The Problems and Crises of the West Indian Writer at Home

Abstract

In 2013, the Archives, Mona, took over the collection of the Library of the Spoken Word originally housed by the university's Radio Education Unit. The collection dates back to the 1950s. Our Archive Gems feature seeks to showcase some of the gems in this collection.In this issue we present the transcript of a talk given by Andrew Salkey, broadcast by the Radio Education Unit of the College of the West Indies, Mona as part of its University College on the Air series, on 25 October 1961.Introduction:University College on the Air: Radio Service presents today the first of three talks1 on the problems of the West Indian writer at home and abroad. The speaker is Andrew Salkey, Jamaican writer and broadcaster, who has attracted attention and established a reputation for himself on both sides of the Atlantic.Andrew Salkey:In the three talks in this series, I will try to describe and discuss the problems and crises of the West Indian writer at home, abroad and in exile. This talk deals with the West Indian writer at home.What do we mean by the problems and crises of the West Indian writer in the West Indies? Let's first examine what living and writing in Jamaica really means. The writer usually belongs to one of two imprecisely defined groups. He may belong to a self-regarding tribe of near-professionals, or he may belong to a highly talented and disciplined body of professionals. He may write copy for advertising agencies, blurbs for glossy magazines, short pithy paragraphs for publicity handouts; he may write television, radio and stage plays; he may write short stories, academic essays and poetry, perhaps all for his ego's sake or for publication in certain approved literary reviews. He may be a serious historian, biographer, novelist, critic, journalist, political pamphleteer, and even an earnest letter writer.The Jamaican writer, therefore, may be a near-professional or indeed a practised professional. He may be part-author of the directions on a medicine bottle, or he may be the sole, daring author of a critical study of Jamaican party politics. Of course, his growing society will naturally help to determine the range of his choice. The Jamaican writer, for example, could hardly make an intelligent claim for wanting to be a television critic in Jamaica. The appearance of the medium of television of necessity the appearance of the television critic. I say suggests because, despite the appearance and existence of our two radio corporations, it is regrettable that the radio critic has not yet emerged as a responsible by-product, as a guide, as a mentor of good taste, as a protector against waste, flabbiness and neo-philistinism. But there are critics and critics: there are the constructive and consolidating critics, and there are the vain and philistine critics. However I am confident that the good critic will emerge in time and possibly as a direct result of our society's need of his services, whether it be in radio, politics, economics or the arts. And above all, let us attempt to be honest with ourselves: we badly need criticism, our whole society demands it. In fact, it has been demanding it ever since 1944. Slightly late as it is for most of us, if only we could now begin to be intelligently self-critical - and who is to say we haven't begun to be - then we might throw up out of our efforts at least one sober critic of our society. I believe, quite implicitly, that the arts can only become a giant, a meaningful giant, when society is willing and prepared to hold a giant mirror up to the arts. Until that is done, we'll be forever glimpsing odd fragments of it, forever seeing the giant in its meaningless parts and never as a purposive whole.Writing at home, then, might well imply writing for home: writing within a framework dictated by the needs and interests of the society. And the society most responsive to, let's say, the disciplines of authority, the appeal to the better life, the conscientious work of prophets, planners and the creative imagination of the artists, the society most responsive to these, whether island society or continental society, has gone more than halfway towards contributing to the welfare of man. …