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No tourist guide can give more
comprehensive introduction to nation as LiTTscapes
Review
& Appraisal of LiTTscapes by
Professor Al Creighton, Deputy Vice
Chancellor of the University of Guyana and of the Guyana Prize for Literature
at LiTTribute II – LiTTurgy to the Mainland at Moray House Trust, Georgetown
We are in the presence
this afternoon of a neat kind of confluence.
Guyana at this time is in the middle of celebrating nationhood – the
peak of it is Republic Day one week from now.
The publication being launched in Guyana today is a celebration of
nationhood as it is captured through photography, an explanatory text and the
literature of Trinidad and Tobago. The
easiest way to begin an analysis of this book Littscapes by Kris Rampersad is to describe it – give an idea so
that the audience gets a clear picture of exactly what it is. But that is not the easiest way, because it
is a text that defies easy description.
There are more types that it is than things that it is not.
The publication is Littscapes : Landscapes of Fiction from
Trinidad and Tobago by Kris Rampersad, published in St Augustine, Trinidad,
in 2012. The bibliographical details
describe it as “First Edition 2012”, which is not surprising, given its
multi-tasking nature and its wide reach, and this suggests that, also
considering the several things that it seems to set out to cover, there is more
to come in future editions.
It is 200 pages of
written and visual text, presenting the landscape of Trinidad and Tobago in
passages of descriptions, explanations and quotations, very impressively
supported and complemented by hundreds of colour photographs and excerpts from
the literature of the country. Rampersad
always interweaves into her own descriptions, the pieces taken from the
literature, so that one gets pictures of the several varied subjects from the
point of view of the writers and of their fictional characters. These are taken predominantly from works of
fiction covering a range of short stories and novels, but to a lesser extent,
there is reference to poetry and drama.
The idea of
“littscapes” comes from this drawing from the literature to give scenes, views
and visions of landscape and life in clear, colourful, illustrative pictures as
well as snippets of how they are treated in the literature. It is a quite thorough artistic concept. It is a portrait and biography of the nation
of Trinidad and Tobago which actually pays tribute to the Republic in 2012, the
year of its 50th anniversary of Independence. The book is attractively, neatly and
effectively designed, using a recurring motif of the double-T – “TT”, which, of
course, is “Trinidad and Tobago”, but is also “literature” so that there is not
only the visual impact but the tribute to nationhood as reflected in the
various works of literature.
Littscapes is a work of art; but also it is a
documentary, a travelogue, a critical work with visual and literary power. It takes us on a tour of the country, giving
some exposure to almost every aspect of life.
It may be too heavy and too academic to be called a tourist guide, but
no tourist guide can give a better, more comprehensive introduction to
Trinidad. It entices and attracts just
as the glossy tourist literature; it looks a weighty volume, but an important
factor is that it is very easy to read.
Neither is this link to tourism accidental, because one of the
objectives of the book is that it must show the value that literature has in
promoting and presenting the nation. It
must show different uses of literature, encourage new approaches to it and make
it more attractive and interesting. The
book does for literature, what literature does for the country.
Rampersad tours the countryside and highlights
features of it, at the same time exploring the literature to indicate how the
writers treat the subjects, what they or their fictional characters say, and
how they are used in the plots.
Photographs of several sections of Port-of-Spain are accompanied by the
descriptions and literary excerpts: this treatment is given to the capital
city, other towns, streets, urban communities, villages, historic buildings and
places, vegetation, animals, institutions, culture and landscape. There is considerable visual beauty, what
Derek Walcott calls “visual surprise” in his Nobel Lecture; an impressive
coverage of social history, geography, and politics, but also a strong literary
experience. It is a survey of Trinidad’s
landscape and of its literature.
The publication
reflects a considerable volume of reading, drawing from as early as Walter Raleigh
at the dawn of Caribbean literature, which adds historical character and depth
to the landscape and culture. The
references include early fiction such as ARF Webber’s Those That Be In Bondage.
The connectedness of nationhood becomes relevant again here, since both
Webber and Raleigh have ties to Guyana as strong if not stronger than those
with Trinidad. Just as the historical
development of the country is reflected in the places and monuments, so it is
in the rise of social realism through the fiction of the 1930s in
Port-of-Spain. Rampersad presents her
subjects through the eyes of CLR James and writers from the Beacon group such
as Alfred Mendes, and has done the painstaking work analogous to that of a
lexicographer, of sorting out their several hundred references to her
subjects.
This account includes
some memorable passages of real literary criticism, although these are
brief. They include the entries on The Humming Bird Tree by Ian McDonald,
another writer that is more Guyanese than Trinidadian, with instructive
insights into the novel’s title and its meaning. Others are the references to Lion House in
Chaguanas and the Capildeo family which hold great interest for background to
VS Naipaul. He immortalises his mother’s
family in Hanuman House and the Tulsis, and Rampersad provides additional
information about Naipaul’s use of his migratory existence in her discussions
of various parts of Port-of-Spain. There
is also similar enlightenment in the way such locations as San Fernando, Mayaro
and Princes Town accumulate greater meaning when used to treat the work of
novelist Michael Anthony. Yet another
passage of deep criticism is the reference to “girl victims” as they are
treated in the fiction.
There are the entries on politicians, calypsonians and
superstitions, all of which abound in the fiction. This work does so much
already that it might be unfair to judge it on its omissions or reduced
treatments.
Trinidad is in all respects the major and dominant island, and this is
overwhelmingly reflected in Rampersad’s treatment. She says in her text that Trinidadian writers
on the whole neglect Tobago, treat it as the lesser of two sisters or do not
treat it at all. In this book,
therefore, the imbalance is noted.
In the end, Rampersad’s
Littscapes does achieve an innovative
approach to literature in bringing it alive in the description of landscape,
life, culture and people. It encourages
people to take ownership of it, see themselves, their home or familiar places
in it and accept it as a definer of identity.
But the book is as much photography by Rampersad and others as it is
literature, and the pictures help to illustrate, highlight and make the fiction
real.
Above all Littscapes: Landscapes of Fiction from
Trinidad and Tobago has an extremely
powerful sense of place and reinforces what in Rampersad’s words is “the pull
of place on authors”. It may claim to be
an accessory to what she calls “the body of fiction inspired by Trinidad and
Tobago”. It communicates the character
of the country.
No one book can be
everything; no one book can set out to achieve everything that a literature and
a visual text can do for its people and its nation; but whatever you say one
book can’t do, this one almost does it.
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