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The Alphabet of Hope

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C YThis volume features texts published on the occasion of International Literacy Day 2007.

It is presented by UNESCO and is not for sale.

Margaret Atwood

Paul Auster

Paulo Coelho

Nadine Gordimer

Amitav Gosh

N. Scott Momaday

Toni Morr ison

Franceso Sioni l José

Wole Soy inka

Amy Tan

Miklós Vamós

Banana Yoshimoto

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y

The Alphabet of Hope

THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

The authors are responsible for the choice and the presentation of the facts contained in this book and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization.

The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning thelegal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

Published in 2007 by the United NationsEducational, Scientific and Cultural Organization7, Place de Fontenoy F-75352 Paris 07 SP, Paris

Coordination : Martina Simeti Graphic design : Gérald SanspouxPhotographs : François GaudierPrinted by UNESCO

Aknowledgments:Namtip AksornkoolLinda Tinio

ISBN 978-92-3-104071-9

© UNESCO 2007www.unesco.org/publishingAll rights reservedPrinted in France

A poor woman learns to write© Margaret Atwood, 2007, excerpt from The Door, McClelland & Stewart.

Somebody’s daughter © Margaret Atwood, 2007, O.W. Toad Ltd,.

Reading with Flaubert© Paul Auster, 2004, excerpt from Moon Palace, Faber & Faber.

The moment when the hand opens© Paulo Coelho, 2005.Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa.

The image and the word© Nadine Gordimer, 2005.

To the young writer© Francisco Sionil Jose 2006.

The testimony of my grandfather’s bookcase© Amitav Gosh, 1998. First appeared in “Kunapipi, A Journal of Post-Colonial Writing” (UK.), Vol. XIX, n. 3.

The value of literacy© N. Scott Momaday, 2007.

The signature© Toni Morrison, 1977, Excerpt from Song of Salomon, Alfred Knopf.

I am going to school© Wole Soyinka, 1981, excerpt from Ake: The years of childhood, Rex Collings.

Mother tongue© Amy Tan, 1990. First appeared in “The Threepenny review”. Reprinted by permission of the author and the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.

Chekhov on the bench© Miklòs Vàmos, 2007.

The power of words© Banana Yoshimoto, 2007. Translated by Michael Emmerich.

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y qFO GSQQAZEWN

5

THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

The authors are responsible for the choice and the presentation of the facts contained in this book and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of UNESCO and do not commit the Organization.

The designations employed and the presentation of material throughout this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning thelegal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

Published in 2007 by the United NationsEducational, Scientific and Cultural Organization7, Place de Fontenoy F-75352 Paris 07 SP, Paris

Coordination : Martina Simeti Graphic design : Gérald SanspouxPhotographs : François GaudierPrinted by UNESCO

Aknowledgments:Namtip AksornkoolLinda Tinio

ISBN 978-92-3-104071-9

© UNESCO 2007www.unesco.org/publishingAll rights reservedPrinted in France

A poor woman learns to write© Margaret Atwood, 2007, excerpt from The Door, McClelland & Stewart.

Somebody’s daughter © Margaret Atwood, 2007, O.W. Toad Ltd,.

Reading with Flaubert© Paul Auster, 2004, excerpt from Moon Palace, Faber & Faber.

The moment when the hand opens© Paulo Coelho, 2005.Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa.

The image and the word© Nadine Gordimer, 2005.

To the young writer© Francisco Sionil Jose 2006.

The testimony of my grandfather’s bookcase© Amitav Gosh, 1998. First appeared in “Kunapipi, A Journal of Post-Colonial Writing” (UK.), Vol. XIX, n. 3.

The value of literacy© N. Scott Momaday, 2007.

The signature© Toni Morrison, 1977, Excerpt from Song of Salomon, Alfred Knopf.

I am going to school© Wole Soyinka, 1981, excerpt from Ake: The years of childhood, Rex Collings.

Mother tongue© Amy Tan, 1990. First appeared in “The Threepenny review”. Reprinted by permission of the author and the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.

Chekhov on the bench© Miklòs Vàmos, 2007.

The power of words© Banana Yoshimoto, 2007. Translated by Michael Emmerich.

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y qFO GSQQAZEWN

5

T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

qFOREWORDUNIPEDCOGSQQAZEWNfSXO q 0 8 / 0 9 / 2 0 0 7 I N T E R N A T I O N A L L I T E R A C Y D A Y

10

18

2 2

28

3 2

38

40

4 4

48

5 2

60

68

Margaret Atwood

Paul Auster

Paulo Coelho

Nadine Gordimer

Amitav Gosh

N. Scott Momaday

Toni Morr ison

Franceso Sioni l José

Wole Soy inka

Amy Tan

Miklós Vamós

Banana Yoshimoto

FO R E WO R D

F O R E W O R D The book is offered by UNESCO on the occasion of International

Literacy Day 2007. As the leading agency and international coordinator

of the United Nations Literacy Decade (2003-2012), UNESCO is grate-

ful to the authors who joined their voices to raise awareness about the

literacy challenges in the world today:

Some 774 million adults lack minimum literacy skills;

One in five of the world’s adults are still not literate;

Two-thirds of them are women;

72.1 million children are out of school;

Access to reading material through appropriate publications

and libraries is lacking and does not allow neo-literates to sus-

tain their skills.

Let us act now, together, to build a literate world, sharing both the

benefits and the pleasure provided by what Scott Momaday calls the

“gift of literacy”.

•

•

•

•

•

This volume, part of a new series produced by UNESCO, brings toge-

ther a collection of short texts in English by a number of internationally

acclaimed writers. The Alphabet of Hope: Writers for Literacy is publi-

shed by UNESCO to advocate for Literacy for All and the promotion of

a sustainable literate environment.

These texts capture the unlimited and surprising possibilities of the use

of literacy by living masters of the written word.

Conceived as a powerful advocacy tool on literacy and its benefits in

terms of achieving the goals of eradicating poverty, reducing child

mortality, curbing population growth, achieving gender equality and

ensuring sustainable development, peace and democracy, this book is

also about the joys offered by literacy and the act of reading as such.

A variety of literacy practices employed by female and male authors is

expressed in this inspiring collection of writings. Taken together, these

texts reflect the plurality of the notion of ‘literacy’ in today’s complex

world, where people acquire and apply literacy for different purposes

in a range of contexts, all of which are shaped by culture, history, lan-

guage, religion and socio-economic conditions.

qFOREWORDUNIPEDCOGSQQAZEWNfSXO q 0 8 / 0 9 / 2 0 0 7 I N T E R N A T I O N A L L I T E R A C Y D A Y

Koïchiro Matsuura

Director-General of UNESCO

FO R E WO R D

F O R E W O R D The book is offered by UNESCO on the occasion of International

Literacy Day 2007. As the leading agency and international coordinator

of the United Nations Literacy Decade (2003-2012), UNESCO is grate-

ful to the authors who joined their voices to raise awareness about the

literacy challenges in the world today:

Some 774 million adults lack minimum literacy skills;

One in five of the world’s adults are still not literate;

Two-thirds of them are women;

72.1 million children are out of school;

Access to reading material through appropriate publications

and libraries is lacking and does not allow neo-literates to sus-

tain their skills.

Let us act now, together, to build a literate world, sharing both the

benefits and the pleasure provided by what Scott Momaday calls the

“gift of literacy”.

•

•

•

•

•

This volume, part of a new series produced by UNESCO, brings toge-

ther a collection of short texts in English by a number of internationally

acclaimed writers. The Alphabet of Hope: Writers for Literacy is publi-

shed by UNESCO to advocate for Literacy for All and the promotion of

a sustainable literate environment.

These texts capture the unlimited and surprising possibilities of the use

of literacy by living masters of the written word.

Conceived as a powerful advocacy tool on literacy and its benefits in

terms of achieving the goals of eradicating poverty, reducing child

mortality, curbing population growth, achieving gender equality and

ensuring sustainable development, peace and democracy, this book is

also about the joys offered by literacy and the act of reading as such.

A variety of literacy practices employed by female and male authors is

expressed in this inspiring collection of writings. Taken together, these

texts reflect the plurality of the notion of ‘literacy’ in today’s complex

world, where people acquire and apply literacy for different purposes

in a range of contexts, all of which are shaped by culture, history, lan-

guage, religion and socio-economic conditions.

qFOREWORDUNIPEDCOGSQQAZEWNfSXO q 0 8 / 0 9 / 2 0 0 7 I N T E R N A T I O N A L L I T E R A C Y D A Y

Koïchiro Matsuura

Director-General of UNESCO

She squats, bare feet

splayed out, not

graceful; skirt tucked around ankles.

Her face is lined and cracked.

She looks old,

older than anything.

She’s probably thirty.

Her hands also are lined and cracked

and awkward. Her hair concealed.

She prints with a stick, laboriously

in the wet grey dirt,

frowning with anxiety.

Great big letters.

There. It’s finished.

Her first word so far.

She never thought she could do this,

Not her.

This was for others,

She looks up, smiles

as if apologizing,

but she’s not. Not this time. She did it right.

What does the mud say?

Her name. We can’t read it.

But we can guess. Look at her face:

Joyful Flower? A Radiant One? Sun On Water?

11THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

Margaret Atwood is the author of

more than forty books of fiction,

poetry, and critical essays. Her

books include the 2000 Booker Prize

winner, The Blind Assassin, Alias

Grace, which also won the Giller

Prize in Canada and the Premio

Mondello in Italy, The Robber Bride,

Cat’s Eye, and The Handmaid’s Tale.

Her most recent book, Curious Pur-

suits, a collection of essays, reviews

and personal prose, was published

in 2005. Margaret Atwood lives in

Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.

Margaret Atwood

CANADA

A p o o r w o m a n l e a r n s t o w r i t e

She squats, bare feet

splayed out, not

graceful; skirt tucked around ankles.

Her face is lined and cracked.

She looks old,

older than anything.

She’s probably thirty.

Her hands also are lined and cracked

and awkward. Her hair concealed.

She prints with a stick, laboriously

in the wet grey dirt,

frowning with anxiety.

Great big letters.

There. It’s finished.

Her first word so far.

She never thought she could do this,

Not her.

This was for others,

She looks up, smiles

as if apologizing,

but she’s not. Not this time. She did it right.

What does the mud say?

Her name. We can’t read it.

But we can guess. Look at her face:

Joyful Flower? A Radiant One? Sun On Water?

11THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

Margaret Atwood is the author of

more than forty books of fiction,

poetry, and critical essays. Her

books include the 2000 Booker Prize

winner, The Blind Assassin, Alias

Grace, which also won the Giller

Prize in Canada and the Premio

Mondello in Italy, The Robber Bride,

Cat’s Eye, and The Handmaid’s Tale.

Her most recent book, Curious Pur-

suits, a collection of essays, reviews

and personal prose, was published

in 2005. Margaret Atwood lives in

Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.

Margaret Atwood

CANADA

A p o o r w o m a n l e a r n s t o w r i t e

1312

Few remember that to learn to read and write is one of the great victories in life.

- Bryher, The Heart to Artemis (p.14)

Akluniq ajuqsarniqangilaq:

In times of scarcity, there is much opportunity for innovative thinking.

- Inuit saying, from Nunavut, Canada.

Some time ago, I received a message from UNESCO asking me to write something to advo-

cate for Literacy. By a great coincidence, I was already involved in a Literacy programme –

Somebody’s Daughter, a two-week camp that takes place in Nunavut, in the Canadian Arctic.

So, as reading and writing are never learned in outer space but under specific local condi-

tions, I will tell you a little about that programme.

Life has never been easy for the people of the far north. For many centuries they lived

in one of the most unforgiving climates on earth: no trees, no agriculture, extreme cold and

darkness for many months of the year. Using tools made of stone and bone, wearing clothing

made of skins, relying largely on fish and on the meat of seal, caribou, polar bear, walrus, and

whales, they had a culture finely tuned to their environment. In this culture, men and women

were interdependent: hunters provided most of the food, but their clothing was made by

the women, and unless it was made very well the hunter could die: a leaky kamik could

mean a frozen foot. Each set of skills was known to be necessary to the survival of all, and

each was respected.

Then came the Europeans, and the gathering of a nomadic people into settlements,

and exposure to many of the more negative aspects of “white” culture, including excessive

drinking and violence towards women; there was a break with traditional ways, and a sharp

increase in suicides. Children were forced into residential schools in an effort to wrench them

into the twentieth century, and two generations have undergone extreme culture shock.

One of the worst effects of this has been the fracturing of families. In the old culture, sons

were taught their hunting skills by fathers and uncles, daughters their sewing skills by

mothers and aunts, but now many younger people are cultural orphans. There are still a

number of elders-living treasures who remember the old ways – and Somebody’s Daughter

aims at a reconnection of the generations.

Somebody’s Daughter is run by Bernadette Dean, the Social Development Coordi-

nator for her district of Nunavut. Bernadette’s Inuit name, Miqqusaaq – mica, or sparkling

S o m e b o d y ’s d a u g h t e r

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - M A R G A R E T A T W O O D qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

1514

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - M A R G A R E T A T W O O D qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

with a tunnel entrance and some fox traps and graves nearby. The ground at our site was

smooth white limestone rocks, so our tents could not be pegged; instead their ropes were

tied to large boulders, a good plan in view of the 80-mile-an-hour winds we soon experienced.

We had three expert hunters with us, to help with the site, to provide food, and to

defend our camp. They immediately bagged a caribou, which was skinned and cut up imme-

diately; some of it became caribou stew, some was soon to be turned into mittens and

kamiks; nothing would be wasted. We weren’t the only hungry ones around, however:

through the twilight came a large healthy male polar bear, intent on dinner. The hunters cha-

sed it off on their Honda ATVs, then took turns standing guard all night – just as well,

because the bear came back four times. “Next time it’s dinner,” said one hunter. The bear

must have heard him. “The elders tell us to be alert at all times,” we were instructed.

The next day the women met with the elders and teachers in a large round communal

tent, where they received the skins they would work on. “What do you want to make?” they

were asked by the elders, in Inuktituk. Then, “Who is it for?” (Sizes vary according to age,

patterns according to gender.) This question – “Who is it for?” – gave Sheree and myself a

thread to follow. During our first writing session, we said that writing, like sewing, took one

thing and made it into another; and that writing, like sewing, was always for someone, even

if that someone was yourself in a future form. It was a way of putting your voice on paper

and sending it – to someone you might know, or else to someone you might never meet,

but who would be able to hear you anyway.

Then I explained that I was going to write a piece for UNESCO. Somebody’s Daughter,

I said, was part of a much larger movement – a movement to improve the lives of women

all over the world. Some of these women – unlike themselves – might not even be able to

write their own names yet. So for their first writing assignment, I would like them to send a

message to these other women. I would be their post-person, I said: I would deliver their

message.

Every single woman wrote a message. Every message was positive and encouraging.

Here is a sampling:

Whoever you are. I am a woman. I am proud of being me. You can be proud of who

you are and be proud of yourself. Don’t ever think that we’re nothing. But we the women

are the most pretty inside and out because we are always helpful to our families and other

people. Just think of yourself that you can do everything.

rock – describes her well: scintillating and clear, but tough underneath. Like many who

confront similar social problems, Bernadette knows that to improve the overall health of a

community and its families you must improve the well-being and confidence of the women.

Somebody’s Daughter is a two-week camp for women in their twenties, thirties and

forties who never had a chance to learn traditional Inuit sewing. Most of them have expe-

rienced tragedy, violence, or separation from their families. Bernadette explained the pro-

gramme’s name to me: “Not everyone is a wife, not everyone is a mother, not everyone is

a grandmother; but every woman is somebody’s daughter.” Immediately the participants

are given a sense of belonging.

The “daughters” go out on the land with a group of elders and teachers. They live in

tents, and make an article of clothing the old way, scraping, stretching, and softening the

animal skin first, then cutting the pattern with a women’s curved knife or ulu, and sewing

it with sinew – the best thread, as it expands in water and makes a garment watertight.

It’s hard to describe the joy that learning this skill can give.

But an improvement in literacy is also part of the plan, because Nunavut exists in the

same twenty-first century we all do. Computers and office jobs are now common, and for

these and the money they can bring, literacy is needed. That is why two writers were invited

to join the group: myself and children’s writer Sheree Fitch, who had been there the two pre-

vious summers. We both felt very lucky to be there.

But how to teach writing to women whose experience of it at school may well have

been negative? Sheree told me that it could prove very difficult to get these women to set

pen to paper: they might be shy, or afraid of writing; or they might not see the use of doing

it at all.

The campsite this year was on the shore of Southampton Island, which is situated at

the top of Hudson’s Bay and is as large as the land mass of Switzerland. It has one settle-

ment, Coral Harbour, with less than a thousand people. It also has two hundred thousand

caribou and a lively population of polar bears. We traveled from Coral Harbour to the site on

a 30-foot long-liner – a trip of sixty miles that took over five hours because of the large

waves.

We set up our tents at a spectacular location – austere and beautiful, with the sea on

one side and the land rising up behind us in a series of earlier shores. On the top ridge were

some Dorset Culture dwellings many centuries old – rocks set into the ground in a circle,

1514

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - M A R G A R E T A T W O O D qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

with a tunnel entrance and some fox traps and graves nearby. The ground at our site was

smooth white limestone rocks, so our tents could not be pegged; instead their ropes were

tied to large boulders, a good plan in view of the 80-mile-an-hour winds we soon experienced.

We had three expert hunters with us, to help with the site, to provide food, and to

defend our camp. They immediately bagged a caribou, which was skinned and cut up imme-

diately; some of it became caribou stew, some was soon to be turned into mittens and

kamiks; nothing would be wasted. We weren’t the only hungry ones around, however:

through the twilight came a large healthy male polar bear, intent on dinner. The hunters cha-

sed it off on their Honda ATVs, then took turns standing guard all night – just as well,

because the bear came back four times. “Next time it’s dinner,” said one hunter. The bear

must have heard him. “The elders tell us to be alert at all times,” we were instructed.

The next day the women met with the elders and teachers in a large round communal

tent, where they received the skins they would work on. “What do you want to make?” they

were asked by the elders, in Inuktituk. Then, “Who is it for?” (Sizes vary according to age,

patterns according to gender.) This question – “Who is it for?” – gave Sheree and myself a

thread to follow. During our first writing session, we said that writing, like sewing, took one

thing and made it into another; and that writing, like sewing, was always for someone, even

if that someone was yourself in a future form. It was a way of putting your voice on paper

and sending it – to someone you might know, or else to someone you might never meet,

but who would be able to hear you anyway.

Then I explained that I was going to write a piece for UNESCO. Somebody’s Daughter,

I said, was part of a much larger movement – a movement to improve the lives of women

all over the world. Some of these women – unlike themselves – might not even be able to

write their own names yet. So for their first writing assignment, I would like them to send a

message to these other women. I would be their post-person, I said: I would deliver their

message.

Every single woman wrote a message. Every message was positive and encouraging.

Here is a sampling:

Whoever you are. I am a woman. I am proud of being me. You can be proud of who

you are and be proud of yourself. Don’t ever think that we’re nothing. But we the women

are the most pretty inside and out because we are always helpful to our families and other

people. Just think of yourself that you can do everything.

rock – describes her well: scintillating and clear, but tough underneath. Like many who

confront similar social problems, Bernadette knows that to improve the overall health of a

community and its families you must improve the well-being and confidence of the women.

Somebody’s Daughter is a two-week camp for women in their twenties, thirties and

forties who never had a chance to learn traditional Inuit sewing. Most of them have expe-

rienced tragedy, violence, or separation from their families. Bernadette explained the pro-

gramme’s name to me: “Not everyone is a wife, not everyone is a mother, not everyone is

a grandmother; but every woman is somebody’s daughter.” Immediately the participants

are given a sense of belonging.

The “daughters” go out on the land with a group of elders and teachers. They live in

tents, and make an article of clothing the old way, scraping, stretching, and softening the

animal skin first, then cutting the pattern with a women’s curved knife or ulu, and sewing

it with sinew – the best thread, as it expands in water and makes a garment watertight.

It’s hard to describe the joy that learning this skill can give.

But an improvement in literacy is also part of the plan, because Nunavut exists in the

same twenty-first century we all do. Computers and office jobs are now common, and for

these and the money they can bring, literacy is needed. That is why two writers were invited

to join the group: myself and children’s writer Sheree Fitch, who had been there the two pre-

vious summers. We both felt very lucky to be there.

But how to teach writing to women whose experience of it at school may well have

been negative? Sheree told me that it could prove very difficult to get these women to set

pen to paper: they might be shy, or afraid of writing; or they might not see the use of doing

it at all.

The campsite this year was on the shore of Southampton Island, which is situated at

the top of Hudson’s Bay and is as large as the land mass of Switzerland. It has one settle-

ment, Coral Harbour, with less than a thousand people. It also has two hundred thousand

caribou and a lively population of polar bears. We traveled from Coral Harbour to the site on

a 30-foot long-liner – a trip of sixty miles that took over five hours because of the large

waves.

We set up our tents at a spectacular location – austere and beautiful, with the sea on

one side and the land rising up behind us in a series of earlier shores. On the top ridge were

some Dorset Culture dwellings many centuries old – rocks set into the ground in a circle,

This message is coming from the North. To the women all over the world, take good

care of yourself because you are the most needed in a family, you are a home to them so

take good care of yourself. We women are all the same and we are as one. Remember,

everyone is created equally and that means if he cannot handle abuse neither should you,

but please remember that we have to help and love our neighbours.

I’d love to teach when I learn more.

A message to the ladies in the world. Remember that you are loved very much and

that you are not alone.

Please let your life be good and don’t forget you’re strong and a helper.

To all the women in the world from someone in the north – no matter what you look

like you are very special. Always keep this in your mind.

And finally:

Learning begins when the learner feels safe and comfortable, provide an atmosphere

of safety and comfort. And keep trying!

Writing messages of encouragement was in itself encouraging to the writers. The

big round tent became a place of safety and comfort and healing for the women in it, and

their writing also became – for most, I think – a place of safety and comfort and healing.

In the tent, and also in the writing, the women laughed and joked and told stories, and also

grieved: in this culture, grieving should be done – it is said – out loud, and with other people.

Grieving in this way leads to healing, it is said.

Each of the women, with the help of her individual elder or teacher, completed the

sewing project she had set out to do. Each continued to write – to expand their handling of

the written word through daily journals, letters, and small poems. Confidence came through

identity and achievement, and on the final day, at the suggestion of one of the women, the

“daughters” wrote a communal poem, each of them contributing a line.

I’ll use the last line of this poem to show how the sewing, the writing, and the healing

all came together through this inspired programme:

After I finished sewing the hard part of the kamik I feel like an eagle, so free and fly

wherever I may go.

1716

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - M A R G A R E T A T W O O D qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

M a r g a r e t A t w o o d

This message is coming from the North. To the women all over the world, take good

care of yourself because you are the most needed in a family, you are a home to them so

take good care of yourself. We women are all the same and we are as one. Remember,

everyone is created equally and that means if he cannot handle abuse neither should you,

but please remember that we have to help and love our neighbours.

I’d love to teach when I learn more.

A message to the ladies in the world. Remember that you are loved very much and

that you are not alone.

Please let your life be good and don’t forget you’re strong and a helper.

To all the women in the world from someone in the north – no matter what you look

like you are very special. Always keep this in your mind.

