George Lamming, 1927-2022. Photo Copyright © 2002 by Ronnie Carrington.
HOW IMPORTANT is a book, any book? To any one person, people, time, or place?
One of my favourite moments with the public George Lamming was when he gave a lecture at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, in January 2004, the second in the Cultural Studies Distinguished Lecture Series. He spoke about his first novel. He spoke about its fame. In doing so, however, he acknowledged that it was probably a book more discussed than read. The room responded well, with self-conscious laughter.
How many of those present—local academics, journalists, artists, and fans—had read In the Castle of My Skin (1953), his novel about Barbadian consciousness and identity in a nascent post-colonial world, to the last page? Long a Caribbean and world classic, how many had read it at all?
This was the question, Lamming’s question, and he could be mischievous about it. Malicious, we might say. Tied to it is the genuine issue of recognition of the value of a work and of its author.
My daughter recognized who I was talking about when I walked into her room and announced George Lamming died yesterday, on June 4. (I thought I should share; this was the kind of news Bajans everywhere, young and old, should be aware of.) But her recognition was not by way of literary association at first.
“You mean the man they named the George Lamming Primary School after?" she said, eventually. "I thought he was already dead.”
An honest assumption. We wait until too late, as Jean Rhys lamented, to honour our heroes. Even so, I had hoped that Aeryn would be aware he was still alive. That she would be aware of more about him than a building bearing his name.
Then I think of Lamming’s comment. At least she knows his name, that it has been deemed worth remembering. Our schools bear the names of certain people for a reason, usually fair ones.
I know, too, that if she does read In the Castle of My Skin, it will most likely be because I give it to her and ask her to, as part of her training, martial-arts-like. That’s how she’s read so many of the books she has, by Barbadians and non-Barbadians. Because I’m a writer, but because I like books apart from being a writer. I believe in their power to inspire, educate, motivate, revolutionize, and plain ole entertain. Make me laugh and cry, then. Feel something for real on my own, or so the illusion goes.
The Emigrants (1954) was the book by Lamming I most responded to. It was the one my Dad had in our basement library, in the family home in Montreal, and that may have had something to do with its appeal. I didn’t come to Lamming through Castle or Natives of My Person (1972) or his early Bim poetry or The Pleasures of Exile (1960) essays. It was what his second novel had to say about voyages to the as yet unknown, by the as yet unknown—wherever they may be on this planet, however their migrations may have been conducted—that reached me where I was in the diaspora. Over thirty years ago, I found The Emigrants risky, atmospheric, playful, disjointed, a little rudderless…and more engaging, to be honest, than I would Castle, when I moved on to that next. It was as if he was explaining not only how I had come to be where I was in my Canadian-Caribbean community, but how I had come to be from the beginning. A very messy business I needed to learn more about.
That’s how The Emigrants made me feel then, anyway. And it did lead me to his other books, and eventually to publishing occasional interviews with Lamming and articles about his writing, between Canada and here. Through these, I’ve also since learned Lamming was partially right: so many people I’ve spoken with about his novels have one that’s relevant to them, their preferred, the one that asks questions of them that no other book can; it just hasn’t often been Castle.
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If there was a favourite public moment with Lamming, I should mention there was a parallel private one as well.
On this occasion, I was watching him quietly after an evening of readings he had come out either to hear or be part of. This must have been a dozen years ago or more, since he was still quite mobile but slowing down. He visibly tired easily. Sitting at the entrance to the building in a chair brought for him, the satchel he often toted strapped around a shoulder, he nodded good evening almost shyly when I passed. He was waiting while the others he had come with chatted in the lobby as the evening closed in. And that was it. That was all. Separate from everyone, and much older than any of us, in that moment he appeared to me content—relieved—not to be the center of anyone’s anything for several minutes. Waiting, it seemed to me, simply waiting to go home.
For more on George Lamming, please see https://writersmosaic.org.uk/close-up/the-caribbean-voice-of-george-lamming/ by Philip Nanton and https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/george-lamming-obituary-rsgmpplgq by John Stevenson.
Robert Edison Sandiford is the cofounding editor with the poet Linda M. Deane of ArtsEtc Inc. He is the author of several award-winning books and well-received graphic novels. Read more by Robert at dcbooks.ca, nbmpub.com and writersunion.ca/member/robertedison-sandiford.
Last Modified: December 8, 2022
