Just the other day my friend Carl wrote a beautiful story about the joys of reading. He, like The Wild Coot, prefers the book form. I enjoy having the thing in my hand where I can see it as well as feel it.
This is a habit developed from childhood when I came across the Royal Reader at Roebuck Street Boys’ school. In those days, there were no co-ed distractions so that one could concentrate on the books rather than pursue other prurient activities. Such activities were fervently pursued in the village – there was no Internet.
With the help of the Government library on Coleridge Street, of which I was a frequent visitor, I devoured all of the Biggles series. Through them I enjoyed warfare in other lands; I visited places I had never heard of before and escaped from many a near miss scrapes. It was fun.
Reading under the oil lamp was an outlet where there was no television, and so I entered the real world of study. It was not difficult then to become entangled in languages. Underlining new words and seeking their meaning became a habit. Latin, Spanish and French beckoned to me.
I wanted to see how those people who spoke those languages lived and compare them with the familiar English characters of Dickens, Shelley, Wordsworth, Macaulay and Shakespeare. Spanish poetry of the Romantics excited me, and in my mind I could see the “pirata” of Espronceda singing and pacing the deck, “Asia a un lado, al otra Europa y alli a su frente Stambul” (Asia on one side, Europe on the other and there in front of him Istanbul).
As luck would have it, I got the real McCoy. Into our third form came a real Spaniard. He was from Oviedo in the north of Spain, a refugee from the tyranny of General Franco. He spoke little English, and from the start he explained that “vamos a conducir nuestras clases en Español” (we are going to conduct our classes in Spanish). He brought us “revistas” (magazines) of all sorts. Since there were no females in our class we freely discussed all subjects (in Spanish) that we may have been shy to discuss “co-edwise”. We could have held our own in a Spanish fish market.
Jose Tonero, and later a beautiful damsel from Grenada, Daisy Donovan, completed the love affair which the class developed for the Spanish language, and a further inquiry into reading and studying the history of the people. Those who comprised that class reaped success in many fields, including the Wild Coot who successfully managed to combine the Spanish language with his pursuit of a career in banking in Latin America.
Barbadian writers may feel frustrated by the paltry support given by Barbadian readers and even the corporate sector. Indeed support from these would go a long way in building a foundation for wider acknowledgement of the local writer, novelist, essayist or poet. The shelf space of bookshops should be inundated with the latest effort of Barbadian writers.
Who knows if they will develop into a George Lamming, a Kamau Brathwaite or a Tom Clarke? I suggest that the DAILY NATION and the Advocate could take a run into dedicating a page or two once a week to excerpts from current Barbadian book writers. This would give them publicity and exposure to the wider Barbadian public. In doing so, encouragement could be given to the public to support the effort.
The same way that foreign novelists can have their work splashed across book space in bookshops, the same publicity could be given to the Barbadian writer.
I usually read the DAILY NATION from cover to cover. On Wednesday November 6, 2013, on Page 10A, I read a letter to the editor submitted by the Reverend Clifford Hall that in my humble opinion is a masterpiece of logic. It should make Bajans think. It certainly was different from many other submissions.
• Harry Russell is a banker.
