. Then we can col­lec­tive­ly deal with the na­tion­al po­si­tion.”

Lovelace be­lieves our na­tion­al pur­pose is greater than har­mo­ny. It’s the op­por­tu­ni­ty to teach the world how to be hu­man.

“The Caribbean chal­lenge to the Caribbean is on be­half of a new hu­man­ness, a larg­er hu­man­ness. We have a greater bur­den and op­por­tu­ni­ty to solve this prob­lem than those coun­tries that have been more fixed and can claim to have achieved some­thing as they have things to show. What we have to show is an ap­proach to deal­ing with one an­oth­er. We can­not be to­geth­er un­til we un­der­stand why we are not to­geth­er. We must face how we re­late to each oth­er and sit­u­a­tions with­in our­selves on be­half of Africa, In­dia, and Eu­rope.

“My re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is what I have been do­ing for the place sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly and hon­est­ly. We have to dis­cov­er our­selves. We al­ways give space. We hang around peo­ple and let them dis­cov­er we are one. We need to spend more time with our­selves, dis­cov­er who we are, and how we re­late to hard ques­tions. We buy in­to what oth­ers think of us, are lied to, and be­lieve their ideas of our worth. We need to start with the con­cept of worth. We see it piece­meal in sports, writ­ing, and the world’s ac­claim, but who is this world? We have to be more hon­est and pa­tient with our­selves.”

As we cel­e­brate Re­pub­lic Day 2023, sure­ly we can take the coun­cil of our lit­er­ary doyen to heart–to learn and teach the world how to be more hu­man.