Award-winning writer Harold Bascom reflects on success, on the challenges he faces as a writer, and his future projects

Dec 06, 2015 News

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Speaking for the ghosts of dead Caribbean writers…
 
By Michael Jordan
A bitter Sheik Sadeek rails at Martin Carter over the fact that Carter’s work continues to be read, while

his is fading into oblivion. Wordsworth Mc Andrew reads his famous ‘Ol Higue’ Poem; the Jamaican Louise Bennett chips in with her humorous, well-known ‘Love Letta’; a jovial and no longer blind Ray Charles stops by, while the wraith of Trinidadian Geoffrey Holder dances among the dead…
They’re a strange mix of artistic minds; the successful, the damned, and the fallen, but they all have one common bond: They’re the ghosts of dead writers, artists, and singers, all bound in a scary nether-world, in which even the little that is left of them may fade to nothingness, if the living don’t read their work.
They all congregate in the aptly named ‘Desperate for Relevance:’ A Surreal Drama of Dead Caribbean Writers Bound in a Curious Hereafter.’
How they help each other, despite their conflicts; how even the seemingly damned find redemption, is at the heart of this riveting drama.
It’s the latest work of prolific Guyanese dramatist Harold Bascom, and it’s this play for which he was recently awarded the Guyana Prize for Literature (2014) and the Guyana Caribbean Prize in the Best Book of Drama categories. It’s a heart-wrenching tale about the pitfalls of daring to follow the artist path; a path in which the reality, more often than not, fails to live up to the dream.
When Sheik Sadeek’s wretched ghost wails: “WHEN WILL MY WORK BEGIN TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY? WHERE DID I GO WRONG?” he speaks for every frustrated writer who seeks immortality through his work, but for whom success, on his terms, remains elusive.
But as Bascom sees it, Sadeek’s lament is mainly the cry of the West Indian artist, particularly those

living in an era when reading for the fun of it seems to be going out of vogue.
In the preface to his play, Bascom harkens back to the sixties and seventies, when “there seemed to have been the comprehension of the importance of documenting the Caribbean experience in the forms of poetry, prose, and drama.
During that period, there was voracious reading in the region. It was a period when many Caribbean novelists, playwrights, and poets (along with the titles of many of their works) were household names. Back then, we gained much ground in the area of cultural identity as a Third World people through our writers and essayists. …
“But what now? he asks. “The names of our numerous authors are rarely recognized or recalled. Maybe it’s a generational thing.”
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Kaieteur News spoke to Harold Bascom from his Georgia, USA residence, shortly after he received news about his double-award. The interview, because of space constraints, is being published in two parts.

KAIETEUR NEWS: Mr. Harold A. Bascom. You have just won the Guyana Prize for Literature for the fourth time, and you have also won the Caribbean Award for Literature. Congratulations! So, tell me:

What was your reaction on learning that you had won not only in the Guyana Prize—the local prize, as some might call it, but the Caribbean Award as well?

HAROLD BASCOM: I’m going to be completely honest. My reaction was more or less a shrug. The truth is, just after I typed the word, ‘CURTAINS’ to end the play, I knew that I’d walk away with both awards.

KN: Can I ask where that confidence came from?
HB: It came from me understanding what Guyanese and Caribbean writers go through—in terms of how we are in our own societies—you know, as stupid people who chose to do something some see as stupid as wanting to be writers and artists and things like that. It came from me knowing that the judges would empathize with this problem of feeling irrelevant to our own Caribbean societies, in which we dare to write and for which we dare to write.
My confidence came from knowing that I was addressing a common problem that transcended national borders in Caricom and the rest of the Caribbean: that problem of us, writers, feeling irrelevant to our own people, who often act as if they do not need us, but not realizing how much they do need us.

KN: Would you say that the impetus to write this play sprung from your own frustrations?
HB: To answer that, let me quote from my preface to Desperate For Relevance: ‘This work was hatched by

a personal angst: a growing fear of worthlessness as a writer in a society that is growing steadily away from reading and gravitating, for catharses, towards the audio-video channels entrenched in social media. Desperate for Relevance is a drama peopled by writers (a few that I have met), but mostly by writers that I have read and enjoyed, and continue to enjoy reading.’

