Ben Okri and Narrative Risk
What I enjoy each time I read a story by Ben Okri is the extent to which he makes things possible in the stories, at once inviting the reader to read between the lines, to enjoy the story while working hard to make associations in the story that lead to a unified interpretation. In Okri's story, anything is possible, and if I were wearing one of my literary critic's hats, I would be throwing some long critical terms, but I am not going to do that now....
Okri's "In the Shadow of War" is a powerful story about the war in Biafra, or any war for that matter, how it causes serious damage to the lives of the civilians. It's a story about secret associations, spying and innocence, but despite its brevity (it would fit under a short short), it raises many questions: Who is the woman veiled in black? What role does the father of the narrator play in the war? What is his relationship between the soldiers and the father? Who is dying? Those corpses that look like logs at first--whose are they?
The story "What the Tapster Saw" has the excess of what I have come to expect from Okri, that anything is possible: A tapster's dream, igored by a healer, will become reality, then takes the story through surreal moments, at once magical, unbelievable but entertaining. The readers get to a point of not being able to determine what's dream and what's not, but the images are aligned in such a way that the best way to interpret the story is by symbolic association. The tapster has been dead for seven days, after he fell from the palm tree he had dreamed about?
There are hints about war as well in this story; large issues like the distruction caused to forests by oil companies (These stories were written in the 80s and the problems they deal with are still evident in Nigeria and other parts of Africa, and, oh, we have wars like the one in Iraq and other international conflicts. The creatures in the story have gone riot: a snake spits at the tapster in dsgust; three turtles mock and befriend him at the same time, and a whole host of other happenings that I may choose to ignore without misunderstanding the overall story.
The title story, "Stars of the New Curfew," which I will attempt to discuss at a later time, is well-executed, sharp narrative voice, a character both dreamy and self-aware, who creates an unforgetable story....
The amount of fictional risk (that's what I am going to call it for a lon time) that Ben Okri shows in his fiction is exemplary and should be emulated or appropriated.
Okri's "In the Shadow of War" is a powerful story about the war in Biafra, or any war for that matter, how it causes serious damage to the lives of the civilians. It's a story about secret associations, spying and innocence, but despite its brevity (it would fit under a short short), it raises many questions: Who is the woman veiled in black? What role does the father of the narrator play in the war? What is his relationship between the soldiers and the father? Who is dying? Those corpses that look like logs at first--whose are they?
The story "What the Tapster Saw" has the excess of what I have come to expect from Okri, that anything is possible: A tapster's dream, igored by a healer, will become reality, then takes the story through surreal moments, at once magical, unbelievable but entertaining. The readers get to a point of not being able to determine what's dream and what's not, but the images are aligned in such a way that the best way to interpret the story is by symbolic association. The tapster has been dead for seven days, after he fell from the palm tree he had dreamed about?
There are hints about war as well in this story; large issues like the distruction caused to forests by oil companies (These stories were written in the 80s and the problems they deal with are still evident in Nigeria and other parts of Africa, and, oh, we have wars like the one in Iraq and other international conflicts. The creatures in the story have gone riot: a snake spits at the tapster in dsgust; three turtles mock and befriend him at the same time, and a whole host of other happenings that I may choose to ignore without misunderstanding the overall story.
The title story, "Stars of the New Curfew," which I will attempt to discuss at a later time, is well-executed, sharp narrative voice, a character both dreamy and self-aware, who creates an unforgetable story....
The amount of fictional risk (that's what I am going to call it for a lon time) that Ben Okri shows in his fiction is exemplary and should be emulated or appropriated.
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