Teju Cole on twitter

"Of what import are brief, nameless lives to Galactus?" Teju Cole has the answer. The author of Open City, currently working on a non-fiction book on Lagos, has been reading Nigerian newspapers and found himself drawn to the little stories, the big and small tragedies of ordinary people. So, he started recasting the stories on twitter in the tradition of the fait divers, a project he has augmented with the tag: Teju Cole Small Fates.

Here he is on TCSF
"The stories I tell in the small fates are more tightly compressed than most fait divers (thanks to the limitation of length Twitter imposes) and often more laconic... Each tells a truth, a whole truth, but never the whole truth (but this is true of all storytelling). Details are suppressed, secondary characters vanish, sometimes the “important” aspect of the story is sidestepped in order to highlight a poignant detail."

The New Yorker took notice
"To a contemporary reader like Cole, fait divers also have another characteristic: they are eminently tweetable. As he began to compose his own versions, which he calls “small fates” to differentiate them from the French, Cole realized they’d do well on Twitter. He’s been at it for a few months, and the results are riveting, providing a snapshot of life in Nigeria that invites and repels at once:

With a razor blade, Sikiru, of Ijebu Ode, who was tired of life,

separated himself from his male organ. But death eluded him."

One of the many Small Fates that make you either go Yeepa! or Ouch!

I love this recent one below about rogue trader Kweku Adoboli, for drawing attention to the racism of Western media reports; a Black Briton is 'British' until they fall foul of the law, then comes overt, repeated referencing of their origin.

Almost always, as in the Abdullahi Ibrahim one above, there is an artful missing-of-the-point in order to tease out that "poignant detail."

According to Cole: "These pieces are generally not events of the kind that alter a nation’s course. They are not about movie stars or, with exceptions, famous politicians. They are about the small fates of ordinary people. The idea is not to show that Lagos, or Abuja, or Owerri, are worse than New York, or worse than Paris. Rather, it’s a modest goal: to show that what happens in the rest of the world happens in Nigeria too, with a little craziness all our own mixed in. In this odd sort of way, bad news is good news because these instances of bad news reveal a whole world of ongoing human experience that is often ignored or oversimplified."

Occasionally in square brackets, the author will 'come out of character' to break TCSF down some more, like when responding to complaints he referred to a man awaiting trial as a 'murderer'. "Feel free to google Arowolo. Is there a reasonable doubt?" he asked. The Small Fates, though drawn from reality, are far from straight news, legal transcripts or policy papers, he maintained. And in any case, "we poets, you know, are bastards, and will continue to be."

TCSF has been so successful that many have been getting in on the act, and Cole indulged them, by posting assignments: links to newspaper stories his followers could try their hands at turning into Small Fates, tagged '#tcsf' on twitter. The very best would be retweeted by Cole to his 2000-plus followers. Many tweeted their own Small Fates, but few got the distinction of being retweeted by the author, inspiring this priceless tweet below by Ebuka Obi-Uchendu. So good, even Teju Cole retweeted it.

Teju Cole's tweets

Teju Cole in the Open City

Suddenly, it’s impossible not to feel the explosive impact of Teju Cole’s ‘Open City’ even all the way down here in Lagos, despite the fact that his new novel has only just been published all the way in America, on February 8, to be precise. And so there I was last week, doing some delicate bargaining with a writer-friend currently in the US; I had the upper hand in the negotiation until he pulled out the ace up his sleeve. He was bringing me a copy of a hot, brand new book that no one had seen anywhere in Nigeria. By the next day, I’d worked out that it could only be Teju Cole’s Open City, and I can’t wait to lay my hands on this, by all accounts, splendid free-form novel.

Meanwhile, I’ve just had a long, bedazzled read of James Wood’s review of Open City in the New Yorker.

Here’s an excerpt:
“Cole has made his novel as close to a diary as a novel can get, with room for reflection, autobiography, stasis, and repetition. This is extremely difficult, and many accomplished novelists would botch it, since a sure hand is needed to make the writer’s careful stitching look like a thread merely being followed for its own sake. Mysteriously, wonderfully, Cole does not botch it: “When I turned around, I saw that I was at the entryway of the American Folk Art Museum. Never having visited before, I went in”; “In early December, I met a Haitian man in the underground catacombs of Penn Station”; “The days went by slowly, and my sense of being entirely alone in the city intensified”; “At the beginning of February, I went down to Wall Street to meet Parrish, the accountant who was doing my taxes, but I forgot to bring my checkbook”; “Last night, I attended the performance of the Ninth Symphony, which is the work Mahler wrote after Das Lied von der Erde.”

