Book Review…Revisiting an iconic Caribbean writer

Feb 05, 2017 Book Review…, Features / Columnists

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Author: Alfred H. Mendes
Book: Short Stories, Articles and Letters
Editor: Michele Levy
Critic: Dr Glenville Ashby

Trinidad-born Alfred H. Mendes (1897-1991) may not be widely popular, but his importance

to West Indian literature is undeniable. That his work is now being revisited is only fitting. Mendes is an able story-teller; the consummate griot. West Indian? Yes, but hardly in the folklore kind of way.
Capsuled in a time when shadism, color and class defined the islands, we are served with tales that are disturbing and even revolting. Using multiple characters to unearth his pain and inner conflicts Short Stories, Letters and Articles becomes a psychoanalytic narrative that reveals secrets of the heart. Indeed, the upper echelon of society is victim of its own racial prejudice.
With jaundiced eyes, race is the measurement of a man’s standing, his morality and his station. For society’s crème de la crème, whiteness is privilege, a blessing that opens doors, but those very doors never bring genuine happiness.
In their arrogance their soul is restless and theirs is never an easy journeying. But not every fair folk is privileged. There is poverty, wanton poverty. This we encounter in The Larsons at Home, a circa 1930s political tale that unearths the economic devastation unleashed by The Great Depression.
“D’you know that we have nothing, no money for dinner tonight?” Mrs Larson throws at her husband. And she continues the tirade, “You’ve got children with appetites to feed, I’d have you know, Mr Larson.”
There is a wanting, a deprivation in the heart of every protagonist; and some are prey to their own devices.
From the horrors of madness they cannot escape as one doyenne discovers in The Cat, a karma-laden occult drama, not unlike Without Snow that bleeds mystery, psychosis and murder.
Surely, these tales are but a reflection of Mendes’ troubled upbringing marked by his continual search for identity and happiness. And seething beneath a racial cesspool is his aversion to religion.
In Young Da Costa and The Larsons at Home, religion is scorned. In the latter, Mrs Larson repudiates her husband’s faith. “You and your Christian Science, huh! Has it ever brought you anything?” And in Young Da Costa, Catholicism is assailed. Of his girlfriend’s religious belief, Joe complains, “I was making her realize how absurd is her God, her immortality, her Bible. I was making her see how cruel, how dangerous her confessional box is….She listened to me attentively when I spoke to her and tried to show her the futility of all organized forms of religion”.
The Larsons at Home, though, is multilayered and is arguably the most engaging of the lot. Tinged with anti-Semitic diatribe and lively exchanges on communism, Hitler and Roosevelt’s New Deal, it is a politically rich narrative.
But race never lets up seemingly shadowing every character. Young Da Costa risks being shunned by his family for courting a coloured girl. “There was a hell of a row at home, because Irene’s father happened to be a slightly coloured man,” the young suitor laments. “It’s a damn shame that a girl should suffer for her father’s drop of negro blood; just as if it is syphilitic blood.”
The racial refrain gets more ghastly in Tropic Town. Through the eyes of a British couple settling on the island for the first time, we confront the pathology of racism.
“The island, we know, Betty, doesn’t look half bad,” her husband states. She rejoins, “But d’you think there are many snakes and scorpions and things?” And later, she adds, “A lot of niggers, though.”
When her husband calls for restraint, she responds, “…but don’t they come from Africa originally – where the savages are?”
In When Mother was left Alone, we hark back to a time, a dark time when one risked a grievous penalty by daring to socialise outside one’s race. Young Elizabeth is duly warned during a vacation in a Mayaro beach house.
“I soon discovered that Sambo, the old caretaker, had a lot of children,” she recalls, “but because they were black …I was not to play with them.”
But there is spattering of levity, albeit dark and wry. In Caribbean Scare, the threat of a German invasion of the Caribbean in 1915 overwhelms a panic stricken barber. His plan to avoid the bombardment and save his family is farcical. He plans to escape to Cascade hills with his family. His customer responds derisively, “German shells won’t want to bother about that peaceful spot.” His sarcasm continues, “Well don’t go spitting it out to everybody who comes into the shop this morning, or else you might have Cascade road blocked with traffic.” The denouement of this short, intriguing tale leaves us with mouths agape.
Deliberate, nuanced and equally bold, Mendes injects a provocative spirit to his every word.  He can be dry, void of color, a mirror of a pained being. Still, he is mesmeric and compelling.
Short stories, Articles and Letters is a revealing drama that appeals to the dark chamber within us. Of Mendes’ work, Editor Michele Levy’s aptly writes, “What makes [him] especially significant was that his fiction was always strongly autobiographical. He wrote about people he knew or met and situations which he encountered frequently in his life…He was both recorder and interpreter of his own times…”
Feedback: [email protected] or follow him on Twitter@glenvilleashby
Glenville Ashby is the author of The Believers: Faith and Spiritism in the Caribbean Diaspora

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