René Maran's 'Batouala' Jazz-Text by Susan Allen (review)

This book proposes an exciting, yet ultimately flawed, new reading of René Maran's Batouala (Paris: A. Michel, 1921), in the form of a musical interpretation. Susan Allen's approach is intriguing, as it draws from such diverse sources as jazz musician Wynton Marsalis, Roland Barthes, and Henry Louis Gates Jr. According to Allen, Batouala should be interpreted more like a jazz composition and less like a book. This new approach is made possible by choosing not to focus on the polemic of the Introduction, which is what Maran's work is most readily known for. Instead, Allen urges readers to approach the work with an eye towards a debate that took place between Marsalis and jazz critic Lincoln Collier. Allen uses Marsalis's charge against Collier that 'reading' jazz music sheets could never be the same as 'listening' to jazz. In Marsalis's argument, Collier's insistence on 'reading' the music to interpret it has rendered him incapable of 'hearing' the music — and therefore fully understanding it. It is Collier's inability to 'hear' the music that serves as the basis for interpreting Maran's work as a 'jazz-text'. The choice of jazz, as a tool for a new literary analysis of Maran's seminal work is unusual but shows much promise, especially in the early pages of the book. Allen argues that the Western inclination to analyse literature in dichotomous fashion has led to an erroneous reading of Maran's work, by reminding us, with a nod to Fanon, of the 'civilised-versus-savage' paradigm (p. xxi). In Allen's view, for nearly a century we have been reading Batouala incorrectly and missing the essence of the work. She further bolsters this point by quoting Josias Semujanga's comment on the nature of Afrocentric vs Eurocentric approaches to reading fiction from the African continent (quoted p. xxiv). Thus, according to Allen, a jazz-text reading in which the reader interprets Maran's work as a 'rhythmic call-and-response' could create a new paradigm for Maran studies (p. xv). Allen then outlines exactly how to conduct a 'jazz-reading' by declaring: 'Batouala's form is its content' (p. xxiii; original emphasis). Firstly, since Batouala cannot be understood in a 'temporal' or 'linear fashion' then neither should Allen's work. Accordingly, Allen divides her text, in a nod to jazz, into two sections: 'Free' and 'Fixed'. Secondly, she urges her readers to 'skim or skip sections' or read the book out of order (p. xxvi). And this, unfortunately, is where Allen's once-promising analysis begins to fall apart. Unfortunately, it is the practical aspect of attempting a jazz-reading of her book that undoes her analysis. Throughout the entirety of the Introduction she merely alludes to the history and background of Maran's Batouala and its 'vitriolic post-Goncourt rejection' (p. xxx). Therein lies the major weakness at the heart of Allen's analysis. For this text to present a fully formed counter-narrative it should have thoroughly addressed the 'traditional' interpretation of Maran's text, before suggesting a new one. Those readers previously unfamiliar with Maran's work would be quite lost in trying to navigate Allen's book. On a practical note, the book would have greatly benefited from an index.