Watching Simon Rattle conduct Mahler at Carnegie Hall, Julius is alive to the sorrow of the composer’s “long but radiant elegy.” He thinks of the strange fact that a hundred years ago, “just a short walk away from Carnegie Hall, at the Plaza Hotel, on the corner of Fifty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue, Mahler had been at work on this very symphony, aware of the heart condition that would soon take his life.” Then, before the music has ended, an old woman rises from her front-row seat, and goes up the aisle: “It was as though she had been summoned, and was leaving into death, drawn by a force invisible to us. The old woman was frail, with a thin crown of white hair that, backlit by the stage, became a halo, and she moved so slowly that she was like a mote suspended inside the slow-moving music.” Cole prepares his effects so patiently and cumulatively, over many pages of relatively “flat” description, that the image of the old woman leaving as if for death, suspended like a mote in the music, seems not forced or ornamental but natural and almost inevitable.”

The New Yorker also has an extract from the novel here.

Then there’s the fascinating iconography that’s already being woven around the person of the author. The image accompanying most publicity about the book, shows Cole in profile, cap pulled to the forehead, a sports top zipped up to the chin, and a beard. It is mysterious and striking; and lends itself very easily to author illustrations, of which the New Yorker’s is just one of several.

When James Wood writes of a scene in the novel as one of the very few "in contemporary fiction in which critical and literary theory is not satirized, or flourished to exhibit the author’s

credentials"... it comes as no surprise to those of us

already accustomed to the effortless, unshowy brilliance of Teju Cole’s writing, the staggering breadth of his references.

Speaking of which, now is perhaps a good time to revisit Cole’s ‘Letter to a Young Writer’, dedicated to a certain Temitayo, who knows herself. The 8 letters are also downloadable as a single PDF document, here.

Photo: Publicity image.

New Read

I once wrote a despairing piece titled 'Do Nigerians Read?' In an extract from Teju Cole's forthcoming book, Every Day is for the Thief, the author gives what may pass for an answer...

"Of course, Nigerians read. There are the readers of newspapers, such as the gentleman next to me. Magazines of various kinds are popular, as are religious books. But to see an adult reading a challenging work of literary fiction on Lagos public transportation: that’s a sight rare as hen’s teeth. The Nigerian literacy rate is low, estimated at fifty-seven percent. But, worse, actual literary habits are inculcated in very few of the so-called literate. I meet only a small number of readers, and those few read tabloids, romance novels by Mills and Boon, or tracts that promise “victorious living” according to certain spiritual principles. It is a hostile environment for the life of the mind. Once we pass the fly-over at Ojota, the rush-hour congestion eases. The speed we are gathering on the road means the journey is surprisingly cool. The breeze through the open window is constant. The man next to me folds away his newspaper and begins to nod. Everyone else stares into space. The reader, of whom I can see only scarf and shoulders, reads."

• Read the extract in full on the website of Teju Cole's publishers, Cassava Republic.

Talking 'Othello' with Teju Cole

I had a bit of dialogue with writer Teju Cole on his blog recently, about a posting he did on Shakespeare's Othello. How does a non-white actor play Othello without reinforcing the play's inherent racial stereotyping (I almost typed 'racial profiling', which is another kettle of fish entirely!).

Teju's blog is intelligent and thought provoking without stuffiness or posturing. Here's his post on Othello. Some of our exchange, is excerpted below, with Teju's permission.

MW: I have read Kwame Kwei-Armah's & Hugh Quarshie (who has played Othello before, I believe)'s thoughts on this matter before. Reminds me of a review I wrote of a production of Othello at the Trafalgar Studios in London back in 2004 in which I also touched on Quarshie's essay (I'll see if I can dig out my review). The production starrred Nsello Maake Ka Ncube as Othello; see a poem I wrote about meeting his eyes during the performance, as one of only 2 0r 3 black people in an audience of 300 or 400.

The saving grace, if you could call it that, was that Anthony Sher's Iago was a Heil Hitler type sniggering over-the-top character you cannot identify with at all, whatever your race; problem is, Shakepeare intended that you dislike Iago, so nothing really new there. The setting was moved to something like second World War Venice; a few of the other minor characters were played by blacks actors. Still, this overiding question of race was overwhelming in the production, for me. And if you were to cut out stuff like: "These moors are changeable in their wills" or references to the "black ram tupping your white ewe" - you would not have the play Othello. I actually love this play, for the very reason that it is not just a great tragedy, but also because it discomfits me and discomfits the person next to me.

