Earl Lovelace

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Earl Lovelace is a Trinidadian novelist and playwright.

Career: Novelist, journalist, playwright, and short story writer. Trinidad Guardian, proofreader, 1953-54; Jamaica Civil Service, forest ranger for Department of Forestry and agricultural assistant for Department of Agriculture, 1956-66; Federal City College (now University of the District of Columbia), Washington, DC, instructor, 1971-73; University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad, lecturer in literature and creative writing, 1977-87. Johns Hopkins University, visiting novelist-in-residence; writer-in-residence, University of Iowa, 1980, Hartwick College, 1986; visiting lecturer, Wellesley College. Dragon Productions, producer.

Awards: British Petroleum Independence Award, 1964, for While Gods Are Falling; Pegasus Literary Award, outstanding contributions to the arts in Trinidad & Tobago, 1966; awards for best play and best music, 1977, for Pierrot Ginnard; Guggenheim fellowship, 1980; grant from National Endowment for the Humanities, 1986; Commonwealth Writer's Prize, 1997, for Salt.

WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:

NOVELS

While Gods Are Falling, Collins (London, England), 1965, Regnery (Chicago, IL), 1966.

The Schoolmaster, Regnery (Chicago, IL), 1968.

The Dragon Can't Dance, Deutsch (London, England), 1979, Three Continents (Washington, DC), 1981.

The Wine of Astonishment, Heinemann (London, England), 1982, Vintage (New York, NY), 1984.

Salt, Persea Books (New York, NY), 1997.

OTHER

(And director) My Name Is Village (musical), produced in Port of Spain, Trinidad, at Queen's Hall, 1976.

Pierrot Ginnard (musical), produced in Port of Spain, Trinidad, at Queen's Hall, 1977.

Jestina's Calypso (play; also see below), produced in St. Augustine, Trinidad, at University of the West Indies, 1978.

The New Hardware Store (play), produced at University of the West Indies, 1980.

Jestina's Calypso and Other Plays (includes The New Hardware Store, My Name Is Village, and Jestina's Calypso), Heinemann (London, England), 1984.

The Dragon Can't Dance (stage adaptation of his novel; produced in Port of Spain, Trinidad, at Queen's Hall, 1986), published in Black Plays 2, edited by Yvonne Brewster, Methuen (London, England), 1989.

A Brief Conversion and Other Stories, Heinemann (Oxford, England), 1988.

Author of the play The New Boss, 1962. Columnist and editorial writer, Trinidad & Tobago Express. Contributor to periodicals, including Voices, South, and Wasafiri.

Works in Progress: Crawfie the Crapaud, a children's story, for Longman; a novel; plays; a book of essays on the Caribbean.

"Sidelights" Earl Lovelace has been hailed by numerous critics as one of the Caribbean's more gifted and talented writers. "Earl Lovelace is primarily a wonderful storyteller," stated John J. Figueroa in Contemporary Novelists. "He holds one's interest whether through exciting dialogue which rings true, or by his descriptive ability and his portrayal of the inner conflicts which puzzle his characters." For the most part, Lovelace sets his writings in his homeland of Trinidad or in one of the neighboring Caribbean islands. Julius Lester commented in the New York Times Book Review that Lovelace is "a writer of consummate skill" who "writes about his homeland from the inside, creating characters with whom the reader quickly identifies despite differences of race, place and time."

In his first novel, While Gods Are Falling, Lovelace tells the story of Walter Castle, who, as Chezia Thompson-Cager wrote in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, "feels imprisoned by his identity and stifled by the poverty into which his father's misfortune has cast the family." He "feels compelled to fortify himself against failure and mediocrity by cutting himself off from his community."

Thompson-Cager identified another element of While Gods Are Fallingthat appears throughout much of Lovelace's work: A narrative that alternates present events with those from the past. In a similar vein, Figueroa referred to the author's "concern with the ambiguous relationship between change and progress" and "the relationship between the rural and urban styles of living." In While Gods Are Falling,Walter wants to leave the poverty, crime, and confusion of urban Port of Spain and return to the countryside of his childhood, where he hopes to rediscover his identity.

The Schoolmaster is a novel about the building of a school in the remote Trinidad village of Kumaca. "Lovelace's The Schoolmasteris set in Trinidad and is a real story-teller's novel, moving with grace from a gently sentimental beginning to a tragic climax," declared A. S. Byatt in the New Statesman. Martin Levin remarked in the New York Times Book Review that "The Schoolmaster is a folk fable with the clean, elemental structure of Steinbeck's The Pearl. But unlike The Pearl, Mr. Lovelace tells his story from the inside looking out, using the unsophisticated accents of everyday speech to lead to a Homeric conclusion." Levin added that Lovelace is a "writer of elegant skills, with an infectious sensitivity to the heady Caribbean atmosphere."

