Writing from Privilege
After all where is it written that only the underprivileged make more compassionate authors, or even more compelling subjects for authors?
Derek Walcott in his latest work The Prodigal considers himself lucky to be writing “from the privilege of all your wits about you in your old age”. Much of his poetry is filled with painterly metaphors for his world citizenship, and in particular for his native St Lucia, its sea salted folk, their kweyol interlaced lives. You sense always the investment of the poet’s entire life in his poetry and paintings, life & art wrapped like a monumental gift for his island people: “you whom I loved first”.
David Dabydeen’s writings reflect a very different kind of privilege, that of metropolitan residence, university education, scholarship & research skills, plus the cornucopia of words that could build up from academic discourse. His subjects have been The Old Empire, the transatlantic journeys of indentured souls, the truths that lie hidden in famous paintings or submerged in historical records.
But in this reissued first novel The Intended (2005) the subject is really himself, his personal journey to England after 12 early years in Guyana, and his success at replantation and self-renewal overseas.
The Intended won the Guyana Prize for Literature in 2002. A Guyanese reader might be overly impressed by the prose flow (‘The boy could write.’) the way back in the days people in the market square were overly impressed by the oratory of lawyer-politicians trained in England (‘If you hear the man speak!’) Like Walcott he reveals a penchant for painterly description; there is much first-book energy deserving of notice, and a good deal of EngLit insights to raise approving eyebrows.
You come away thinking that despite its Guyana origins the novel seems pronouncedly British in its concerns and accomplishment. Not that there’s anything shape-shifty about that.
Semi-autobiographical first novels are often an announcement of pubescent writerly talent. The Intended is really a showcase of literary talent which Dabydeen has already developed to produce highly praised books of poetry and fiction. In the reader’s mind back home there should be little doubt: The man could write!His central character, a Guyanese Indian, comes to England to get an education. Quite suddenly he finds himself down on his luck and dependent on British social services and security cheques. His days are spent just getting by on the margins though you’d never know it if he didn’t remind you. Compared to the rough-and-tumble migrancy of Sam Selvon’s London fellas or George Lamming’s boat migrants, his day-to-day street hardships seem trifling; they’re eased considerably by the fellowship of two friends, Shaz of Pakistan and Joseph, a homeless Rastafari youth.
On occasion the plot ushers in two white girls from privileged homes (Monica and Janet) to focus our attention on the young men’s heterosexual growth; but for the most part the three lads drift a lot and ‘ol talk a lot.
They talk about “O” Level & “A” Level exams, about sex, about Joseph Conrad’s novel “The Heart of Darkness”, Milton’s “Lycidas”, Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales”. They find summer jobs, lose touch for awhile. The Rasta youth gets arrested, then becomes a fugitive from the law. But always they find each other again, and a sense of shared responsibility & caring develops among them.
Self-absorption (that deepens into voluble self-awareness, though not quite angst) fairly well sums up the predicament of the Guyanese narrator. Even after he befriends the other characters, something keeps him psychic yards away from England’s cultural mixing. From this detached point he offers insights into uncertain citizenships in British society, the problems of adaptation for brown and black newcomers, the attitudes of English people, those money-grubbing Pakistanis, those shiftless dancehall Jamaicans; and how hard it is for everyone to get along.
His close friend Shaz was born in England, his parents from Pakistan. This would make their kinship as “Asian” brothers an easy congruence; but Shaz exudes a native-born confidence that extends to women and sexual adventuring. The narrator makes fumbling attempts to keep up with Shaz, but is reminded each time of his fresh-from-the-canefield greenness in matters of erotic fun. To compensate for failure he stays focused on his migrant ambition, on his desire to become “somebody”; and he lives self-consciously distanced from Shaz, though sex is constantly on his mind. Then there’s Joseph, the black youth who lives in a Boy’s Home run by the Social Services. He plays the guitar and becomes intrigued with the narrator’s opinions of Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”. At some point he puts down the guitar and picks up a camera and has crazy ideas for making films. Inevitably cultural “difference” sets them apart. The narrator grows weary of Joseph’s dreamy vagrancy & his anti-social urges, and on one visit he recoils: “When he raised his head, he looked like a gollywog, his wooly locks spread out in spikes.” Pages later, as the narrator sits in the Oxford University Library, Joseph creeps into his thoughts, “reminding me of my dark shadow, drawing me back to my dark self.” His sense of separateness deepens, and in a spasm of self-disclosure that would warm the hearts of concerned family & neighbours back home in Berbice the narrator explains his West Indianness this way: “I’m different really. I come from their place, I’m dark-skinned like them, but I’m different, and I hope the whites can see that and separate me from that lot. I’m an Indian really, deep down I’m decent and quietly spoken and hard-working and I respect good manners, books, art, philosophy. I’m like the whites, we both have civilization.” (p. 127) He experiences the occasional flashback to childhood days in Guyana, but he’s far from being a homesick soul. These sections, filled with village incident and a small cast of village folk, are lovingly written; you notice the author’s attention to exact local detail. They provide sociological colour and context that explain the character’s unsureness in England. Like snapshots of a life “back there” they impinge on the narrator’s behavior in England only when he’s poised to do something untried & unfamiliar.On the last page as the narrator gets ready for Oxford – “I watch the clouds being rinsed in their original colour and the darkness slowly unpeeling from the sky. I wait under the street lamp, wanting to be visible, but the light flames upon my head, flames upon my skin and I have to step back into the shade” – there’s a hint of muted triumph and self-congratulation as the novel sweeps to its lyrical finish. You’d think the poor fellow had suffered nightmarish hard times along the way but managed somehow to survive, keeping his wits about him and his ambition pristinely intact.
The Intended is an earnest first novel about commingling identities, making it perhaps essential reading for outward-bound Guyanese, but not a casual read for bus or subway riders. A Courantyne reader might be struck by a few graphic scenes of, for instance, two country donkeys mating, described in way that makes you think this observed act could only happen in Guyana. Student hopefuls heading to England might be drawn to Dabydeen’s cultural insights and personal revelations, and the central character’s chin-up determination should inspire.
The novel was first published in 1991, years before the new Islamism and a new wave of immigrants (from Eastern Europe) took root in England. This might propel it very fast toward a library shelf of dated books, though not before postcolonial scholars have had a feast of pickings off its characters & themes. Still, once the dark clouds over Guyana have lifted, and the death grip of ethnic power politics finds lasting release, one can hope for a resurgence of a literary culture in our nation, and who knows? maybe the return of the coffee table to Georgetown living rooms. Then Arts lovers could point to The Intended with its stylish ‘arriviste’ prose and say with homeboy pride, “The man could write!”Book Reviewed: The Intended: David Dabydeen: Peepal Tree Press, England, 2005, 176 pgs. (w.w.)
