Latest update November 17th, 2024 1:00 AM
Latest News
- Guyana received US$5.4B in royalty, profits from 500M barrels pumped to date
- Final audit report of Exxon’s US$7.3B expenses sent to company, to be made public next week – Minister Bharrat
- Israeli air raid on Gaza City school turned shelter kills 10 people
- Baby dies, toddler severely burnt in Sophia fire
- Venezuelan- orchestrated cyber operations targeting Guyana – National Defence Institute
Book Review…Revelatory book resurrects life of a Caribbean icon
Book: John Hearne’s Life and Fiction: A Critical Biographical Study by Shivaun Hearne
Reviewer: Dr Glenville Ashby
John Hearne’s Life and Fiction: A Critical Biographical Study is an exposition that merges an artist with his canvas, a writer with his pen. More importantly, it examines the moulding of an artist. Shivaun Hearne offers a scholastic oeuvre that comes alive with colour and verve. It is exhaustively researched work punctuated with academic rigour.
The book cover of John Hearne’s Life and Fiction
That Hearne’s work appears anachronistic, on the cusp of irrelevance, is challenged by the author. She argues, in compelling style, that a country is an amalgam of many cultural epochs, none outstripping the other in worth. This is the crux of Hearne’s thesis
John Hearne was raised in a period that was afflicted by the embers of plantocracy and the unsavoury canons on class, race and “shadism.” His was a family that enjoyed the privileges seized by society’s upper crust. Here, several observations can be gleaned. Hearne’s merit was attributed to structured familial grooming, but also his (own) personal adventurism.
He attended the most prestigious schools and had the mantras of the privileged drilled into him by his elders. Indeed, his home was a replica of a highly stratified society. His work reflected that much. Colonial and post colonial societies do reflect their artists’ zeitgeist in as genuine a manner as possible. Unfortunately, social critics can be unforgiving, dismissive of yesterday’s spirit. Some are blinded by political opportunism, thereby marginalizing achievements of the past.
But Hearne’s compendium transcends politics. It is classical existentialism that bleeds with the joys and anguish of the human experience. It brilliantly portrays the crises that beset many an artist. Of Hearne’s self doubt we learn: “The internal battle between wanting to be a poet but having the talent for prose seemed to nag at Hearne more than he would admit. He continued to write, more poetry than prose…and suffered through the lulls and dry spells.”
Heavy drinking soon emerged as a nemesis to his literary prowess.
“Whether alcoholism was the result or the cause of his increased depression is impossible to say. What is certain is that his periods of guilt and self loathing grew and his creative writing suffered,” surmises the author.
During his sojourn in London in the early 1950s he met with other West Indian literary giants such as George Lamming, V.S. Naipaul, and Samuel Selvon. This was a period of acculturation with all its personal struggles and misgivings.
The author is reserved in casting Hearne as an unapologetic conservative. And rightly so. Ever the master of framing reality within a fictional context, his “Voices under the Window,” should be explored for its sheer brilliance in creativity. In this masterpiece he casts himself as Mark Lattimer, “the light-skinned politically active lawyer.” Here, “Lattimer attempts to save a little boy from being trampled by the crowd,” and “is fatally wounded by an enraged mulatoo man” spewing racial expletives. He writes, “The black people bellowing at me to get off their necks and the whites, too, screaming nervously not so often, more refined, whenever I came nearer to certain limits.”
Although Hearne might have missed the opportunity to redeem himself politically, because, “Lattimer” second guessed his motives, “Voices” speaks volumes of the raging battle between the human conscience and the forces of revolution.
Effortlessly, Hearne’s revelatory book moves us to revisit the past, without blinders. No doubt, we stand to garner profound lessons from John Hearne’s timeless artistry.
John Hearne’s Life and Fiction: A Critical Biographical Study by Shivaun Hearne
Publisher: Caribbean Quarterly, UWI, Mona, Jamaica, 2013
ISBN: 978-976-41-0253-3
Rating: Highly recommended
Similar Articles
THE BLUNT OF THE DAY
Sports
Features/Columnists
The PPP is in the grip of the bourgeoisie
…Peeping Tom Kaieteur news- The People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) stands at a crossroads. Once the vanguard... more
Rising Gun Crimes in the Caribbean: Urgent Action required by all
By Sir Ronald Sanders Kaieteur News – There is an alarming surge in gun-related violence, particularly among younger... more
Weekend Cartoon
