Childhood in contemporary nigerian fiction

115
Laye‟s The Radiance of the King; Mariama Ba‟s So Long
a Letter; and thrillers like Kalu Okpi‟s The Road and Valentine
Alily‟s The Cobra. (111 Emphasis retained) This representation of a circulation of used books is part of a material culture of memory, informing Abani‟s project of hailing cultural influences while remapping geographies of reading. We are immediately told that He Elvis had read them and ran his fingers along the spine nostalgically (111-112) and eventually settling fora torn copy of
Dostoevsky‟s Crime and Punishment and a near-pristine copy of James Baldwins
Another Country” (112). In Abani‟s hailing of elite and popular works of fiction is apolitically conscious act of collapsing what Jacque Ranciere (2004:20-30) has called the representative regimes that distribute the sensible through deciding on structures of reading, representation and interpretation inartistic works. Indeed the medley of fictional works that are cited here reflect the hybrid nature of cultures represented in Graceland, while also being an echo of the pastiche of metalwork and vehicular body parts of the
Molue buses described earlier. At the same time, there is the joining of worlds and continents that seem apart and therefore by a literal intertextual hailing, Graceland is inserted into a global topography of other texts with Elvis as the organising consciousness and subject of this experience. The canonical classics quoted above defy spatio-temporal maps of reading by their circulation, years after their publication. Indeed these texts, as Susan Stewart says, endow the book a tension with history (1984:22) and defy the distinctive class notions of “canon/elite” and serious readerships that are assumed to come with the pragmatic activities of reading (Stewart, 1984: xi. Elvis eventually notices another section of the secondhand book market, which as is represented in the text reflects competing forms of literacy – indeed, the dichotomic anxieties of the popular and the canon, the elite and the masses, even the exotic and indigenous Come and buy de original Onitsha Market Pamphlet Leave all that imported nonsense and buy de books written by our people for de people. We get plenty. Three for five naira!” shouts the bookseller (112). The portrayal of this marketplace literacy battles introduces us to a significant moment of literacy history and memory, as

116 part of the project of material cultures of memory in Abani‟s Graceland. The third person narrative voice takes the opportunity for this historical talking point in Nigeria‟s literacy history These pamphlets, written between 1910 and 1970, were produced on small presses in the eastern market town of Onitsha, hence their name. They were the Nigerian equivalent of dime drugstore pulp fiction crossed with pulp pop self-help books. They were morality tales with the subject matter and tone translated straight out of the oral culture. (112) This is a meta-fictional device on the part of Abani, to represent a crucial historical moment of literacy and literary history in Nigeria. In similar fashion, there is a quotation of the corpus of these pamphlets There were titles like Rosemary and the Taxi Driver
Money – Hard to Get but Easy to Spend Drunkards Believe Bar As Heaven Saturday
Night Disappointment The Life Story and Death of John Kennedy and How to Write
Famous Love Letters, Love Stories and Make Friends with Girls” (112. Emphasis retained. There is, subsequently, a quotation in Graceland of contents of one of the pamphlets Beware of Harlots and Many Friends in which moral talking points about harlots are given (113). The phenomenon of Onitsha pamphleteering reflects the material cultures of memory in

Download 1.93 Mb.

Share with your friends: