But Larson is obviously not as foolish as this passage would make him out to be, for he ends it on a note of self-doubt which I find totally disarming. He says：
Or am I deluding myself in considering the work universal? Maybe what I really mean is that The Second Round is to a great degree Western and therefore scarcely African at all. （238）
I find it hard after that to show more harshness than merely agreeing about his delusion. But few people I know are prepared to be so charitable. In a recent review of the book in Okike（Okike （ISSN 0331-0566）是切努亞·阿契貝於1971年創立的一本尼日利亞文學刊物，致力於引介文學新人，介紹實驗性作品，發表詩歌、短篇故事、散文、小戲劇、評論以及訪談等各類作品。）, a Nigerian critic, Omolara Leslie, mocks “the shining faith that we are all Americans under the skin”.
Does it ever occur to these universities to try out their game of changing names of characters and places in an American novel, say, a Philip Roth or an Updike, and slotting in African names just to see how it works? But of course it would not occur to them. It would never occur to them to doubt the universality of their own literature. In the nature of things the work of a Western writer is automatically informed by universality. It is only others who must strain to achieve it. So-and-so's work is universal; he has truly arrived! As though universality were some distant bend in the road which you may take if you travel out far enough in the direction of Europe or America, if you put adequate distance between yourself and your home. I should like to see the word “universal” banned altogether from discussions of African literature until such a time as people cease to use it as a synonym for the narrow, self-serving parochialism of Europe, until their horizon extends to include all the world.
If colonialist criticism were merely irritating one might doubt the justification of devoting a whole essay to it. But strange though it may sound some of its ideas and precepts do exert an influence on our writers, for it is a fact of our contemporary world that Europe'spowers of persuasion can be far in excess of the merit and value of her case. Take for instance the black writer who seizes on the theme that Africa's past is a sadly inglorious one as though it were something new that had not already been “proved” adequately for him. Colonialist critics will, of course, fall all over him in ecstatic and salivating admiration—which is neither unexpected nor particularly interesting. What is fascinating, however, is the tortuous logic and sophistry they will sometimes weave around a perfectly straightforward and natural enthusiasm.
A review of Yambo Ouologuem'sBound to Violence（雅波·歐洛格姆（Yambo Ouologuem, 1940—）：馬裏作家，筆名為Utto Rodolph，通曉幾種非洲語言及法語、英語和西班牙語，倡導獨立後非洲文學，激烈抨擊塞內加爾總統桑戈爾所倡導的黑人性理論（Senghorian negritude），即對黑人文化傳統的認同和自豪感，主張非洲作家不應沉溺於對非洲過去和曆史的緬懷，阿契貝對此顯然不能苟同。歐洛格姆的作品Bound to Violence（1968）備受爭議，被指控有抄襲嫌疑，因為其中包含了他人作品的片斷，但也有評論家認為這是一篇絕妙的戲仿作品。） （1968b） by a Philip M.Allen in the Pan-African Journal （Allen 1971） was an excellent example of sophisticated, even brilliant colonialist criticism. The opening sentence alone would reward long and careful examination; but I shall content myself here with merely quoting it：
The achievement of Ouologuem's much discussed, impressive, yet over-praised novel has less to do with whose ideological team he'splaying on than with the forcing of moral universality on African civilization. （my italics）
A little later Mr Allen expounds on this new moral universality：
This morality is not only “un-African”—denying the standards set by omnipresent ancestors, the solidarity of communities, the legitimacy of social contract: it is a Hobbesian universe that extends beyond the wilderness, beyond the white man's myths of Africa, into all civilization, theirs and ours.
If you should still be wondering at this point how Ouologuem was able to accomplish that Herculean feat of forcing moral universality on Africa or with what gargantuan tools, Mr Allen does not leave you too long in suspense. Ouologuem is “an African intellectual who has mastered both a style and a prevailing philosophy of French letters”, able to enter “the remote alcoves of French philosophical discourse”....
That a “critic” playing on the ideological team of colonialism should feel sick and tired of Africa's“pathetic obsession with racial and cultural confrontation” should surprise no one. Neither should his enthusiasm for those African works that show “no easy antithesis between white and black”. But an African who falls for such nonsense, not only in spite of Africa's so very recent history but, even more, in the face of continuing atrocities committed against millions of Africans in their own land by racist minority regimes, deserves a lot of pity. Certainly anyone, white or black, who chooses to see violence as the abiding principle of African civilization is free to do so. But let him not pass himself off as a restorer of dignity to Africa, or attempt to make out that he is writing about man and about the state of civilization in general.... Perhaps for most ordinary people what Africa needs is a far less complicated act of restoration....
The colonialist critic, unwilling to accept the validity of sensibilities other than his own, has made a particular point of dismissing the African novel. He has written lengthy articles to prove its non-existence largely on the grounds that the novel is a peculiarly Western genre, a fact which would interest us if our ambition was to write “Western” novels. But, in any case, did not the black people in America, deprived of their own musical instruments, take the trumpet and the trombone and blow them as they had never been blown before, as indeed they were not designed to be blown? And the result, was it not jazz? Is any one going to say that this was a loss to the world or that those first Negro slaves who began to play around with the discarded instruments of their masters should have played waltzes and foxtrots? No! Let every people bring their gifts to the great festival of the world'scultural harvest and mankind will be all the richer for the variety and distinctiveness of the offerings.
My people speak disapprovingly of an outsider whose wailing drowned the grief of the owners of the corpse. One last word to the owners. It is because our own critics have been somewhat hesitant in taking control of our literary criticism （sometimes—let's face it—for the good reason that we will not do the hard work that should equip us） that the task has fallen to others, some of whom （again we must admit） have been excellent and sensitive. And yet most of what remains to be done can best be tackled by ourselves, the owners. If we fall back, can we complain that others are rushing forward? A man who does not lick his lips, can he blame the harmattan for drying them？Note
1. From the novel （1910） of the same name by the imperial statesman and adventure writer, John Buchan.
閱讀參考書目
1. Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart. London: Heinemann, 2000.
2. Chinua Achebe, The Trouble with Nigeria. Enugu, Nigeria: Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1998.
3. Chinua Acheb, Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays. New York: Doubleday, 1989.
4. Chinua Acheb, Home and Exile. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
5. Robert M Wren, Achebe'sWorld: the Historical and Cultural Context of the Novels of Chinua Achebe. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1980.