KN: How did the plot for ‘Desperate for Relevance’ form in your mind?
HB: I thought of all the writers and artists and dancers that have died and were quickly forgotten because there is a scarcity of biographies… and then I thought of all the ‘creatives’ from the wider Caribbean that suffered and continue to suffer the same fate: irrelevancy. And the crazy thought hit me: What are they thinking now in the consciousness of their death as they look down and realize that their works are hardly being read?
The rest is creative plotting that grew from a platform of ‘what ifs?’ My confidence came in knowing that a play like this would resonate with every living Caribbean person aspiring to be a writer.
I knew that the need to revive a failing Caribbean literary culture is an important thing. I wrote from a grand position—not as a Guyanese writer—but as a Caribbean writer. Most Caribbean writers share a common dilemma—that of irrelevancy to their native societies. That is why I knew I had put together a play that would resonate beyond the borders of crass Caribbean nationalism, and encompass a single Caribbean lament.
I knew my adventure was vast. In my mind no other Caribbean playwright, I was sure, was going to be so bold—so broad-minded. I knew that as a playwright, I was going to win it all.

KN: Did you wake up one morning and say, ‘Hmmm…I’m going to write a play about dead Caribbean writers?”?
HB: Very dramatic—almost filmic. But no. One morning the house phone rang, and I saw it was Hector

Bunyan, my buddy-friend from Toronto. And the voice came through: “Harold!—ah have something here that going fire you up!—YOU REMEMBER ITABO CAFÉ IN GEORGETOWN?
Of course, me being a country boy, I have never heard of this iconic café. But Hector told me about it effusively—about the great literary figures and creative minds that hung out there in the pre-Independent era. Hector raved on about those days.
Then he told me this story of doing his rounds as a postman, and a white guy asked him where he was from, and that he turned and to the guy and said: “Where I am from does not exist any longer.”
Something about that line made me think of the old writers…the old minds…the Caribbean creative community—the writers of Guyana and the Caribbean that exiled themselves to cold England where they wrote for relevance, though they knew true relevance for themselves could only have been relished back in their native lands. There was nostalgia and a depth of loss after listening to Hector, and somewhere between that talk, the idea for Desperate For Relevance was germinated.

KN: And you dedicated your play to your friend Hector Bunyan—tell us a bit more about him.
HB: Well he’s a Guyanese, longtime resident in Toronto, Canada—and he’s a fantastic poet who works as a postman—a job he relishes since it keeps him in touch with ‘people’.
Hector is one of the deepest poets I know. His simplicity, however, and his down-to-earth cool keep him away from submitting his work for literary prizes. Hector doesn’t even have his own email address and believes fervently in public radio. What is ironic is that even though Hector doesn’t care to be in the running for any kind of prize, he ends up in my play as a character, and his work becomes part of the plot’s embellishment.

KN: That’s quite an interesting stroke—putting real-life characters in your fictional work. I read your first novel, ‘APATA: The Story of a Reluctant Criminal’ and in that book, you infused colorful, Guyanese street characters like, ‘Law and Order’ into the plot. Why do you do that?
HB: It’s a way to pay homage to simple but influential people who lived—to keep them alive. I like doing that. It is something I learned from the American writer, El Dotorow from reading his novel, ‘RAGTIME’.

KN: Do you hope that the theme that you touched on will send a message that will cause the powers that be to honour artists like yourself?
HB: Hmmm … the thing is, the powers that be normally place others to guide them in those matters. I fear that in too many Caribbean societies those that advise our leaders in matters of arts and the culture are too often political appointees—opportunists, who really do not have their finger on the pulse of the arts and the culture on the whole. Because of this—and it is often a square-pegs-in round-holes situation.
The advice that the powers often get, does not often represent the needs of that what must be addressed for the advancement of the arts within specific Caribbean nation societies. So, to give you a direct answer to your question:  I am hoping that the theme will send a message—but before that message can be sent, the play would first have to be staged—and that has been a problem, at least here in Guyana. Since the inception of the Guyana Prize for Literature back in 1987 and the Caribbean Award back in 2010, only one prize-winning play has ever been staged—‘MAKANTALI’ back in 2012.