And finally:

Learning begins when the learner feels safe and comfortable, provide an atmosphere

of safety and comfort. And keep trying!

Writing messages of encouragement was in itself encouraging to the writers. The

big round tent became a place of safety and comfort and healing for the women in it, and

their writing also became – for most, I think – a place of safety and comfort and healing.

In the tent, and also in the writing, the women laughed and joked and told stories, and also

grieved: in this culture, grieving should be done – it is said – out loud, and with other people.

Grieving in this way leads to healing, it is said.

Each of the women, with the help of her individual elder or teacher, completed the

sewing project she had set out to do. Each continued to write – to expand their handling of

the written word through daily journals, letters, and small poems. Confidence came through

identity and achievement, and on the final day, at the suggestion of one of the women, the

“daughters” wrote a communal poem, each of them contributing a line.

I’ll use the last line of this poem to show how the sewing, the writing, and the healing

all came together through this inspired programme:

After I finished sewing the hard part of the kamik I feel like an eagle, so free and fly

wherever I may go.

1716

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - M A R G A R E T A T W O O D qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

M a r g a r e t A t w o o d

19THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

It didn’t take me long to get the hang of the wheelchair. There were a few bumps on the

first day, but once I learned how to tilt the chair at the proper angle when we went up and

down curbs, things went fairly smoothly. Effing was exceedingly light, and pushing him

around caused little strain on my arms. In other respects, however, our excursions were

rather difficult for me. As soon as we got outside, Effing would begin jabbing his stick into

the air, asking in a loud voice what object he was pointing at. As soon as I told him, he would

insist that I describe it for him. Garbage cans, shop windows, doorways: he wanted me to

give him a precise account of these things, and if I couldn’t muster the phrases swiftly

enough to satisfy him, he would explode in anger. “Dammit, boy,” he would say, “use the

eyes in your head! I can’t see a bloody thing, and here you’re spouting drivel about ‘your ave-

rage lamppost’ and ‘perfectly ordinary manhole covers.’ No two things are alike, you fool,

any bumpkin knows that. I want to see what we’re looking at, goddamit, I want you to make

things stand out for me!” It was humiliating to be scolded like that in the middle of the

street, standing there as the old man lashed out at me, having to take it as people turned

their heads to watch the uproar. Once or twice, I was tempted just to walk away and leave

him there, but the fact was that Effing was not entirely wrong. I was not doing a very good

job. I realized that I had never acquired the habit of looking closely at things, and now that

I was being asked to do it, the results were dreadfully inadequate.

Until then, I had always had a penchant for generalizing, for seeing the similarities

between things rather than their differences. Now I was being plunged into a world of par-

ticulars, and the struggle to evoke them in words, to summon up the immediate sensual

data, presented a challenge I was ill prepared for. To get what he wanted, Effing should have

hired Flaubert to push him around the streets – but even Flaubert worked slowly, sometimes

laboring for hours just to get a single sentence right. I not only had to describe things accu-

rately, I had to do it within a matter of seconds. More than anything else, I hated the inevi-

table comparisons with Pavel Shum. Once, when I was having a particularly rough time of it,

Effing went on about his departed friend for several minutes, describing him as a master of

the poetic phrase, a peerless inventor of apt and stunning images, a stylist whose words

could miraculously reveal the palpable truth of objects. “And to think,” Effing said, “English

wasn’t even his first language.” That was the only time I ever talked back to him on the sub-

ject, but I felt so wounded by his remark that I couldn’t resist. “If you want another lan-

guage,” I said, “I’ll be happy to oblige you. How about Latin? I’ll talk to you in Latin from now

on if you like. Better yet, I’ll talk to you in Pig Latin. You shouldn’t have any trouble under-

R e a d i n g w i t h F l a u b e r t

Paul Auster was born in Newark,

New Jersey, on 3 February 1947. A

poet, translator and film director, he

is the author of numerous novels,

screenplays and works of non-fic-

tion. Through his rich and unexpec-

tedly dream-like prose, Paul Auster

is widely regarded by critics as one

of America’s greatest living writers.

He is best known for his three expe-

rimental detective stories, The New

York Trilogy (City of Glass, 1985;

Ghosts, 1986; The Locked Room,

1986). He lives in Brooklyn, New

York with his wife, the author Siri

Hustvedt.

Paul Auster

USA

19THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

It didn’t take me long to get the hang of the wheelchair. There were a few bumps on the

first day, but once I learned how to tilt the chair at the proper angle when we went up and

down curbs, things went fairly smoothly. Effing was exceedingly light, and pushing him

around caused little strain on my arms. In other respects, however, our excursions were

rather difficult for me. As soon as we got outside, Effing would begin jabbing his stick into

the air, asking in a loud voice what object he was pointing at. As soon as I told him, he would

insist that I describe it for him. Garbage cans, shop windows, doorways: he wanted me to

give him a precise account of these things, and if I couldn’t muster the phrases swiftly

enough to satisfy him, he would explode in anger. “Dammit, boy,” he would say, “use the

eyes in your head! I can’t see a bloody thing, and here you’re spouting drivel about ‘your ave-

rage lamppost’ and ‘perfectly ordinary manhole covers.’ No two things are alike, you fool,

any bumpkin knows that. I want to see what we’re looking at, goddamit, I want you to make

things stand out for me!” It was humiliating to be scolded like that in the middle of the

street, standing there as the old man lashed out at me, having to take it as people turned

their heads to watch the uproar. Once or twice, I was tempted just to walk away and leave

him there, but the fact was that Effing was not entirely wrong. I was not doing a very good

job. I realized that I had never acquired the habit of looking closely at things, and now that

I was being asked to do it, the results were dreadfully inadequate.

Until then, I had always had a penchant for generalizing, for seeing the similarities

between things rather than their differences. Now I was being plunged into a world of par-

ticulars, and the struggle to evoke them in words, to summon up the immediate sensual

data, presented a challenge I was ill prepared for. To get what he wanted, Effing should have

hired Flaubert to push him around the streets – but even Flaubert worked slowly, sometimes

laboring for hours just to get a single sentence right. I not only had to describe things accu-

rately, I had to do it within a matter of seconds. More than anything else, I hated the inevi-

table comparisons with Pavel Shum. Once, when I was having a particularly rough time of it,

Effing went on about his departed friend for several minutes, describing him as a master of

the poetic phrase, a peerless inventor of apt and stunning images, a stylist whose words

could miraculously reveal the palpable truth of objects. “And to think,” Effing said, “English

wasn’t even his first language.” That was the only time I ever talked back to him on the sub-

ject, but I felt so wounded by his remark that I couldn’t resist. “If you want another lan-

guage,” I said, “I’ll be happy to oblige you. How about Latin? I’ll talk to you in Latin from now

on if you like. Better yet, I’ll talk to you in Pig Latin. You shouldn’t have any trouble under-

R e a d i n g w i t h F l a u b e r t

Paul Auster was born in Newark,

New Jersey, on 3 February 1947. A

poet, translator and film director, he

is the author of numerous novels,

screenplays and works of non-fic-

tion. Through his rich and unexpec-

tedly dream-like prose, Paul Auster

is widely regarded by critics as one

of America’s greatest living writers.

He is best known for his three expe-

rimental detective stories, The New

York Trilogy (City of Glass, 1985;

Ghosts, 1986; The Locked Room,

1986). He lives in Brooklyn, New

York with his wife, the author Siri

Hustvedt.

Paul Auster

USA

assault. Effing constantly had to tell me to slow down, complaining that he couldn’t keep up

with me. The problem was less in my delivery than in my general approach. I was piling too

many words on top of each other, and rather than reveal the thing before us, they were in

fact obscuring it, burying it under an avalanche of subtleties and geometric abstractions.

The important thing to remember was that Effing was blind. My job was not to exhaust him

with lengthy catalogues, but to help him see things for himself.

In the end, the words didn’t matter. Their task was to enable him to apprehend the

objects as quickly as possible, and in order to do that, I had to make them disappear the

moment they were pronounced. It took me weeks of hard work to simplify my sentences, to

learn how to separate the extraneous from the essential. I discovered that the more air I left

around a thing, the happier the results, for that allowed Effing to do the crucial work on his

own: to construct an image on the basis of a few hints, to feel his own mind traveling toward

the thing I was describing for him. Disgusted by my early performances, I took to practicing

when I was alone, lying in bed at night, for example, and going around the objects in the

room, seeing if I couldn’t get any better at it.

The harder I worked, the more serious I became about what I was doing. I no longer

saw it as an aesthetic activity but as a moral one, and I began to be less irritated by Effing’s

criticisms, wondering if his impatience and dissatisfaction could not eventually serve some

higher purpose. I was a monk seeking illumination, and Effing was my hair shirt, the whip I

flayed myself with. I don’t think there was any question that I improved, but that does not

mean I was ever entirely satisfied with my efforts. The demands of words are too great for

that; one meets with failure too often to exult in the occasional success. As time went on,

Effing became more tolerant of my descriptions, but I can’t say whether that meant they

were really any closer to what he wanted. Perhaps he had given up hope, or perhaps he was

beginning to lose interest. It was difficult for me to know. In the end, it could be that he was

simply getting used to me.

standing that.” It was a stupid thing to say, and Effing quickly put me in my place. “Shut up

and talk, boy,” he said. “Tell me what the clouds look like. Give me every cloud in the western

sky, every one as far as you can see.”

In order to do what Effing asked, I had to learn how to keep myself separate from him.

The essential thing was not to feel burdened by his commands, but to transform them into

something I wanted to do for myself. There was nothing inherently wrong with the activity,

after all. If regarded in the proper way, the effort to describe things accurately was precisely

the kind of discipline that could teach me what I most wanted to learn: humility, patience,

rigor. Instead of doing it merely to discharge an obligation, I began to consider it as a spiri-

tual exercise, a process of training myself how to look at the world as if I were discovering it

for the first time. What do you see? And if you see, how do you put it into words? The world

enters us through our eyes, but we cannot make sense of it until it descends into our

mouths. I began to appreciate how great that distance was, to understand how far a thing

must travel in order to get from the one place to the other. In actual terms, it was no more

than two or three inches, but considering how many accidents and losses could occur along

the way, it might just as well have been a journey from the earth to the moon.

My first attempts with Effing were dismally vague, mere shadows flitting across a blur-

red background. I had seen these things before, I told myself, and how could there be any

difficulty in describing them? A fire hydrant, a taxi cab, a rush of steam pouring up from the

pavement – they were deeply familiar to me, and I felt I knew them by heart. But that did

not take into account the mutability of those things, the way they changed according to the

force and angle of the light, the way their aspect would be altered by what was happening

around them: a person walking by, a sudden gust of wind, an odd reflection. Everything was

constantly in flux, and though two bricks in a wall might strongly resemble each other, they

could never be construed as identical. More to the point, the same brick was never really the

same. It was wearing out, imperceptibly crumbling under the effects of the atmosphere, the

cold, the heat, the storms that attacked it, and eventually, if one could watch it over the

course of centuries, it would no longer be there. All inanimate things were disintegrating, all

living things were dying. My head would start to throb whenever I thought of this, imagining

the furious and hectic motions of molecules, the unceasing explosions of matter, the colli-

sions, the chaos boiling under the surface of all things. As Effing had warned me at our first

meeting: take nothing for granted. From casual indifference, I passed through a stage of

intense alarm. My descriptions became overly exact, desperately trying to capture every pos-

sible nuance of what I was seeing, jumbling up details in a mad scramble to leave nothing

out. The words burst from my mouth like machine-gun bullets, a staccato of rapid-fire

2120

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - P A U L A U S T E R qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

P a u l A u s t e r

assault. Effing constantly had to tell me to slow down, complaining that he couldn’t keep up

with me. The problem was less in my delivery than in my general approach. I was piling too

many words on top of each other, and rather than reveal the thing before us, they were in

fact obscuring it, burying it under an avalanche of subtleties and geometric abstractions.

The important thing to remember was that Effing was blind. My job was not to exhaust him

with lengthy catalogues, but to help him see things for himself.

In the end, the words didn’t matter. Their task was to enable him to apprehend the

objects as quickly as possible, and in order to do that, I had to make them disappear the

moment they were pronounced. It took me weeks of hard work to simplify my sentences, to

learn how to separate the extraneous from the essential. I discovered that the more air I left

around a thing, the happier the results, for that allowed Effing to do the crucial work on his

own: to construct an image on the basis of a few hints, to feel his own mind traveling toward

the thing I was describing for him. Disgusted by my early performances, I took to practicing

when I was alone, lying in bed at night, for example, and going around the objects in the

room, seeing if I couldn’t get any better at it.

The harder I worked, the more serious I became about what I was doing. I no longer

saw it as an aesthetic activity but as a moral one, and I began to be less irritated by Effing’s

criticisms, wondering if his impatience and dissatisfaction could not eventually serve some

higher purpose. I was a monk seeking illumination, and Effing was my hair shirt, the whip I

flayed myself with. I don’t think there was any question that I improved, but that does not

mean I was ever entirely satisfied with my efforts. The demands of words are too great for

that; one meets with failure too often to exult in the occasional success. As time went on,

Effing became more tolerant of my descriptions, but I can’t say whether that meant they

were really any closer to what he wanted. Perhaps he had given up hope, or perhaps he was

beginning to lose interest. It was difficult for me to know. In the end, it could be that he was

simply getting used to me.

standing that.” It was a stupid thing to say, and Effing quickly put me in my place. “Shut up

and talk, boy,” he said. “Tell me what the clouds look like. Give me every cloud in the western

sky, every one as far as you can see.”

In order to do what Effing asked, I had to learn how to keep myself separate from him.

The essential thing was not to feel burdened by his commands, but to transform them into

something I wanted to do for myself. There was nothing inherently wrong with the activity,

after all. If regarded in the proper way, the effort to describe things accurately was precisely

the kind of discipline that could teach me what I most wanted to learn: humility, patience,

rigor. Instead of doing it merely to discharge an obligation, I began to consider it as a spiri-

tual exercise, a process of training myself how to look at the world as if I were discovering it

for the first time. What do you see? And if you see, how do you put it into words? The world

enters us through our eyes, but we cannot make sense of it until it descends into our

mouths. I began to appreciate how great that distance was, to understand how far a thing

must travel in order to get from the one place to the other. In actual terms, it was no more

than two or three inches, but considering how many accidents and losses could occur along

the way, it might just as well have been a journey from the earth to the moon.

My first attempts with Effing were dismally vague, mere shadows flitting across a blur-

red background. I had seen these things before, I told myself, and how could there be any

difficulty in describing them? A fire hydrant, a taxi cab, a rush of steam pouring up from the

pavement – they were deeply familiar to me, and I felt I knew them by heart. But that did

not take into account the mutability of those things, the way they changed according to the

force and angle of the light, the way their aspect would be altered by what was happening

around them: a person walking by, a sudden gust of wind, an odd reflection. Everything was

constantly in flux, and though two bricks in a wall might strongly resemble each other, they

could never be construed as identical. More to the point, the same brick was never really the

same. It was wearing out, imperceptibly crumbling under the effects of the atmosphere, the

cold, the heat, the storms that attacked it, and eventually, if one could watch it over the

course of centuries, it would no longer be there. All inanimate things were disintegrating, all

living things were dying. My head would start to throb whenever I thought of this, imagining

the furious and hectic motions of molecules, the unceasing explosions of matter, the colli-

sions, the chaos boiling under the surface of all things. As Effing had warned me at our first

meeting: take nothing for granted. From casual indifference, I passed through a stage of

intense alarm. My descriptions became overly exact, desperately trying to capture every pos-

sible nuance of what I was seeing, jumbling up details in a mad scramble to leave nothing

out. The words burst from my mouth like machine-gun bullets, a staccato of rapid-fire

2120

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - P A U L A U S T E R qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

P a u l A u s t e r

The right hand starts to pull slowly on the string, while the left keeps a firm grip on the bow.

This takes an enormous effort – the equivalent of lifting a suitcase weighing 35 kilos along

a horizontal plane – but I must not shake, I must keep both eyes open, my feet must be

firmly planted on the ground. I go into a kind of trance: I am, at one and the same time, the

bow, the arrow and the target in front of me, 28 meters away.

And then, when I ‘feel’ the moment has come, my hand opens and the arrow sets

off towards its goal. From that point on, all that remains for the archer is to contemplate

its flight, knowing that he has given of his best, that he remained in control and felt joy

throughout the whole process of shooting the arrow. There is an obvious paradox: I put all

that effort into bringing close to my chest, close to my face, something that I must let go

the following moment and whose course I cannot then modify in the slightest.

I can hear the phone ringing, but it can wait. I am accompanying the arrow in its

flight, and that flight is similar to the moment I am living through now in my career: my new

book is coming out on Monday, 21st March, in four days’ time. What does the archer feel

after he has released the bowstring, but before the target has been reached? What does the

writer feel when he knows that very shortly his work will be in the hands of those people for

whom it was intended – the readers, those who will plunge into its pages and understand

(or not) the emotions I have tried to share?

If I could sum it up in two words, those words would be ‘excitement’ and ‘joy’.

The old Zen archers used to say that each arrow is a life, and that a man must res-

pect this. Each book is an arrow, a little of my life that is revealed, first to me, and then to

my readers. Obviously, I have published books before, and each has provoked in me a diffe-

rent emotion, but there is something different about The Zahir: it is more about myself than

any of my other books, apart, perhaps, from The Pilgrimage. In that book, I followed the road

to Santiago, searching with longing and persistence for my sword. Now I am sharing with

other people what I have done with that sword.

The arrow is the archer’s intention: it is the arrow that brings together the strength

of the bow and the sweetness of the target. This intention, therefore, must be crystal-clear,

straight and balanced. Once the arrow has gone, it will not come back, it is, therefore,

better to interrupt the shot – because the movements leading up to it were not sufficiently

23THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

T h e m o m e n t w h e n t h e h a n d o p e n s

Paulo Coelho was born in 1947 in

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the city where

he currently lives. He worked as a

theatre director and actor, lyricist

and journalist. His own life has been

as varied and unusual as the prota-

gonists of his novels. His books

include The Alchemist, The Pilgri-

mage, The Fifth Mountain, Eleven

Minutes and The Zahir. Translated

into over sixty languages, his novels

have not only topped the bestseller

lists but have also received nume-

rous awards.

Paulo Coelho

BRAZIL

The right hand starts to pull slowly on the string, while the left keeps a firm grip on the bow.

This takes an enormous effort – the equivalent of lifting a suitcase weighing 35 kilos along

a horizontal plane – but I must not shake, I must keep both eyes open, my feet must be

firmly planted on the ground. I go into a kind of trance: I am, at one and the same time, the

bow, the arrow and the target in front of me, 28 meters away.

And then, when I ‘feel’ the moment has come, my hand opens and the arrow sets

off towards its goal. From that point on, all that remains for the archer is to contemplate

its flight, knowing that he has given of his best, that he remained in control and felt joy

throughout the whole process of shooting the arrow. There is an obvious paradox: I put all

that effort into bringing close to my chest, close to my face, something that I must let go

the following moment and whose course I cannot then modify in the slightest.

I can hear the phone ringing, but it can wait. I am accompanying the arrow in its

flight, and that flight is similar to the moment I am living through now in my career: my new

book is coming out on Monday, 21st March, in four days’ time. What does the archer feel

after he has released the bowstring, but before the target has been reached? What does the

writer feel when he knows that very shortly his work will be in the hands of those people for

whom it was intended – the readers, those who will plunge into its pages and understand

(or not) the emotions I have tried to share?

If I could sum it up in two words, those words would be ‘excitement’ and ‘joy’.

The old Zen archers used to say that each arrow is a life, and that a man must res-

pect this. Each book is an arrow, a little of my life that is revealed, first to me, and then to

my readers. Obviously, I have published books before, and each has provoked in me a diffe-

rent emotion, but there is something different about The Zahir: it is more about myself than

any of my other books, apart, perhaps, from The Pilgrimage. In that book, I followed the road

to Santiago, searching with longing and persistence for my sword. Now I am sharing with

other people what I have done with that sword.

The arrow is the archer’s intention: it is the arrow that brings together the strength

of the bow and the sweetness of the target. This intention, therefore, must be crystal-clear,

straight and balanced. Once the arrow has gone, it will not come back, it is, therefore,

better to interrupt the shot – because the movements leading up to it were not sufficiently

23THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

T h e m o m e n t w h e n t h e h a n d o p e n s

Paulo Coelho was born in 1947 in

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the city where

he currently lives. He worked as a

theatre director and actor, lyricist

and journalist. His own life has been

as varied and unusual as the prota-

gonists of his novels. His books

include The Alchemist, The Pilgri-

mage, The Fifth Mountain, Eleven

Minutes and The Zahir. Translated

into over sixty languages, his novels

have not only topped the bestseller

lists but have also received nume-

rous awards.

Paulo Coelho

BRAZIL

to happen, you must be aware of the effort it took to draw the bow, to breathe correctly, to

concentrate on the target, to be clear about your intention, to maintain elegance of pos-

ture, to respect the work involved.

The arrow cannot leave before the archer is ready to shoot, because its flight would

be too brief; it cannot leave after the exact posture and concentration have been achieved

because the body would be unable to withstand the effort and the hand would begin to shake.

It must leave at the moment when bow, archer and target are at the same point in

the universe: this is called inspiration.

I ponder this word in The Zahir, because the main character is a writer. Now writing

is one of the most solitary activities in the world. Once every two years, I sit down in front

of the computer, gaze out on the unknown sea of my soul, and see a few islands – ideas that

have developed and which are ripe to be explored. Then I climb into my boat - called The

Word - and set out for the nearest island.

On the way, I meet strong currents, winds and storms, but I keep rowing, exhausted,

knowing that I have drifted away from my chosen course and that the island I was trying to

reach is no longer on my horizon.

I can't turn back, though, I have to continue somehow or else I'll be lost in the middle

of the ocean; at that point, a series of terrifying scenarios flash through my mind, such as

spending the rest of my life talking about past successes, or bitterly criticising new writers,

simply because I no longer have the courage to publish new books. Wasn't my dream to be

a writer? Then I must continue creating sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and go on writing

until I die, and not allow myself to get caught in such traps as success or failure. Otherwise,

what meaning does my life have: going to live in a mill in the south of France and simply cul-

tivating my garden? Giving lectures, because it's easier to talk than to write? Withdrawing

from the world in a calculated, mysterious way, in order to create a legend that will deprive

me of many pleasures?

Shaken by these alarming thoughts, I find a strength and a courage I didn't know

I had: they help me to venture into an unknown part of my soul. I let myself be swept along

by the current, and finally anchor my boat at the island I was being carried towards. I spend

days and nights describing what I see, wondering why I'm doing this, telling myself that it's

really not worth the effort, that I don't need to prove anything to anyone, that I've got what

I wanted and far more than I ever dreamed of having.

precise or correct – than to act carelessly simply because the bow was fully drawn and the

target was waiting.

I’ve done this many times: I have erased whole drafts of books from my computer

because in them I was failing to give clear expression to my ideas and feelings. But I have

never not released my arrows, my books, simply because I was afraid of making a mistake. If

the movements I have made are correct, then I open my hand and let go of the bowstring.

If I am fully part of every word I have written, then the words no longer belong to me,

the target becomes a mirror, I see myself reflected in my readers’ eyes.

The telephone rings again, my private number.

