USA Africa Dialogue Series - Not funny : Ruminating a little about Christopher Albani

At this point all I'm waiting for is Mwalimu Bangura showing up with what he promises to deliver, namely  "the Pluridisciplinary, Fractal and Linguistic Presupposition analysis of Mwalimu Toyin Falola's autobiography, A Mouth Sweeter than Salt." -  so that, maybe,  informed and inspired  by his analysis, I can begin to put  finishing touches  to  what up till now are only notes, scribbled  in my logbook  - on my own  literary appreciation of  "a mouth sweeter than water"   - destined not just for USA –Africa Forum , but maybe for something like Amatoritsero Ede's Maple Tree Literary Supplement– if my essay should be acceptable/ meet his required standards.

Ignorance smiles : I Don't know whether that discussion has ended or not and that's why I'm still waiting avidly for the next chapter  in the thrilling sequence of call and response between the  two erudite gentlemen  scholars - Harrow and Ochonu  - on the theme " who? Me ? What precisely do you mean "liberal"? If you mean X, y or z, you had better count me out mate. I should like to give Harrow a call sometime, with my bow and arrow (just kidding) just to talk to him, man to man. Who knows he may even like the sound of my voice...

We ( spectators in peeperdom ) have devoured the left and right definitions, definitions left and right of the term liberal as can be variously applied to North Americans more specifically, and some of us are currently aware that such definitions begin to lose their constancy of shape and certainly their intensity or vacuity when located in a more Swedish context - and this, in spite of the globalisation of ideas and even of political or mental  identities.  Revolutionary  still remains a dirty word, like that dirty river that philosophy professor Segun Ogungbemi was talking about just the other day, re – "I cannot imagine our President will go to a dirty river in Israel when we have better rivers in Nigeria," he whined. (The next ambitious project could be the nationalisation of not just oil and gas but also holy rivers.)

 Not that one must be legally ordained or obtain an academic license from the sheriff's office to talk shop  or some  more nonsense  or to even  make certain kinds of credible observations, especially not when it's time (not long after  the Bay of Pigs) to make room for some poetic flexibility as in

"Now, I'm liberal, but to a degree
I want ev'rybody to be free
But if you think that I'll let Barry Goldwater
Move in next door and marry my daughter
You must think I'm crazy!
I wouldn't let him do it for all the farms in Cuba" (I Shall Be Free No. 10)

With regard to some of the popular Western media outlets  going for what Soyinka in several different context, has previously labelled "exotica" - in this case what from the very beginning  reeked of the bizarre and extraordinary  - and  Doug Henning  of Wisconsin the person who came to mind when I first read about Chris Abani's shufferings and survivals – and mind you  we did not give Doug the name Poe for nothing , except that in the case of Abani ( rhymes with Germany) his biographical details  - like all biographical details, are supposed to be real, not merely imaginary – although some writers fail to distinguish between reality,  fantasy and outright wishful thinking. When Professor Harrow said (smile) "We don't teach the biographical heresy anymore "(me thought he was talking about Jesus) and here's some honest truth:  the gospels for me do rival the accuracy of "a mouth sweeter than salt " or "Ake" or  "Over the Bridge" or "The Golden Sovereign" or Joseph Brodsky's "Watermark "or Michael Heseltine's "Life in the Jungle" or indeed Woody Allen's "Mere Anarchy"

And so from Woody Allen to Bullfrog Albani and some of his weird shit.  After his "Song for Night" had been translated into Swedish and this, at a time when he still had his facebook fan pages, I did take time out to accurately translate and post to his facebook pages, some of the things that were being said about in our two main Swedish morning papers both of which have very talented book reviewers on their culture pages. Unfortunately - as I then observed, Albani's improbable biographical stories about his imprisonment as a teenage Biafran by the wicked federal forces & their police constables, occupied too much space in all the pages that were meant to serve as an introduction to his fiction. Here's some of what was said in Svenska Dagbladet– my translations of what was written a couple of years ago are on a disk and right now I'm afraid I don't have the time or desire to start searching for it. I suppose that some of the barbarism he recounts having suffered in real life – much dilated upon by our local oyibo, was calculated to titillate our readers and even further elevate Albani to the heroic stature of Soyinka in "The Man Died" and Ngugi Wa Thiong'o in Detained

 Right now, I can't wait to get my hands on Okey Ndibe's "Foreign God's Inc "

Don't get me wrong, the Torah explicitly forbids me lusting after any foreign gods  and Professor Ndibe's book is assuredly not serving any....

Time to update my blog

We Sweden