KN: That is 25 years after the Guyana Prize for Literature was started. Now I’m looking at this: ‘Makantali’ is a play with a spiritual aspect; ‘Desperate for Relevance’—like Makantali, is partly set on a spiritual level; then there was your short story, THE VAT, based on a demon from a fictional Jonestown. Is Bascom switching to the supernatural genre?
HB: I won’t say switching—let’s say that the supernatural genre has always fascinated me, and I challenged myself to try it. Now I like it.

KN: How do you rate this play among the others?
HB: Tough question—very much like asking a mother which of her children she likes best. This is what I will say: That I find myself patting myself on the back for being able to do certain things.
For example, I like how I dared to put Hector, an actual living person as a character in a fictional work. Of course, I had to be confident enough to write about someone and not cross lines of respect and privacy in terms of what he or she might say or do in a fictional setting. It was strange in many respects, but I know Hector enough to just write about him on a level that I know he would appreciate.
Since we hope to do something better than the last play and the last play, I rate ‘Desperate for Relevance’ very high on the list of plays I have written, because I know I have transcended the barriers of crass Caribbean nationalism that made ‘Caricom’ the butt of Paul Keens-Douglas ‘jokey’ line: “Tell me again—‘bout Cari-COME and Cari-GONE…tell mih again!”
In other words, I feel that with this play, I have found kinship with other writers in the wider Caribbean. I hope I’m correct.

KN: Are you hoping that this play will be staged/ filmed sometime?
HB: This is what Hector Bunyan is excited about. He’s telling me often that this play is filmic property. I’m hoping that it gets staged somewhere in Guyana or the Caribbean soon, and maybe after it begins to be seen as a filmic property.

KN: How do you feel about the fact that there appears to be little investment in the arts in Guyana by the state/businesses?
HB: That is a definite negative spin-off from the way that most people have been conditioned to regard culture—as something not to be serious about—as something not to waste money over. The interesting thing, however, is that these very businessmen would take time off to watch at a lot of shows on American TV. Then again, maybe the businessmen feel that Guyanese can’t write anything worthy of investing in. I really don’t know, and since I’ve not been in Guyana for the past nineteen years, maybe I don’t qualify to answer that question adequately.

Q: Do you think that these might be a revival in the arts under this new Government? What would you advise/suggest that this government do?
A: ‘UNDER’ is the operative word. I have found that most of the artists and writers I speak to in Guyana under the ‘new’ government, speak in the same hush as they did under the ‘last’ government. They continue to speak cautiously—as if in fear of upsetting somebody or some Minister or some organization, lest he or she be victimized and not get further crumbs on which he or she exists—mind you!
This is just an impression I get—and I could be totally wrong. But timidity and fear don’t augur well for creativity. In order to be creative, one must be bold! If, under any system there is a fear and a hesitancy to be ‘bold’—to rock the boat—to challenge the status quo, then there will be no revival under whatever Government—new or else.

How long did it take you to write ‘Desperate for relevance?’
A: I write very fast and very intensely! I wrote it in one month.

Q: What is the greatest challenge to you as a writer—especially as a Guyanese writer continuing to write on Guyanese and Caribbean themes while being ensconced in the USA?
A: My greatest challenge is finding access to local references for Guyana in terms of location and current-day input as to what is happening in Guyana—beyond what I can find in the news on the Internet. To deal with this, I have developed a small database of people I can contact through social media and talk with.
Sometimes I would text a friend or send a message on ‘WhatsApp’ and say, “Budday—send me a picture of what’s happening out on yuh street right now.” And that is how I keep up with the atmosphere and other things that are going on in Guyana or elsewhere. I am 64, but I use social media to keep up to date like a ‘boss’.

(Read the conclusion of the interview in next week’s Sunday Special)

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