Chris Abani: Graceland

[Bjorn]

It's hard to be a man, Elvis Ok?'s father tells him. The measure of a man used to be his good name, and he has to be prepared to defend that name - his honour - against anything, from outside or inside.

Names play a part in this, yes. Elvis father is named Sunday, his best friend is named Redemption, and Elvis himself is of course named Elvis. That's about all they have left, it seems; they live in a shanty town in Lagos, Nigeria, and if there's any meaning to the fact that Sunday is a drunk to whom every day is a day of rest, Redemption is a small-time bandit, and Elvis himself a failed dancer, it's nothing they try to think about: names, today, are just words. Sure, Elvis tries to make a living as an Elvis impersonator, dance and smile for the rich white tourists, but nobody wants a 16-year-old black (and tonedeaf) king of rock'n'roll. And so instead, having to make a living somehow, he gets pulled into both criminal and political conflicts - which, in a military dictatorship (the book is set in 1983, with flashbacks to Elvis' childhood) is often the same thing.

In a lot of ways, Graceland is an impressive novel, both playful and harshly realistic in its depiction of life at the (not quite but almost) bottom. Abani has his characters reference both Nigerian (Achebe, Soyinka) and Western (Ellison, Dostoevsky, Marley) writers to create a picture of a world that's become an interconnected web long before modern communications made it obvious; the characters rarely set foot outside their own city, yet thanks to the cultural, commercial and political revolutions of the past centuries they very much live in the Big World Outside. Starting from a, to be honest, fairly cliched story - a young man trying to find his place in a world that doesn't want him - Abani weaves a character piece where the details get to show how it all hangs together, from kingdoms to dictatorship, from Las Vegas to Lagos, where everything you're promised by your name or your background turns to bitter (though often laugh-out-loud funny) irony. A land of grace, as in spending your life at the mercy of someone else's good graces. Abani tackles politics without bashing us over the head with it; things are as they are, men and women do what they do to survive until they leave the building. At best, they get to choose their own encore.

Some people name their children after saints or forefathers in the hope that they will be, well, graced with their good sides. Others are named after rock stars, which may be the modern equivalent. According to some doctors, Elvis - the original one, Presley, that is - died of poverty. Not in 1977, obese and trapped in the Graceland that was to be his palace but got turned into his mausoleum, but when he was young. After growing up poor and undernourished, his body couldn't handle the comfort food and the drugs he could suddenly afford (after growing rich off cover versions of black artists, heh). He was pretty much screwed from the beginning, if poverty didn't kill him, success would; an irony as bitter as the situation in what could have been one of the richest countries in Africa. But great music was always born from the blues. Graceland isn't quite up there, it's a little too self-conscious and meandering for that, but it's a very good read nonetheless.

...That is, I assume that it is if you read it in the original English. Because unfortunately, I read a poor Swedish translation of it. And when you take characters who speak English like Nigerian street kids (it's part of the theme, too) and translate it into Swedish, it ends up sounding like an old 50s comedy half the time. Which is a pity, as it lowers what I assume would be a solid ****0 to a somewhat disappointing ***00.

 

[shaunrandol]

Here is my take on "Graceland," originally published on The Mantle (www.mantlethought.org)

By switching between flashbacks and the present, and sprinkling in some gritty scenes (child rape) and colorful detail (quoting John Wayne) Chris Abani builds a compelling narrative through the first half Graceland, like the beginning of a roller coaster ride clacking you to the top of the first big hill. About halfway through I felt eager and anxious that the rest of the novel would be a frightening, downward spiral?I was right. Abani unfolds his story woven with interesting characters in a land less than paradise (slums of Lagos); there is always a nagging sense that things are not going to be pretty. This, I assume, is the way life in Lagos? netherworlds really is, which is why I am was a little disappointed in the ?Hollywood,? sort of cheesy final pages.

I, having never visited a real-deal slum, have foggy ideas of its poverty, of putrid streets and filthy public toilets. Bare bedrooms and drug deals in the shadows. Guns tucked under t-shirts and barefoot children padding down litter-strewn, unpaved roads. Details make a story unique to the author, place, and narrative. In Graceland, examples include intermittent allusions to Igbo customs and offhand remarks mixing local, animalist beliefs into the narrative. In one quick scene, the protagonist Elvis Oke is young, in the yard, fetching water for his bath and whistling the theme song from Casablanca. His grandmother admonishes him: ?Elvis, stop dat! You know it is taboo to whistle at night. You will attract a spirit.? Without that witchy-warning, this slummy backyard could be anywhere: the backstreets of Tijuana, forgotten parts of Queens, the sprawl of New Delhi, the favelas of S?o Paulo. Details are what bring it back to Lagos each time. Yam recipes. Palm oil and palm wine. Herbal remedies and anti-witchcraft concoctions?these are Nigerian.


Graceland?s overarching themes (boy becomes a man; vulnerability in the face of violent regimes, etc) are universal. The main character, Elvis Oke, mulls over a decision to follow his dream of becoming a dancer, noting, ?There was a positive side to not trying at something: you could always pretend that your life would have been different if you had.? Who can?t relate to having to make such a decision?


Still, Graceland seems to me to be a story that is?in its particulars?very Nigerian. I appreciate getting a glimpse of the lives of those living physically in a place many in the West find exotic and curious, and easily packaged as a ?megacity.? Abani writes that the streets of the slum ?singed straight and proud, like a rope burn or a cane?s welt.? I am not sure I know what a cane?s welt looks like; Abani certainly does and so do, unfortunately, his fellow Nigerians. Later, after some very scary tribulations, Elvis has an exchange with a soldier who roughs him up. Abani expresses his impotency: ?The tears that wouldn?t come for his father streamed freely now as he felt worthless in the face of blind, unreasoning power.? Just little reminders that between New York City and Lagos, our day-to-day existences, and the hurdles we must overcome to get through those days, are very different.