Only five people know that number, and so this time I answer. It is Mônica Antunes,

my friend and agent, who has just arrived back from the London Book Fair. She had met my

various publishers there, who are very excited; after all, there is to be a first print run of 8

million copies worldwide. She says they have all agreed that I will give only one interview per

country (the exception being my own country, Brazil). She starts telling me that the British

are producing an advertisement to be shown in cinemas, and that the Japanese publisher

will be placing posters in the Tokyo metro.

‘That gave me a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach, Paulo. Those advertisements

in the metro cost a fortune.’

I prefer to end the conversation there. After what she said about Tokyo, I don’t want

to hear any more details. I add another expression to the two previous words: excitement,

joy and… a cold feeling in the pit of the stomach.

Best to go back to my bow and arrow. There are two types of shot.

The first is the shot made with great precision, but without any soul. In this case,

although the archer may have a great mastery of technique, he has concentrated solely on

the target and because of this he has not evolved, he has become stale, he has not managed

to grow, and, one day, he will abandon the way of the bow because he finds that everything

has become mere routine.

The second type of shot is the one made with the soul. When the intention of the

archer is transformed into the flight of the arrow, his hand opens at the right moment, the

sound of the string makes the birds sing, and the gesture of shooting something over a dis-

tance provokes – paradoxically enough – a return to and an encounter with oneself. For this

2524

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - P A U L O C O E L H O qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

to happen, you must be aware of the effort it took to draw the bow, to breathe correctly, to

concentrate on the target, to be clear about your intention, to maintain elegance of pos-

ture, to respect the work involved.

The arrow cannot leave before the archer is ready to shoot, because its flight would

be too brief; it cannot leave after the exact posture and concentration have been achieved

because the body would be unable to withstand the effort and the hand would begin to shake.

It must leave at the moment when bow, archer and target are at the same point in

the universe: this is called inspiration.

I ponder this word in The Zahir, because the main character is a writer. Now writing

is one of the most solitary activities in the world. Once every two years, I sit down in front

of the computer, gaze out on the unknown sea of my soul, and see a few islands – ideas that

have developed and which are ripe to be explored. Then I climb into my boat - called The

Word - and set out for the nearest island.

On the way, I meet strong currents, winds and storms, but I keep rowing, exhausted,

knowing that I have drifted away from my chosen course and that the island I was trying to

reach is no longer on my horizon.

I can't turn back, though, I have to continue somehow or else I'll be lost in the middle

of the ocean; at that point, a series of terrifying scenarios flash through my mind, such as

spending the rest of my life talking about past successes, or bitterly criticising new writers,

simply because I no longer have the courage to publish new books. Wasn't my dream to be

a writer? Then I must continue creating sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and go on writing

until I die, and not allow myself to get caught in such traps as success or failure. Otherwise,

what meaning does my life have: going to live in a mill in the south of France and simply cul-

tivating my garden? Giving lectures, because it's easier to talk than to write? Withdrawing

from the world in a calculated, mysterious way, in order to create a legend that will deprive

me of many pleasures?

Shaken by these alarming thoughts, I find a strength and a courage I didn't know

I had: they help me to venture into an unknown part of my soul. I let myself be swept along

by the current, and finally anchor my boat at the island I was being carried towards. I spend

days and nights describing what I see, wondering why I'm doing this, telling myself that it's

really not worth the effort, that I don't need to prove anything to anyone, that I've got what

I wanted and far more than I ever dreamed of having.

precise or correct – than to act carelessly simply because the bow was fully drawn and the

target was waiting.

I’ve done this many times: I have erased whole drafts of books from my computer

because in them I was failing to give clear expression to my ideas and feelings. But I have

never not released my arrows, my books, simply because I was afraid of making a mistake. If

the movements I have made are correct, then I open my hand and let go of the bowstring.

If I am fully part of every word I have written, then the words no longer belong to me,

the target becomes a mirror, I see myself reflected in my readers’ eyes.

The telephone rings again, my private number.

Only five people know that number, and so this time I answer. It is Mônica Antunes,

my friend and agent, who has just arrived back from the London Book Fair. She had met my

various publishers there, who are very excited; after all, there is to be a first print run of 8

million copies worldwide. She says they have all agreed that I will give only one interview per

country (the exception being my own country, Brazil). She starts telling me that the British

are producing an advertisement to be shown in cinemas, and that the Japanese publisher

will be placing posters in the Tokyo metro.

‘That gave me a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach, Paulo. Those advertisements

in the metro cost a fortune.’

I prefer to end the conversation there. After what she said about Tokyo, I don’t want

to hear any more details. I add another expression to the two previous words: excitement,

joy and… a cold feeling in the pit of the stomach.

Best to go back to my bow and arrow. There are two types of shot.

The first is the shot made with great precision, but without any soul. In this case,

although the archer may have a great mastery of technique, he has concentrated solely on

the target and because of this he has not evolved, he has become stale, he has not managed

to grow, and, one day, he will abandon the way of the bow because he finds that everything

has become mere routine.

The second type of shot is the one made with the soul. When the intention of the

archer is transformed into the flight of the arrow, his hand opens at the right moment, the

sound of the string makes the birds sing, and the gesture of shooting something over a dis-

tance provokes – paradoxically enough – a return to and an encounter with oneself. For this

2524

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - P A U L O C O E L H O qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

I notice that I go through the same process as I did when writing my first book: I wake

at nine o'clock in the morning, ready to sit down at my computer immediately after break-

fast; then I read the newspapers, go for a walk, visit the nearest bar for a chat, come home,

look at the computer, discover that I need to make several phone calls, look at the computer

again, by which time lunch is ready, and I sit eating and thinking that I really ought to have

started writing at eleven o'clock, but that now there are various things I need to do: I go to

check my e-mails and realise that there is something wrong with the connection, I’ll have to

go to a place ten minutes away where I can get on-line; but couldn't I, just to free my

conscience from these feelings of guilt, couldn't I at least write for half an hour?

I begin, then, out of a feeling of duty, but suddenly 'the thing' takes hold of me and

I can't stop. The maid calls me for supper and I ask her not to interrupt me; an hour later,

she calls me again; I'm hungry, but I must write just one more line, one more sentence, one

more page. By the time I sit down at the table, the food is cold, I gobble it down and go

back to the computer – I am no longer in control of where I place my feet, the island is being

revealed to me, I am being propelled along its paths, finding things I have never even

thought or dreamed of. I drink a cup of coffee, and another, and at two o'clock in the mor-

ning I finally stop writing, because my eyes are tired.

In The Zahir, the main character has exactly these same thoughts: to write is to reveal

the untold story to yourself, to travel to the unknown island, and try and share it with your

fellows. And it is a constant source of surprise to me to discover that other people were also

in search of that very island and that they find it in my book. From then on, I am no longer

the man lost in the storm: I find myself through my readers, I understand what I wrote when

I see that others understand it too, but never before.

I am watching with admiration the flight of the arrow: with it goes my heart, and

I am sure, absolutely sure, that despite the joy, the excitement and the cold feeling in the pit

of my stomach, I will sleep peacefully tonight: with that arrow flies my heart.

2726

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - P A U L O C O E L H O qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

P a u l o C o e l h o

I notice that I go through the same process as I did when writing my first book: I wake

at nine o'clock in the morning, ready to sit down at my computer immediately after break-

fast; then I read the newspapers, go for a walk, visit the nearest bar for a chat, come home,

look at the computer, discover that I need to make several phone calls, look at the computer

again, by which time lunch is ready, and I sit eating and thinking that I really ought to have

started writing at eleven o'clock, but that now there are various things I need to do: I go to

check my e-mails and realise that there is something wrong with the connection, I’ll have to

go to a place ten minutes away where I can get on-line; but couldn't I, just to free my

conscience from these feelings of guilt, couldn't I at least write for half an hour?

I begin, then, out of a feeling of duty, but suddenly 'the thing' takes hold of me and

I can't stop. The maid calls me for supper and I ask her not to interrupt me; an hour later,

she calls me again; I'm hungry, but I must write just one more line, one more sentence, one

more page. By the time I sit down at the table, the food is cold, I gobble it down and go

back to the computer – I am no longer in control of where I place my feet, the island is being

revealed to me, I am being propelled along its paths, finding things I have never even

thought or dreamed of. I drink a cup of coffee, and another, and at two o'clock in the mor-

ning I finally stop writing, because my eyes are tired.

In The Zahir, the main character has exactly these same thoughts: to write is to reveal

the untold story to yourself, to travel to the unknown island, and try and share it with your

fellows. And it is a constant source of surprise to me to discover that other people were also

in search of that very island and that they find it in my book. From then on, I am no longer

the man lost in the storm: I find myself through my readers, I understand what I wrote when

I see that others understand it too, but never before.

I am watching with admiration the flight of the arrow: with it goes my heart, and

I am sure, absolutely sure, that despite the joy, the excitement and the cold feeling in the pit

of my stomach, I will sleep peacefully tonight: with that arrow flies my heart.

2726

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - P A U L O C O E L H O qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

P a u l o C o e l h o

29THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

In the beginning was the Word. The Word that was Creation. Its transformation into the writ-

ten word came to us when it was first scratched as a hieroglyph or ideogram on a stone or

traced on papyrus, and when it travelled from parchment to print in Gutenberg. That was

the next genesis: of literacy. It was and is the miraculous ability that humans alone possess

within the miracle of creation. (We have devised the means to take to the air.)

Our new millennium, stated as dedicated to defining and upholding human rights,

surely should list literacy as an inalienable one?

Yet UNESCO reports that over 700 million adults in our era cannot read or write and

more than a 72 million children do not go to school, deprived of their rightful heritage, lite-

racy. In South Africa, where I write these words, illiteracy is almost 50% in certain rural areas.

What are the reasons, world-wide or nearer wherever one’s home may be? Poverty

and lack of educational facilities are the obvious ones in poor and developing countries. The

disastrous economic effect is seen from the humble levels – at an automobile assembly

plant in South Africa, research found that many workers on the line could follow only spoken

orders, unable to read any written notification. At the level of higher education for the pro-

fessions, universities are faced with the problem of students ostensibly qualified for entry

who do not have the vocabulary or skilled use of the written word necessarily assumed for

university courses. The shortage of suitably competent candidates for positions essential in

development of governance, social services, industry and commerce, is thus evident.

President Mbeki recently said that in order to serve the needs of South Africa’s fast-growing

economy – the leading one on the African continent in terms of resources and infrastruc-

ture – he believes we shall have to import qualified individuals from other countries to fill

the vacancies while assisting to raise the capabilities of South Africans to fulfill such positions,

particularly in industry. An upgraded version of the adage, each-one-teach-one.

But we come back to the absolute. It shouldn’t need to be stated, but has to be, it

seems. Literacy is the basis of all learning. Even if one goes on to the differently profound

numero-ideogrammatic knowledges of science.

And on the way back to the source that is the written word we arrive at a presently

prevalent intermediate condition of literacy: semi-literacy. This is no doubt exacerbated in

multilingual countries where as a result of long colonisation a foreign language became and

T h e i m a g e a n d t h e w o r d

Nadine Gordimer was born and lives

in South Africa. She is the author of

fourteen novels, numerous short

story collections and works of non-

fiction. Three of her books were

banned in South Africa during the

Apartheid regime. She has received

numerous awards, culminating in

the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1991.

She is a Goodwill Ambassador of

UNDP. She recently edited an antho-

logy of stories featuring twenty-one

international authors, all profits in

aid of HIV/AIDS victims, now publi-

shed in fifteen languages worldwide.

Nadine Gordimer

SOUTH AFRICA

29THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

In the beginning was the Word. The Word that was Creation. Its transformation into the writ-

ten word came to us when it was first scratched as a hieroglyph or ideogram on a stone or

traced on papyrus, and when it travelled from parchment to print in Gutenberg. That was

the next genesis: of literacy. It was and is the miraculous ability that humans alone possess

within the miracle of creation. (We have devised the means to take to the air.)

Our new millennium, stated as dedicated to defining and upholding human rights,

surely should list literacy as an inalienable one?

Yet UNESCO reports that over 700 million adults in our era cannot read or write and

more than a 72 million children do not go to school, deprived of their rightful heritage, lite-

racy. In South Africa, where I write these words, illiteracy is almost 50% in certain rural areas.

What are the reasons, world-wide or nearer wherever one’s home may be? Poverty

and lack of educational facilities are the obvious ones in poor and developing countries. The

disastrous economic effect is seen from the humble levels – at an automobile assembly

plant in South Africa, research found that many workers on the line could follow only spoken

orders, unable to read any written notification. At the level of higher education for the pro-

fessions, universities are faced with the problem of students ostensibly qualified for entry

who do not have the vocabulary or skilled use of the written word necessarily assumed for

university courses. The shortage of suitably competent candidates for positions essential in

development of governance, social services, industry and commerce, is thus evident.

President Mbeki recently said that in order to serve the needs of South Africa’s fast-growing

economy – the leading one on the African continent in terms of resources and infrastruc-

ture – he believes we shall have to import qualified individuals from other countries to fill

the vacancies while assisting to raise the capabilities of South Africans to fulfill such positions,

particularly in industry. An upgraded version of the adage, each-one-teach-one.

But we come back to the absolute. It shouldn’t need to be stated, but has to be, it

seems. Literacy is the basis of all learning. Even if one goes on to the differently profound

numero-ideogrammatic knowledges of science.

And on the way back to the source that is the written word we arrive at a presently

prevalent intermediate condition of literacy: semi-literacy. This is no doubt exacerbated in

multilingual countries where as a result of long colonisation a foreign language became and

T h e i m a g e a n d t h e w o r d

Nadine Gordimer was born and lives

in South Africa. She is the author of

fourteen novels, numerous short

story collections and works of non-

fiction. Three of her books were

banned in South Africa during the

Apartheid regime. She has received

numerous awards, culminating in

the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1991.

She is a Goodwill Ambassador of

UNDP. She recently edited an antho-

logy of stories featuring twenty-one

international authors, all profits in

aid of HIV/AIDS victims, now publi-

shed in fifteen languages worldwide.

Nadine Gordimer

SOUTH AFRICA

its lines of language safely together… Words on a screen have virtual qualities, to be sure…

but they have no materiality, they are only shadows, and when the light shifts they’ll be

gone. Off the screen they do not exist as words. They do not wait to be reseen, reread; they

only wait to be remade, relit.’

Yes, the Image of text, of the Word, disappears off the screen; to recall it, along with

the other visuals, you have to have an apparatus, a cell, a battery, access to an electric power

connection. The book needs none of these. Simply held in the hand it can be read, turned

to again and again, on a bus, in the subway, in the bath, on a mountain top, in a queue.

This is no fuddy-duddy turning away from progress. The vast advances in communi-

cations technology are an information revolution that has great possibilities for social deve-

lopment if well used, which means made economically available to the millions in the world

whose lives will otherwise be bulldozed by the financial oligarchy of globalisation.

But information does not, it cannot, ever replace, outmode illumination – searching

knowledge of the human intellect and spirit that, all readers know, comes in communication

with the Word in its infinitely portable, available home between hard or paperback covers.

First it became the book of the movie.

Now it is the book of the website.

Don’t let it happen.

remains a lingua franca, the second language, not the mother tongue, the natal Word of the

inhabitant. One would accept that you are unlikely to be able to read and write the lingua

franca as confidently, precisely, as, once master of the alphabet, you surely could read and

write your own. But a distinguished writer and academic, Professor Es’kia Mphahlele, tells

me that black South Africans emerge from their schooling semi-literate in the reading and

writing of their own mother tongues just as white South Africans and those of other ethno-

linguistic backgrounds are semi-literate in theirs. To be able to read the legend on a billboard

and the bubble-enclosed dialogue of Spacemen in a comic book, while unable to understand

the vocabulary of a poem or follow in prose literature the meaningful variations of syntax, the

use of words in ways that open up new depths of self-comprehension – that is not literacy.

It is not what every individual should have by human right.

The developing countries, although with more reasons for producing only the half-

way to literacy, are not alone in this cultural state. Colleges in the USA report the same result

of their educational system, reflection of current cultural values of their society. In Britain

there is the same dismay at young men and women, born and educated in the country of

the birth of the English language, who cannot read or write using the great resources of their

mother tongue.

So while poverty and lack of educational opportunity are responsible for the great

void in our world that is illiteracy, this tragic situation is not the prime cause, let alone the

justification for the widespread phenomenon of semi-literacy.

The fact is that we are conjoined, all countries long developed or struggling to deve-

lop across the abyss between rich nations and poor, under threat of the Image against the

Written Word. From the first third of the 20th Century the image has been challenging the

power of the written word as the stimulation of the imagination, the opening of human

receptivity. The bedtime story of middleclass childhood has been replaced by the hour in

front of the TV screen; in shack settlements all over the poor countries of the globe the TV

aerial signifies the battery-run screen where no book is to be found. School and community

libraries don’t exist in villages and towns where video cassettes are for hire. Yes, TV images

are accompanied by the spoken word, sometimes by text, but it is the picture that decides

how secondary the Word’s role shall be.

The American writer William Gass defines best the Written Word, in its home, the

book: ‘We shall not understand what a book is, and why a book has the value many persons

have… if we forget how important to it is its body, the building that has been built to hold

3130

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - N A D I N E G O R D I M E R qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

N a d i n e G o r d i m e r

its lines of language safely together… Words on a screen have virtual qualities, to be sure…

but they have no materiality, they are only shadows, and when the light shifts they’ll be

gone. Off the screen they do not exist as words. They do not wait to be reseen, reread; they

only wait to be remade, relit.’

Yes, the Image of text, of the Word, disappears off the screen; to recall it, along with

the other visuals, you have to have an apparatus, a cell, a battery, access to an electric power

connection. The book needs none of these. Simply held in the hand it can be read, turned

to again and again, on a bus, in the subway, in the bath, on a mountain top, in a queue.

This is no fuddy-duddy turning away from progress. The vast advances in communi-

cations technology are an information revolution that has great possibilities for social deve-

lopment if well used, which means made economically available to the millions in the world

whose lives will otherwise be bulldozed by the financial oligarchy of globalisation.

But information does not, it cannot, ever replace, outmode illumination – searching

knowledge of the human intellect and spirit that, all readers know, comes in communication

with the Word in its infinitely portable, available home between hard or paperback covers.

First it became the book of the movie.

Now it is the book of the website.

Don’t let it happen.

remains a lingua franca, the second language, not the mother tongue, the natal Word of the

inhabitant. One would accept that you are unlikely to be able to read and write the lingua

franca as confidently, precisely, as, once master of the alphabet, you surely could read and

write your own. But a distinguished writer and academic, Professor Es’kia Mphahlele, tells

me that black South Africans emerge from their schooling semi-literate in the reading and

writing of their own mother tongues just as white South Africans and those of other ethno-

linguistic backgrounds are semi-literate in theirs. To be able to read the legend on a billboard

and the bubble-enclosed dialogue of Spacemen in a comic book, while unable to understand

the vocabulary of a poem or follow in prose literature the meaningful variations of syntax, the

use of words in ways that open up new depths of self-comprehension – that is not literacy.

It is not what every individual should have by human right.

The developing countries, although with more reasons for producing only the half-

way to literacy, are not alone in this cultural state. Colleges in the USA report the same result

of their educational system, reflection of current cultural values of their society. In Britain

there is the same dismay at young men and women, born and educated in the country of

the birth of the English language, who cannot read or write using the great resources of their

mother tongue.

So while poverty and lack of educational opportunity are responsible for the great

void in our world that is illiteracy, this tragic situation is not the prime cause, let alone the

justification for the widespread phenomenon of semi-literacy.

The fact is that we are conjoined, all countries long developed or struggling to deve-

lop across the abyss between rich nations and poor, under threat of the Image against the

Written Word. From the first third of the 20th Century the image has been challenging the

power of the written word as the stimulation of the imagination, the opening of human

receptivity. The bedtime story of middleclass childhood has been replaced by the hour in

front of the TV screen; in shack settlements all over the poor countries of the globe the TV

aerial signifies the battery-run screen where no book is to be found. School and community

libraries don’t exist in villages and towns where video cassettes are for hire. Yes, TV images

are accompanied by the spoken word, sometimes by text, but it is the picture that decides

how secondary the Word’s role shall be.

The American writer William Gass defines best the Written Word, in its home, the

book: ‘We shall not understand what a book is, and why a book has the value many persons

have… if we forget how important to it is its body, the building that has been built to hold

3130

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - N A D I N E G O R D I M E R qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

N a d i n e G o r d i m e r

33THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

As a child I spent my holidays in my grandfather’s house in Calcutta and it was there that

I began to read. My grandfather’s house was a chaotic and noisy place, populated by a large

number of uncles, aunts, cousins and dependents, some of them bizarre, some merely

eccentric, but almost all excitable in the extreme. Yet I learned much more about reading

in this house than I ever did in school.

The walls of my grandfather’s house were lined with rows of books, neatly stacked in

glass-fronted bookcases. The bookcases were prominently displayed in a large hall that served,

amongst innumerable other functions, also those of playground, sitting-room and hallway.

The bookcases towered above us, looking down, eavesdropping on every conversation, kee-

ping track of family gossip, glowering upon quarreling children. Very rarely were the book-

cases stirred out of their silent vigil: I was perhaps the only person in the house who raided

them regularly, and I was in Calcutta for no more than a couple of months every year. When

the bookcases were disturbed in my absence, it was usually not for their contents but

because some special occasion required their cleaning. If the impending event happened to

concern a weighty matter, like a delicate marital negotiation, the bookcases got a very tho-

rough scrubbing indeed. And well they deserved it, for at such times they were important

props in the little plays that were enacted in their presence. They let the visitor know that

this was a house in which books were valued; in other words that we were cultivated peo-

ple. This is always important in Calcutta, for Calcutta is a bookish city.

Were we indeed cultivated people? I wonder. On the whole I don’t think so. In my

memory my grandfather’s house is always full – of aunts, uncles, cousins. I am astonished

sometimes when I think of how many people it housed, fed, entertained, educated. But my

uncles were busy, practical, and on the whole successful professionals, with little time to

spend on books.

Only one of my uncles was a real reader. He was a shy and rather retiring man; not

the kind of person who takes it upon himself to educate his siblings or improve his relatives’

taste. The books in the bookcases were almost all his. He was too quiet a man to carry much

weight in family matters, and his views never counted for much when the elders sought each

other’s council. Yet despite the fullness of the house and the fierce competition for space,

it was taken for granted that his bookcases would occupy the place of honour in the hall.

Eventually, tiring of his noisy relatives, my book-loving uncle decided to move to a house of

his own in a distant and uncharacteristically quiet part of the city. But oddly enough the

T h e t e s t i m o n y o f m y g r a n d f a t h e r ’ s b o o k c a s eAmitav Gosh

I N D I AAmitav Gosh is one of the most wi-

dely known Indians writing in English

today. He was born in Calcutta in

1956. He studied in Delhi, Oxford

and Alexandria, Egypt. He worked for

The Indian Express in New Delhi and

he earned his doctorate at Oxford

before he wrote his first novel. His

books include The Circle of Reason,

The Shadow Lines, The Calcutta

Chromosome and most recently, The

Glass Palace. Amitav Gosh lives with

his wife, Deborah Baker, and their

children, in Brooklyn, USA.

33THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

As a child I spent my holidays in my grandfather’s house in Calcutta and it was there that

I began to read. My grandfather’s house was a chaotic and noisy place, populated by a large

number of uncles, aunts, cousins and dependents, some of them bizarre, some merely

eccentric, but almost all excitable in the extreme. Yet I learned much more about reading

in this house than I ever did in school.

The walls of my grandfather’s house were lined with rows of books, neatly stacked in

glass-fronted bookcases. The bookcases were prominently displayed in a large hall that served,

amongst innumerable other functions, also those of playground, sitting-room and hallway.

The bookcases towered above us, looking down, eavesdropping on every conversation, kee-

ping track of family gossip, glowering upon quarreling children. Very rarely were the book-

cases stirred out of their silent vigil: I was perhaps the only person in the house who raided

them regularly, and I was in Calcutta for no more than a couple of months every year. When

the bookcases were disturbed in my absence, it was usually not for their contents but

because some special occasion required their cleaning. If the impending event happened to

concern a weighty matter, like a delicate marital negotiation, the bookcases got a very tho-

rough scrubbing indeed. And well they deserved it, for at such times they were important

props in the little plays that were enacted in their presence. They let the visitor know that

this was a house in which books were valued; in other words that we were cultivated peo-

ple. This is always important in Calcutta, for Calcutta is a bookish city.

Were we indeed cultivated people? I wonder. On the whole I don’t think so. In my

memory my grandfather’s house is always full – of aunts, uncles, cousins. I am astonished

sometimes when I think of how many people it housed, fed, entertained, educated. But my

uncles were busy, practical, and on the whole successful professionals, with little time to

spend on books.

Only one of my uncles was a real reader. He was a shy and rather retiring man; not

the kind of person who takes it upon himself to educate his siblings or improve his relatives’

taste. The books in the bookcases were almost all his. He was too quiet a man to carry much

weight in family matters, and his views never counted for much when the elders sought each

other’s council. Yet despite the fullness of the house and the fierce competition for space,

it was taken for granted that his bookcases would occupy the place of honour in the hall.

Eventually, tiring of his noisy relatives, my book-loving uncle decided to move to a house of

his own in a distant and uncharacteristically quiet part of the city. But oddly enough the

T h e t e s t i m o n y o f m y g r a n d f a t h e r ’ s b o o k c a s eAmitav Gosh

I N D I AAmitav Gosh is one of the most wi-

dely known Indians writing in English

today. He was born in Calcutta in

1956. He studied in Delhi, Oxford

and Alexandria, Egypt. He worked for

The Indian Express in New Delhi and

he earned his doctorate at Oxford

before he wrote his first novel. His

books include The Circle of Reason,

The Shadow Lines, The Calcutta

Chromosome and most recently, The

Glass Palace. Amitav Gosh lives with

his wife, Deborah Baker, and their

children, in Brooklyn, USA.

mainstay. There were a few works of anthropology and psychology; books that had in some

way filtered into the literary consciousness of the time: The Golden Bough for example, as

well as the Collected Works of Sigmund Freud, Marx and Engels’ Manifesto, Havelock Ellis and

Malinowski on sexual behavior and so on.

But without a doubt it was the novel that weighed most heavily on the floors of my

grandfather’s house. To this day I am unable to place a textbook or a computer manual upon

a bookshelf without a twinge of embarrassment.

This is how Nirad Chaudhuri, that erstwhile Calcuttan, accounts for the position that

novels occupy in Bengali cultural life: “It has to be pointed out that in the latter half of the

nineteenth century Bengali life and Bengali literature had become very closely connected

and literature was bringing into the life of educated Bengalis something which they could

not get from any other source. Whether in the cities and towns or in the villages, where the

Bengali gentry still had the permanent base of their life, it was the mainstay of their life of

feeling, sentiment and passion. Both emotional capacity and idealism were sustained by it...

when my sister was married in 1916, a college friend of mine presented her with fifteen of

the latest novels by the foremost writers and my sister certainly did not prize them less that

her far more costly clothes and jewelry. In fact, sales of fiction and poetry as wedding pre-

sents were a sure standby of their publishers.” (1)

About a quarter of the novels in my uncle’s bookcases were in Bengali – a represen-

tative selection of the mainstream tradition of Bengali literature. Prominent among these

were the works of Bankim Chandra, Sarat Chandra, Tagore, Bibhuti Bhushan, Bonophul &

Syed Mustafa Ali. The rest were in English. But of these only a small proportion consisted of

books that had been originally written in English. The others were translations from a number

of other languages, most of them European: Russian had pride of place, followed by French,

Italian, German and Danish. The great masterpieces of the 19th century were dutifully repre-

sented: the novels of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Turgenev, of Victor Hugo, Flaubert, Stendhal,

Maupassant and others. But these were the dustiest books of all, placed on shelves that were

lofty but remote.

The books that were prominently displayed were an oddly disparate lot – or so they

seem today. Some of those titles can still be seen on bookshelves everywhere: Joyce,

Faulkner and so on. But many others have long since been forgotten. Marie Corelli and

Grazia Deledda for instance, names that are so little known today, even in Italy, that they

have become a kind of secret incantation for me, a password that allows entry into the

bookcases stayed; by this time the family was so attached to them that they were less dis-

pensable than my uncle.

In the years that followed, the house passed into the hands of a branch of the family

that was definitely very far from bookish. Yet their attachment to the bookcases seemed to

increase inversely to their love of reading. I had been engaged in a secret pillaging of the

bookcases for a very long time. Under the new regime my depredations came to a sudden

halt; at the slightest squeak of an hinge, hordes of cousins would materialize suddenly

around my ankles, snapping dire threats.

It served no purpose to tell them that the books were being consumed by maggots

and mildew; that books rotted when they were not read. Arguments such as these interes-

ted them not at all: as far as they were concerned the bookcases and their contents were a

species of property and were subject to the same laws.

This attitude made me impatient, even contemptuous at the time. Books were

meant to be read, I thought, by people who valued and understood them: I felt not the

slightest remorse for my long years of thievery. It seemed to me a terrible waste, an injus-

tice that non-readers should succeed in appropriating my uncle’s library. Today I am not so

sure. Perhaps those cousins were teaching me a lesson that was important on its own terms:

they were teaching me respect, they were teaching me to value the printed word. Would

anyone who had not learned these lessons be foolhardy enough to imagine that a living

could be made from words? I doubt it.

In another way they were also teaching me what a book is, a proper book that is, not

just printed paper gathered between covers. However much I may have chafed against the

regime that stood between me and the bookcases, I have not forgotten those lessons. For

me, to this day, a book, a proper book, is and always will be the kind of book that was on

those bookshelves.

And what exactly was this kind of book?

Although no one had ever articulated any guidelines about them, so far as I know,

there were in fact some fairly strict rules about the books that were allowed on to those shel-

ves. Textbooks and schoolbooks were never allowed; nor were books of a technical or pro-

fessional nature – nothing to do with engineering, or medicine or law, or indeed any of the

callings that afforded my uncles their livings. In fact the great majority of the books were of

a single kind; they were novels. There was some poetry too but novels were definitely the

3534

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - A M I T A V G O S H qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

mainstay. There were a few works of anthropology and psychology; books that had in some

way filtered into the literary consciousness of the time: The Golden Bough for example, as

well as the Collected Works of Sigmund Freud, Marx and Engels’ Manifesto, Havelock Ellis and

Malinowski on sexual behavior and so on.

But without a doubt it was the novel that weighed most heavily on the floors of my

grandfather’s house. To this day I am unable to place a textbook or a computer manual upon

a bookshelf without a twinge of embarrassment.

This is how Nirad Chaudhuri, that erstwhile Calcuttan, accounts for the position that

novels occupy in Bengali cultural life: “It has to be pointed out that in the latter half of the

nineteenth century Bengali life and Bengali literature had become very closely connected

and literature was bringing into the life of educated Bengalis something which they could

not get from any other source. Whether in the cities and towns or in the villages, where the

Bengali gentry still had the permanent base of their life, it was the mainstay of their life of

feeling, sentiment and passion. Both emotional capacity and idealism were sustained by it...

when my sister was married in 1916, a college friend of mine presented her with fifteen of

the latest novels by the foremost writers and my sister certainly did not prize them less that

her far more costly clothes and jewelry. In fact, sales of fiction and poetry as wedding pre-

sents were a sure standby of their publishers.” (1)

About a quarter of the novels in my uncle’s bookcases were in Bengali – a represen-

tative selection of the mainstream tradition of Bengali literature. Prominent among these

were the works of Bankim Chandra, Sarat Chandra, Tagore, Bibhuti Bhushan, Bonophul &

Syed Mustafa Ali. The rest were in English. But of these only a small proportion consisted of

books that had been originally written in English. The others were translations from a number

of other languages, most of them European: Russian had pride of place, followed by French,

Italian, German and Danish. The great masterpieces of the 19th century were dutifully repre-

sented: the novels of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Turgenev, of Victor Hugo, Flaubert, Stendhal,

Maupassant and others. But these were the dustiest books of all, placed on shelves that were

lofty but remote.

The books that were prominently displayed were an oddly disparate lot – or so they

seem today. Some of those titles can still be seen on bookshelves everywhere: Joyce,

Faulkner and so on. But many others have long since been forgotten. Marie Corelli and

Grazia Deledda for instance, names that are so little known today, even in Italy, that they

have become a kind of secret incantation for me, a password that allows entry into the

bookcases stayed; by this time the family was so attached to them that they were less dis-

pensable than my uncle.

In the years that followed, the house passed into the hands of a branch of the family

that was definitely very far from bookish. Yet their attachment to the bookcases seemed to

increase inversely to their love of reading. I had been engaged in a secret pillaging of the

bookcases for a very long time. Under the new regime my depredations came to a sudden

halt; at the slightest squeak of an hinge, hordes of cousins would materialize suddenly

around my ankles, snapping dire threats.

It served no purpose to tell them that the books were being consumed by maggots

and mildew; that books rotted when they were not read. Arguments such as these interes-

ted them not at all: as far as they were concerned the bookcases and their contents were a

species of property and were subject to the same laws.

This attitude made me impatient, even contemptuous at the time. Books were

meant to be read, I thought, by people who valued and understood them: I felt not the

slightest remorse for my long years of thievery. It seemed to me a terrible waste, an injus-

tice that non-readers should succeed in appropriating my uncle’s library. Today I am not so

sure. Perhaps those cousins were teaching me a lesson that was important on its own terms:

they were teaching me respect, they were teaching me to value the printed word. Would

anyone who had not learned these lessons be foolhardy enough to imagine that a living

could be made from words? I doubt it.

In another way they were also teaching me what a book is, a proper book that is, not

just printed paper gathered between covers. However much I may have chafed against the

regime that stood between me and the bookcases, I have not forgotten those lessons. For

me, to this day, a book, a proper book, is and always will be the kind of book that was on

those bookshelves.

And what exactly was this kind of book?

Although no one had ever articulated any guidelines about them, so far as I know,

there were in fact some fairly strict rules about the books that were allowed on to those shel-

ves. Textbooks and schoolbooks were never allowed; nor were books of a technical or pro-

fessional nature – nothing to do with engineering, or medicine or law, or indeed any of the

callings that afforded my uncles their livings. In fact the great majority of the books were of

a single kind; they were novels. There was some poetry too but novels were definitely the

3534

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - A M I T A V G O S H qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

met with a much more enthusiastic reception outside. I spent a couple of years studying in

England in the late seventies and early eighties. I don’t remember ever having come across

a bookshelf like my uncle’s: one that had been largely formed by this vision of literature, by

a deliberate search for books from a wide array of other countries.

1 Nirad Chaudhuri, Thy Hand Great Anarch, Addison-Wesley, New York, 1987, pp. 155.

2 Ibid.

brotherhood of remembered bookcases. Knut Hamsun, too, was once a part of this incan-

tation, but unlike the others his reputation has since had an immense revival – and with

good reason.

Other names from those shelves have become, in this age of resurgent capitalism,

symbols of a certain kind of embarrassment or unease – the social realists for example. But

on my uncle’s shelves they stood tall and proud, Russians and Americans alike: Maxim Gorky,

Mikhail Sholokov, John Steinbeck, Upton Sinclair. There were many others too, whose places

next to each other seem hard to account for at first glance: Sienkiewicz (of Quo Vadis),

Maurice Maeterlinck, Bergson. Recently, looking through the mildewed remnants of those

shelves I came upon what must have been the last addition to that collection. It was Ivo

Andric’s Bridge on the Drina, published in the sixties.

For a long time I was at a loss to account for my uncle’s odd assortment of books.

I knew their eclecticism couldn’t really be ascribed to personal idiosyncrasies of taste. My

uncle was a keen reader but he was not, I suspect, the kind of person who allows his own

taste to steer him through libraries and bookshops. On the contrary he was a reader of the

kind whose taste is guided largely by prevalent opinion. This uncle I might add was a writer

himself, in a modest way. He wrote plays in an epic vein with characters borrowed from the

Sanskrit classics. He never left India and indeed rarely ventured out of his home state of West

Bengal.

The principles that guided my uncle’s taste would have been much clearer to me had

I ever had an interest in trivia. To the quiz-show adept the link between Grazia Deledda,

Gorky, Hamsun, Sholokov, Sienkiewicz and Andric will be clear at once: it is the Nobel Prize

for Literature.

Writing about the Calcutta of the twenties and thirties Nirad Chaudhuri writes: “To be

up to date about literary fashions was a greater craze among us that to be up to date in clo-

thes is with society women, and this desire became keener with the introduction of the

Nobel Prize for literature. Not to be able to show at least one book by a Nobel Laureate was

regarded almost as being illiterate.” (2)

But of course the Nobel Prize was itself both symptom and catalyst of a wider condi-

tion: the emergence of a notion of a universal ‘literature’, a form of artistic expression that

embodies differences in place and culture, emotion and aspiration, but in such a way as to

render them communicable. This idea may well have had its birth in Europe but I suspect it

3736

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - A M I T A V G O S H qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

A m i t a v G o s h

met with a much more enthusiastic reception outside. I spent a couple of years studying in

England in the late seventies and early eighties. I don’t remember ever having come across

a bookshelf like my uncle’s: one that had been largely formed by this vision of literature, by

a deliberate search for books from a wide array of other countries.

1 Nirad Chaudhuri, Thy Hand Great Anarch, Addison-Wesley, New York, 1987, pp. 155.

2 Ibid.

brotherhood of remembered bookcases. Knut Hamsun, too, was once a part of this incan-

tation, but unlike the others his reputation has since had an immense revival – and with

good reason.

Other names from those shelves have become, in this age of resurgent capitalism,

symbols of a certain kind of embarrassment or unease – the social realists for example. But

on my uncle’s shelves they stood tall and proud, Russians and Americans alike: Maxim Gorky,

Mikhail Sholokov, John Steinbeck, Upton Sinclair. There were many others too, whose places

next to each other seem hard to account for at first glance: Sienkiewicz (of Quo Vadis),

Maurice Maeterlinck, Bergson. Recently, looking through the mildewed remnants of those

shelves I came upon what must have been the last addition to that collection. It was Ivo

Andric’s Bridge on the Drina, published in the sixties.

For a long time I was at a loss to account for my uncle’s odd assortment of books.

I knew their eclecticism couldn’t really be ascribed to personal idiosyncrasies of taste. My

uncle was a keen reader but he was not, I suspect, the kind of person who allows his own

taste to steer him through libraries and bookshops. On the contrary he was a reader of the

kind whose taste is guided largely by prevalent opinion. This uncle I might add was a writer

himself, in a modest way. He wrote plays in an epic vein with characters borrowed from the

Sanskrit classics. He never left India and indeed rarely ventured out of his home state of West

Bengal.

The principles that guided my uncle’s taste would have been much clearer to me had

I ever had an interest in trivia. To the quiz-show adept the link between Grazia Deledda,

Gorky, Hamsun, Sholokov, Sienkiewicz and Andric will be clear at once: it is the Nobel Prize

for Literature.

Writing about the Calcutta of the twenties and thirties Nirad Chaudhuri writes: “To be

up to date about literary fashions was a greater craze among us that to be up to date in clo-

thes is with society women, and this desire became keener with the introduction of the

Nobel Prize for literature. Not to be able to show at least one book by a Nobel Laureate was

regarded almost as being illiterate.” (2)

But of course the Nobel Prize was itself both symptom and catalyst of a wider condi-

tion: the emergence of a notion of a universal ‘literature’, a form of artistic expression that

embodies differences in place and culture, emotion and aspiration, but in such a way as to

render them communicable. This idea may well have had its birth in Europe but I suspect it

3736

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - A M I T A V G O S H qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

A m i t a v G o s h

39THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

As a poet, I cannot imagine a life without words. Language is the element in which the mind

lives, and it is the very basis of human being.

It is that which distinguishes Man from all other creatures. To speak, to read and write,

to encounter the power and beauty and magic of words – these are gifts that enrich and

ennoble our existence. It seems almost miraculous to me that a child, only two or three years

of age, can learn the complexities of language. But children take possession of language

naturally, as a birthright. And it should be by birthright also that the child learns to read and

write, and is therefore enabled to discover the riches of the world and to share those riches

with others. I believe with all my heart that every person in the world is entitled to the gift

of literacy. We must provide that gift to the best of our ability, for doing so ensures our

humanity and makes possible the realization of a more nearly perfect world.

O n t h e v a l u e o f l i t e r a c y N. Scott Momaday

N. Scott Momaday’s work as a nove-

list, scholar, painter, print-maker

and poet, combines modern Anglo-

American literary methods with

Native American traditions of poetry

and story telling. He won the Pulitzer

Prize for Fiction in 1969 for his first

novel House Made of Dawn. He foun-

ded the Buffalo Trust, a non-profit

foundation, to preserve, protect and

restitute Native cultural heritage. In

2004 he was appointed UNESCO

Artist for Peace.

USA

N . S c o t t M o m a d a y

39THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

As a poet, I cannot imagine a life without words. Language is the element in which the mind

lives, and it is the very basis of human being.

It is that which distinguishes Man from all other creatures. To speak, to read and write,

to encounter the power and beauty and magic of words – these are gifts that enrich and

ennoble our existence. It seems almost miraculous to me that a child, only two or three years

of age, can learn the complexities of language. But children take possession of language

naturally, as a birthright. And it should be by birthright also that the child learns to read and

write, and is therefore enabled to discover the riches of the world and to share those riches

with others. I believe with all my heart that every person in the world is entitled to the gift

of literacy. We must provide that gift to the best of our ability, for doing so ensures our

humanity and makes possible the realization of a more nearly perfect world.

O n t h e v a l u e o f l i t e r a c y N. Scott Momaday

N. Scott Momaday’s work as a nove-

list, scholar, painter, print-maker

and poet, combines modern Anglo-

American literary methods with

Native American traditions of poetry

and story telling. He won the Pulitzer

Prize for Fiction in 1969 for his first

novel House Made of Dawn. He foun-

ded the Buffalo Trust, a non-profit

foundation, to preserve, protect and

restitute Native cultural heritage. In

2004 he was appointed UNESCO

Artist for Peace.

USA

N . S c o t t M o m a d a y

41THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

At fifty-two, Macon Dead was as imposing a man as he had been at forty-two, when Milkman

thought he was the biggest thing in the world. Bigger even than the house they lived in. But

today he had seen a woman who was just as tall and who had made him feel tall too.

“I know I’m the youngest one in this family, but I ain’t no baby. You treat me like I was

a baby. You keep saying you don’t have to explain nothing to me. How do you think that

makes me feel? Like a baby, that’s what. Like a twelve-year-old baby!”

“Don’t you raise your voice to me.”

“Is that the way you treat your father treated you when you were twelve?”

“Watch your mouth!” Macon roared. He took his hands out of his pocket but didn’t

know what to do with them. He was momentarily confused. His son’s question had shifted

the scenery. He was seeing himself at twelve, standing in Milkman’s shoes and feeling what

he himself had felt for his own father. The numbness that had settled on him when he saw

the man he loved and admired fall off the fence; something wild ran through him when he

watched the body twitching in the dirt. His father had sat for five nights on a split-rail fence

cradling a shotgun and in the end died protecting his property. Was that what this boy felt

for him? Maybe it was time to tell him things.

“Well, did he?”

“I worked right alongside my father. Right alongside him. From the time I was four or

five we worked together. Just the two of us. Our mother was dead. Died when Pilate was

born. Pilate was just a baby. She stayed over at another farm in the daytime. I carried her

over there myself in my arms every morning. Then I’d go back across the fields and meet my

father. We’d hitch President Lincoln to the plow and… That’s what we called her: President

Lincoln. Papa said Lincoln was a good plow hand before he was President and you shouldn’t

take a good plow hand away from his work. He called our farm Lincoln’s Heaven. It was a

little bit a place. But it looked big to me then. I know now it must a been a little bit a place,

maybe a hundred and fifty acres. We tilled fifty. About eighty of it was woods. Must of been

a fortune in oak and pine. We had a pond that was four acres. And a stream, full of fish. Right

down in the heart of a valley. Prettiest mountain you ever saw, Montour Ridge. We lived in

Montour Country. Just north of the Susquehanna. We had a four-stall hog pen. The big barn

was forty feet by a hundred and forty – hip-roofed too. And all around in the mountains was

T h e s i g n a t u r eToni

Morrison

USAToni Morrison is the first African-

American woman to receive the

Nobel Prize for Literature (1993). In

her novels, she focuses on the expe-

rience of black Americans in an

unjust society and the search for

cultural identity. Born in 1931, in

Ohio, Morrison is considered one of

the best contemporary novelists. Her

works include The Bluest Eye, Song

of Solomon, and Beloved, which won

the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Along with her novels Paradise and

Love, Morrison wrote several chil-

dren's books, including The Book of

Mean People, and The Ant or the

Grasshopper?, with her son Slade.

Retired from her professional post

at Princeton University in 2006, she

lives in Princeton and upstate New

York.

41THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

At fifty-two, Macon Dead was as imposing a man as he had been at forty-two, when Milkman

thought he was the biggest thing in the world. Bigger even than the house they lived in. But

today he had seen a woman who was just as tall and who had made him feel tall too.

“I know I’m the youngest one in this family, but I ain’t no baby. You treat me like I was

a baby. You keep saying you don’t have to explain nothing to me. How do you think that

makes me feel? Like a baby, that’s what. Like a twelve-year-old baby!”

“Don’t you raise your voice to me.”

“Is that the way you treat your father treated you when you were twelve?”

“Watch your mouth!” Macon roared. He took his hands out of his pocket but didn’t

know what to do with them. He was momentarily confused. His son’s question had shifted

the scenery. He was seeing himself at twelve, standing in Milkman’s shoes and feeling what

he himself had felt for his own father. The numbness that had settled on him when he saw

the man he loved and admired fall off the fence; something wild ran through him when he

watched the body twitching in the dirt. His father had sat for five nights on a split-rail fence

cradling a shotgun and in the end died protecting his property. Was that what this boy felt

for him? Maybe it was time to tell him things.

“Well, did he?”

