Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - "How Achebe ruined African literature"

i might hazard two comments, without joining in the fruitless debate,
who's better. one, better by whose standards?
more importantly, better known= better writer? historically that's
nonsense; anyone who studied british 19th c lit could tell you that. i
once knew the name of the most famous irish writer of the 19th c, but
lost since forgot it...as has everyone else.
but worse, better= more $. ??
wow, that's really interesting. almost every famous writer you can think
of, nowadays, would fail by that standard. not to mention painters,
musicians, etc. bach was largely forgotten in the 19th c till mendelsohn
resurrected him; ditto for shakespeare in 19th c, till folks like goethe
came along. melville wasn't even noticed when he died, el greco, etc.
for a long time djibril diop was in eclipse; even senghor had faded in
his last years, or should i say last decades.
so what's really at stake in this achebe vs soyinka argument? at the
time of chinweizu i knew the answer. nowadays it must be something
different from those old tired arguments, esp when it is an outsider
posing it.
ken


On 3/28/14 9:05 PM, Ikhide wrote:
> "Such pointed dissents from multiculturalist orthodoxy may explain the strange fact that although Soyinka is, by most accounts, a better and more interesting writer than Achebe, he is not nearly so well known. His marvelous plays are rarely assigned in Western classrooms. In commercial terms, Soyinka has never been a huge success, whereas sales of Achebe's books accounted for as much as a third of the revenue coming in from the African Writers Series even in the 1980s, decades after they had first been published. When Soyinka won the Nobel Prize in 1986, he was cornered at a reception by one particularly effusive admirer who proceeded to praise his work in the most gushing terms. When Soyinka asked, "What have you read by me?" the admirer answered, "Things Fall

>   Apart." -
>
> - Helen Rittelmeyer
>
> "... Soyinka is, by most accounts, a better and more interesting writer than Achebe" ???!! Okay, I hear! What do I think? Awful essay blighted by Rittelmeyer's ideological bias. Simplistic, patronizing and dated. She needs to read more contemporary writing by Africans.
>
> http://www.claremontinstitute.org/index.php?act=crbArticle&id=114#sthash.sr9bATJ5.5p7MYiZP.dpuf
>
> - Ikhide
>

--
kenneth w. harrow
faculty excellence advocate
professor of english
michigan state university
department of english
619 red cedar road
room C-614 wells hall
east lansing, mi 48824
ph. 517 803 8839
har...@msu.edu