Chak De Sami should never wait for consensus. It does not work in flock, he wanders alone in a meadow - even in the desert of the Tartars - even if it be the black sheep, the child "curse" of our letters. Chak author will identify for you always somewhere, and you will not get read. Take care, Chak go unnoticed in a crowd. He looks wary, but darkens striding toward the individual who has a book in his hands. To trap and out of his den, put a book on a park bench, hide yourself, you'll come out of nowhere, take this book, sit on the bench and spend the day reading it without a glance at passers.
Tchak? He reads everything, because he knows that this is everything that shape the world. His critical eye annoys many, but the author prefers to die for his ideas, that this death is slow or fast, because for him, literature is the supreme sacrifice. In 2001 he published Square celebrations that is, in my opinion, the novel's most daring, the most iconoclastic of contemporary sub-Saharan francophone literature. A novel that does not pass through the allusion to put it and who planted the knife in the wound (the wound, I would say). The author then acquired the reputation of "plague" of African literature. How would one speak of a novel in a language that evoked "flood" which haunted us but we held that we put in our books? In sum, parties Place is one of the most important novels of the early 2000s, both in form and in content themes and the breakdown. That, basically, the romance of the independence of the spirit of the African author. This masterly work deconstructing the foundations of a literature veiled timorous, hypocritical and motivated by the good conscience and activism that we will be auctioned as a standard literary African barely concealed nostalgia of Negritude. With Place des fêtes game of intertextuality suddenly took roots in our letters. Tchak reminded us that a writer was primarily any player. A great player. And he willingly howl there are too many uneducated in our literature and a writer is not necessarily an intellectual - or vice versa. Give lessons? No, rather fly in the round defender and Letters. Chak straightened the bar, puts things in place and recommended the infinite respect for all things written that has achieved greatness. And it was unbearable to see hacks parade with their records of what lessons should say, bellowing, denounce and write to release the so-called "African consciousness".
 |
| novel selected by the Orange Prize. |
Each of his later books show the power of the imagination of a writer constantly on the move and unforgiving vis-à-vis himself. Never place after France's Immigration ( Place des Fêtes), it often goes in Latin America ( Hermina , Girls of Mexico, among others), it will evoke unexpected themes in the African author (sexuality, prostitution etc..) so that one could imagine that the author "dodged" Africa in his fictions, and we conclude lazily in a burst of relief, with his last title, Al Capone Malian (Mercure de France, 2011), the prodigal son would return to his native continent, the first trip that took place with unfaithful wife, a novel published in Africa.
Al Capone Malian is yet in a straight line from the world of his work in that it pursues the project of the author who is to annihilate the distances, peel cultures with a staging of the little people tormented in their manners. Al Capone Malian goes well in a "frontier perspective", between Guinea and Mali. It is a journey, an attempt to place the continent at the heart of mobility with its beliefs, its lightness, its joys and pleasures repressed fantasies, fantasies, his exaggerations, his clowning, his hypocrisy and know- what else. The language of this novel band appeased with knowledge of the microscopic field. In general Tchak set foot in places he later recalled in his novels. It identifies the geography, his training as a sociologist to question encourages manners. And therefore, his works become real slices of life. Al Capone in the Malian it is Europe that looks Africa she wanted to shape its image. If the black continent has resisted - we will remember the "no" famous Guinea in 1958 - perhaps as a breath ancient traditions that date back to time immemorial served as a shield. It is Europe now understand the "black soul" through the journey to the "heart of darkness" undertaken by the main character, Rene, for a report commissioned by a European magazine. This reminds me of Rene David, the character's White House Giovanni James Baldwin. I am also thinking of Bardamu Journey to the End of the Night Celine. The David Baldwin, the stubbornness of forbidden desire, and the Bardamu Celine, for the weight of wandering. Behind David Baldwin and Bardamu ago and Celine, and of course behind Rene Cherin can not be ruled out malicious smile Chak. The ability the author is to have blown his character autonomy of movement and a life of its own that makes the reader immediately the door Costume narrator fascinated by this traditional instrument, the Sosso Bala . Rene can quietly write an article about this sacred instrument without taking into account the behavior of Africans? Naming Africa clearly does not think that Tchak "finally" to the mainland. This is a consequence that I perceived from a point in his career: Africa "imaginary" - that betrayed by small points here and there in the previous books through its "Latino" - here comes tumbling down like a tributary that empties into a large sea after a long and winding journey.
 |
| Our place of exchange for 10 years ... |
fact remains that we want, with Chak, not only a great writer but also a man of exceptional culture. These two qualities are rare, and until then I had only found that in a writer and a great friend: Dany Laferrière. Japanese authors? Chak speaks without stopping. Authors Latinos? This is his world of choice. The Man Without Qualities by the Austrian Robert Musil? Chak seems to cover this colossal work each month. Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas puts him in ecstasy. Three sad tigers , the novel dizzying Guillermo Cabrera Infante, another Cuban, crazy and endless praise, and he even forgets to drink his dolly-mint when we discuss the first floor of Father Tranquille in the 1 st arrondissement of Paris. words with Chak, not to mention the rain and weather reminiscent of illustrations from the pages of the grandest of world literature . We write every day. As with Laferrière. And every day and I do Tchak round of what is written, what has been written and we love together. Because we are convinced that this is not just about writing, it is mostly forgotten, take the time to measure the size of other imaginary. Everything else is vanity, a commodity, alas, increasingly consumed by these day and age where the postures of circumstance, demagogy and militant morality is minting in defiance of the greatness of literature just waiting to breathe fresh air. As in the books of Sami Chak. And so goes the world and us.
A. Mabanckou
A. Mabanckou
------
This text was published online in CulturesSud
0 comments:
Post a Comment