The Nigerian author Chinua Achebe has passed away. I vividly recall reading his novel Things Fall Apart – it was something assigned in a university class of some kind, but it had an impact on me, and I returned to it and reread it many years later and it will pop into my mind sometimes. It's a great book.
I always felt some ambivalence about Achebe as a personality (as opposed as an author) because, like so many great authors from poor, post-colonial countries, he seemed to exist mostly in Europe and the US. I'm thinking in terms of the great Latin Americans whom I loved reading so much, but all of whom were living lives as academics in US universities: Carlos Fuentes, Octavio Paz, Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende. Achebe was the same – he lived in New York and New England for most of the second half of his long life [UPDATE: shortly after posting this I ran across a very interesting meditation on Achebe that pursues this aspect in depth – it's not at all flattering to one's perception of Achebe, however].
I don't mean this despectively. It is simply a reality that talented writers will gravitate to places where they can be well paid for their talents. But it creates a certain ambivalence vis-a-vis their having crafted narratives critical of colonialism and neocolonialism.
… enough of uncharitable ranting.
What's undeniable is that Achebe was a great writer – one of the greatest of the 20th century.
A poem of his:
Pine Tree in Spring
(for Leon Damas)
Pine tree
flag bearer
of green memory
across the breach of a desolate hourLoyal tree
that stood guard
alone in austere emeraldry
over Nature’s recumbent standardPine tree
lost now in the shade
of traitors decked out flamboyantly
marching back unabashed to the colors they betrayedFine tree
erect and trustworthy
what school can teach me
your silent, stubborn fidelity?