Volume 44, Number 13 · August 14, 1997
A Letter to Chamoiseau
By Derek Walcott
Texaco
by Patrick Chamoiseau, translated by Rose-Myriam Réjouis, translated by Val Vinokurov
Pantheon, 401 pp., $27.00
We know that road around the blue harbor with its immaculate cruise ship, its oil-storage tanks, and the dwindling fishing settlement you describe under an immense, disconsolate banyan, its shacks with their contorted lanes and rusted trees. The road takes us into the infernal congestion of the settlement from which we avert our eyes—Texaco, Conway, La Basse. We know the people who inhabit these settlements, we recognize nicknames given for both ingenuity and affliction. We had our own Iréné, the shark fisherman of your book, our own Ti-Cirique, the ornate belle-lettriste, we certainly knew Marie-Sophie Laborieux, the mother of our multilingual fictions, we knew Esternome, her father, and Sonore, Marie-Clémence, and even the bony, delicately elongated Christ, the emissary of Town Planning, the one who was stoned. We know them still by their quarrels and imprecations.
Review, 5686 words
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