“We are on the verge of listening”
Earl Lovelace talks to B.C. Pires about his long-awaited new novel Is Just a Movie, and acknowledging the importance of rebellion
Born in Toco, in north-east Trinidad, in 1935, Earl Lovelace is the author of the novels While Gods Are Falling (1965), The Schoolmaster (1968), The Dragon Can’t Dance (1979), The Wine of Astonishment (1983), and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize–winning Salt (1997), as well as volumes of short fiction, plays, and essays. His long-awaited sixth novel, Is Just a Movie, was published in early 2011. The scholar Funso Aiyejina suggests that Lovelace’s books “speak of, to, and for those who are not usually the subjects in their own history . . . his vision, no matter how unique, echoes, clarifies, problematises, and extends folk preoccupations, wisdom, and philosophy.”
Soon after the launch of Is Just a Movie, Lovelace spoke to B.C. Pires over lunch about his fiction’s exploration of the nature, causes, and effects of rebellion, and the state of contemporary Trinidad.
B.C. Pires: When you refer to your new book, do you shorten the title to, say, Movie? Or is it always Is Just a Movie?
Earl Lovelace: Is Just a Movie. Is very difficult to shorten the title.
BC: But you might say Dragon for The Dragon Can’t Dance.
EL: I realise that. You could talk about Wine, Dragon, Schoolmaster, and so on, but this one, Is Just a Movie, just happened that way. I was looking for a long time for another title, and many possible ones came up, but eventually I thought Is Just a Movie would be useful.
[Lees hier verder in The Caribbean Review of Books]
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