“I worked right alongside my father. Right alongside him. From the time I was four or

five we worked together. Just the two of us. Our mother was dead. Died when Pilate was

born. Pilate was just a baby. She stayed over at another farm in the daytime. I carried her

over there myself in my arms every morning. Then I’d go back across the fields and meet my

father. We’d hitch President Lincoln to the plow and… That’s what we called her: President

Lincoln. Papa said Lincoln was a good plow hand before he was President and you shouldn’t

take a good plow hand away from his work. He called our farm Lincoln’s Heaven. It was a

little bit a place. But it looked big to me then. I know now it must a been a little bit a place,

maybe a hundred and fifty acres. We tilled fifty. About eighty of it was woods. Must of been

a fortune in oak and pine. We had a pond that was four acres. And a stream, full of fish. Right

down in the heart of a valley. Prettiest mountain you ever saw, Montour Ridge. We lived in

Montour Country. Just north of the Susquehanna. We had a four-stall hog pen. The big barn

was forty feet by a hundred and forty – hip-roofed too. And all around in the mountains was

T h e s i g n a t u r eToni

Morrison

USAToni Morrison is the first African-

American woman to receive the

Nobel Prize for Literature (1993). In

her novels, she focuses on the expe-

rience of black Americans in an

unjust society and the search for

cultural identity. Born in 1931, in

Ohio, Morrison is considered one of

the best contemporary novelists. Her

works include The Bluest Eye, Song

of Solomon, and Beloved, which won

the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Along with her novels Paradise and

Love, Morrison wrote several chil-

dren's books, including The Book of

Mean People, and The Ant or the

Grasshopper?, with her son Slade.

Retired from her professional post

at Princeton University in 2006, she

lives in Princeton and upstate New

York.

“Who shot him, Daddy?”

Macon focused his eyes on his son. “Papa couldn’t read, couldn’t even sign his name.

Had a mark he used. They tricked him. He signed something, I don’t know what, and they

told him they owned his property. He never read nothing. I tried to teach him, but he said

he couldn’t remember those little marks from one day to the next. Wrote one word in his

life – Pilate’s name; copied it out of the Bible. That’s what she got folded up in that earring.

He should have let me teach him. Everything bad that ever happened to him happened

because he couldn’t read. Got his name messed up cause he couldn’t read.”

“His name? How?”

“When freedom came. All the colored people in the state had to register with the

Freedmen’s Bureau.”

“Your father was a slave?”

“What kind of foolish question is that? Course he was. Who hadn’t been in 1869?

They all had to register. Free and not free. Free and used-to-be slaves. Papa was in his teens

and went to sign up, but the man behind the desk was drunk. He asked Papa where he was

born. Papa said Macon. Then he asked him who his father was. Papa said, ‘He’s dead.’ Asked

him who owned him, Papa said, ‘I’m free.’ Well, the Yankee wrote it all down, but in the

wrong spaces. Had him born in Dunfrie, wherever the hell that is, and in the space for his

name the fool wrote, ‘Dead’ comma ‘Macon’. But Papa couldn’t read so he never found out

what he was registered as till Mama told him. They met on a wagon going North. Started

talking about one thing and another, told her about being a freedman and showed off his

papers to her. When she looked at his paper she read him out what it said.”

“He didn’t have to keep the name, did he? He could have used his real name, couldn’t he?”

“Mama liked it. Like the name. Said it was new and would wipe out the past. Wipe it

all out.”

deer and wild turkey. You ain’t tasted nothing till you taste wild turkey the way Papa cooked

it. He’d burn it real fast in the fire. Burn it black all over. That sealed it. Sealed the juices in.

Then he’d let it roast on a spit for twenty-four hours. When you cut the black burnt part off,

the meat underneath was tender, sweet, juicy. And we had fruit trees. Apple, cherry. Pilate

tried to make me a cherry pie once.”

Macon paused and let the smile come on. He had not said any of this for years. Had

not even reminisced much about it recently. When he was first married he used to talk about

Lincoln’s Heaven to Ruth. Sitting on the porch swing in the dark, he would recreate the land

that was to have been his. Or when he was just starting out in the business of buying hou-

ses, he would lounge around the barbershop and swap stories with the men there. But for

years he hadn’t had that kind of time, or interest. But now he was doing it again, with his

son, and every detail of that land was clear in his mind: the well, the apple orchard, President

Lincoln; her foal, Mary Todd; Ulysses S. Grant, their cow, General Lee, their hog. That was the

way he knew what history he remembered. His father couldn’t read, couldn’t write; knew

only what he saw and hard tell of. But he had etched in Macon’s mind certain historical figu-

res, and as a boy in school, Macon thought of the personalities of his horse, his hog, when

he read about these people. His father may have called their plow horse President Lincoln

as a joke, but Macon always thought of Lincoln with fondness since he had loved him first as

a strong, steady, gentle, and obedient horse. He even liked General Lee, for one spring they

slaughtered him and ate the best pork outside Virginia, “from the butt to the smoked ham

to the ribs to the sausage to the jowl to the feet to the tail to the head cheese” – for eight

months. And there was cracklin in November.

“General Lee was alright by me,” he told Milkman, smiling. “Finest general I ever knew.

Even his balls was tasty. Circe made up the best pot of maws she ever cooked. Huh! I’d for-

gotten that woman’s name. That was it, Circe. Worked at a big farm some white people

owned in Danville, Pennsylvania. Funny how things get away from you. For years you can’t

remember nothing. Then just like that, it all comes back to you. Had a dog run, they did.

That was the big sport back then. Dog races. White people did love their dogs. Kill a nigger

and comb their hair at the same time. But I’ve seen grown white men cry about their dogs.”

His voice sounded different to Milkman. Less hard, and his speech was different. More

southern and comfortable and soft. Milkman spoke softly too. “Pilate said somebody shot

your father. Five feet into the air.”

“Took him sixteen years to get that farm to where it was paying. It’s all dairy country

up there now. Then it wasn’t. Then it was… nice.”

4342

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To n i M o r r i s o n

“Who shot him, Daddy?”

Macon focused his eyes on his son. “Papa couldn’t read, couldn’t even sign his name.

Had a mark he used. They tricked him. He signed something, I don’t know what, and they

told him they owned his property. He never read nothing. I tried to teach him, but he said

he couldn’t remember those little marks from one day to the next. Wrote one word in his

life – Pilate’s name; copied it out of the Bible. That’s what she got folded up in that earring.

He should have let me teach him. Everything bad that ever happened to him happened

because he couldn’t read. Got his name messed up cause he couldn’t read.”

“His name? How?”

“When freedom came. All the colored people in the state had to register with the

Freedmen’s Bureau.”

“Your father was a slave?”

“What kind of foolish question is that? Course he was. Who hadn’t been in 1869?

They all had to register. Free and not free. Free and used-to-be slaves. Papa was in his teens

and went to sign up, but the man behind the desk was drunk. He asked Papa where he was

born. Papa said Macon. Then he asked him who his father was. Papa said, ‘He’s dead.’ Asked

him who owned him, Papa said, ‘I’m free.’ Well, the Yankee wrote it all down, but in the

wrong spaces. Had him born in Dunfrie, wherever the hell that is, and in the space for his

name the fool wrote, ‘Dead’ comma ‘Macon’. But Papa couldn’t read so he never found out

what he was registered as till Mama told him. They met on a wagon going North. Started

talking about one thing and another, told her about being a freedman and showed off his

papers to her. When she looked at his paper she read him out what it said.”

“He didn’t have to keep the name, did he? He could have used his real name, couldn’t he?”

“Mama liked it. Like the name. Said it was new and would wipe out the past. Wipe it

all out.”

deer and wild turkey. You ain’t tasted nothing till you taste wild turkey the way Papa cooked

it. He’d burn it real fast in the fire. Burn it black all over. That sealed it. Sealed the juices in.

Then he’d let it roast on a spit for twenty-four hours. When you cut the black burnt part off,

the meat underneath was tender, sweet, juicy. And we had fruit trees. Apple, cherry. Pilate

tried to make me a cherry pie once.”

Macon paused and let the smile come on. He had not said any of this for years. Had

not even reminisced much about it recently. When he was first married he used to talk about

Lincoln’s Heaven to Ruth. Sitting on the porch swing in the dark, he would recreate the land

that was to have been his. Or when he was just starting out in the business of buying hou-

ses, he would lounge around the barbershop and swap stories with the men there. But for

years he hadn’t had that kind of time, or interest. But now he was doing it again, with his

son, and every detail of that land was clear in his mind: the well, the apple orchard, President

Lincoln; her foal, Mary Todd; Ulysses S. Grant, their cow, General Lee, their hog. That was the

way he knew what history he remembered. His father couldn’t read, couldn’t write; knew

only what he saw and hard tell of. But he had etched in Macon’s mind certain historical figu-

res, and as a boy in school, Macon thought of the personalities of his horse, his hog, when

he read about these people. His father may have called their plow horse President Lincoln

as a joke, but Macon always thought of Lincoln with fondness since he had loved him first as

a strong, steady, gentle, and obedient horse. He even liked General Lee, for one spring they

slaughtered him and ate the best pork outside Virginia, “from the butt to the smoked ham

to the ribs to the sausage to the jowl to the feet to the tail to the head cheese” – for eight

months. And there was cracklin in November.

“General Lee was alright by me,” he told Milkman, smiling. “Finest general I ever knew.

Even his balls was tasty. Circe made up the best pot of maws she ever cooked. Huh! I’d for-

gotten that woman’s name. That was it, Circe. Worked at a big farm some white people

owned in Danville, Pennsylvania. Funny how things get away from you. For years you can’t

remember nothing. Then just like that, it all comes back to you. Had a dog run, they did.

That was the big sport back then. Dog races. White people did love their dogs. Kill a nigger

and comb their hair at the same time. But I’ve seen grown white men cry about their dogs.”

His voice sounded different to Milkman. Less hard, and his speech was different. More

southern and comfortable and soft. Milkman spoke softly too. “Pilate said somebody shot

your father. Five feet into the air.”

“Took him sixteen years to get that farm to where it was paying. It’s all dairy country

up there now. Then it wasn’t. Then it was… nice.”

4342

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To n i M o r r i s o n

Franceso Sionil José

PH IL IPP INES

Francisco Sionil Jose has been cal-

led a Philippine national treasure.

Born in 1924, he is one of the most

widely-read Filipino writers. His

series of novels and short stories

depict the social underpinnings of

class struggles and colonialism. He

attended the University of Santo

Tomas after World War II, but drop-

ped out and plunged into writing

and journalism in Manila. In subse-

quent years, he edited various lite-

rary and journalistic publications

and started a publishing house. The

Pretenders is his most popular

novel.

45THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

In a moral crisis such as what grips the country today when a handful of Congressmen betray

the people’s trust in obedience to their powerful leader, what can the ordinary Filipino do?

What can a writer do?

The German writer Stefan Heym who lived through Nazism and East Germany’s com-

munist regime had this advice: “the writer’s duty is to survive.”

“What” I asked, “if survival means acquiescence or surrender?”

“Then,” he replied, “survival is also a test of his moral strength.”

Do our writers today have that strength? Every so often, when I am asked by young

writers for advice, this is what I tell them:

Memory and sentiment are never enough. You must master the craft of writing and

use the language you know best – respect the word and know the rules before you break

them. Having mastered the word, use it then as one would create a window – polished,

untarnished, so that you can see clearly beyond the crystal. Don’t cover the frame with frills

and fancy drapes for it is these decorations that will attract, and hide the view. Review,

revise, rewrite till it hurts, till the hand that holds the pen is numb, till every sentence reads

easily, every word in place and you know by then that the window is made.

You are a storyteller, a singer – so learn rhythm, music, resonance, narrative technique,

until these are in your marrow. You can learn all these by writing letters, notes, exercises,

journals. That concert pianist, that prima ballerina – everyday they practise and limber up

before they go on stage.

Do not be waylaid by the latest literary fads, by fashionable ideologies. They will surely

pass as unremembered seasons and what will remain are those verities – love and death,

faith and forbearance, which you have made permanent in prose. Look at your craft with

humility, and be your own severest critic. Do not for once believe that ancient panegyric that

the pen is mightier than the sword. Nunca! It is always naked power which triumphs and

rules, against which you must always rail till your voice hoarsens. Beware, too, of early praise

for it can destroy, and remember again that only time will tell if your work will prevail.

Write with all your senses, and some of your ulcers working, so that what you write

will throb with life. Live, be observant, be the eternal child aglow with awe and wonder of

T o t h e y o u n g w r i t e r

Franceso Sionil José

PH IL IPP INES

Francisco Sionil Jose has been cal-

led a Philippine national treasure.

Born in 1924, he is one of the most

widely-read Filipino writers. His

series of novels and short stories

depict the social underpinnings of

class struggles and colonialism. He

attended the University of Santo

Tomas after World War II, but drop-

ped out and plunged into writing

and journalism in Manila. In subse-

quent years, he edited various lite-

rary and journalistic publications

and started a publishing house. The

Pretenders is his most popular

novel.

45THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

In a moral crisis such as what grips the country today when a handful of Congressmen betray

the people’s trust in obedience to their powerful leader, what can the ordinary Filipino do?

What can a writer do?

The German writer Stefan Heym who lived through Nazism and East Germany’s com-

munist regime had this advice: “the writer’s duty is to survive.”

“What” I asked, “if survival means acquiescence or surrender?”

“Then,” he replied, “survival is also a test of his moral strength.”

Do our writers today have that strength? Every so often, when I am asked by young

writers for advice, this is what I tell them:

Memory and sentiment are never enough. You must master the craft of writing and

use the language you know best – respect the word and know the rules before you break

them. Having mastered the word, use it then as one would create a window – polished,

untarnished, so that you can see clearly beyond the crystal. Don’t cover the frame with frills

and fancy drapes for it is these decorations that will attract, and hide the view. Review,

revise, rewrite till it hurts, till the hand that holds the pen is numb, till every sentence reads

easily, every word in place and you know by then that the window is made.

You are a storyteller, a singer – so learn rhythm, music, resonance, narrative technique,

until these are in your marrow. You can learn all these by writing letters, notes, exercises,

journals. That concert pianist, that prima ballerina – everyday they practise and limber up

before they go on stage.

Do not be waylaid by the latest literary fads, by fashionable ideologies. They will surely

pass as unremembered seasons and what will remain are those verities – love and death,

faith and forbearance, which you have made permanent in prose. Look at your craft with

humility, and be your own severest critic. Do not for once believe that ancient panegyric that

the pen is mightier than the sword. Nunca! It is always naked power which triumphs and

rules, against which you must always rail till your voice hoarsens. Beware, too, of early praise

for it can destroy, and remember again that only time will tell if your work will prevail.

Write with all your senses, and some of your ulcers working, so that what you write

will throb with life. Live, be observant, be the eternal child aglow with awe and wonder of

T o t h e y o u n g w r i t e r

then exists beyond our puny lives, a testament to our humanity for all the world to witness.

And having witnessed it, it is our hope that what we have written will evoke compassion, for

it the end, this is what draws all men together.

One final word: write wherever you can do it best, in exile perhaps, but never, never

leave your village, your town, your beginning. Enshrine it in the heart, sanctify it in your mind

for your beginning gives you your soul, your humanity. In remembering with passion, you will

be writing about a particular place and a particular people but you shall have given them

also what all men will recognize, the universality of man and of art itself.

the world, amass memories for they will all be retrieved as dialogue, color, plot, action.

Ask yourself, what is literature, who is your audience. Literature is the noblest of the

arts and writers should, therefore, be of noble bearing, affirming in their very lives the

Socratic precepts of virtue and excellence. This is difficult to achieve; perhaps, it is enough

that you strive to be able to look at every man straight in the eye and to sleep soundly at

night without the nightmares of a bad conscience.

Be an honest witness to your time, and be strong when they revile you for telling the

truth. Your vocation will also condemn you to solitude, but remember – he who stands alone

is the strongest. Even in your shattering loneliness, remember you are writing, not for critics,

academics, or other writers, but for your own people who, in their silence and perhaps

poverty, cannot express their aspirations and anguish. You are their voice but only if you have

not deserted or betrayed them.

Whatever suffering might be heaped upon you, never, never lose your equanimity,

your humor. Much of what you will write be bleak – just the same, learn to laugh at yourself

first, and your critics, and certainly at the antics of the wretched among your countrymen.

Nurture in yourself that abiding sense of urgency, of passion – deep and volcanic –

but always keep it in control and with it, that profound melancholy wrought by our history,

by our own leaders – no matter how effulgent our fiestas and how bright our smiles. This

passion, this melancholy, must surface as literature if you are to be an artist. So Lenin said all

art is propaganda, but remember, not all propaganda is art.

I make writing seem difficult because it really is. Worse, it may not even make you live

comfortably, and you will grow old like so many of us who tried without ever being appre-

ciated in your own country. Just look at all those books piled in bargain counters – nobody

buys them for though we have a novelist as a national hero, we do not read novels.

Why then must you write at all? Do it because there is so much hypocrisy and cus-

sedness in us and, who knows, you may be able to exorcise a bit of these. Do it because

many of us have lost our moorings, and it is in literature where history lives, where we can

know best ourselves so that we can then live ourselves and be rooted again in native soil. Do

it because it is a vocation which will give you such pleasure, so lasting and so deep – it trans-

cends anything those sybarites and sensualists covet. I assure you, this old man knows.

What, after all, is literature but pain remembered. In remembering, we adorn it with

our imagination, our craftsmanship, ennobling it perhaps, imbuing it with permanence; it

4746

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - F R A N C I S C O S I O N I L J O S É qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

F r a n c e s o S i o n i l J o s é

then exists beyond our puny lives, a testament to our humanity for all the world to witness.

And having witnessed it, it is our hope that what we have written will evoke compassion, for

it the end, this is what draws all men together.

One final word: write wherever you can do it best, in exile perhaps, but never, never

leave your village, your town, your beginning. Enshrine it in the heart, sanctify it in your mind

for your beginning gives you your soul, your humanity. In remembering with passion, you will

be writing about a particular place and a particular people but you shall have given them

also what all men will recognize, the universality of man and of art itself.

the world, amass memories for they will all be retrieved as dialogue, color, plot, action.

Ask yourself, what is literature, who is your audience. Literature is the noblest of the

arts and writers should, therefore, be of noble bearing, affirming in their very lives the

Socratic precepts of virtue and excellence. This is difficult to achieve; perhaps, it is enough

that you strive to be able to look at every man straight in the eye and to sleep soundly at

night without the nightmares of a bad conscience.

Be an honest witness to your time, and be strong when they revile you for telling the

truth. Your vocation will also condemn you to solitude, but remember – he who stands alone

is the strongest. Even in your shattering loneliness, remember you are writing, not for critics,

academics, or other writers, but for your own people who, in their silence and perhaps

poverty, cannot express their aspirations and anguish. You are their voice but only if you have

not deserted or betrayed them.

Whatever suffering might be heaped upon you, never, never lose your equanimity,

your humor. Much of what you will write be bleak – just the same, learn to laugh at yourself

first, and your critics, and certainly at the antics of the wretched among your countrymen.

Nurture in yourself that abiding sense of urgency, of passion – deep and volcanic –

but always keep it in control and with it, that profound melancholy wrought by our history,

by our own leaders – no matter how effulgent our fiestas and how bright our smiles. This

passion, this melancholy, must surface as literature if you are to be an artist. So Lenin said all

art is propaganda, but remember, not all propaganda is art.

I make writing seem difficult because it really is. Worse, it may not even make you live

comfortably, and you will grow old like so many of us who tried without ever being appre-

ciated in your own country. Just look at all those books piled in bargain counters – nobody

buys them for though we have a novelist as a national hero, we do not read novels.

Why then must you write at all? Do it because there is so much hypocrisy and cus-

sedness in us and, who knows, you may be able to exorcise a bit of these. Do it because

many of us have lost our moorings, and it is in literature where history lives, where we can

know best ourselves so that we can then live ourselves and be rooted again in native soil. Do

it because it is a vocation which will give you such pleasure, so lasting and so deep – it trans-

cends anything those sybarites and sensualists covet. I assure you, this old man knows.

What, after all, is literature but pain remembered. In remembering, we adorn it with

our imagination, our craftsmanship, ennobling it perhaps, imbuing it with permanence; it

4746

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - F R A N C I S C O S I O N I L J O S É qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

F r a n c e s o S i o n i l J o s é

49THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

“I am going to school,” I announced one day. It became a joke to be passed from mouth to

mouth, producing instant guffaws. Mother appeasingly said. “Wait till you are as old as your

sister.”

The hum of voices, once the pupils were within the buildings, took mysterious over-

tones. Through the open windows of the schoolroom I saw heads in concentration, the

majestic figure of a teacher who passed in and out of vision, mumbling incantations over the

heads of his attentive audience. Different chants broke out from different parts of the buil-

ding, sometimes there was even direct singing, accompanied by a harmonium. When the

indoor rites were over, they came out in different groups, played games, ran races, they

spread over the compound picking up litter, sweeping the paths, clipping lawns and wee-

ding flower-beds. They roamed about with hoes, cutlasses, brooms and sticks, retired into

open workshop shed where they wove baskets, carved bits of wood and bamboo, kneaded

clay and transformed them into odd-shaped objects.

Under the anxious eyes of ‘Auntie’ Lawanle, I played by myself on the pavement of

our house and observed these varied activities. The tools of the open air were again trans-

formed into books, exercise books, slates, books under armpits, in little tin or wooden boxes,

books in raffia bags, tied together with string and carried on the head, slung over shoulders

in cloth pouches. Directly in front of our home was the lawn which was used exclusively by

girls from the other school. They formed circles, chased one another in and out of the circles,

struggled for a ball and tossed it through an iron hoop stuck on a board. Then they also vani-

shed into classrooms, books were produced and they commenced their own observances of

the mystery rites.

Tinu became even more smug. My erstwhile playmate had entered a new world and,

though we still played together, she now had a new terrain to draw upon. Every morning she

was woken earlier than I, scrubbed, fed and led to school by one of the older children of the

house. My toys and games soon palled but the laughter still rankled, so I no longer demanded

that I join Tinu in school.

Instead, I got up one morning as she was being woken up, demanded my bath at the

same time, ate, selected the clothing which I thought came closest to the uniforms I had

seen, and insisted on being dressed in them. I had marked down a number of books on

father’s table but did not yet remove them. I waited in the front room. When Tinu passed

I a m g o i n g t o s c h o o l

Wole Soyinka is a Nobel prize-win-

ning playwright, poet, and novelist,

Born in Nigeria, Soyinka is conside-

red by many to be Africa’s finest wri-

ter. His work serves as a record of

twentieth-century Africa’s political

turmoil and struggle to reconcile

tradition with modern culture.

Soyinka has published over forty

works in a career that spans five

decades including most recently

Ake: The Years of Childhood and You

Must Set Forth at Dawn: A Memoir

(2006). He was appointed UNESCO

Goodwill Ambassador in 1994.

Wole Soyinka

NIGERIA

49THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

“I am going to school,” I announced one day. It became a joke to be passed from mouth to

mouth, producing instant guffaws. Mother appeasingly said. “Wait till you are as old as your

sister.”

The hum of voices, once the pupils were within the buildings, took mysterious over-

tones. Through the open windows of the schoolroom I saw heads in concentration, the

majestic figure of a teacher who passed in and out of vision, mumbling incantations over the

heads of his attentive audience. Different chants broke out from different parts of the buil-

ding, sometimes there was even direct singing, accompanied by a harmonium. When the

indoor rites were over, they came out in different groups, played games, ran races, they

spread over the compound picking up litter, sweeping the paths, clipping lawns and wee-

ding flower-beds. They roamed about with hoes, cutlasses, brooms and sticks, retired into

open workshop shed where they wove baskets, carved bits of wood and bamboo, kneaded

clay and transformed them into odd-shaped objects.

