Articles - How long before we return to the bush? By Rick Wayne

Lapses & Infelicities had barely hit local bookstores when friends and other amateur reviewers started bombarding me (the joys of small-island life!) with a variety of questions that in essence amounted to: “Was it absolutely necessary to provide so much information . . . did you have to reveal so much about his background . . . ? He must be so embarrassed!”
Someone added: “This is a very important book for several reasons but, my goodness, I’m not sure I needed to know as much as I now know!”
Then there was my dear friend from her earliest days as a teenager, when I was well into my thirties, who proffered the following: “I have read the . . . chronicles and, quite frankly, he was handled with humanity. This is the advantage of being alive. He could be interviewed to try to influence what is revealed about him. The personal flashbacks add depth to the character and so the reader is able to make some sense regarding motives and motivations. George Odlum did not have this multi-layered approach and so comes across as a flat character typifying power hunger . . .”
Yes, a mouthful, and so contradictory of the other expressed sentiments. More proof that we get out of what we read no more than we take to it—including our own undeclared prejudices. Still the question remains: How much is too much when it comes to informing one’s readers?
I well recall the comments that greeted the publication of my first book It’ll Be Alright in the Morning. While a respected critic in Toronto had to my uncontainable elation favorably compared it with the V.S. Naipaul classic The Middle Passage, local reviewers were more concerned with what I had written about my relationship with my parents, with my mother in particular, for whom I was her “cross to bear . . . her crown of thorns.” Others, mostly relatives close and otherwise, openly regretted that I had chosen to “tell the whole world” about certain domestic difficulties that concerned only my mother and father.
Yes, too much information, they said, none of which had anything to do with people outside our family circle. I was young then, relatively inexperienced, and especially vulnerable to criticism, however meritless. It did not occur to me to remind my detractors (the torch of time would expose them as nothing more!) that Morning was, if only in part, autobiographical. The ostensibly private episodes I had chosen to share with readers of my first book were personal experiences, the bricks and mortar that formed the structure that was my life as I had lived it up to the time covered; my experiences to keep under wraps or to purposefully share. If I had chosen to write about my behind-closed-doors relationship with my parents, it was only because I believed it had contributed much to who I am, why I am as I am and might in the future become. And yes, my openness served warning that I planned to be equally intrusive in my treatment of my subjects, all in the best interests of bringing truth to light.
I ask yet again, can information be too much that affords better analysis? In all events, how honest would I be should I determine what to write about our public figures, our prime ministers past and present—yes, wannabe prime ministers too—based only on what I consider potentially embarrassing? Can a writer, in particular one whose latest work has been described by many as “contemporary history,” afford to be judgmental? And if one should so prune one’s facts as to spare one’s subjects and their friends (hacks?) possible embarrassment, would one not then be providing misleading information that by virtue of convenient editing amounts to prevarication?
And finally: Is it actually possible at once to spare the feelings of every single reader of say, Derek Walcott’s What the Twilight Says or of my Lapses & Infelicities—be they wives and girlfriends past and current, bitter turncoats, venal hacks or other presumed owners of over-sensitive souls? I think not. Meanwhile, I might take comfort from Omar Khayyam’s indelible words: “The moving finger writes; and having writ, moves on: nor all thy piety or wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.”
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Another day, another farcical murder trial flushed down the toilet almost before it begins. What will it take before this nation recognizes the foolhardiness in placing in control of our collective destiny individuals with neither the perspicacity, the will nor the guts demanded of their positions? It turns out that the 15-year-old (now 18) who was nearly four years ago charged with the horrifying murder of public servant Marcia Jules, seemingly hours after her brutalized body was discovered in her bathroom, never had a case to answer. At any rate, so said Friday’s verdict by the magistrate Florita Nicholas. Did our beleaguered police, then under foreign domination, bungle with impunity yet another highly publicized murder investigation? (Recently, in the UK, four Metropolitan police officers were canned and charged with screwing up a rape investigation!) Will the long-suffering public ever know the precise reasons the Marcia Jules case was thrown out of court at its earliest stage? Already the nation has lost all respect for its police force, perhaps unfairly dismissing its members at every opportunity as “criminals in uniform” who should be replaced pronto, and preferably by non-nationals. How long before the system of justice, such as operates in Saint Lucia, succumbs to its jungle relative? How long before even the most law-abiding among us, armed with illegal gun and sharpened cutlass, are forced by prevailing circumstances to take personal responsibility for our lives and property? How long before we are forced to revert to the so-called law of the bush?
And how was your week, fellow pilgrim?