“Wole Soyinka: A Garden
of Too Many Cultures”
Leonard’s commentary on the event of Wole Soyinka’s Nobel
Prize…a pick that inspires Leonard to write that the Nobel committee “…finally
got one right.” Not only have I never read any Soyinka, I’ve never heard of him
or his classic memoir Ake: The Years of
Childhood about which, Leonard writes, is a book that “would dazzle anybody
into sentience” and that “Ake locates
the lost child in all of us.”
Leonard brings up Nabokov (who did not win a Nobel) several
times and writes that “Soyinka belongs in [his] company.” Near the end of the
essay, Leonard writes “If most of Ake
charms, however, the last fifty pages inspire and confound; they are
transcendent.” OK, onto the Goodreads list!
New word: cowrie = small to large sea snails
New
learning: Soyinka, most notably a play write and poet, is Nigerian and was the
first African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Funny
Video of Soyinka’s poem “Telephone Conversation”:
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