Palavers of African Literature: Essays in Honor of Bernth Lindfors, and: African Writers and Their Readers: Essays in Honor of Bernth Lindfors (review)

At the Modern Language Association meeting in December of 2001, I was a presenter on one of the two festive panels "toasting" our truly beloved and admired African literary historian, Professor Bernth Lindfors. I listened as dozens of former students and colleagues bestowed honor, one after another, to an indefatigable, energetic literary critic, scholar, teacher, and first-rate archivist. Even in our own subfield of lusophone Africa, he has been nothing short of supportive in the inclusion of this neglected area whenever possible, as his Research Priorities in African Literatures to which Gerald Moser contributed attests. I marveled at the humility of this well-respected comrade and wondered what happened to our own literary historians of yesteryears. The encomia were well deserved and perhaps long overdue, and I interjected that two panels would not be enough to do justice to the intellectual legacy of Bernth Lindfors. I was correct. At the 2002 African Literature Association meeting in San Diego, Professor Abdul Rasheed Na'Allah organized a double panel dedicated to the honor of Bernth Lindfors. That same spring, I picked up volume 32.4 of Research of African Literatures only to encounter a cluster of articles titled "Tributes to Bernth Lindfors." And finally, it is my turn to review two hefty volumes dedicated to Bernth Lindfors. I do so with honor.

Bringing together a total of thirty-eight well-researched essays, Palavers of African Literature (PAL) and African Writers and Their Readers (AWTR) testify to the continuing vitality and relevance of African literature within a postmodern and postcolonial theoretical quagmire that continues to fragment the African continent as well as the field of African literature. Both a celebration of the field of African literary studies and a recognition of one of the valuable godfathers the field, the variety and scholarly richness of the essays reveal the possibilities of African literature as well as a forum for African and Africanist critics to express a solidarity of purpose. In this sense, to honor Lindfors is indeed to honor African Literature.

Palavers of African Literature is divided almost biographically into five main sections: "Ben's Workings," "Institutions across Continents," "Politics," "Publishing," and "Pedagogy"—all totaling seventeen contributions in one volume. Of these five sections, the first, which truly unravels the enigmas and essence of Bernth Lindfors, is the most compelling. Niyi Osundare's "Telephone from Heaven," which the author calls a "telepsychic conversation between Amos Tutuola and Bernth Lindfors" (PAL 1) is a double-edged celebration, one that both invokes and provokes, indicts and forgives, yet makes the point about the lasting effects of memory and misappropriated legacy. Since Tutuola is currently writing a book titled "No Brawler in Heavenstown" in Heavenstongue, there is a call here for peace and the need to let sleeping writers sleep. The question Tutuola asks Lindfors is, however, more fundamental and resilient: "The Deads. . . keep wondering why many of these great actors and performers were not treated well when they were in the land of the Alives" (PAL 12). As if responding to Osundare's provocation, James Gibbs gets into the heart of the matter in his "Miscellaneous Essays" by revisiting some of the battlefields Lindfors has had to tread in the course of his brilliant career. From accusations of Euro/American-centricism and insensitivity to African writers to a more specific "mercenarian" charge regarding the preservation of Tutuola's manuscripts, Gibbs painstakingly defends Lindfors, and his account on his background and contributions is not only informative but celebratory. A reader interested in the Gibbs-Soyinka-Lindfors controversies may also want...