| Nnorom Azuonye: My E-conversation with Emman Usman Shehu
(continued from previous page)
And in the area of image engineering every writer must realise that he needs to court the attention of the public when his work is coming off the press, because that is one way of generating interest for the work to be purchased.
NA: In "A Journey Of Discoveries" you told of your earlier difficulty in telling stories, because you had no idea of the fact you could adapt real events and give them new impetus. Is this a realisation that still escapes some young Nigerian writers, seeing that the country's history is full of bizarre and unspeakably histrionic events that should translate into mind-blowing works?
EUS: It is a general problem and that is part of the reason for the failure of our literature to fulfil its initial promise. As I have noted earlier the writer does not exist in a vacuum, and the things that happen around him are the basic material with which he can turn out profound literary works. There is also the artistic limitation such as the situation I described; when as a child I did not realise the potential in adaptation. Writers therefore need to develop the necessary skills that would enable them take these events and translate them into formidable literary works.
Femi Osofisan is a prolific playwright basically because he has cottoned on to this idea of adapting Yoruba myths and legends and using them as a canvas for commenting on contemporary events. A lot of interesting material is available in our ancient as well as contemporary history. The popularity of poetry can partly be explained against this background. The form lends itself to capturing an event in a few lines but it also takes a lot of skill to interpret those events meaningfully within that given form. Take the Nigerian Civil War, for example, quite a lot of work has come from the so-called Biafran side. Not much has been produced from the Federal side and the one I can readily recall is Kole Omotoso’s The Combat. But even from the Biafran side the output has not been as rich as one would have expected given the calibre of writers from that part of the country who were directly involved.
Chinua Achebe relied on poetry and one or two short stories, but somehow you keep wondering if he would ever write that major novel of the civil war which he is capable of doing because that is the form where his forte is evident. Interestingly Eddie Iroh’s pseudo-trilogy of that tragic period of our contemporary history, despite its populist approach is more significant than Achebe’s poems and short stories about the same event. And there are many events like that in our country from the past and in the present waiting to be interpreted through the lens of creative writing.
NA: You have stated severally in different pieces what you consider the poor recognition of Cyprian Ekwensi. To be totally honest, I still don't get it myself. Jagua Nana and Jagua Nana's Daughter excited me greatly as a young man. What do you reckon is the reason why such a talented writer has not made the front row in the recognition ranks, and might it help to have a kind of Ekwensi Festival or Symposium/Seminar where essays, debates and talks on him might be featured?
EUS: It is not difficult to explain the poor recognition of Cyprian Ekwensi. Early scholarship undertaken by non-African literary critics had placed him in the populist category. Unfortunately in Western scholarship this connotes that a writer has no depth and his works are not worth critical study. Our own critics have followed the same pattern and this has adversely affected Ekwensi’s critical acclaim. And our scholarship is somewhat conservative in that independent-minded analysis is not encouraged, thus we are stuck in the same old mould and therefore there is hardly any groundbreaking work.
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