Abstract
This essay examines an understudied moment in George Lamming’s career: his guest editorship of New World Quarterly’s Barbados independence issue in 1966. With a reputation for writing difficult, dense fiction, Lamming has faced criticism from both fellow authors and literary scholars for the incompatibility of esoteric literature with working-class Caribbean readers. But in the Barbados independence issue of New World Quarterly, Lamming includes excerpts from two of his novels, In the Castle of My Skin and Of Age and Innocence. I examine these excerpts, as well as the special Barbados issue more generally, alongside Lamming’s fiction to show how independence offered the writer an opportunity to refashion his project as a novelist. Given how the unit of the excerpt embraces accessibility and multiplicity, I argue that Lamming’s editorship of New World Quarterly illuminates an important way in which he sought to adapt his work for local readers on the occasion of independence.
Highlights
Cover Page Acknowledgments I would like to thank the librarians and staff at the Sidney Martin Library of the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill for kindly assisting me in Barbados where the research for this essay was undertaken during the summer of 2012
As Lamming puts it, “The third most important event in West Indian history is the discovery of the novel by West Indians as a way of projecting the inner experiences of the West Indian community” (1960b, 37)
I draw attention to the 1966 Barbados independence issue of New World Quarterly that Lamming guest edited in an effort to frame it as a moment when the author sought to reorient the role of the novel in the Caribbean through the use of excerpts
Summary
Cover Page Acknowledgments I would like to thank the librarians and staff at the Sidney Martin Library of the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill for kindly assisting me in Barbados where the research for this essay was undertaken during the summer of 2012. DeGuzman, Kathleen (2014) "The Pleasures of Excerpts: George Lamming, New World Quarterly, and the Novel," Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal: Vol 11 : Iss. 2 , Article 2.
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