Under the anxious eyes of ‘Auntie’ Lawanle, I played by myself on the pavement of

our house and observed these varied activities. The tools of the open air were again trans-

formed into books, exercise books, slates, books under armpits, in little tin or wooden boxes,

books in raffia bags, tied together with string and carried on the head, slung over shoulders

in cloth pouches. Directly in front of our home was the lawn which was used exclusively by

girls from the other school. They formed circles, chased one another in and out of the circles,

struggled for a ball and tossed it through an iron hoop stuck on a board. Then they also vani-

shed into classrooms, books were produced and they commenced their own observances of

the mystery rites.

Tinu became even more smug. My erstwhile playmate had entered a new world and,

though we still played together, she now had a new terrain to draw upon. Every morning she

was woken earlier than I, scrubbed, fed and led to school by one of the older children of the

house. My toys and games soon palled but the laughter still rankled, so I no longer demanded

that I join Tinu in school.

Instead, I got up one morning as she was being woken up, demanded my bath at the

same time, ate, selected the clothing which I thought came closest to the uniforms I had

seen, and insisted on being dressed in them. I had marked down a number of books on

father’s table but did not yet remove them. I waited in the front room. When Tinu passed

I a m g o i n g t o s c h o o l

Wole Soyinka is a Nobel prize-win-

ning playwright, poet, and novelist,

Born in Nigeria, Soyinka is conside-

red by many to be Africa’s finest wri-

ter. His work serves as a record of

twentieth-century Africa’s political

turmoil and struggle to reconcile

tradition with modern culture.

Soyinka has published over forty

works in a career that spans five

decades including most recently

Ake: The Years of Childhood and You

Must Set Forth at Dawn: A Memoir

(2006). He was appointed UNESCO

Goodwill Ambassador in 1994.

Wole Soyinka

NIGERIA

school and the piles of books with which my father appeared to commune so religiously in

the front room, and which had constantly to be snatched from me as soon as my hands

grew long enough to reach them on the table.

“I shall come every day.” I confidently declared.

through with her escort, I let them leave the house, waited a few moments, then seized the

books I had earlier selected and followed them. Both parents were still in the dining room.

I followed at a discreet distance, so I was not noticed until we arrived at the infant school.

I waited at the door, watched where Tinu was seated, then went and climbed on to the

bench beside her.

Only then did Lawanle, Tinu’s escort that day, see me. She let out a cry of alarm and

asked me what I thought I was doing. I ignored her. The teachers heard the commotion and

came into the room. I appeared to be everybody’s object of fun. They looked at me, poin-

ted and they held their sides, rocked forwards and backwards with laughter. A man who

appeared to be in charge of the infant section next came in, he was also our father’s friend

and came often to the house. I recognized him, and I was pleased that he was not laughing

with the others. Instead he stood in front of me and asked,

“Have you come to keep your sister company?”

“No. I have come to school.”

Then he looked down at the books I had plucked from father’s table.

“Aren’t these your father’s books?”

“Yes, I want to learn them.”

“But you are not old enough, Wole.”

“I am three years old.”

Lawanle cut in. ‘”Three years old wo? Don’t mind him sir, he won’t be three until July.”

“I am nearly three. Anyway, I have come to school. I have books.” He turned to the

class-teacher and said, “Enter his name in the register.” He then turned to me and said, “Of

course you needn’t come to school every day – come only when you feel like it. You may

wake up tomorrow morning and feel that you would prefer to play at home…”

I looked at him in some astonishment. Not feel like coming to school! The coloured

maps, markers, slates, inkwells in neat round holes, crayons and drawing books, a shelf laden

with modelled objects – animals, human beings, implements – raffia and basket-work in

various stages of completion, even the blackboards, chalk and duster… I had yet to see a

more inviting playroom! In addition, I had made some vague, intuitive connection between

5150

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W o l e S o y i n k a

school and the piles of books with which my father appeared to commune so religiously in

the front room, and which had constantly to be snatched from me as soon as my hands

grew long enough to reach them on the table.

“I shall come every day.” I confidently declared.

through with her escort, I let them leave the house, waited a few moments, then seized the

books I had earlier selected and followed them. Both parents were still in the dining room.

I followed at a discreet distance, so I was not noticed until we arrived at the infant school.

I waited at the door, watched where Tinu was seated, then went and climbed on to the

bench beside her.

Only then did Lawanle, Tinu’s escort that day, see me. She let out a cry of alarm and

asked me what I thought I was doing. I ignored her. The teachers heard the commotion and

came into the room. I appeared to be everybody’s object of fun. They looked at me, poin-

ted and they held their sides, rocked forwards and backwards with laughter. A man who

appeared to be in charge of the infant section next came in, he was also our father’s friend

and came often to the house. I recognized him, and I was pleased that he was not laughing

with the others. Instead he stood in front of me and asked,

“Have you come to keep your sister company?”

“No. I have come to school.”

Then he looked down at the books I had plucked from father’s table.

“Aren’t these your father’s books?”

“Yes, I want to learn them.”

“But you are not old enough, Wole.”

“I am three years old.”

Lawanle cut in. ‘”Three years old wo? Don’t mind him sir, he won’t be three until July.”

“I am nearly three. Anyway, I have come to school. I have books.” He turned to the

class-teacher and said, “Enter his name in the register.” He then turned to me and said, “Of

course you needn’t come to school every day – come only when you feel like it. You may

wake up tomorrow morning and feel that you would prefer to play at home…”

I looked at him in some astonishment. Not feel like coming to school! The coloured

maps, markers, slates, inkwells in neat round holes, crayons and drawing books, a shelf laden

with modelled objects – animals, human beings, implements – raffia and basket-work in

various stages of completion, even the blackboards, chalk and duster… I had yet to see a

more inviting playroom! In addition, I had made some vague, intuitive connection between

5150

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W o l e S o y i n k a

53THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

In 1989, I was invited to speak at a conference, “The State of the English Language.” Upon

learning that I would be on a panel with noted academicians and writers, I wrote this apolo-

gia the night before. Wendy Laser of The Threepenny Review later asked to publish it, and

subsequently it was included in The Best American Essay 1991.

I am not a scholar of English or literature. I cannot give you much more than personal

opinions on the English language and its variations in this country or others.

I am a writer. And by that definition, I am someone who has always loved language.

I am fascinated by language in daily life. I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the

power of language – the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a

simple truth. Language is the tool of my trade. And I use them all – all the Englishes I grew

up with.

Recently, I was made keenly aware of the different Englishes I do use. I was giving a

talk to a large group of people, the same talk I had already given to half a dozen others

groups. The talk was about my writing, my life, and my book The Joy Luck Club, and it was

going along well enough, until I remembered one major difference that made the whole talk

sound wrong. My mother was in the room. And it was perhaps the first time she had heard

me give a lengthy speech, using the kind of English I have never used with her. I was saying

things like “the intersection of memory and imagination” and “There is an aspect of my fic-

tion that relates to thus-and-thus” – a speech filled with carefully wrought grammatical phra-

ses, burdened, it suddenly seemed to me, with nominalized forms, past perfect tenses,

conditional phrases, forms of standard English that I had learned in school and through

books, the forms of English I did not use at home with my mother.

Just last week, as I was walking down the street with her, I again found myself

conscious of the English I was using, the English I do use with her. We were talking about the

price of new and used furniture, and I heard myself saying this: “Not waste money that way.”

My husband was with us as well, and he didn’t notice any switch in my English. And then I

realized why. It’s because over the twenty years we have been together I have often used

the same kind of English with him, and sometimes he even uses it with me. It has become

our language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family that, the language

I grew up with.

M o t h e r t o n g u eAmy Tan

CHINAAmy Tan is the author of The Joy

Luck Club, a bestselling novel which

explores the relationships between

Chinese women and their Chinese-

American daughters. One of her

books, Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese

Cat, was developed into a popular

children’s television series on PBS. In

her off-hours, she is the lead singer

for the Rock Bottom Remainders, a

rock band made up of fellow writers,

including Stephen King and Dave

Barry – they make select appearances

in support of literacy programmes

for children.

53THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

In 1989, I was invited to speak at a conference, “The State of the English Language.” Upon

learning that I would be on a panel with noted academicians and writers, I wrote this apolo-

gia the night before. Wendy Laser of The Threepenny Review later asked to publish it, and

subsequently it was included in The Best American Essay 1991.

I am not a scholar of English or literature. I cannot give you much more than personal

opinions on the English language and its variations in this country or others.

I am a writer. And by that definition, I am someone who has always loved language.

I am fascinated by language in daily life. I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the

power of language – the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a

simple truth. Language is the tool of my trade. And I use them all – all the Englishes I grew

up with.

Recently, I was made keenly aware of the different Englishes I do use. I was giving a

talk to a large group of people, the same talk I had already given to half a dozen others

groups. The talk was about my writing, my life, and my book The Joy Luck Club, and it was

going along well enough, until I remembered one major difference that made the whole talk

sound wrong. My mother was in the room. And it was perhaps the first time she had heard

me give a lengthy speech, using the kind of English I have never used with her. I was saying

things like “the intersection of memory and imagination” and “There is an aspect of my fic-

tion that relates to thus-and-thus” – a speech filled with carefully wrought grammatical phra-

ses, burdened, it suddenly seemed to me, with nominalized forms, past perfect tenses,

conditional phrases, forms of standard English that I had learned in school and through

books, the forms of English I did not use at home with my mother.

Just last week, as I was walking down the street with her, I again found myself

conscious of the English I was using, the English I do use with her. We were talking about the

price of new and used furniture, and I heard myself saying this: “Not waste money that way.”

My husband was with us as well, and he didn’t notice any switch in my English. And then I

realized why. It’s because over the twenty years we have been together I have often used

the same kind of English with him, and sometimes he even uses it with me. It has become

our language of intimacy, a different sort of English that relates to family that, the language

I grew up with.

M o t h e r t o n g u eAmy Tan

CHINAAmy Tan is the author of The Joy

Luck Club, a bestselling novel which

explores the relationships between

Chinese women and their Chinese-

American daughters. One of her

books, Sagwa, The Chinese Siamese

Cat, was developed into a popular

children’s television series on PBS. In

her off-hours, she is the lead singer

for the Rock Bottom Remainders, a

rock band made up of fellow writers,

including Stephen King and Dave

Barry – they make select appearances

in support of literacy programmes

for children.

ted the quality of what she had to say. That is, because she expressed them imperfectly, her

thoughts were imperfect. And I had plenty of empirical evidence to support me: the fact

that people in department stores, at banks, and in restaurants did not take her seriously, did

not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not

hear her.

My mother has long realized the limitations of her English as well. When I was a teen-

ager, she used to have me call people on the phone and pretended I was she. In this guise,

I was forced to ask for information or even to complain and yell at people who had been

rude to her. One time it was a call to her stockbroker in New York. She had cashed out her

small portfolio, and it just so happened we were going to New York the week, our first trip

outside California. I had to get on the phone and say in an adolescent voice that was not

very convincing, “This is Mrs. Tan.”

My mother was standing in the back whispering loudly, “Why he don’t send me

check, already two weeks late. So mad he lie to me, losing my money.”

And then I said in perfect English on the phone, “Yes, I’m getting rather concerned.

You had agreed to send the check two weeks ago, but it hasn’t arrived.”

Then she began to talk more loudly. “What he want, I come to New York tell him front

of his boss, you cheating me?” And I was trying to calm her down, make her be quiet, while

telling the stockbroker, “I can’t tolerate any more excuses. If I don’t receive the check imme-

diately, I am going to have to speak to your manager when I’m in New York next week.” And

sure enough, the following week, there we were in front of this astonished stockbroker, and

I was sitting there red-faced and quiet, and my mother, the real Mrs. Tan, was shouting at

his boss in her impeccable broken English.

We used a similar routine more recently, for a situation that was far less humorous.

My mother had gone to the hospital for an appointment to find out about a CAT scan she

had had a month earlier. She said she had spoken very good English, her best English, no

mistakes. Still, she said, the hospital staff did not apologize when they informed her they had

lost the CAT scan and she had come for nothing. She said they did not seem to have any

sympathy when she told them she was anxious to know the exact diagnosis, since both her

husband and her son had died of brain tumors. She said they would not give her any more

information until the next time and she would have to make another appointment for that.

So she said she would not leave until the doctor called her daughter. She wouldn’t budge.

And when the doctor finally called her daughter, me, who spoke in perfect English – lo and

So that you’ll have some idea of what this family talk sounds like, I’ll quote what my

mother said during a conversation that I videotaped and then transcribed. During this

conversation, she was talking about a political gangster in Shanghai who had the same last

name as her family’s, Du, and how in his early years the gangster wanted to be adopted by

her family, who were rich by comparison. Later, the gangster became more powerful, far

richer than my mother’s family, and he showed up at my mother’s wedding to pay his res-

pects. Here’s what she said in part:

“Du Yusong having business like fruit stand. Like off-the-street kind. He is Du like Du

Zong – but not Tsung-ming Island people. The local people call putong. The river east side,

he belong to that side local people. That man want to ask Du Zong father take him in like

become own family. Du Zong father wasn’t look down on him, but didn’t take seriously, until

that man big like become a mafia. Now important person, very hard to inviting him. Chinese

way, came only to show respect, don’t stay for dinner. Respect for making big celebration,

he shows up. Mean gives lots of respect. Chinese custom. Chinese social life that way. If too

important won’t have to stay too long. He come to my wedding. I didn’t see, I heard it.

I gone to boy’s side, they have YMCA dinner. Chinese age I was nineteen.”

You should know that my mother’s expressive command of English belies how much

she actually understands. She reads the “Forbes report”, listens to “Wall Street Week”,

converses daily with her stockbroker, reads Shirley MacLaine’s books with ease – all kinds of

things I can’t begin to understand. Yet some of my friends tell me they understand fifty per-

cent of what my mother says. Some say they understand eighty to ninety percent. Some say

they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But to me, my mother’s

English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It’s my mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it,

is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the

way I saw things, expressed things made sense of the world.

Lately I’ve been giving more thought to the kind of English my mother speaks. Like

others, I have described it to people as “broken” or “fractured” English. But I wince when

I say that. It has always bothered me that I can think of no way to describe it other than “bro-

ken,” as if it were damaged and needed to be fixed, as if it lacked a certain wholeness and

soundness. I’ve heard other terms used, “limited English,” for example. But they seem just as

bad, as if everything is limited, including people’s perceptions of the limited-English speaker.

I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mother’s “limited” English

limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflec-

5554

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - A M Y T A N qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

ted the quality of what she had to say. That is, because she expressed them imperfectly, her

thoughts were imperfect. And I had plenty of empirical evidence to support me: the fact

that people in department stores, at banks, and in restaurants did not take her seriously, did

not give her good service, pretended not to understand her, or even acted as if they did not

hear her.

My mother has long realized the limitations of her English as well. When I was a teen-

ager, she used to have me call people on the phone and pretended I was she. In this guise,

I was forced to ask for information or even to complain and yell at people who had been

rude to her. One time it was a call to her stockbroker in New York. She had cashed out her

small portfolio, and it just so happened we were going to New York the week, our first trip

outside California. I had to get on the phone and say in an adolescent voice that was not

very convincing, “This is Mrs. Tan.”

My mother was standing in the back whispering loudly, “Why he don’t send me

check, already two weeks late. So mad he lie to me, losing my money.”

And then I said in perfect English on the phone, “Yes, I’m getting rather concerned.

You had agreed to send the check two weeks ago, but it hasn’t arrived.”

Then she began to talk more loudly. “What he want, I come to New York tell him front

of his boss, you cheating me?” And I was trying to calm her down, make her be quiet, while

telling the stockbroker, “I can’t tolerate any more excuses. If I don’t receive the check imme-

diately, I am going to have to speak to your manager when I’m in New York next week.” And

sure enough, the following week, there we were in front of this astonished stockbroker, and

I was sitting there red-faced and quiet, and my mother, the real Mrs. Tan, was shouting at

his boss in her impeccable broken English.

We used a similar routine more recently, for a situation that was far less humorous.

My mother had gone to the hospital for an appointment to find out about a CAT scan she

had had a month earlier. She said she had spoken very good English, her best English, no

mistakes. Still, she said, the hospital staff did not apologize when they informed her they had

lost the CAT scan and she had come for nothing. She said they did not seem to have any

sympathy when she told them she was anxious to know the exact diagnosis, since both her

husband and her son had died of brain tumors. She said they would not give her any more

information until the next time and she would have to make another appointment for that.

So she said she would not leave until the doctor called her daughter. She wouldn’t budge.

And when the doctor finally called her daughter, me, who spoke in perfect English – lo and

So that you’ll have some idea of what this family talk sounds like, I’ll quote what my

mother said during a conversation that I videotaped and then transcribed. During this

conversation, she was talking about a political gangster in Shanghai who had the same last

name as her family’s, Du, and how in his early years the gangster wanted to be adopted by

her family, who were rich by comparison. Later, the gangster became more powerful, far

richer than my mother’s family, and he showed up at my mother’s wedding to pay his res-

pects. Here’s what she said in part:

“Du Yusong having business like fruit stand. Like off-the-street kind. He is Du like Du

Zong – but not Tsung-ming Island people. The local people call putong. The river east side,

he belong to that side local people. That man want to ask Du Zong father take him in like

become own family. Du Zong father wasn’t look down on him, but didn’t take seriously, until

that man big like become a mafia. Now important person, very hard to inviting him. Chinese

way, came only to show respect, don’t stay for dinner. Respect for making big celebration,

he shows up. Mean gives lots of respect. Chinese custom. Chinese social life that way. If too

important won’t have to stay too long. He come to my wedding. I didn’t see, I heard it.

I gone to boy’s side, they have YMCA dinner. Chinese age I was nineteen.”

You should know that my mother’s expressive command of English belies how much

she actually understands. She reads the “Forbes report”, listens to “Wall Street Week”,

converses daily with her stockbroker, reads Shirley MacLaine’s books with ease – all kinds of

things I can’t begin to understand. Yet some of my friends tell me they understand fifty per-

cent of what my mother says. Some say they understand eighty to ninety percent. Some say

they understand none of it, as if she were speaking pure Chinese. But to me, my mother’s

English is perfectly clear, perfectly natural. It’s my mother tongue. Her language, as I hear it,

is vivid, direct, full of observation and imagery. That was the language that helped shape the

way I saw things, expressed things made sense of the world.

Lately I’ve been giving more thought to the kind of English my mother speaks. Like

others, I have described it to people as “broken” or “fractured” English. But I wince when

I say that. It has always bothered me that I can think of no way to describe it other than “bro-

ken,” as if it were damaged and needed to be fixed, as if it lacked a certain wholeness and

soundness. I’ve heard other terms used, “limited English,” for example. But they seem just as

bad, as if everything is limited, including people’s perceptions of the limited-English speaker.

I know this for a fact, because when I was growing up, my mother’s “limited” English

limited my perception of her. I was ashamed of her English. I believed that her English reflec-

5554

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - A M Y T A N qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

precedes nightfall” was as logical as saying “A chill precedes a fever.” The only way I would

have gotten that answer right was to imagine an associative situation, such as my being diso-

bedient and staying out past sunset, catching a chill at night, which turned into a feverish

pneumonia as punishment – which indeed did happen to me.

I have been thinking about all this lately, about my mother’s English, about achieve-

ment tests. Because lately I’ve been asked, as a writer, why there are not more Asian-

Americans represented in American literature. Why are there few Asian-Americans enrolled

in creative writing programs? Why do so many Chinese students go into engineering? Well,

these are broad sociological questions I can’t begin to answer. But I have noticed in surveys

– in fact, just last week – that Asian-American students, as a whole, do significantly better

on math achievement tests that on English tests. And this makes me think that there are

other Asian-American students whose English spoken in the home might also be described

as “broken” or “limited.” And perhaps they also have teachers who are steering them away

from writing and into math and science, which is what happened to me.

Fortunately, I happen to be rebellious and enjoy the challenge of disproving assump-

tions made about me. I became an English major my first year in college, after being enrolled

as pre-med. I started writing nonfiction as a freelancer the week after I was told by my boss

at the time that writing was my worst skill and I should hone my talents towards account

management.

But it wasn’t until 1985 that I began to write fiction. At first I wrote what I thought to

be wittily crafted sentences, sentences that would finally prove I had mastery over the

English language. Here’s an example from the first draft of a story that later made its way

into The Joy Luck Club, but without this line: “That was my mental quandary in its nascent

state.” A terrible line, which I can barely pronounce.

Fortunately, for reasons I won’t get into here, I later decided I should envision a reader

for the stories I would write. And the reader I decided on was my mother, because these

were stories about mothers. So with this reader in mind – and in fact she did read my early

drafts – I began to write stories using all the Englishes I grew up with: the English I spoke to

my mother, which for lack of a better term might be described as “simple”; the English she

used with me, which for lack of a better term might be described as “broken”; my translation

of her Chinese, which could certainly be described as “watered down”; and what I imagined

to be her translation of her Chinese if she could speak in perfect English, her internal lan-

guage, and for that I sought to preserve the essence, but neither an English nor a Chinese

behold – we had assurances the CAT scan would be found, promises that a conference call

on Monday would be held, and apologies for any suffering my mother had gone through for

a most regrettable mistake.

I think my mother’s English almost had an effect on limiting my possibilities in life as

well. Sociologists and linguists probably will tell you that a person’s developing language

skills are more influenced by peers than by family. But I do think that the language spoken

in the family, especially in immigrant families which are more insular, plays a large role in sha-

ping the language of the child. And I believe that it affected my results on achievement

tests, IQ tests, and the SAT. While my English skills were never judged poor, compared with

math, English could not be considered my strong suit. In grade school I did moderately well,

getting perhaps B’s, sometimes B-pluses, in English and scoring perhaps in the sixtieth or

seventieth percentile on achievement tests. But those scores were not good enough to over-

ride the opinion that my true abilities lay in math and science, because in those areas I achie-

ved A’s and scored in the ninetieth percentile or higher.

This was understandable. Math is precise; there is only one correct answer. Whereas,

for me at least, the answers on English tests were always a judgment call, a matter of opi-

nion and personal experience. Those tests were constructed around items like fill-in-the-

blank sentence completion, such as “Even though Tom was ___ Mary thought he was ___.”

And the correct answer always seemed to be the most bland combinations, for example,

“Even though Tom was shy, Mary thought he was charming,” with the grammatical structure

“even though” limiting the correct answer to some sort of semantic opposites, so you

wouldn’t get answers like “Even though Tom was foolish, Mary thought he was ridiculous.”

Well, according to my mother, there were very few limitations as to what Tom could have

been and what Mary might have thought of him. So I never did well on tests like that.

