White and Black Views of the African:
LOMAX, LOUIS E.
White and Black Views of the African The Goddam White Man. By David Lytton. Simon and Sinister. 247 pp. $3.50. No Longer at Ease. By Chinua Achebe. Ivan Obolensky. 170 pp. $2.95. Reviewed by...
...The Goddam White Man is not that book, but it is essential reading for an understanding of what lies ahead in the troubled and contorted Union of South Africa, the land of apartheid...
...In fact, "quiet power" defines Achebe's literary style...
...The result is the best African fiction by a native I have ever read...
...A word must be added about Achebe himself...
...Moralist...
...Yet Lytton's novel does command attention: It tells white South Africans that all is far from well, that blacks have learned to hate and do so with a vengeance...
...He does no such thing...
...Yes, but no ascetic...
...While his African leaders are crying "independence" Achebe shows them eyebrow deep in graft...
...Yes, but no whiner...
...The plot drags on and finally peters out without saying anything conclusive...
...while they are condemning the white man for segregation and white domination, the Africans themselves practice the most troubling kind of discrimination...
...This is what Lytton seems to be saying...
...The writing is interesting, if odd, and the story line is intriguing only because it is always engaging to hear a white man—particularly a white man from South Africa—try to think like a black man...
...His name should be remembered because he will be the first African to achieve full stature as a novelist...
...Black man...
...The central weakness of Lytton's book is its failure to resolve any of the questions raised by the central character...
...Chinua Achebe's novel is something else again...
...Yet, in all honesty, I cannot say that had I written this book I would have let people see the things I talked about either...
...His first book, Things Fall Apart, was well received and offered promise that he would one day deliver himself of a totally honest and compelling narrative...
...Nationalist...
...His writing skill is extraordinary, his sense of narrative compelling and his power is second only to his quiet manner...
...Achebe has one annoying habit: He tends to tell the reader things rather than let the reader see and feel them for himself...
...Yes, but no fool...
...Can a black South African first become an anguished gangster and then live happily ever after...
...In a phrase, Achebe has achieved the most human rendition of the African personality that has yet been published...
...Before the blood bath in South Africa comes, a book—an alarm, really—telling the people of the imminent holocaust, may appear...
...As a result, No Longer at Ease is sometimes flat...
...one feels for the first 100 pages or so that this is the Native Son of South Africa, that Lytton will plumb the depths of black despair and sing freedom's litany...
...Achebe has bared the souls of middle class Africans...
...while they are putting their best foot forward, Achebe catches the Africans in their more scabrous hours...
...contributor, "Harper's" Here are two recent novels about Africa—one mediocre, the other excellent...
...Reviewed by Louis E. Lomax Author, "The Reluctant African...
...If one would know Africa, I suggest that he listen to the African politicians less and read Chinua Achebe more...
...This brilliant and sensitive Nigerian is, without doubt, one of the ablest writers alive today...
...David Lytton's The Goddam White Man begins with great promise...
...His protagonist, a thief, is not jailed, nor does he mend his ways...
...He has done so in No Longer at Ease...
Vol. 44 • May 1961 • No. 21
