By a fascinating coincidence, “Anglo-Nigerian” writer Adewale Maja-Pearce, who turned 60 on June 3, was recently in the news as the target of a devastating public verbal assault by Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, whose performance turned out to be a sensational “drama of existence”, to appropriate the categorical phrase of the Swedish Academy in awarding him the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, which made him the first African to be so decorated. The titan of letters was superlatively adjudged a lord of that dramatic definition. Interestingly, he staged his mastery in a well-circulated interview granted Sahara Reporters, the daring and thorny online news portal. The interaction coincided with events leading to the May burial of novelist Chinua Achebe, another big name in the literary universe, and Soyinka’s peer in the so-called “first generation” of champions of Nigerian Literature in English.
It was a platform for Soyinka, who turns 79 next month, to express his mind on contextual front-burner issues, especially his relationship with the departed author, a subject that has generated intense storm over the years. However, in the course of his clarifications, there was a side show. Soyinka devoted quality time and space to an individual writer who had attempted to probe in a book the relationship between himself, Achebe, playwright and poet JP Clark and poet Christopher Okigbo. It is instructive that following Achebe’s death, Soyinka and Clark had issued a joint statement saying, “Of the ‘pioneer quartet’ of contemporary Nigerian literature, two voices have been silenced”, referring to Okigbo and Achebe.
The focus of Soyinka’s lavish attention was Maja-Pearce. Reacting to Achebe’s 2012 controversial last book, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra, here is how the distinguished dramatist characterized Maja-Pearce: “The saddest part for me was that this work was bound to give joy to sterile literary aspirants like Adewale Maja-Pearce, whose self-published book – self-respecting publishers having rejected his trash – sought to create a ‘tragedy’ out of the relationships among the earlier named ‘pioneer quartet’ and , with meanness aforethought, rubbish them all – WS especially. Chinua got off the lightest.”
Qualifying the work as “that hatchet mission of an inept hustler”, Soyinka also called it “A compendium of outright impudent lies, fish market gossip, unanchored attributions, trendy drivel and name dropping.” He added, “This is a ghetto tract that tries to pass itself up as a product of research, and has actually succeeded in fooling at least one respectable scholar.”
Not done with name-calling, Soyinka referred to Maja-Pearce as “that ignoble character I’ve just mentioned, who was so desperate to prove the existence of such a thing that he even tried to rope JP’s wife into it, citing her as source for something I never uttered in my entire existence.” He lamented, “I cannot think of a more unprincipled, despicable conduct. These empty, notoriety-hungry hangers-on and upstarts need to find relevance, so they concoct.”
How did Maja-Pearce find himself on the wrong end of Soyinka’s tongue? Ironically, before releasing the book that drew Soyinka’s ire, he had published a work on the dramatist which didn’t receive such harshly critical treatment from Soyinka, perhaps because it was flattering. The instant drama, therefore, seems to betray the logic of human nature. In August 1991, Maja-Pearce published Who’s Afraid of Wole Soyinka? Essays on Censorship. He has also edited Wole Soyinka: An Appraisal. He is an active essayist, book reviewer and publisher; and has published a number of books, including biographical and fictional works.
In chronological terms, it is likely that Soyinka’s problem with him predated November 2010 when he published the biographical account, A Peculiar Tragedy: J.P. Clark-Bekederemo and the Beginning of Modern Nigerian Literature in English, the book that the playwright considered offensive and deserving of his rage. Maja Pearce had earlier done a review of Soyinka’s 2006 memoirs, You Must Set Forth At Dawn, for the London Review of Books, which apparently triggered his resentment. Maja-Pearce titled his 2007 review “Our Credulous Grammarian: Soyinka’s Dubious Friendships”.
In an interview he granted Daily Independent a year ago, Maja-Pearce gave the background to Soyinka’s displeasure with him and provided an insight into behind-the-scenes interaction between them. So Soyinka’s sourness is not new; nevertheless, the fact that he revisited the issue of Maja-Pearce’s book in his recent interview speaks volumes about his state of anger. Maja-Pearce narrated: “I wrote to him because I was working on JP Clark’s book during the time they were launching Femi Osofisan’s book on JP. I said “do you have any piece on what you said about JP Clark?” This was because Soyinka alleged that Clark had been going around telling everybody that he (Soyinka) when he was in detention, he was suffering from terminal syphilis. It was a big thing, of course they went to court and everything and Clark eventually withdrew from the case. I said to Soyinka I’m engaged in JP book and I just want to know if you have further thought on your allegation. He said ‘no, no, no,’ he doesn’t have anything; that he stands by himself and that by the way, “I am glad to get in touch with you.”
Maja-Pearce added: “He said he was willing to tell me that he had heard from so many quarters that I had written negative reviews of his book; that he hadn’t read it and he was not going to read it. I applied for a fellowship at the University of Nevada, United States of America with about $50 for one year nine months. I didn’t know that Soyinka was on the board. He said by the way I understand that you applied for this fellowship. I have to excuse myself from any consideration of your candidateship. So, I just wrote back to him that well, it was my fundamental human rights to say if I don’t like a book, that you yourself have reserved the right to say what you like about other people’s works. I know that censorship takes many forms. I said it was his choice to do whatever he had done.”
Indeed, beyond Maja-Pearce’s asserted right to self-expression, and his concession that Soyinka also had a right to express his views about other people’s works, there is the significant question of integrity. Who should be believed in this drama of colliding narratives? In an interestingly persuasive appeal to authority, Maja-Pearce’s contentious book is described by the publisher in the following terms: “Much of this book is the product of research conducted in Nigeria and the U.K., interviews from time spent with Clark over two years in Lagos and his country home of Kiagbodo, the setting for most of his early writings, and access to the writer’s personal papers. It throws new light on the famous quarrel between Achebe, Soyinka and Clark, and brings forth new responses from some of the actors themselves.” It is striking that Soyinka himself admitted that “at least one respectable scholar” had found the book’s contents worthy of belief. However, in the light of Soyinka’s bilious reaction, it is logical to ask, “Could Maja-Pearce have sexed up the information, or manipulated the material to serve his own ends?”
Surely, Soyinka’s sound and fury in this joust cannot be enough. Perhaps unwittingly, though, he provided an illuminating ray when, with reference to his peers, he explained, “Life is sometimes strange – rich but strange, and inundated with flux…It would be stupid to claim that it was all constantly harmonious.” By this admission, it would, therefore, make sense to ponder whether a present state of relative harmony invalidates the reality of past discord.
It is food for thought that signals from Soyinka indicate an open-ended battle. “There will be more said, in another place,” he assured the interviewers. Where, when and how?
• Macaulay is on the editorial board of The Nation
