Books I am Reading

Like a lot of busy people I know, I try to read several books at once. Believe it or not, I am re-reading Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". Marlow keeps transforming each time I read the book, but that's not why I am reading it. I am reading the book with particular attention to craft, and yes, reading this way shows me how Conrad was putting the story together, and the effect he was trying to get from the words he chose, the phrases he crafted. This edition has footnotes that show the tranformation of the text from when it first appeared in a magazine to when it was published in England as a book, to the first authoritative American edition. Certain offensive or insensitive passages were removed, either by Conrad himself or by editors. When describing Kurtz's African girlfriend, Conrad, or is it Marlow, had been indulgent, the ambivalence of the language choice rising rapidly with the accumulation of prose (to praise or not to praise an African beauty, that's the question). Then there was the part he visited the women who encouraged him to follow his dreams (one of them an aunt): the language used to describe these women was insensitive, so the sentences were later struck out by the editors after the American edition. It's interesting to note that Conrad himself used any opportunity to edit and improve his work.
I am also reading Binyavanga Wainaina's memoir, "One Day I Will Write about this Place', but I am being distracted by all the debates about what the writer recently said about British writers being shallow (he didn't say this exactly, but judging by the string of comments following the Guardian article, he ruffled some feathers). Actually, he said something to the effect that they are inaccessible to contemporary Kenyans, but he was understood as saying they are not universal enough.  It is the fact that he said what he said without concerning himself with what people would say in return that I find fascinating. Let a writer say what he wants to say and then let others say what they want to say and, if you are so inclined, say what you want to say as well. That's the beauty of debating, nothing personal. These are the things that are taking my attention away from finishing the book; that, and the fact that I am too busy to stay focused on one book... But I like what I have read so far, the snippets of the writer's Kenyan experience as a boy: I was a boy once, so some of the experiences are relatable; some, but not a lot... I grew up under very different circumstances from his. He was a city boy, I was a rural boy; so there are parts in the memoir that I don't quite care about yet, except that I can see why and how they are important to the author. You know, the thing about being in someone's shoes ,et cetra.

I am reading and thoroughly enjoying Miriam Shumba's 'That Which Has Horns". I love that it's set in Harare, practically starts in Glen View. Yes, the Glen View of Glen View 1, Glen View 2, Glen View 3, Glen View 4 (where you could find sugar cane), and Glen View 7 (where some of the houses where like those in Waterfalls). She is writing  about my Glen Views!  I lived in Glen View from 1987 to 1996 (sometimes on and off, like when I attended Gweru Teacher's College for three months in 1993, that's an off situation, and when I went to the University of Zimbabwe, now coming from Gweru, I was a resident student, like other people--Makoni, Chatora, Mudzingwa and others; then when I lived in Chimanimani in early 1996, before briefly returning to Glen View and eventiually leaving Zimbabwe altogether. Glen View on an off, then way off). 

Reading books by African writers builds the expectation for the familiar, or for the relatably unfamiliar, such as, tell me about how they fell in love, how he, Unashe, started by just helping her, Priscilla, with her moving to a new flat (use this word, instead of apartment), then how he kept coming to offer her comfort (because she had just found out that the father she knew was not her real father), and soon Unashe and Priscilla were going to a club in what was once the Sheraton Hotel. Write this, and you bring back memories, because if you mention Sheraton, you remind me of Harare City Library, from whose window I would look at Sheraton and dream... And later, at least once, I would go to Sheraton to cover a Beauty Pageant; yes, I was some kind of journalist, press-card carrying, covering the pageant for a newspaper in Norton. Then one time we went there to do something I can't quite remember, but I was in a group of friends, Memory Chirere, Alson Mfiri...this must have been something to do with writing; it had to. But you make me think about more: there is the kopje, but before that, there is Harare City Library (again), then the museum place, then courthouse somewhere not very far (where a friend went once to fight a traffic ticket), and that building which housed a college of Musicology where at one time I was a guest speaker, et cetra. I get to think about all these things because of how the novel lingers near these places, and I like that; let them fall in love, Priscilla and Unashe, since this novel is labeled a "contemporary romance'.

That label, 'contemporary romance', I can see how it is relevant, it's a love story, but I can't categorize this book as a Mills and Boon, or those romance mass markets you see in US bookstores, those Harlequins et al with horse, and ladies and gentlemen on the covers. There are many aspects of  'That Which Has Horns' which begin to push it toward the literary, starting with the title, the way it taps into the symbolic and figurative zone of Shona proverbs. Those proverbs, despite their brevity are serious literature. I asked an American reader what the title calls to mind and the reader said, "  An elephant, that which has horns." Of course, the writer, in Chapter one, gives the Shona version first, then the English translation, followed by an explanation, a serious, literary explanation of the symbolic, highly literary proverb. In the meantime, we are reading a romance. To me, no, so far this is not a romance, but for others it can be. And I think this is a good thing, to write a book that can fit into different genres, a book that can mean many things to different readers.
But I am still reading it, so I can't say more.

I think I am also reading a book about how Google works, and another entitled 'We First', which again is about how social media benefits its inventors and how it can benefits its users. Very practical books, easy, fast reads. I am topping this with Thomas Friedman's 'The World is Flat', which really captures the dynamics of globalization 3.0, this era of what he calls the 'flattening of the earth.' I love reading books like this.

There are other books I am reading too, on and off, such as Raymond Carver's Collected Writings, the little expensive collection of his short stories and essays. Inspiring bits of information and some minimalist stories. Carver has the ability to make your creative faculties go wild.

Tonight, right now, as I blog, I have in front of me Dambudzo Marechera's Cemetery of Mind, which I carried to the Sacramento Poetry Center where I hosted a reading by Brad Henderson and Sharon Campbell, both based in Davis, California. They were great together. They read all kinds of poems, but I enjoyed, especially, their poems about each other, and then Brad's poems about boyhood. I started to reflect back when I was a boy and started dreaming about one day writing about that, and I started trying several titles: 'One Day I will Write....'", "I Have Already Written about this Place...." In a way, these are already taken, so is 'Boyhood' (J.M. Coetzee), but there are other interesting ones, which I can't mention. Forget that I mentioned that I am thinking about writing a memoir about my boyhood. But Brad and Sharon gave a good reading. And about the Marechera book...

I always carry it to poetry reading (lately). Last week I was one of the featured poets at a reading. I was planning to start by reading from Marechera's collection, just one poem, '"Neither Innocence Nor Experience", whose memorable last line is, "There is never enough time to know what is going on". When my turn came though, I got a bit nervous and dropped my book, so I read from the first book I picked up. I read from 'Forever Let Me Go', a poem about an email server outage. It drew much laughter, so I was encouraged to move on to my signature poem, entitled "A House for Mother'. Once I read this one, forget about Marechera...I move deeper into my own work. But I want to go to a reading with the option to start with the works of a writer I respect.

Another book I am reading is..., actually two more, 'On Black Sister Street' (Chika Unigwe) and 'Running the Rift' (Naomi Benaron). I will really get a chance to finish these books after I am done with finals (a lot to grade).

I am always trying to read all kinds of things, and that's good.  But now, time to read research papers.