The same was true with word analogies, pairs of words for which you were supposed

to find some logical semantic relationship, for instance, “Sunset is to nightfall as ___ is to

___.” And here you would be presented with a list of four possible pairs, one of which sho-

wed the same kind of relationship: red is stoplight, bus is to arrival, chills is to fever, yawn is

to boring. Well, I could never think that way. I knew what the tests were asking, but I could

not block out of my mind the images already created by the first pair, sunset is to nightfall

– and I would see a burst of colors against a darkening sky, the moon rising, the lowering of

a curtain of stars. And all the other pairs of words – red, bus, stoplight, boring – just threw

up a mass of confusing images, making it impossible for me to see that saying “A sunset

5756

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - A M Y T A N qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

precedes nightfall” was as logical as saying “A chill precedes a fever.” The only way I would

have gotten that answer right was to imagine an associative situation, such as my being diso-

bedient and staying out past sunset, catching a chill at night, which turned into a feverish

pneumonia as punishment – which indeed did happen to me.

I have been thinking about all this lately, about my mother’s English, about achieve-

ment tests. Because lately I’ve been asked, as a writer, why there are not more Asian-

Americans represented in American literature. Why are there few Asian-Americans enrolled

in creative writing programs? Why do so many Chinese students go into engineering? Well,

these are broad sociological questions I can’t begin to answer. But I have noticed in surveys

– in fact, just last week – that Asian-American students, as a whole, do significantly better

on math achievement tests that on English tests. And this makes me think that there are

other Asian-American students whose English spoken in the home might also be described

as “broken” or “limited.” And perhaps they also have teachers who are steering them away

from writing and into math and science, which is what happened to me.

Fortunately, I happen to be rebellious and enjoy the challenge of disproving assump-

tions made about me. I became an English major my first year in college, after being enrolled

as pre-med. I started writing nonfiction as a freelancer the week after I was told by my boss

at the time that writing was my worst skill and I should hone my talents towards account

management.

But it wasn’t until 1985 that I began to write fiction. At first I wrote what I thought to

be wittily crafted sentences, sentences that would finally prove I had mastery over the

English language. Here’s an example from the first draft of a story that later made its way

into The Joy Luck Club, but without this line: “That was my mental quandary in its nascent

state.” A terrible line, which I can barely pronounce.

Fortunately, for reasons I won’t get into here, I later decided I should envision a reader

for the stories I would write. And the reader I decided on was my mother, because these

were stories about mothers. So with this reader in mind – and in fact she did read my early

drafts – I began to write stories using all the Englishes I grew up with: the English I spoke to

my mother, which for lack of a better term might be described as “simple”; the English she

used with me, which for lack of a better term might be described as “broken”; my translation

of her Chinese, which could certainly be described as “watered down”; and what I imagined

to be her translation of her Chinese if she could speak in perfect English, her internal lan-

guage, and for that I sought to preserve the essence, but neither an English nor a Chinese

behold – we had assurances the CAT scan would be found, promises that a conference call

on Monday would be held, and apologies for any suffering my mother had gone through for

a most regrettable mistake.

I think my mother’s English almost had an effect on limiting my possibilities in life as

well. Sociologists and linguists probably will tell you that a person’s developing language

skills are more influenced by peers than by family. But I do think that the language spoken

in the family, especially in immigrant families which are more insular, plays a large role in sha-

ping the language of the child. And I believe that it affected my results on achievement

tests, IQ tests, and the SAT. While my English skills were never judged poor, compared with

math, English could not be considered my strong suit. In grade school I did moderately well,

getting perhaps B’s, sometimes B-pluses, in English and scoring perhaps in the sixtieth or

seventieth percentile on achievement tests. But those scores were not good enough to over-

ride the opinion that my true abilities lay in math and science, because in those areas I achie-

ved A’s and scored in the ninetieth percentile or higher.

This was understandable. Math is precise; there is only one correct answer. Whereas,

for me at least, the answers on English tests were always a judgment call, a matter of opi-

nion and personal experience. Those tests were constructed around items like fill-in-the-

blank sentence completion, such as “Even though Tom was ___ Mary thought he was ___.”

And the correct answer always seemed to be the most bland combinations, for example,

“Even though Tom was shy, Mary thought he was charming,” with the grammatical structure

“even though” limiting the correct answer to some sort of semantic opposites, so you

wouldn’t get answers like “Even though Tom was foolish, Mary thought he was ridiculous.”

Well, according to my mother, there were very few limitations as to what Tom could have

been and what Mary might have thought of him. So I never did well on tests like that.

The same was true with word analogies, pairs of words for which you were supposed

to find some logical semantic relationship, for instance, “Sunset is to nightfall as ___ is to

___.” And here you would be presented with a list of four possible pairs, one of which sho-

wed the same kind of relationship: red is stoplight, bus is to arrival, chills is to fever, yawn is

to boring. Well, I could never think that way. I knew what the tests were asking, but I could

not block out of my mind the images already created by the first pair, sunset is to nightfall

– and I would see a burst of colors against a darkening sky, the moon rising, the lowering of

a curtain of stars. And all the other pairs of words – red, bus, stoplight, boring – just threw

up a mass of confusing images, making it impossible for me to see that saying “A sunset

5756

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - A M Y T A N qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

structure. I wanted to capture what language ability tests could never reveal: her intent, her

passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts.

Apart from what any critic had to say about my writing, I knew I had succeeded

where it counted when my mother finished reading my book and gave me her verdict:

“So easy to read.”

5958

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - A M Y T A N qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

A m y Ta n

structure. I wanted to capture what language ability tests could never reveal: her intent, her

passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts.

Apart from what any critic had to say about my writing, I knew I had succeeded

where it counted when my mother finished reading my book and gave me her verdict:

“So easy to read.”

5958

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - A M Y T A N qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

A m y Ta n

61THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

He was standing around at the edge of the court, till night fell on him. His flat feet were hur-

ting a lot, so he sat on an umpire chair. Around nine he started to shiver, climbed off the

chair; from his pocket he pulled out the brightly-polished, double-edged key, closed the

metal gate he once painted blue, exactly like he did at the end of each and every day for

many-many years. This time unnecessarily though. “Why?” He opened it again. Then closed

it after all. “Everything must be in order. Or should be...” The brick-red quadrangles of the

three hard courts were glowing in the twilight. “Well, come on, let’s go!” – Vello urged

himself. Yet he was unable to start for a long time.

It was not easy to grasp that there was not going to be a tennis court there any more.

The whole zone was being sold, the sports centre was going to be closed down, the deserted

and desolate colossal concrete buildings of the screw factory were to be pulled down, just

like the blocks of one-room flats of the neighbouring streets. It was said that a shopping centre

was going to be built here, as if there were not enough of them. Vello – or as the majority

call him, Velo – was an old-age pensioner from the following day. His father was mocked

even more than him for his name, because he was called Vellöschaer, an ethnic German

Schwabian, who then Hungarianised his name in patriotic zeal, whereupon his parents

disowned him. (1) Vello learned of this only by hearsay. His father disappeared (they say he

tottered off to America) when he was on mother’s milk in a miserable house in Kispest, like

the ones waiting to be bulldozed here.

Vello was already working at the age of ten. He took the washed and ironed clothes

to his mother’s customers, first balancing the wicker basket on the top of his head – otherwise

he was not able to carry it. He was over thirteen when he became a ballboy at the tennis

courts of DAC, the Detective Athletics Club, near the bridgehead on the Pest side of the

Margaret bridge, on the banks of the Danube. After the war he became the warden. When

the DAC was liquidated, he went to the Újpesti Dózsa, and then came here to the distillery

sports centre in Budafoki street – it is hard to say – almost fifty years ago.

Every day he rose at dawn to arrive at the courts by quarter to six. He watered the

hard courts, carefully raked and netted the evening before. He pushed the wheelbarrow

around, he scattered a shovelful of new red clay here and there in the small holes hollowed

out by shoe heels, and trod the clay in. As long as it depended on him, they ordered the best

quality Champion clay. Then with chalk powder he filled up the machine which rolled on

C h e k h o v o n t h e b e n c h

Miklós Vámos is one of the most

respected writers in his native

Hungary. He has taught at Yale Uni-

versity, served as The Nation’s East

European correspondent, and pre-

sented Hungary’s most-watched

cultural television show. Vámos has

received numerous awards for his

plays, screenplays, novels and short

stories, including the Hungarian

Merit Award for lifetime achieve-

ment. The Book of Fathers is consi-

dered his most accomplished novel.

Miklós Vamós

HUNGARY

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61THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

He was standing around at the edge of the court, till night fell on him. His flat feet were hur-

ting a lot, so he sat on an umpire chair. Around nine he started to shiver, climbed off the

chair; from his pocket he pulled out the brightly-polished, double-edged key, closed the

metal gate he once painted blue, exactly like he did at the end of each and every day for

many-many years. This time unnecessarily though. “Why?” He opened it again. Then closed

it after all. “Everything must be in order. Or should be...” The brick-red quadrangles of the

three hard courts were glowing in the twilight. “Well, come on, let’s go!” – Vello urged

himself. Yet he was unable to start for a long time.

It was not easy to grasp that there was not going to be a tennis court there any more.

The whole zone was being sold, the sports centre was going to be closed down, the deserted

and desolate colossal concrete buildings of the screw factory were to be pulled down, just

like the blocks of one-room flats of the neighbouring streets. It was said that a shopping centre

was going to be built here, as if there were not enough of them. Vello – or as the majority

call him, Velo – was an old-age pensioner from the following day. His father was mocked

even more than him for his name, because he was called Vellöschaer, an ethnic German

Schwabian, who then Hungarianised his name in patriotic zeal, whereupon his parents

disowned him. (1) Vello learned of this only by hearsay. His father disappeared (they say he

tottered off to America) when he was on mother’s milk in a miserable house in Kispest, like

the ones waiting to be bulldozed here.

Vello was already working at the age of ten. He took the washed and ironed clothes

to his mother’s customers, first balancing the wicker basket on the top of his head – otherwise

he was not able to carry it. He was over thirteen when he became a ballboy at the tennis

courts of DAC, the Detective Athletics Club, near the bridgehead on the Pest side of the

Margaret bridge, on the banks of the Danube. After the war he became the warden. When

the DAC was liquidated, he went to the Újpesti Dózsa, and then came here to the distillery

sports centre in Budafoki street – it is hard to say – almost fifty years ago.

Every day he rose at dawn to arrive at the courts by quarter to six. He watered the

hard courts, carefully raked and netted the evening before. He pushed the wheelbarrow

around, he scattered a shovelful of new red clay here and there in the small holes hollowed

out by shoe heels, and trod the clay in. As long as it depended on him, they ordered the best

quality Champion clay. Then with chalk powder he filled up the machine which rolled on

C h e k h o v o n t h e b e n c h

Miklós Vámos is one of the most

respected writers in his native

Hungary. He has taught at Yale Uni-

versity, served as The Nation’s East

European correspondent, and pre-

sented Hungary’s most-watched

cultural television show. Vámos has

received numerous awards for his

plays, screenplays, novels and short

stories, including the Hungarian

Merit Award for lifetime achieve-

ment. The Book of Fathers is consi-

dered his most accomplished novel.

Miklós Vamós

HUNGARY

´́

´́

´́

´́

´́

that he had never played. Newer and newer generations followed on the courts bordered

by white lines, and they called him “Uncle Velo” even at the age of thirty. Some tennis vete-

rans much older than him adressed him as “Sports comrade Velo.” He was last called by his

first name probably at the DAC (not counting the Boy Scouts (2), by the caretaker there –

who preceded him – “Mister János, would you be kind enough to level Court 2 urgently…”

– at that time Vello was still at primary school. The dashing young boys were disappearing

one after the other from the field, the war was going on, and they were receiving their call-

up papers.

The first day of his retirement passed painfully slowly. Vello had failed to fill his life

with children, objects or passions. He had been married for not more than fourteen months,

at the end of the fifties. In those days the Board of Directors of the tennis section had allo-

cated a one-room council flat to him in the Vaspálya street where he had lived ever since.

At the time they got acquainted, Anna, his wife, was working as a secretary in the club-

house. She left a brief farewell letter: “Vello, I love someone else, forget me!” – forget-me-

not was the plump woman’s favourite flower. Vello could hardly remember her face; only her

clear blue eyes shone in his memory.

Vello took his time to wash, iron and clean up. For lunch he prepared a lecsó. (3) After

eating he took a nap, tried to sleep, but sleep eluded him. Later he went for a walk. At the

third corner he found himself short of breath. “Of course, because I am hurrying…” – he did

not wander around aimlessly like this. Even though his working time had also been fixed at

eight hours, he spent at least twelve at the sportsground. After work he drank a fröccs (4) in

the run-down pub on the corner. During dinner he would watch TV. He often fell asleep with

his head lying on the edge of the table. At weekends sometimes he went to see a film at

the old cinema.

Now the idea flashed through his mind to buy something for himself. But he could

not think out what it should be. He had one thousand forints on him. Up to that day he felt

that a green Hungarian banknote was a sizable sum of money. However for a long time one

thousand notes had replaced one hundred notes in the pay packets. He decided to pop into

the first shop he found on his way. He was unlucky. He came across a second-hand bookshop

with a worn sign. “It’s all the same to me...” He went down the steep, creaking wooden stair

into the rectangular basement. The tinkling of the bell above the door recalled childhood

memories: his mother used to serve customers in a grocer’s shop for a few years in Maglód

with the same tinkling bell. In that shop the oiled strip flooring used to creak welcomingly,

and the unavoidable smell of the chemicals weighed heavily on the air. In the second-hand

little wheels and drew the lines. By the time it was ready the players were already drifting in.

The team of the distillery was competing in the first league for a while; in the mid-fifties they

fell back to the second. By now they had dropped even behind the third and could only take

part in district competitions. However, Vello’s clay and lines stayed first class.

Nothing else is like it used to be. Nets now are black, balls are yellowish-green, com-

petitors’ clothes are gaudy and flashy, wooden rackets and strings made of intestines went

out of fashion, instead of having sprinkled lines the stripes are made of small white plastic

cards fixed into the ground… Gentleman’s sport is a thing of the past, swearing is common

and rackets are flung everywhere. On Vello’s courts it was only flies that flew around; it is all

over now. He might as well work somewhere else. They sent word to him from a private ten-

nis club, they would take him on as a tennis-court worker, paid by the hour, under the coun-

ter to save social insurance and VAT. It is also possible, explained the messenger, a young

man with a briefcase (he played in the distillery’s group before), that uncle Vello could ask

for a entrepreneur’s certificate at the local authority, possibly for a secondary occupation,

depending on what worked out better. Then, of course, he would have to pay social insu-

rance and VAT. In this case, if he opted for an activity involving VAT, he would need a good

bookkeeper, who knew his way round the system – he kept winking. Vello was shaking his

head, “thanks,” he thought, “but that’s the last thing I need … a bookkeeper and VAT… if my

pension is enough to make ends meet, I would rather sit on my bum and do nothing. It’s a

crazy world… they would send me to a bookkeeper, only to become an unskilled worker,

everyone’s dogsbody. I’m too old for that sort of thing.”

During the last working days he was sorely tempted to take the old and worthless

Slazenger racket that somebody had forgotten on Court 3 some twenty years ago, and serve

a few balls on Court 1, pretentiously named the Centre Court. Balls, he had plenty of. Kids

kept throwing them away and he collected them in a wooden case. Not all were dead, there

were some quite stringy ones among them. Every now and then Vello gave out most of

them on playgrounds to kindergarten children who still welcomed gifts like this.

As a farewell gesture, it might have been nice to hit a dozen balls precisely into the

corner of the serving area, as it has to be. I could also practise against the wall, he thought.

In his mind’s eye, past champions he once saw playing tennis popped up. He wondered

which one he would prefer to have a game with and what the result would be of a three-set

game. In the end he opted for “Little Gulyás,” Hungary’s eternal champion.

Vello spent all his life serving the “white” sport without having played once. As a child

he never thought he would pursue this high-society pastime. Later he felt ashamed to admit

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that he had never played. Newer and newer generations followed on the courts bordered

by white lines, and they called him “Uncle Velo” even at the age of thirty. Some tennis vete-

rans much older than him adressed him as “Sports comrade Velo.” He was last called by his

first name probably at the DAC (not counting the Boy Scouts (2), by the caretaker there –

who preceded him – “Mister János, would you be kind enough to level Court 2 urgently…”

– at that time Vello was still at primary school. The dashing young boys were disappearing

one after the other from the field, the war was going on, and they were receiving their call-

up papers.

The first day of his retirement passed painfully slowly. Vello had failed to fill his life

with children, objects or passions. He had been married for not more than fourteen months,

at the end of the fifties. In those days the Board of Directors of the tennis section had allo-

cated a one-room council flat to him in the Vaspálya street where he had lived ever since.

At the time they got acquainted, Anna, his wife, was working as a secretary in the club-

house. She left a brief farewell letter: “Vello, I love someone else, forget me!” – forget-me-

not was the plump woman’s favourite flower. Vello could hardly remember her face; only her

clear blue eyes shone in his memory.

Vello took his time to wash, iron and clean up. For lunch he prepared a lecsó. (3) After

eating he took a nap, tried to sleep, but sleep eluded him. Later he went for a walk. At the

third corner he found himself short of breath. “Of course, because I am hurrying…” – he did

not wander around aimlessly like this. Even though his working time had also been fixed at

eight hours, he spent at least twelve at the sportsground. After work he drank a fröccs (4) in

the run-down pub on the corner. During dinner he would watch TV. He often fell asleep with

his head lying on the edge of the table. At weekends sometimes he went to see a film at

the old cinema.

Now the idea flashed through his mind to buy something for himself. But he could

not think out what it should be. He had one thousand forints on him. Up to that day he felt

that a green Hungarian banknote was a sizable sum of money. However for a long time one

thousand notes had replaced one hundred notes in the pay packets. He decided to pop into

the first shop he found on his way. He was unlucky. He came across a second-hand bookshop

with a worn sign. “It’s all the same to me...” He went down the steep, creaking wooden stair

into the rectangular basement. The tinkling of the bell above the door recalled childhood

memories: his mother used to serve customers in a grocer’s shop for a few years in Maglód

with the same tinkling bell. In that shop the oiled strip flooring used to creak welcomingly,

and the unavoidable smell of the chemicals weighed heavily on the air. In the second-hand

little wheels and drew the lines. By the time it was ready the players were already drifting in.

The team of the distillery was competing in the first league for a while; in the mid-fifties they

fell back to the second. By now they had dropped even behind the third and could only take

part in district competitions. However, Vello’s clay and lines stayed first class.

Nothing else is like it used to be. Nets now are black, balls are yellowish-green, com-

petitors’ clothes are gaudy and flashy, wooden rackets and strings made of intestines went

out of fashion, instead of having sprinkled lines the stripes are made of small white plastic

cards fixed into the ground… Gentleman’s sport is a thing of the past, swearing is common

and rackets are flung everywhere. On Vello’s courts it was only flies that flew around; it is all

over now. He might as well work somewhere else. They sent word to him from a private ten-

nis club, they would take him on as a tennis-court worker, paid by the hour, under the coun-

ter to save social insurance and VAT. It is also possible, explained the messenger, a young

man with a briefcase (he played in the distillery’s group before), that uncle Vello could ask

for a entrepreneur’s certificate at the local authority, possibly for a secondary occupation,

depending on what worked out better. Then, of course, he would have to pay social insu-

rance and VAT. In this case, if he opted for an activity involving VAT, he would need a good

bookkeeper, who knew his way round the system – he kept winking. Vello was shaking his

head, “thanks,” he thought, “but that’s the last thing I need … a bookkeeper and VAT… if my

pension is enough to make ends meet, I would rather sit on my bum and do nothing. It’s a

crazy world… they would send me to a bookkeeper, only to become an unskilled worker,

everyone’s dogsbody. I’m too old for that sort of thing.”

During the last working days he was sorely tempted to take the old and worthless

Slazenger racket that somebody had forgotten on Court 3 some twenty years ago, and serve

a few balls on Court 1, pretentiously named the Centre Court. Balls, he had plenty of. Kids

kept throwing them away and he collected them in a wooden case. Not all were dead, there

were some quite stringy ones among them. Every now and then Vello gave out most of

them on playgrounds to kindergarten children who still welcomed gifts like this.

As a farewell gesture, it might have been nice to hit a dozen balls precisely into the

corner of the serving area, as it has to be. I could also practise against the wall, he thought.

In his mind’s eye, past champions he once saw playing tennis popped up. He wondered

which one he would prefer to have a game with and what the result would be of a three-set

game. In the end he opted for “Little Gulyás,” Hungary’s eternal champion.

Vello spent all his life serving the “white” sport without having played once. As a child

he never thought he would pursue this high-society pastime. Later he felt ashamed to admit

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the habit of reading. An age-old advert came into his head, but slightly changed: “Tell me,

cow, what makes you grieve?” “Books are even cheaper than meat.”

He settled down on a bench at the playground. “Now, it’s reading time.” The late

afternoon sun was shining encouragingly, it painted the pages brightly. “After the wedding

they had not even light refreshments; the happy pair simply drank a glass of champagne,

changed into their traveling things, and drove to the station.” (6) This is how the book title

story started, Anna on her Husband’s Neck. This reminded Vello of his own Anna”. I could

not actually say that she was hanging around me too long… – he closed the book. Once

again he looked closely at the drawing on the book cover. He realized that it was not an old

woman but the husband and the medallion hanging from his neck was certainly portraying

his wife, Anna. “This is how the title should be understood,” he thought. He only kept one

photo of Anna, the one of the wedding, in which the newly married woman squinted into

space gloomily, leaning her head with her elaborate hairdo on the husband’s shoulder.

“Come on, old man, stop daydreaming, and start reading!” – he forced himself to return to

the text “Instead of a gay wedding ball and supper, instead of music and dancing, they

went on a journey to pray at a shrine a hundred and fifty miles away.” Vello took a break at

the full stop. He laid the open volume flat on his knees, closed his eyes. Circles of light were

sparkling in his head.

They even put an epilogue printed in italics in the Chekhov book, written by Irén

Leszev. “Maybe I will understand the whole thing better if I start with this.” “The son of the

grocer from Taganrog was twenty years old when he arrived in Moscow in the autumn of

1879 to enrol at university.” “A grocer’s… that must be the same in Tangawhatever as here”

– Mother was bustling about behind the counter which was covered by chipped glass. “Son,

come on, greet Uncle Nirts, properly!” – Mother was continually afraid of bringing the

owner’s wrath down on her and she would lose her good job. For Uncle Nirts was a gentle

soul with a pince-nez, he was hardly ever angry at mother, or anyone else. He used to

bounce him on his knees: “Ride a cock horse!” Uncle Nirts’ children died, one after the other.

“Poor things, their lungs were too weak…” – Vello heard this apologetic statement at least a

hundred times from the old grocer. “Well… that’s it… one has to accept it… you at least are

thriving like cabbages from Zala, isn’t that so… then, tell me, ‘Little Velo’, what are you going

to do when you grow up?” “Professor of medicine,” he replied, knowing this was what

Mother wanted to hear. In reality he wanted to be a high-ranking army officer with countless

decorations, with a tasselled sword, a white horse. “That’s right,” approved Uncle Nirts, “a

clever child like you should go to university… if only I had strived for that myself.”

bookshop his sandals shuffled noisily on the rusty brown linoleum, the grains of dust were

visible floating in the beams of light filtering in through the two small windows. “Can I help

you?” asked the shop assistant, a man of Vello’s age, looking at him from above the half-

moon glasses sliding down to the tip of his nose. “I am just looking around,” mumbled Vello

disgruntedly, ready to leave. “As you wish,” and the shop assistant went on reading the book

lying on the counter.

