The Guyana Prize for Literature
Arts Editor's note
Arts on Sunday
by Al Creighton
Stabroek News
November 10, 2002
The decision to expend scarce resources on the Guyana Prize for Literature was a conscious one made by the then President, Desmond Hoyte, in 1987, significantly, at a time when the country was suffering particularly severe foreign exchange difficulties. When the PPP/C took office in 1992, agreement to continue the expenditure was immediate, and government support for the Prize has been consistent. A nation cannot be built if attention is paid only to its material needs. There is an equally pressing need at least for literacy, without which the best physical infrastructure would soon collapse. That is why there is genuine national concern for Guyana's poor performance in CXC English Language and Literature. At a very basic level, it is impossible to maintain any standard of national literacy without the input from good literature.
The argument that funding should be withdrawn from the Prize because it is often won by 'writers who don't live here' is short-sighted and a false dilemma. Although more local writers have won, or have emerged from the Prize, than is generally recognized, the dominance of their overseas-based colleagues is indeed a serious concern. But, as Mr Rampertab has quite correctly pointed out, the reasons for the local writers' limited success needs to be far more carefully analysed than many critics of the Prize have been doing so far.
One popular notion is the influence of the supposed 'absentee literocracy,' whose control leads to unfair adjudication. Under this theory, the judges are accused of favouritism towards foreign-based writers because of an innate cultural bias and/or an inability to judge Guyanese work. Two problems arise from this. It imposes an unfair assumption that all judges are going to be either dishonest or incompetent, and it expresses a basic misunderstanding of literature. Despite the occasional necessity for an understanding of a particular ethos or tradition, good works of literature, whether Guyanese or otherwise, are usually read and understood by international audiences. There is something seriously wrong with Guyanese literature if only Guyanese living in Guyana can read it.
We agree with Mr Rampertab's observation that the reasons why local writers have not won more prizes are to be found in the fact that the winning books by their overseas colleagues might have been better. No one can doubt that there is a need for improvement in the quality of much of the local writing. Some of the limitations facing the writers may be identified. Guyana's infrastructure and resources are limited, publishing houses are virtually non-existent, there is no professional editing as is available in other countries, there is limited exposure, unavailability of several books, insufficient literature in schools, poor habits and almost no culture of reading, very few workshops and almost no training. The writers living abroad, especially those in the developed countries, have all these facilities available to them, more so if they are published writers. It should not be surprising that they have produced most of the better books.
It is not true, however, as Mr Rampertab writes, that their work is "not of any superlative quality." Nor is it accurate to say that Guyana's "wretched literary culture... is still to produce a world-recognized literary figure." Pauline Melville, Fred D'Aguiar and David Dabydeen, who have won both major British and international prizes as well as the Guyana Prize, are three names that immediately come to mind. But the foremost of them all is Wilson Harris, widely acclaimed as among the most strikingly original of contemporary novelists. Like his erroneous reference to Martin Carter, Mr Rampertab's dismissal of Harris is unfair and uninformed. The writer who Mr Rampertab says "merely disappeared into the obscure corners of British literature," actually rose to prominence there, in Europe and North America and has been mentioned as being a candidate for the Nobel Prize.
Mr Rampertab also mentions the comments in the local press about VS Naipaul and a passing remark by Al Creighton in the year 2000 about Salman Rushdie. Both merit responses which will have to be addressed on another occasion.
