People like Chimamanda Adichie and I, who live abroad, have no right to berate our fellow countrymen for not reading fiction ("Blinded by God's business", February 19). Contrary to what she would like the world to believe, Nigerians still have a need and a deep appreciation for literature. They just can't afford to enjoy it so much these days. Why is it so impossible to believe that folk would rather spend their money and time on feeding their families or seeking solace in religion? I had never heard of Miss Adichie, but I got a copy of her book from my sister in Nigeria last Christmas. Nigerians are aware of literature.
The theatre can be a remarkable place. But Gary Taylor's notion ("Race Card", February 19), that the English began to see themselves as racially white in 1613, all because Thomas Middleton mentions "white people" in his play of that year, gives the stage an entirely fabulous power. In fact, it was only in the course of the last century that the whiteness of ordinary English people became either assertive or acceptable across the class scale. Seeing English soldiers bathing during the Battle of the Somme, Lord Curzon famously remarked "I never knew the working classes had such white skins".
Newcastle upon Tyne
I was sorry that Gary Taylor's analysis included one unfortunate inaccuracy. Professor Eldred Durosimi Jones is not an "African-American", as Taylor says, but a Sierra Leonean. He was for many years professor of literature at Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone, later becoming principal. He was a brilliant and thoughtful editor of African Literature Today, even when he had serious trouble with his eyesight. He has continued to live in his native country through all the disturbances it has undergone.
The uses of irony
Richard Eyre's fine article on Arthur Miller ("Touched by Fire", February 19), had an interesting misremembered attribution. Rather than Twain saying of Huckleberry Finn, "There are things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth", it is Huck who comments on the author of Tom Sawyer , "That book was made by Mr Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth." Americans are sometimes accused of suffering from irony deficiency, but not Sam Clemens.
Given the labyrinthine complexity of Epileptic by David B, I'm amazed Andrew Davidson (Letters, February 19) is able to reduce it to one simple meaning. And from reading his letter you would have no idea that the telling of the story is mostly done through drawing.
I have no direct experience of the disease and understand Andrew Davidson's sensitivities, but the brother in the book is presented as a very complex and rounded character. Independent, dependent, maddening to live with, frustrated and frustrating and anything but a monster. The honesty of the author in depicting all sides of a difficult situation and finding visual metaphors to describe what happened was, for me, fascinating and moving.
I don't know how old John Mullan is; he's obviously younger than me, but I'm sure there are still many readers for whom Andrea Levy's beautifully evoked post-war London of the late 40s/early 50s is a familiar place, "calculated to revive memories rather than invent a world", to borrow a phrase he uses about The Rotters' Club ("Pregnant Silence, December 18). Small Island may be a historical novel rather than a period one to Mr Mullan, however I'm "only" 60 and my generation is not yet quite ready to be consigned to history.
Ian Pindar, in his review of Bess: The Life of Lady Ralegh, Wife to Sir Walter (Paperbacks: Non-Fiction, February 19) says that Sir Walter Ralegh was beheaded under Charles I. Ralegh was beheaded in 1618, under James I. Charles I did not succeed to the throne until 1625. I assume this error was not contained in the book itself.
Darwin's poor taste
Richard Dawkins' article, "The giant tortoise's tale" (February 19) reminded me of my Galápagos trip in 1990. What disappointed me was that none of the giant tortoises we saw had been hatched in the wild. I wonder how many of the 1,000 young tortoises released between 1971-90 from the Charles Darwin Research Station on Isla Santa Cruz have survived and bred independently on their ancestors' former islands?
And what distressed me most about Darwin is that he not only desecrated his evidence by eating it (his share of 30 upturned tortoises stacked on the Beagle) but he tossed overboard the scientifically valuable, if inedible, carapaces. Not one adult specimen arrived in England, alive or dead. It wasn't as if Darwin could hop on a plane and go back for more.
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