What I feel is that, the racial connotations of Othello changes depending on (1) where it is staged; (2) the racial composition of the actors; and (3) the composition of the audience. If you had a production of Othello in Lagos with Nigerian actors playing to a Nigerian audience, the emphasis on character rather than race as suggested by Quarshie, would come to the fore. Any other way, it remains problematic. And you can't have a white (un-blacked out) actor play him because Othello is necessarily black ("Happily, for I am black").

A black actor playing Othello in a largely white cast to a largely white audience may unwittingly validate racial stereotypes. But I am of the view that it is a darn sight better than Laurence Olivier "blacking up" to play Othello, something that was once the norm. And since Shakespeare himself wrote the part for a white actor, the very notion of a black actor taking over the role is a subversion of sorts, and that pleases me. And when we think about it, some great black cultural icons (Paul Robeson, no less) have played Othello. Quarshie himself shows from his essay that he had ruminated so much about the role that (though I never saw the production that featured him) one cannot doubt that he approached the part with a great sense of responsibility. What is needed, are talented black actors with the presence of mind and self awareness to help them transcend the stereotypes.

We must carry on seeing productions of Othello, because I see shades of the moor and the societal factors that made and broke him, all around us everyday. Quarshie's examples of Dodi Fayed and O J Simpson (him especially; who lived in a white world only to embrace his blackness on a rap for the gruesome murder of his wife, someone that was a consuming passion to him - poor Nicole, God rest her) were on the ball, and I noted this in my review. I added to Quarshie's list a black boxer (I hesitate to name him still) who wasn't such a good pugilist but was adored by the British public because he was (maybe still is) the kind of black man that made whites comfortable, reinforced their sense of racial superiority. He wasn't clever, he knew his place, he made black people cringe in their seats (Caribbean or African, I am yet to meet a black person who was proud of this guy even in his glory days). The boxer was greatly rewarded for his modest talents when better black British boxers didn't fare so well. Crucially, he had a white wife. Since he's been divorced, the facade seems to have been blown and the boxer is now just a pathetic loser, though rich. So there you have it.

Othello is all around us. Long live the play, "flawed" though it is.

~ * ~ * ~

TC: Though I'd assent to some judicious editing of the play's text (it's controversial but, like Quarshie, I don't believe in being enslaved to the text--and how many people do full length Hamlets anyway?), I also hav to say a black actor in the troubling role is a damn sight better than Lord Buttermelt done up in blackface.

Blackface is its own thing, full of rotten history, impermissible to anyone except, perhaps, to teenage Japanese girls who are so far off the kooky scale they aren't any of our business.
See...

Your poem of Nsello reminds me, Molara, of one time I went to see Seamus Heaney give a talk in New York. The audience was large, but only two of us had the touch of the tar-brush, just me and another, older, man.

Five minutes before the event started, I was in my seat. The room was almost full. That was when two white women walked across the room and said to me, "Could you please do something about the air-conditioning." Wit failed. And all I could say in response was a prosaic, "I'm here for the poems, too" and thank the gods these fools hadn't approached Derek Walcott instead.

~ * ~ * ~

MW: "Could you please do something about the air-conditioning"?!

What a cheek! I'd have to say they're a lot more polite and reserved in England, to say such.
Derek Walcott, ehn? You were in esteemed company, mai broda.

An English colleague who worships black Jazz gods told me he's noticed some serene sense of joy that shows upon the bearing of black jazz musicians when they spot their kind in the crowd during concerts at the Queen Elizabeth Hall or such places, since the audience is mostly white for these shows. I admire white audiences for turning up purely for the love of the arts (they turn up for Malian & Yoruba musicians too and clearly enjoy themselves, even as they don't understand the lyrics). There's been a slight increase in black attendance for Nigerian/African artists in recent years - but I remain baffled as to why blacks generally stay away.

As someone who goes to art events a lot here in London, one regularly feels like an endangered specie in the audience, especially in the theatre (must be even worse at the opera, though I must confess I'm as guilty as the next woman when it comes to opera!). Your skin colour suddenly becomes so magnified. You wear it loose on you, like an oversized cross. And it's so lonely. Then think how it is for the black player who can't find anyone he/she can identify with in the audience.

Much as any player loves to play to all of God's children, it helps sometimes if you can get that specific identification allowed by your kind. That was what happened when Nsello saw me in that audience. The loneliness of the black in Elizabethan period Venice was in that theatre filled with white people in 2004. I felt some racial angst. It wasn't just about Othello anymore; it was about me too.

That's what I love about theatre. The danger.

• Teju Cole's book, Everyday is for the Thief, will be published later this year by Cassava Republic.