By Anote Ajeluorou
EASILY the most humorous short fiction writer in the
country, Chuma Nwokolo, who trained as a lawyer, brings a certain performative
breeziness into his reading events that endear him indelibly to his audience.
And he was his usual theatrical self last Saturday at Quintessence book and art
shop at Parkview Estate, Ikoyi, Lagos, when he read from his latest collection
of 100 short stories, How to Spell Naija.
Although a well-known
bookshop that only recently relocated from Awolowo Way, Ikoyi to its precent
location, Quintessence, according to Nwokolo, had lost its former bookshop
vitality, as there were far more other articles on sale other than books fro
which it derives its fame.
But Nwokolo wasn’t
too surprised at the new turn of affairs at Quintessence and other such outfits,
as the country’s book culture continues to receive sundry economic and
philistine assaults. For there to be a change, the short fiction author, who
started out his writing career in London, said the book sector, especially
publishing, needed entrepreneurial, business people to drive it to achieve the
success it lacks at the moment.
Nwokolo recalled the
glorious 1980s, when Nigeria’s book culture was at its peak and such series as
Longman’s ‘Drumbeat’, Macmillan’s ‘Pacesetters’, Heinemann’s ‘African Writers
Series’ and a few other smaller series dominated the literary scene with titles
that nurtured a generation of young and adult readers. These series eventually
disappeared in the heat of Structural Adjustment Programe (SAP). But Nwokolo
singled out Macmillan’s ‘Pacesetters’, as the commanding series at the time for
young readers, a series he also contributed a few titles. He said ‘Pacesetters’
impact was phenomenal, as writers from across Africa contributed to it and it gave
that generation of readers a cross-cultural taste of continental writing that
was lacking at the moment.
However, the author
of Diary of a Dead African, The Ghost of Sanni Abacha and Other Stories and
other titles stated that although the ‘Pacesetters’ novellas were apt at the
time for their audience, they were no longer so today, as such modern gadgets
such as mobile phones, computers, iPhones and iPads were not in vogue back then
as now and so young people might not relate to the limited socio-cultural
setting well enough.
But he was full of
praises for the titles back then, particularly as Macmillan deployed an
effective marketing strategy to get the books to every nook and crannies of the
country. In this wise, Nwokolo charged that it would take people with business
ingenuity to achieve what Macmillan achieved back then, noting, “We need
ambitious publishers to do what Macmillan was doing for the ‘Pacesetters’
series. We need to have the right books for the right audience. We need
entrepreneurial, business people into publishing”.
Nwokolo was
responding to what makes a writer a truly fulfilled person since there was no
money, so to say, in writing, and how he combines writing with law practice. He
stated simply, “You have to be a man of modest desires. Many writers have their
heads in the clouds, and don’t have entrepreneurial skills. You have to be a
missionary writer and not a purist depending only on writing but you take on
other functions as well to survive”. It’s for which reasons, he argued, that
there was need for ambitious publishers to give writers a measure of financial
sucour for their writing.
All his short
fiction collections are self-published efforts.
Nwokolo, who read
from a couple of stories in How to Spell
Naija and an excerpt from Diary of a
Dead African, said the short story rather than the full length novel works
for him, as explanation on why he has produced more short stories as against the
novel. He also stated that his stories derived from emotional truth, noting, “There’s
emotional truth in my fiction. When you read it you feel it. Usually, true life
is not as interesting because it’s still unfolding. But in fiction, you try to
end it and get some sort of closure for it. Only emotional truth is what I give
my fiction. True life doesn’t end. The short story works for me because of its
intensity. I write it seamlessly in one stretch. I persuade my inspiration to
fit a short story. Periods of estrangement come to me in longer fiction (novel),
where I lose trend of what had gone before”.
Family life and all
the drama that go with it feature recurrently in Nwokolo’s stories, which he
attributed to the value he places on the family unit, as having a strong place
in society, pointing out, “Human relationships are very important to us in
every sense”.
Humour is Nwokolo’s
strong forte, and he said, “My life is not funny, so I try to make my stories
funny to amuse myself. If you crack the same joke many times you try to make it
funny. I try to look at the world from a funny perspective; I don’t want to die
young. I hope to write stories that are redemptive. I can’t do stand up comedy,
but I only write humourously in my room. I’m not a comedian but a humourist”.
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