African Literary Manuscripts and African Archives by Bernth Lindfors (review)

This substantial and wide-ranging collection of Lindfors’s work gathers together twenty-one essays, mostly reprinted, though the final cluster are new. Indications of place and date of first publication are given at the end of some (though not all of the) essays, rather than there being a consolidated record of publishing history.

Lindfors begins by stating, “I have had opportunities to carry out research in environments in Africa, Europe and the United States, where abundant resources have enabled me to learn something new about particular African writers and their texts” (1). Much of the present collection gives a good sense of the thrill of the archival chase (at one point Amos Tutuola’s family confide in Lindfors their belief that “‘perhaps you were a policeman before’” [48]), though one wishes there had been at least a short note on the logistical problems incurred in working in archives in Africa, as caveat/encouragement for future researchers. (This reviewer remembers his profound gratitude at discovering a UK-published guide to that most Byzantine of institutions, the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, before setting out to work in the place.)

The opening essay, “‘Beware the Ides of March’: Amending Julius Nyerere’s Julius Caesar,” begins with an account of how Lindfors was step-by-step drawn into African literary studies, with his appointment in 1957 under the Teachers for Africa program to a school in Kenya. Lindfors’s account of this personal history is full of startling insights and memories and tinged with his trademark laconic humor.

This essay, which covers 1957 and the consequent sea-change in Lindfors’s life (and that of his family!), goes on to dive into the nitty-gritty, recounting his first AfrLit project, a translation of Nyerere’s Kiswahili version of Julius Caesar back into English and sending emendations to Nyerere that were incorporated into later editions. Another essay on early issues of the journal African Literature Today demonstrates Lindfors’s ability to engage with criticism of his own work, some of which has been snide, or worse. On two colleagues who crossed swords with him he states, “we are now the best of friends, having mellowed with age into a state of geriatric bliss” (22). An essay on Tutuola’s first manuscript, The Wild Hunter in the Bush of Ghosts, offers a typical synthesis of archival detective work and litcrit (a bit heavy on plot summary, but we’ve all been there). There are nice asides, such as “Tutuola’s vision of Hell as a vast bureaucracy is one of the most entertaining conceptions in the whole story—something no doubt inspired by the government offices in Lagos with which his job brought him into regular contact” (29).

The remaining essays range across the following disciplinary foci: close textual analysis, biography, gold mining, and critical analysis. Among those essays using close textual analysis is a piece on Achebe’s revisions to the manuscript of A Man of the People as insight into the author’s awareness “that the language was extraordinarily important” (82). Among those exploring biography, Lindfors recounts the shenanigans attending the 1960 Rockefeller Foundation grant, which took Soyinka back to Nigeria after years in the UK. Answering his own question, were Rockefeller taken for a ride?, with a fine command of extended metaphor, Lindfors comments: “Rockefeller only set the wheels in motion; Soyinka did all the navigating, following his own impulses and boldly steering a course to unbridled artistic freedom” (123). Another piece on Soyinka is on and around a 1966 BBC radio production of The Lion and the Jewel; there is fascinating material here on the business of theater, on how a production is put together, as well as extensive quotations from a BBC survey of audience reactions. This could provide material for a debate-style play, with characters based on the actual listeners surveyed, such as Housewife and Cartographer’s Draughtsman. Another biographical essay, “Okigbo as Jock,” reveals the poet and the scholar’s shared love of...