He envied the man for the attention that kept him absorbed in his text… “I might as

well read too,” he thought. He was deciphering the names and titles on the spines of the

volumes. He discovered the “Low-price Library” series. He knew this one; his mother collec-

ted it while she was still alive. Thinner ones cost three forints, thicker ones were four.

“Mother, are you reading again? Why strain your eyes?” – Vello scolded her. She would smile

to herself: “I have found a thick, boring book; it helps to pass the time.” He could never

understand this. “What pleasure can you find in something that is boring?” “Forget it, my

son,” said his mother, “I do not want any more excitement.” Vello tried to remember where

those yellowish uniform volumes had gone after having buried his mother. Obviously he had

given them away as a present to the two neighbours with red-rimmed eyes, just like the rest

of the jumble.

He took the small books, which felt old and dusty in his hand, he even remembered

the title page of a few. Suddenly a kind of dizziness came over him. “Mother had this book,

that’s for sure!” At that time the simple drawing on the cover looking at him was engraved

on his mind: the idiotic portrait of an ugly fat old woman with a cross-shaped medallion

hanging around her neck on a red ribbon, a lamenting woman figure in the background,

her dress of the same red colour as the ribbon. Chekhov: Anna on her Husband’s Neck.

Short stories. (5)

He hardly ever read, at the most he browsed People’s Sport or the weekly illustrated

magazines left on the field. The stream of letters in this book barely made complete words.

“Translated from Russian, a collected edition of twenty volumes published in Moscow bet-

ween 1946-1951, by Erzsébet Devecseri Guthi, Sarolta Lányi, Klára Szollosy. Editor Etel

Gordon. Published by the Director of New Hungarian Publisher. Editing Director: Irén Leszev.

Technical Director: Béla Siklós. Number of copies: 48.000, 14,1 (A/5) sheet size …” “Wow!”

He was soaking in sweat.

He was surprised that the bespectacled seller asked not more than twenty-two forints

for the “Chekhov.” If it is such an inexpensive form of entertainment, in the end I will get into

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the habit of reading. An age-old advert came into his head, but slightly changed: “Tell me,

cow, what makes you grieve?” “Books are even cheaper than meat.”

He settled down on a bench at the playground. “Now, it’s reading time.” The late

afternoon sun was shining encouragingly, it painted the pages brightly. “After the wedding

they had not even light refreshments; the happy pair simply drank a glass of champagne,

changed into their traveling things, and drove to the station.” (6) This is how the book title

story started, Anna on her Husband’s Neck. This reminded Vello of his own Anna”. I could

not actually say that she was hanging around me too long… – he closed the book. Once

again he looked closely at the drawing on the book cover. He realized that it was not an old

woman but the husband and the medallion hanging from his neck was certainly portraying

his wife, Anna. “This is how the title should be understood,” he thought. He only kept one

photo of Anna, the one of the wedding, in which the newly married woman squinted into

space gloomily, leaning her head with her elaborate hairdo on the husband’s shoulder.

“Come on, old man, stop daydreaming, and start reading!” – he forced himself to return to

the text “Instead of a gay wedding ball and supper, instead of music and dancing, they

went on a journey to pray at a shrine a hundred and fifty miles away.” Vello took a break at

the full stop. He laid the open volume flat on his knees, closed his eyes. Circles of light were

sparkling in his head.

They even put an epilogue printed in italics in the Chekhov book, written by Irén

Leszev. “Maybe I will understand the whole thing better if I start with this.” “The son of the

grocer from Taganrog was twenty years old when he arrived in Moscow in the autumn of

1879 to enrol at university.” “A grocer’s… that must be the same in Tangawhatever as here”

– Mother was bustling about behind the counter which was covered by chipped glass. “Son,

come on, greet Uncle Nirts, properly!” – Mother was continually afraid of bringing the

owner’s wrath down on her and she would lose her good job. For Uncle Nirts was a gentle

soul with a pince-nez, he was hardly ever angry at mother, or anyone else. He used to

bounce him on his knees: “Ride a cock horse!” Uncle Nirts’ children died, one after the other.

“Poor things, their lungs were too weak…” – Vello heard this apologetic statement at least a

hundred times from the old grocer. “Well… that’s it… one has to accept it… you at least are

thriving like cabbages from Zala, isn’t that so… then, tell me, ‘Little Velo’, what are you going

to do when you grow up?” “Professor of medicine,” he replied, knowing this was what

Mother wanted to hear. In reality he wanted to be a high-ranking army officer with countless

decorations, with a tasselled sword, a white horse. “That’s right,” approved Uncle Nirts, “a

clever child like you should go to university… if only I had strived for that myself.”

bookshop his sandals shuffled noisily on the rusty brown linoleum, the grains of dust were

visible floating in the beams of light filtering in through the two small windows. “Can I help

you?” asked the shop assistant, a man of Vello’s age, looking at him from above the half-

moon glasses sliding down to the tip of his nose. “I am just looking around,” mumbled Vello

disgruntedly, ready to leave. “As you wish,” and the shop assistant went on reading the book

lying on the counter.

He envied the man for the attention that kept him absorbed in his text… “I might as

well read too,” he thought. He was deciphering the names and titles on the spines of the

volumes. He discovered the “Low-price Library” series. He knew this one; his mother collec-

ted it while she was still alive. Thinner ones cost three forints, thicker ones were four.

“Mother, are you reading again? Why strain your eyes?” – Vello scolded her. She would smile

to herself: “I have found a thick, boring book; it helps to pass the time.” He could never

understand this. “What pleasure can you find in something that is boring?” “Forget it, my

son,” said his mother, “I do not want any more excitement.” Vello tried to remember where

those yellowish uniform volumes had gone after having buried his mother. Obviously he had

given them away as a present to the two neighbours with red-rimmed eyes, just like the rest

of the jumble.

He took the small books, which felt old and dusty in his hand, he even remembered

the title page of a few. Suddenly a kind of dizziness came over him. “Mother had this book,

that’s for sure!” At that time the simple drawing on the cover looking at him was engraved

on his mind: the idiotic portrait of an ugly fat old woman with a cross-shaped medallion

hanging around her neck on a red ribbon, a lamenting woman figure in the background,

her dress of the same red colour as the ribbon. Chekhov: Anna on her Husband’s Neck.

Short stories. (5)

He hardly ever read, at the most he browsed People’s Sport or the weekly illustrated

magazines left on the field. The stream of letters in this book barely made complete words.

“Translated from Russian, a collected edition of twenty volumes published in Moscow bet-

ween 1946-1951, by Erzsébet Devecseri Guthi, Sarolta Lányi, Klára Szollosy. Editor Etel

Gordon. Published by the Director of New Hungarian Publisher. Editing Director: Irén Leszev.

Technical Director: Béla Siklós. Number of copies: 48.000, 14,1 (A/5) sheet size …” “Wow!”

He was soaking in sweat.

He was surprised that the bespectacled seller asked not more than twenty-two forints

for the “Chekhov.” If it is such an inexpensive form of entertainment, in the end I will get into

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expressly in order to make his young bride realize that even in marriage he put religion and

morality above everything.” Vello got lost in this longwinded and complicated sentence, he

got to the end only after a second reading. He remembered his mother. “Would she find

Chekhov boring enough? As for the thickness of the book, not so bad.”

“When the train started, Anna saw her father run a little way after the train, staggering

and spilling his wine, and what a kind, guilty, pitiful face he had.” Vello was sighing heavily.

His interest cooled, his eyes got tired too. “The letters are too small…” – he would hardly

read this book all the way through, nor another one, he was too old to begin reading, it was

beyond him, too complicated, like almost everything else in this life.

He left the “Chekhov” on the bench, he was about to leave for home. A shrill chil-

dren’s voice rang out behind him: “Hey mister!” He stopped short. A tiny young boy in dun-

garees was running after him: “You’ve forgotten this!” – holding out the book to him, his

grimy fingers covering the husband’s head on the book cover. Vello took it, “thank you,

you’re a nice boy… what’s your name?” “Sajó.” “Hacsek and Sajó,” said Vello spontaneously.

The little boy nodded: “And you?” “Vello.” “Then you are the könyvello!” (7) – he grinned,

then he sang cheekily: “Könyv-ello! Köny-vel-lo!”

Vello would dearly have loved to give him a slap across the face. “But he was only a

child…” He felt ashamed, and placed the volume in the little boy’s hand: “Take this, it’s

yours!” The child grasped it contentedly: “OK… but I cannot read yet.” “Neither can I,” said

Vello. The little boy laughed, he thought the old man was joking.

1 Velo means bone marrow in Hungarian.2 In the original: Levente, a military youth organisation in Hungary, 1928-44.3 Lecsó is a vegetable dish made from red, yellow or green peppers, tomatoes and onions.4 Fröccs is a popular summer drink made from wine and soda water.5 The Hungarian translation reads Anna on her Husband’s Neck.

The order of St. Anna: Russian decorations came in different grades; lower grades would be placed in a buttonhole, while higher grades were pinned on the chest or hung around the neck.

6 In the above text, quotations from the short story come from Constance Garnett’s translation of Anna on the Neck. She translated and published 13 volumes of Chekhov stories between 1916 and 1922.

7 Vello, Könyvello – a play on words in Hungarian: könyv means book, and könyvelo is bookkeeper.

Uncle Nirts went bankrupt unexpectedly, just before his shop and he himself were

swept away by the war without a trace. After that Vello did not aspire to an Army career.

University was totally out of the question, as first he should have completed secondary

school. “What was in the past of the young man who was quietly looking around?

Troublesome years, a childhood without ever really being a child, misery, humiliation.” “They

could just as well have written this about me,” thought Vello. At this moment he felt Anton

Pavlovics Chekhov to be a close friend who only lived forty-four years in this world (1860—

1904), because – as it turned out from the meticulous paragraphs of Irén Leszev – his lungs

were at least as weak as those of the Nirts children. “He used to like the natural sciences,

thus he became a medical student.” “His mother must have been delighted,” thought Vello.

All that Irén Leszev revealed about Chekhov’s mother was that she earned a modest living

by sewing after the father’s bankruptcy of his grocer’s shop. “So father Chekhov was exactly

the same as Uncle Nirts… still they could not have been as extremely poor as us… Bankrupt

or not, a grocer can always make ends meet…” – hairline cracks were appearing in his sym-

pathy.

“Chekhov’s plays met with tumultuous success in the theatre world. His beloved Olga

Knipper, one of the most famous actresses of the age…” – at this point the mild but gra-

dually recognizable antipathy changed into hatred mixed with sorrow. Since his wife left

him, Vello barely considered womankind worthy of attention. “But an actress… after all…” –

Vello stuck alluring front page images of the magazine Theatre and Cinema (later to be Film,

Theatre, Music) all over his kitchen walls. Margit Bara. Violetta Ferrari. Mariann Krencsey.

“Well, these were real women!”

“Not only a medical degree, money, but – as Irén Leszev wrote: – ‘fame and immor-

tality’, Chekhov also had one of these buxom actresses.” For her, Vello envied him the most.

“My Anna, let’s admit it, was not pretty… Not even she wanted me. Of course, I too am

somewhat ugly, and apart from my two hands I don’t have anything else… never have I

had…” – he was sweating a lot, grief overcame him. “His life ended in a strange country –

at a German spa – but he lies buried at home, in Moscow, the capital of his country.”

Vello mused about what kind of woman that Irén Leszev could be. Bespectacled. With a bun.

Ink-blot and lump on her finger from writing.

The sun was still glowing above the roofs, the playground packed with children, their

noise fused in one monotone melody. Vello sighed. He turned the pages back to the begin-

ning to continue Anna on her Husband’s Neck where he had stopped. “People said, too, that

Modest Alexeitch, being a man of principle, had arranged this visit to the monastery

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´́

´́

´́

´́

´́

´́

´́

´́

´́

´́

´́´́

´́´́

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´́ ´́ ´́

expressly in order to make his young bride realize that even in marriage he put religion and

morality above everything.” Vello got lost in this longwinded and complicated sentence, he

got to the end only after a second reading. He remembered his mother. “Would she find

Chekhov boring enough? As for the thickness of the book, not so bad.”

“When the train started, Anna saw her father run a little way after the train, staggering

and spilling his wine, and what a kind, guilty, pitiful face he had.” Vello was sighing heavily.

His interest cooled, his eyes got tired too. “The letters are too small…” – he would hardly

read this book all the way through, nor another one, he was too old to begin reading, it was

beyond him, too complicated, like almost everything else in this life.

He left the “Chekhov” on the bench, he was about to leave for home. A shrill chil-

dren’s voice rang out behind him: “Hey mister!” He stopped short. A tiny young boy in dun-

garees was running after him: “You’ve forgotten this!” – holding out the book to him, his

grimy fingers covering the husband’s head on the book cover. Vello took it, “thank you,

you’re a nice boy… what’s your name?” “Sajó.” “Hacsek and Sajó,” said Vello spontaneously.

The little boy nodded: “And you?” “Vello.” “Then you are the könyvello!” (7) – he grinned,

then he sang cheekily: “Könyv-ello! Köny-vel-lo!”

Vello would dearly have loved to give him a slap across the face. “But he was only a

child…” He felt ashamed, and placed the volume in the little boy’s hand: “Take this, it’s

yours!” The child grasped it contentedly: “OK… but I cannot read yet.” “Neither can I,” said

Vello. The little boy laughed, he thought the old man was joking.

1 Velo means bone marrow in Hungarian.2 In the original: Levente, a military youth organisation in Hungary, 1928-44.3 Lecsó is a vegetable dish made from red, yellow or green peppers, tomatoes and onions.4 Fröccs is a popular summer drink made from wine and soda water.5 The Hungarian translation reads Anna on her Husband’s Neck.

The order of St. Anna: Russian decorations came in different grades; lower grades would be placed in a buttonhole, while higher grades were pinned on the chest or hung around the neck.

6 In the above text, quotations from the short story come from Constance Garnett’s translation of Anna on the Neck. She translated and published 13 volumes of Chekhov stories between 1916 and 1922.

7 Vello, Könyvello – a play on words in Hungarian: könyv means book, and könyvelo is bookkeeper.

Uncle Nirts went bankrupt unexpectedly, just before his shop and he himself were

swept away by the war without a trace. After that Vello did not aspire to an Army career.

University was totally out of the question, as first he should have completed secondary

school. “What was in the past of the young man who was quietly looking around?

Troublesome years, a childhood without ever really being a child, misery, humiliation.” “They

could just as well have written this about me,” thought Vello. At this moment he felt Anton

Pavlovics Chekhov to be a close friend who only lived forty-four years in this world (1860—

1904), because – as it turned out from the meticulous paragraphs of Irén Leszev – his lungs

were at least as weak as those of the Nirts children. “He used to like the natural sciences,

thus he became a medical student.” “His mother must have been delighted,” thought Vello.

All that Irén Leszev revealed about Chekhov’s mother was that she earned a modest living

by sewing after the father’s bankruptcy of his grocer’s shop. “So father Chekhov was exactly

the same as Uncle Nirts… still they could not have been as extremely poor as us… Bankrupt

or not, a grocer can always make ends meet…” – hairline cracks were appearing in his sym-

pathy.

“Chekhov’s plays met with tumultuous success in the theatre world. His beloved Olga

Knipper, one of the most famous actresses of the age…” – at this point the mild but gra-

dually recognizable antipathy changed into hatred mixed with sorrow. Since his wife left

him, Vello barely considered womankind worthy of attention. “But an actress… after all…” –

Vello stuck alluring front page images of the magazine Theatre and Cinema (later to be Film,

Theatre, Music) all over his kitchen walls. Margit Bara. Violetta Ferrari. Mariann Krencsey.

“Well, these were real women!”

“Not only a medical degree, money, but – as Irén Leszev wrote: – ‘fame and immor-

tality’, Chekhov also had one of these buxom actresses.” For her, Vello envied him the most.

“My Anna, let’s admit it, was not pretty… Not even she wanted me. Of course, I too am

somewhat ugly, and apart from my two hands I don’t have anything else… never have I

had…” – he was sweating a lot, grief overcame him. “His life ended in a strange country –

at a German spa – but he lies buried at home, in Moscow, the capital of his country.”

Vello mused about what kind of woman that Irén Leszev could be. Bespectacled. With a bun.

Ink-blot and lump on her finger from writing.

The sun was still glowing above the roofs, the playground packed with children, their

noise fused in one monotone melody. Vello sighed. He turned the pages back to the begin-

ning to continue Anna on her Husband’s Neck where he had stopped. “People said, too, that

Modest Alexeitch, being a man of principle, had arranged this visit to the monastery

6766

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M i k l ó s Va m ó s

´́

´́

´́

´́

´́

´́

´́

´́

´́

´́

´́

´́

´́´́

´́´́

´́

´́

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´́ ´́ ´́

69THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

Once I went on a trip with a friend whose mother had just died. She cried every night in our

cottage there, on one of the southern islands. Of course I would comfort her, and then I’d

get to see her smile. But there was nothing I could do for her. I was powerless. When we left

our cottage during the day to walk on the beach, a Japanese mother and daughter were

always out there walking. Their timing was terrible. The woman, who was just entering old

age, and her daughter, who was in her late twenties, strolled along the shoreline like the best

of friends. Each time my friend saw them, her eyes filled with tears. Until a few years earlier,

she and her mother had been like that, too: they had taken trips abroad together, and quar-

reled, and shared delicious food, and gone shopping. Seeing her so sad was all the more

heart-wrenching for me because I knew that. But still there was nothing I could do for her.

One evening when I was starting to give way under the pressure of being unable to

help, after my friend had fallen asleep – having exhausted herself crying, or maybe having

struggled successfully to keep from crying – I found myself unable to drift off, and so I was

reading a mystery I had borrowed from my friend. The story, which revolved around a rather

lackluster detective, was incredibly dark. And yet I doubt any other book could have comfor-

ted me at that moment as perfectly as that one did. The world created by that book was

able to make room for my worn out, lonely heart, which had nowhere else to go – to take it

in and give it pleasure.

I have another story like that. When you’re traveling in a group, someone always gets

into an argument. Once, when I was riding a claustrophobically small boat in Egypt and there

was nowhere to escape and the atmosphere just got to be too much, I got totally wrapped

up in a popular fiction sort of novel by Ryu Murakami that a friend had lent me, and before

I knew it the suffocating closed-in feeling was gone. That book, which hardly seems likely to

be counted among the best works of that writer, had saved me. I don’t know, maybe if I’d

been in Japan I wouldn’t have read it with as much attention as I did. But I remember that

there, during those travels, the breathtaking Japanese prose Ryu Murakami writes seemed to

sink right into me.

It’s possible that the ability to read something that’s been written down, to read a

book, say, is only able to open up the world that much more – to do the little things it did

for me on the occasions I’ve described. Maybe the ability to read isn’t something one abso-

lutely needs to get by in this world. Still, if there are people who have the desire to read or

T h e p o w e r o f w o r d s

Banana Yoshimoto was born in 1964.

She is the author of Kitchen, N.P.,

Amrita, Asleep, Goodbye, Tsugumi,

and Hardboiled & Hard Luck. Her

works have been translated and pu-

blished in more than twenty coun-

tries. Her writing has been awarded

numerous literary prizes around the

world. She lives in Tokyo with her

family.

Banana Yoshimoto

J A P A N

69THE ALPHABET OF HOPE

Once I went on a trip with a friend whose mother had just died. She cried every night in our

cottage there, on one of the southern islands. Of course I would comfort her, and then I’d

get to see her smile. But there was nothing I could do for her. I was powerless. When we left

our cottage during the day to walk on the beach, a Japanese mother and daughter were

always out there walking. Their timing was terrible. The woman, who was just entering old

age, and her daughter, who was in her late twenties, strolled along the shoreline like the best

of friends. Each time my friend saw them, her eyes filled with tears. Until a few years earlier,

she and her mother had been like that, too: they had taken trips abroad together, and quar-

reled, and shared delicious food, and gone shopping. Seeing her so sad was all the more

heart-wrenching for me because I knew that. But still there was nothing I could do for her.

One evening when I was starting to give way under the pressure of being unable to

help, after my friend had fallen asleep – having exhausted herself crying, or maybe having

struggled successfully to keep from crying – I found myself unable to drift off, and so I was

reading a mystery I had borrowed from my friend. The story, which revolved around a rather

lackluster detective, was incredibly dark. And yet I doubt any other book could have comfor-

ted me at that moment as perfectly as that one did. The world created by that book was

able to make room for my worn out, lonely heart, which had nowhere else to go – to take it

in and give it pleasure.

I have another story like that. When you’re traveling in a group, someone always gets

into an argument. Once, when I was riding a claustrophobically small boat in Egypt and there

was nowhere to escape and the atmosphere just got to be too much, I got totally wrapped

up in a popular fiction sort of novel by Ryu Murakami that a friend had lent me, and before

I knew it the suffocating closed-in feeling was gone. That book, which hardly seems likely to

be counted among the best works of that writer, had saved me. I don’t know, maybe if I’d

been in Japan I wouldn’t have read it with as much attention as I did. But I remember that

there, during those travels, the breathtaking Japanese prose Ryu Murakami writes seemed to

sink right into me.

It’s possible that the ability to read something that’s been written down, to read a

book, say, is only able to open up the world that much more – to do the little things it did

for me on the occasions I’ve described. Maybe the ability to read isn’t something one abso-

lutely needs to get by in this world. Still, if there are people who have the desire to read or

T h e p o w e r o f w o r d s

Banana Yoshimoto was born in 1964.

She is the author of Kitchen, N.P.,

Amrita, Asleep, Goodbye, Tsugumi,

and Hardboiled & Hard Luck. Her

works have been translated and pu-

blished in more than twenty coun-

tries. Her writing has been awarded

numerous literary prizes around the

world. She lives in Tokyo with her

family.

Banana Yoshimoto

J A P A N

write but are never given the chance, that’s not right. The world matured long enough ago

that it ought to be able to give that chance to everyone.

There’s no need to insist that people read masterpieces or communicate important

information, or that they study, or even contribute to the future by learning to read and

write. It seems to me they really ought to be given that opportunity solely for their own plea-

sure, and to broaden the horizons of their own individual lives.

7170

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - B A N A N A Y O S H I M O T O qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

B a n a n a Yo s h i m o t o

write but are never given the chance, that’s not right. The world matured long enough ago

that it ought to be able to give that chance to everyone.

There’s no need to insist that people read masterpieces or communicate important

information, or that they study, or even contribute to the future by learning to read and

write. It seems to me they really ought to be given that opportunity solely for their own plea-

sure, and to broaden the horizons of their own individual lives.

7170

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C Y - B A N A N A Y O S H I M O T O qFO GSQQAZEWNESXO

B a n a n a Yo s h i m o t o

G r a p h i c d e s i g n G é r a l d S a n s p o u x B e l g i u m

The

Alp

hab

et o

f H

ope

WR

IT

ER

SF

OR

LIT

ER

AC

Y

The Alphabet of Hope

W R I T E R S F O R L I T E R A C YThis volume features texts published on the occasion of International Literacy Day 2007.

It is presented by UNESCO and is not for sale.

Margaret Atwood

Paul Auster

Paulo Coelho

Nadine Gordimer

Amitav Gosh

N. Scott Momaday

Toni Morr ison

Franceso Sioni l José

Wole Soy inka

Amy Tan

Miklós Vamós

Banana Yoshimoto