Harold Bascom – From dreaming ‘country-boy’ to three-time Guyana Prize winner (Conclusion)

Sep 25, 2011 News

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By Michael Jordan

Pull Quote: “Maybe people will hate me for this.  I just shrugged and showed my fiancée the news. I was not surprised. Why? I know I am a good writer because I know how hard I work to put out what I put out. When I was finished writing ‘Blank Document’ I knew in my gut that it was good enough and that it was going to win the Guyana Prize.”

(Continued from last week)

Kaieteur News (KN): Was there a period when you wanted to say ‘I am done with writing’?
Harold Bascom (HB): The truth: Yes, and this was after working for close to a year on a novel manuscript entitled Shuttered Street. It is a manuscript that tells multiple stories of individuals and families that live on one street in Hackensack, New Jersey, and how their lives came together meaningfully after one man invites the entire street to his wife’s funeral. I felt I had a story that was inclusive of minorities and mainstream Americans alike, a story that echoes the following quotation by Martin Luther King, Junior: ‘We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.’ This is a manuscript I felt very confident would have been accepted, but then it was rejected times over by mainstream publishing agents. After that my mindset was ‘Screw it!—I’m done with writing!” That was three to four years ago; there was a lull, but then the bug came back.

KN: What else have you been working on?
HB: Within a few years of being in America I was fired up on being an entrepreneur and wanted to start my own Publishing Company. I registered KOKERFLOW PRESS, wrote a little book, ‘It’s My Cup of Sex’. I tried marketing it on Amazon. My intention was to use the original proceeds from that book and launch into something bigger—something that I might be able to get other Caribbean and South American writers published—knowing how hard it is. The project flopped.
I next started a T-shirt business—aiming to create a new brand of tee with positive slogans like, ‘Independent and Loving it’, ‘Issues-Free’, and ‘Abuseproof’ (the latter slogan which I copyrighted). For lack of distribution that project failed also. A few years later I tried my hand at yet another publishing company, KOKER PRESS in which I put out a biography of a Guyanese woman, ‘Faith Vs. Faith; The Shaun Stephenson Story’. It turned out a PA fiasco since North American audiences didn’t care about the story of an immigrant. In the end KOKER PRESS folded too.
I have been working on all kinds of artistic projects that involve writing and art—ever looking for that something to carry over the top and make some money while making sense. And I’m still at it. Of course through all this I worked part-time as a forklift operator and post press operator until my wife died in 2006 and I went back to pursuing art and writing full time while living on the proceeds of the house I had sold in Hackensack. To keep finances topped up, I do freelance editing every now and again.
Since the beginning of this year (2011) I have embarked on painting full time. Don’t forget that I’m also an artist. Want to see my art? Go to www.harold-bascom.artistwebsites.com
KN: How do you feel about winning the Guyana prize for a third time (as someone who was not immediately accepted by the critics for your Guyanese mirror plays?
HB: It’s a good feeling to be able to show that—after what seems to be a long time of seeming literary dormancy—I can rise like a phoenix and show that I am an even more potent writer than I was when I won with Makantali in 1996. It felt good—more-so since there are people, I heard, who thought I was long dead.
KN: What was your reaction on learning that you had won?
HB: Maybe people will hate me for this.  I just shrugged and showed my fiancée the news. I was not surprised. Why? I know I am a good writer because I know how hard I work to put out what I put out. When I was finished writing ‘Blank Document’ I knew in my gut that it was good enough and that it was going to win the Guyana Prize.
KN: Are you happy with the way that local writers are treated? Is enough being done here to encourage writers and artists and to stimulate interest in the work of Guyanese writers?
HB: To be honest, I don’t know how the writers I have left back in Guyana are being treated. I would read Ruel Johnson’s letters from time to time and I have to conclude that more needs to be done to better the lot of local writers; what I do believe even stronger is that it is up to the local writers to better his/her lot by aggressively studying the craft of writing and get down to writing and rewriting.
What the local writer has to do is to study the writer’s craft—and with the advent of the Internet it is even easier to do so. I feel strongly also, that after so many Guyana Prizes, the local writer ought to get every bit of Guyana Prize-winning work out there and study them to see what it is that Prize-winning writers have over them. To be honest, I don’t have any special sympathy for local writers. Ruel Johnson won the Guyana Prize while being in Guyana; I won the Guyana Prize in ’94 and 96, and both plays were written in Hadfield Street, Lodge. I even had my very first novel published in London (APATA) after writing it in Linden.
