To belong or not to belong
Zenga Longmore
A NEW WORLD ORDER by Caryl Phillips
Seeker, £17.99, pp. 309, ISBN 0436205602
The thoughts of Caryl Phillips are many and varied. In this distinctive collection of essays he muses on the works of Richard Wright, James Baldwin and V. S. Naipaul. He contemplates Stephen Spielberg, soul singer Marvin Gaye, the poet Linten Kw-esi Johnson, and myriad lesser-known African and Caribbean writers. To conclude, he treats us to an agonised outpouring over his own sense of `unbelonging'.
Born in St Kitts, Caryl grew up in Leeds and now lives in New York. In distraught tones, he laments that he `feels of, and not of' every country in which he finds himself, be it the West Indies, America, Africa or England. Poor Caryl. Few people feel they ever quite 'fit in', but Caryl seems to take it so much more to heart than the rest of us. In Britain, he says, 'I recognise the place, I feel at home here but don't belong ... Who am I? How do I explain who I am?' When he empties his anguished soul in such a way, I am convinced I am not alone in yearning to pat his hand and murmur a soothing, 'There, there, it'll be all right.'
Many of the authors whom Phillips discusses suffer similar angst over issues of race and identity. Richard Wright's Native Son is the first to undergo the Phillips treatment. Native Son (1940) features Bigger Thomas, a young black American boy who ends up murdering white people who attempt to befriend him. I have never gone a bundle on Native Son, preferring the poignancy and truth of Wright's autobiographical memoir, Black Boy. It is interesting to hear Phillips's expansive praise of Native Son, for it is a book that confirms the bigot's most hideous stereotype of the black rapist and murderer. Whilst admitting the book has only two flaws, the characters and the plot (both are only there to prove an ideological point), Caryl rhapsodises over the prose with such passion and tenderness that it is impossible not to pretend to like Native Son, just to make him happy.
Stephen Spielberg foxes Phillips. First Spielberg is berated for producing facile money-spinners such as ET and Jurassic Park. Then, the hapless film producer sends Caryl into a froth by making such socially earnest films as Schindler's List and Amistad. Schindler's List is slated for containing 'periodic outbursts of sentimentality' and 'many unresolved ambiguities which surround the troubling character of Schindler'. It is also one of the most boring films ever made, but that appears to have escaped Caryl's notice, Caryl is equally unimpressed by Amistad, a film about a slave mutiny. The facts are incorrect. And why does the lead character have to keep taking his clothes off? 'At moments I had to ask myself if this was serious dramatic reconstruction or a gay porn flick.' So much for Spielberg.
It is when Caryl gets to grips with V. S. Naipaul that he really cooks with gas. Naipaul, like Caryl, has made us all feel terribly sorry for him. He is Indian, and was saddled with Trinidad, the world's most beautiful, ebullient island, for a birthplace. He once told an interviewer:
Coming from a place like Trinidad which I felt always existed on the edge of the world, far away from everything else, not physically but in terms of culture, I had to try very hard to rejoin the world.
Naipaul is another author who has always brought out the 'There, there' in me. but Caryl stints on pity. He loathes the way Naipaul suggests Trinidad is populated by 'monkeys' who 'live purely physical lives which I find contemptible'. Letters between V. S. and his father are discussed at length. Warmth is directed towards the father, but the eminent son's eccentric opinions of 'the third world' are greeted with gnashing teeth.
Here is a man who can visit the Ivory Coast, or Iran or Pakistan, or his native Trinidad, and make the most outlandish, racist, unscholarly, inaccurate statements in books and in interviews and still be taken seriously.
Not by Caryl, he can't, even though they are both lost babes in the post-colonial wood.
Whether I agreed or scoffed at what Phillips had to say, I was utterly beguiled by his original outlook on literature, life, race and 'belonging' in this immensely readable collection of essays.
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