Perfected Fables Now

Since the mid-1960s, Gordon Rohlehr has been an incomparable recorder and analyzer of Caribbean literature and culture, and their intersection with history and politics. Rohlehr doffs the costume of the carnival figure of the "Bookman," the recording Satan of the devil band, who walks with his book in which he writes down the names of the damned. And here we have the clue to the fact that along with the serious analysis of calypso; his summing up of what is essential in the work of Derek Walcott, Earl Lovelace, and V.S. Naipaul; and the essays of remembrance for those like Walcott, Lloyd Best, Pat Bishop, Tony Martin, and others who have made their earthly exits, there is a devilish humor at work. This comes out particularly in an essay that joyfully demolishes an attempt to characterize the Caribbean in any other than its own terms, and the subservience of Trinidad's rulers to the neo-colonialisms of tourism, visiting American ships and the U.S. embassy.