The Dragon Can't Dance tells the story of the poor and discouraged people of Calvary Hill as they attempt to renew their heritage, culture, and sense of community by participating in Carnival, an annual celebration commemorating the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Lovelace's next novel, The Wine of Astonishment, is perhaps his most well-known work to readers living outside the Caribbean. This novel follows a Bonasse peasant woman as she witnesses the repercussions that result after the government denies members of the Spiritual Baptists the right to worship their religion. "The novel's basic theme is the clash between the tradition and the modern, between cultural integrity and assimilation, in the village of Bonasse," explained Lester in the New York Times Book Review. "In The Wine of Astonishment--written entirely in the soft sibilance of Trinidadian speech--Mr. Lovelace sensitively and perceptively explores ancient conflicts, both personal and political."

Writing in the Washington Post Book World, Donald McCaig noted that The Wine of Astonishment "is written in patois, a musical dialect, full of sweet metaphors. It's lovely stuff to read aloud. And it can put the reader where he's never been before." McCaig also remarked that "Lovelace's idiomatic prose forces his reader to understand another people from the inside out. That's a good trick, and only the best novelists can do it."

"The argument for the enlightenment of the West Indian community is the hallmark of Lovelace's work," wrote Thompson-Cager. His writing "displays an uncommon love for himself as a black man, for his language, for his people, and for their potential greatness." Figueroa commented: "[Lovelace] takes his ability to enshrine the full Trinidadian--and Caribbean--experience . . . to further levels of perfection in his short story collection A Brief Conversation [and Other Stories]. In doing so he fulfills one of the oldest desires of writers of fiction: to mix the useful with the pleasurable." Thompson-Cager cited the title story as one in which a young man acquires "respect for life and a willingness to fight to preserve dignity." Figueroa recommended the story "Call Me 'Miss Ross' for Now": "The portrayal of Miss Ross . . . confirms what we knew of this writer before, that he has the master's touch, and in being hilarious at times he is in no way frivolous but deeply serious."

Several years elapsed before Lovelace produced his next major work of fiction, Salt. Some years earlier Thompson-Cager had commented: "The climaxes of Lovelace's [works] usually depend on two elements: the decision of one individual to be the person who makes the sacrifice that facilitates positive change within the community; and the emergence of a partnership or love relationship that strengthens or affirms familial and communal bonds." In Salt these elements appear to be blended into the characters of Bango and Alford George. William Ferguson wrote in the New York Times Book Review: "Bango, with his folk tales, his charm . . . represents the indigenous values of Trinidad." He is a worker and political activist whose conscious goal in life is to organize a holiday parade that includes representatives of every racial group in Trinidad. As Andrea Henry explained in the Times Literary Supplement, the emancipation of African slaves had caused a worker shortage that was filled by Chinese and Indian laborers, and Bango's village had become "a synthetic community, now struggling to hold itself together." Henry continued, "Not entirely conscious of it himself, [Bango] is on a journey to seek reparation for the wrongs committed against his people." Ferguson wrote, "His opposite number is Alford George, a Trinidadian whose ideals are European and who therefore lives in perpetual disillusionment." After failing at a career opportunity in England, failing at teaching, and failing as a political reformer, "Alford has a much-delayed epiphany," as Ferguson put it. Inspired by Bango, Alford discovers a new reality within himself.

Henry concluded that "one of the key achievements of Salt is [the] balancing of stories from black slave history with current ideas about racial issues. The past is inextricably bound to the present." She called the novel "a rich voyage of discovery" but was troubled by shifts of narrator from one chapter to the next and shifts of voice from one race or time period to another. Washington Post Book World reviewer Kwame Dawes reported that Salt "lack[ed] urgency" and the "currency of vision" of The Dragon Can't Dance or The Wine of Astonishment, but determined that Salt is Lovelace's "most assured work to date, and it allows him to display his remarkable capacity as a poetic and innovative fiction writer."

While Lovelace is best known for his novels, he has also written numerous plays, including a dramatization of The Dragon Can't Dance. His plays typically use song and dance to bring them to life. Discussing Lovelace's contributions to the theater, an essayist for Contemporary Dramatists remarked that as a playwright Lovelace shows "considerable and unusual talent." Jestina's Calypso is one of Lovelace's better-known dramatic works; it concerns a single woman, Jestina, and her confrontation with her age and her future. Jestina's neighbors provide a kind of chorus that comments on her actions. The musical elements in Lovelace's plays "lift the events from their everyday settings as they give a collective role to a community that, without dehumanizing the individuals who work out their lives and personal misfortunes within it, is nonetheless envisioned as the greater value in the final analysis," noted the writer for Contemporary Dramatists.

Critics often note that Lovelace is unique in writing about Caribbean culture from an insider's viewpoint. In an interview with Celia Sankar for Americas, Lovelace commented on the challenges faced by aspiring Caribbean writers, who often have a difficult time finding support in their own communities. "Just as society needs to produce engineers and priests and so on, it should feel the need to produce artists and writers," he mused. "A society that is serious should see that the writers and artists are there to see the development of the place, someone to give them back themselves."Comparing his homeland to other areas, he pointed out that in Africa, literature is taken very seriously, to the point that it is "often banned. In Europe you have a sense that the aesthetic is of some social importance. In North America the university system is a support to writers. In the Caribbean it has been very shameful, really. The society has not felt itself responsible to have people living here and writing. We've grown up seeing our writers being taken care of elsewhere."