KN: Your body of work (plays, etc)?
HB: My first full length play, The Butterline, was written in Linden, in between 1981 and 1983. After the Butterline, I eventually returned to Georgetown and wrote, ‘The Barrel’, TV Alley, TV Alley II, The Visa Wedding, The Visa Wedding II, Family Budget, Book & Key for Stolen U.S, Home for Christmas, ‘Crisis Spell’ ,Tessa Real-Girl & The Ol’ Fool, Queen o” de Pack, Witch-hunt for Harry Barker, Cockle House, Makantali, Blank Document. I’m sure there are a few I have forgotten.
KN: Do you plan on returning to live here? If not—why not? After all, you write deeply on local issues. At this time, Guyana is a writer’s gold mine. Will we see you focusing on any of the topical issues–corruption, drug dealing in high places, etc.
HB: Let me give the reasons why I left in the first place. I made the decision to leave Guyana because at the core, I am a very honest and conscientious person. The first time I had to bribe a customs officer in order not to pay an arm and a leg to pick up a model car from the post office, I felt wretched for days. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. After that transgression I made the decision to leave Guyana. I could not continue to live in a morally corrupted society, where if you have money you can get away with murder. Then there was another reason: I found that as a writer, intent on helping to bring my society to see the moral corruption of itself, the message was not getting through and I refused to be a jester—writing plays that were destined to be milked for banality. I had to get away or be destroyed as a creative person. That’s how I felt.
Now the other part of the question: Yes I wrote my ‘mirror’ plays before I left Guyana, and yes; from what I’m reading everyday on the Internet, Guyana is indeed a writer’s goldmine. But if there is pervasiveness and shallowness in the Guyanese society, how receptive would the local audience be to anything perceived as not having enough banality and laughs?
I would not be so vain as to think that because I am not in Guyana there are no serious-issue plays. It must be that the writers who are there feel that their heads are in a mammoth tiger’s mouth and the best order of the day is to pat its head.
KN: Despite your success, is there something that you still yearn to achieve at this point in your career (for example, is the film-making dream still alive?)
HB: Yes, I still would like to make a film–at this point, however, it cannot be described as a ‘yearning’.
KN: A former government official—one in the Ministry of Information–once told me: “Guyana doesn’t need writers. Guyana needs doctors…scientists…engineers…” Can you respond to this, in terms of telling me of what value is the writer to his society?
HB: One of the things I have read since I was studying art philosophy and believe, is this: The only thing that defines the human being is his/her ability to appreciate art; and that if there is an individual—a society that does not appreciate art, that individual—society can be described as philistine—uncultured—barbarous—unsophisticated—boorish—in short a barbarian country.
Of course Guyana needs doctors and scientists and engineers; so does every other developing country; but Guyana also needs to recognize its craftspeople, its artists, its writers, and its poets. Were this Guyana Government official in question to express such an anti-art sentiment to a French Government official counterpart, that Frenchman would immediately recognize the Guyanese official as what he is: as an uncultured boor.
It is the painters, the poets, the novelists, the playwrights, the composers of Europe that help to make Europe great. Consider France—consider Italy. It is Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting on the Sistine Ceiling in the Vatican that helps to make Rome great—and I can go on naming countries. When one thinks of Australia it is the opera house in the Sydney Harbour that helps to make Australia memorable—and the beauty of the Taj Mahal, one of the artistic wonders, that makes Indian a place to visit. All of these the latter things are related to the aesthetes of the latter-named countries—their artists and writers—their creative people. All of these named countries knew they needed doctors and scientists and engineers—and they have those; but they also knew that the icing on the cake was the need for creative people and also the need to respect them. I will end by saying that any country that does not respect its artist will be quickly lost to history.
What the Guyana Government official admitted to, unfortunately, is that he and the Guyana he represents will easily not only recognize the original Mona Lisa, but burn it.

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