Book Review
Oseloka Obaze*
Tuesday 24 February 2009
A Rich, Enabling Silence
Deji Haastrup
(ISBN: 978-8135-24-2: Bookcraft, Ibadan, Nigeria; 2008; p.110; Price, $15.00)
Available at: http://www.bookcraftafrica.com
Deji Haastrup’s collection of essays, titled A Rich, Enabling Silence, is the sequel to his much praised 1992 collection, Eavesdropping, which Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka unreservedly proclaimed as “light, urbane reading, product of gentle wit and measured prose, much in the manner of Addison and Steele, those eighteenth century English practitioners of the personal journal….” A Rich, Enabling Silence might very well live up to that acclaim.
Perhaps because personal journal entries are written initially for oneself, they tend to be intrinsically insightful, vivid, unvarnished and thus, faithful to what is observed or analyzed. Authors of journal also keep history and their role in it in perspective. For the consequent reader, the greatest essence of such essays is one of transference and immersion; the reader becomes intrinsically acquainted with what the author had observed, without any temporal restrictions. Yet, the greatest of the benefits of such essays, is that despite their subjectivity, they also elucidate and in some instances, demythologize people and places. In all, however, the power of perception and account of the author remains a salient attribute, even if admittedly, based on personal values.
Beyond mere musing, A Rich, Enabling Silence, a compendium of eleven vibrant essays, covers a mosaic of issues, thus making it a work of universal interest. Although I thoroughly enjoyed the eleven essays in this volume, I found, of choice, the most intriguing and compelling ones to be, Dreams, A Rich Enabling Silence, and Authority and the Author, in that particular order. The others are now less worthy by any means. Indeed, most readers will readily recognize A Little Gift At Xmas as a metaphor for Nigeria’s altered state, and circumstances where “things have since changed and become less certain.” In this context, Haastrup’s perspective is a largely shared.
Dreams, is particularly poignant, having touched on the raw nerves of Nigeria’s dashed aspirations. By leading off with Langston Hughes’ classic poem, Dream Deferred, Haastrup seemed intent on posing that inescapable numbing question: “What happens to a dream deferred?” Drawing on his personal and Nigeria’s national experiences, Haastrup undertakes an excursion into the unrealized personal and collective dreams of the Nigerian nation. Far from being uncharitably, he candidly observed, “Most of our grown up dreams lack wings to fly beyond measurable reality. Instead, we nurture much less innocent ideas and infuse our longings with amazing adult zeal and arrogance.”
While surveying the dreamy quirks of Nigeria’s past generations, -- “the generation before that of our parents’”, “our parents’ generation”, “the generation sandwiched between our parents’ and ours’ during whose era things really went awry”, Haastrup delivers a harsh but well-deserved verdict. His take: “The greatest challenge my generation faced was perhaps the ability to limit our far-fetched dreams…having once built for ourselves a perfect paradise for fools, we have now lost faith in the promise of dreams.”
Haastrup’s title piece, A Rich Enabling Silence is better read than explained. The shortest essay of the lot, it unmasks the veneer of Nigeria’s troubled psyche. Nigeria personified, is renownedly gregarious, loud and sometimes obtuse; it is a nation that seems to thrive on noise and confusion. Hence, “Abstinence from banter greatly worries us and diminishes our sense of relevance”. And, “Silence impregnates our senses with premonition of evil and horror.”
According to Haastrup, what we miss in our preferred cacophony is twofold; grasping that “in the rich embrace of contemplative silence that a great deal of meaningful activity transpires” and that “silence provides the soil in which thought germinate; it is the wings upon which creativity takes flight and imagination soars”. Apropos Nigeria, this essay’s most profound observation is that served last: “And yet, silence must not be an escape from truth: the outcome of a perverse desire to avoid conscientious objection”. Certainly, Nigerians are witnesses to the damage done to their nation by those who opted to remain silent for all the wrong reasons.
In Authority and the Author, Haastrup delves into the relationship between an author and his work as well as the relationship between the work and its readers. He acknowledges the bane of the undiscovered and unsung author; “Their work is yet to find favor with experts and critics. And so, we the potential readers of their work simply avoid them, denying ourselves the benefit that could be derived from and fresh perspective.” Noting that most readers engage in hero-worship of celebrated authors, becoming groupies of sorts for them, he concludes that, “Work should be the authority of the author and work ought to be paid more attention than the purveyor.”
A Rich, Enabling Silence is a work that any writer, teacher or admirer of spoken or written English language will cherish; it is also a work to be respected as well as appreciated. This slim volume is so deliberately engrossing; dabbling into it is like a two-hour immersion in a captivating surround-sound epic movie.
Deji Haastrup, a very revealing writer and master of the word that some say he is, explores several societal cracks and foibles, which some Nigerians, believing as they do, have come to accept with resignation as the default option, proven reality or the truth. Unfailingly, and with deft prose and homespun logic, Haastrup uses varied and robust philosophical deductions to render such idiosyncrasies open to contest, making them at best, debatable proposals, while generally proving their diametric unacceptability.
Deji Haastrup writes with compelling simplicity and the flourish of an artist with a broad canvass, who possesses the innate skills of currency or ten-penny stamp engraver. He has the ability to make casual forays into a vast expanse of life’s multitude of conflicting experiences, and yet, is able to unearth the critical minutiae and vexing foibles that a non-skilled observer of memorable and nondescript events would easily miss.
Haastrup’s A Rich, Enabling Silence, is a pithy, pleasantly brilliant and exquisite piece of work, in which the author capture events, people and places, with remarkable fidelity. Interestingly, he does it for both consequential and inconsequential subjects.
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Mr. Oseloka Obaze is a founding member of the Kwenu.com Book Review Forum, which is dedicated to the promotion of books with Igbo and Afrocentric themes. He is also a supporting Member of the African Writers Endowment (AWE). From 1999 to 2005, he served on the editorial board of INYEAKA, the journal of Songhai Charities, Inc., a New Jersey community-based charity founded and run by Nigerians based in New York Tri-state area in the United States, first as its founding Publisher and later as the Editor-At-Large. He is also on the editorial board of The Amaka Gazette, the journal of the Christ the King College, Onitsha Alumni Association in America. His collection of poems, “Regarscent Past: A Collection of Poems” was second among the top three finalists in the poetry category in the African Writers Endowment Publishing Grant Program for 2004. He is working on a novel titled “Happy Eulogy”. He reviews books and arts strictly as a hobby. © Copyright 24 February 2009.