| His magical vision is astounding and actually reminds you of the African cosmogony. Derek Walcott, Octavio Paz. I must mention Adam Dickinson, a young powerful poet, who I met at the University of Alberta, where I was doing a PhD in English. And Syl-Chenney Cocker, for his Marquez-like novel, "The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dumbar". I met him once in Iserlohn where I had a reading with Uche Nduka, Elias Dunu and Cyprian Ekwensi.
NA: I understand you gave up your PhD to become a full time writer. That is a leap of courage isn’t it?
AE: It is a leap of courage and a frightening one, I tell you. Yes. I gave up the PhD for writing. I think it is a waste of my time. The University of Alberta disappointed my lofty image of the ivory tower. Studying there is like going to war. The politics there will kill Machiavelli himself or even Thomas Hobbes. And you do not expect this from a group of people who are supposed to be highly enlightened. I think what they have is a lot of worldly knowledge and no spiritual knowledge and that is a problem. They become pompous and inflated. There are very frail egos there – people with little self-confidence who must impress their importance upon the graduate student or punish them with all kinds academic impediments. One Canadian student, a PhD, said to me, “They have ruined my life in this department”. So it could not have been a case of racism against me. The first two weeks after my arrival into the country, another grad student came to me, took me to a pub on campus, plied me with beer and began to cry into his own glass. I thought he was whining. But after two semesters at University of Alberta’s English department the scales fell from my eyes. They have an ‘English House’ there – a general, airy all-purpose room, which I refer to as the English house of horror.
Those corridors are the corridors of hell. In Germany you may disagree with your professors and barely get away with it. In contrast I enjoyed my days at University of Ibadan better where you had true intellectuals like Harry Garuba, Dipo Irele, Abiola Irele and others as your teachers and co-sinners at the bar. I learnt more from them at the beer-table than in the classroom. It was a true intellectual watering-hole, it honed my poetry skills. We also had the poetry club. My guru at the Krishna temple in Lagos where I was a Monk, Shrila Backti Thirta Swami Krishnapad, used to refer to university dons ironically as first class fools – if they have no spiritual knowledge. He himself has a PhD in psychology. So he should know.
Another reason for dropping the PhD is that too much theorising can take you away completely from creative writing. You unconsciously begin to analyse what you are in the process of writing even before setting pen to paper. You are being trained to be a critic. It has been said before that a critic is a failed writer. The writer and the critic have never been good bedfellows, anyway, throughout literary history. What does Alexander Pope say to the critic in “An Essay on Man”? ; “cavil you may but never criticise”. He was probably insinuating by that that the critic, who is not close to the creative muse in a similar manner, has no right to criticise the writer, who has been specially positioned by society to redeem it from its decadence (this was what led to the whole idea of the ‘romantic Artist’ in the 18th century).
So if you want to fail as a writer the best way is to go into academics. Some manage it well but not all can. I am a trained book editor. I started out in the Publishing industry in Nigeria. So going back to editing will keep me in tune with the literary world, without eating into my writing time too much. They are complementary efforts to some extent.
NA: I was reading an interview given by John Grisham in the Financial Times last week in which he suggests a serious writer must write at least a page every day. Do you agree? Take me on a quick tour of your own writing habit; tell me too if you are one of those writers that keep a notebook or tape recording of ideas.
AE: John Grisham is well ensconced in the West where existential conditions actually allow you to write a page a day. Your country is not in political turmoil, you are not a refugee on some strange country on planet Mars, you are not dealing with the effects of the International Monetary Fund’s structural adjustment programme in Third-World countries like brazil or Argentina or Nigeria, well…then you write a page a day.
Do you remember Amadou kourouma, who passed away recently? Remember he had not produced much until he was into his 40’s or 50’s and suddenly there was a burst of creative activity from him. And I think asked why the sudden fury of writing, he said he realised he did not have much time left. Sometimes depending on where you are coming from or going to you have the time to do a page a day or you don’t. Continue>>
Cover Page l Home l Next Page
| |
