"Write with New Urgency": A Conversation with Ben Okri

Abstract

"Write with New Urgency"A Conversation with Ben Okri February 2022 Click for larger view View full resolution Click for larger view View full resolution Click for larger view View full resolution Author of The Famished Road, among other books, Ben Okri has never been a run-of-the-mill writer. He has been hailed as "a literary and social visionary," and his oeuvre—novels, plays, poetry, haiku, stories—probe essential truths of our times. Creatively, he is as restless as ever, reimagining and expanding his literary landscape. Earlier this year, two new works—an edition of his 1995 quest novel, Astonishing the Gods (featuring a new introduction), and the eco-fable Every Leaf a Hallelujah—were published in the US by Other Press. Here, he speaks about invisibility, consciousness, and the lifesaving powers of literature. [End Page 26] Anderson Tepper: In your introduction to Astonishing the Gods, you explain how the book poured out of you in the summer of 1993. Tell me more about what prompted it. Ben Okri: The truth is I had been carrying the germ of the idea of the novel since I was a child. I had always wanted to write a story about a person who arrives on a mysterious island. Later I became fascinated by the ancient trope of invisibility. It is there in fairy tales and legends. In Nigeria, in certain traditions, individual disappearance, return, and transformation are linked. Then a strange incident happened to me. It was a racial incident, and it ignited the third link in the magic chain of inspiration. Suddenly I knew who these invisible people of the island were and why they were invisible. The book was written the way it was because of a technique I learned from late Renaissance art, a technique that is also there in the best of traditional African art. And because of the indirect way it's written, a few people read the novel the wrong way. They thought I was celebrating self-annihilation or some form of social abdication. A few incisive questions would have revealed other layers. Astonishing the Gods had to be written the way it was to be true to its themes. The real question now is, What are its themes? Tepper: What was it like to revisit the book today, and why publish it in the US now? Okri: Books are seldom what we think they are. If they are any good, they reveal aspects of themselves not comprehended before. Invisibility is little understood. In a world where everything visible is celebrated, people don't understand that invisibility is the precondition for true creativity. Writers are mostly invisible when they write. We only see them when the work is done. In the night things grow unseen. In the mind ideas germinate unnoticed. The common aspiration is to be seen. But there is another higher invisibility where thought is prepared, where the best work is done, and where true transformation occurs. I think this new paradigm is much needed now in America where there is a kind of arms race of visibility, leading to exhaustion and stress and depletion of the creative and spiritual faculties. I believe there is a reason this book has taken twenty-seven years to come to America. There is a mysterious destiny in books. When a book like this appears in a land, that is when it is most needed. Astonishing the Gods is in America at the right hour. These things happen due to an underlying power greater than individuals. It is perhaps the power of culture itself. Tepper: Like the book's hero, you "set out to find one thing, but found another." What did you discover in the process of writing? Okri: One of the great things I discovered is that sometimes a book wants to write you, and you should have the humility to let it. But also you must always be ready for when a really deep dream, a big work, needs your aesthetic, your humanity, to come into being. Most books we write, we choose, we determine. But every now and again, for reasons beyond our immediate understanding, a book wants to write you, wants...