By Petamber Persaud
At the mention of the name Edgar Mittelholzer, the Kaywana Trilogy readily comes to mind, especially those titles with erotic cover designs. The Kaywana Trilogy comprising of the Children of Kaywana, Kaywana Stock and The Old Blood is an uninhibited family saga covering more three hundred years of Guyana’s history from earliest times – colonization and slavery – to the advent of Independence and democracy. But those titles are only three in an oeuvre of novels numbering twenty-three, published and known; there is a sense of anticipation that there is more to unearth about Mittelholzer.
Also at the mention of the name Edgar Mittelholzer, other novels may readily come to mind depending on taste in literature and affinity to places; titles like Corentyne Thunder, My Bones and my Flute & The Life and Death of Silvia (set in Guyana), A Morning at the Office (set in Trinidad), The Weather Family, Of Tree and the Sea and The Mad McMullochs (set in Barbados) and Uncle Paul and The Jilkington Drama (England).
Apart from the novels, Mittelholzer has written an autobiography of his formative days in Guyana – A Swarthy Boy – a travelogue, numerous short sketches, short stories, poems and essays. When he died by suicide at age 56 in 1965, he left an impressive array of writings, an achievement far ahead of any of his contemporaries in Guyana and in the Caribbean at that time and to date. In this body of work, he explored themes of class, race, sex, identity, freedom, speaking eloquently to a wide cross section of humanity as his books of which many were translated into Dutch, French, Italian and German, the honesty and eloquence of his writing inviting a bittersweet relationship with the critic who made him and eventually wore him down and broke him, truncating an exceptional and spectacular career. Today, it is a known truth that his life and work has suffered insufficient scholarship and critical perception and critical appreciation, robbing the writer his fair dues and the reader full enjoyment of one of the most significant names in Guyanese and Caribbean literature.
The publication of Creole Chips And Other Writings of Edgar Mittelholzer edited by Juanita Cox, the acknowledged authority on Mittelholzer, is an attempt to right many wrongs in the life and work and the perception and misconception of that Guyanese pioneering writer, sporting many firsts in Anglophone Caribbean literature. Frank Birbalsingh commented that at the time of Mittelholzer’s death, ‘when no Guyanese writer had yet gained international recognition, he had already established basic genres of Guyanese or West Indian fiction: the novel of manners, the historical novel, the ghost story, science fiction, and what he calls comedy-fantasy’.
Creole Chips and Other Writings contains twenty-five sketches, twenty-four short stories, thirteen essays & personal writings, five dramatic pieces, twenty-two poems, a novel The Adding Machine, and a well-crafted and beautiful children story labeled ‘Poolwana’s Orchid: A Tale for Juveniles’ running into fourteen pages of reading delight.
Cox in her introduction declares that the material for this came to her attention ‘as the result of background research for a PhD thesis: Edgar Mittelholzer 1909 – 1965) and the Shaping of his Novels’, confessing that her ‘initial interest in these pieces was thus on the usefulness of their content rather than their literary qualities’, later discovering that these shorter pieces offer ‘useful insights into the emergence and development of the novelist’s key but complexly interlinked and often abstruse themes (e.g. religion/oriental occultism, sex death, crime); his literary, philosophical and other influences, and sociological preoccupation with dynamics of race, colour and class’.
That this is a first attempt to collect the shorter pieces in one volume is commendable for more than one reason; this would now serve a primary source material for researcher, offer better understanding and appreciation of the life and work of Mittelholzer and stimulate further research.
In conclusion, it is prudent to give Dr. Cox the final word on her magisterial work by quoting the final sentence in her introduction: ‘…my hope is that this collection will be enjoyed by a wide range of readers, add to the already diverse range of Caribbean short stories, poetry and plays, and be recognized as an important contribution to the canon of Caribbean literature’.
WHAT’S HAPPENING:
New Arrivals: Monsoon on the Fingers of God (poetry) by Sasenarine Persaud; Red Hibiscus (novel) by Scott Ting-A-Kee; Aftermath of Empire: The Novels of Roy A. K. Heath (literary criticism) by Ameena Gafoor.
Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com (Times Sunday Magazine)
