Remembering Gerald Moore (22 August 1924 – 27 December 2022)
James Gibbs
Gerald Moore, a formidable, industrious, ubiquitous, pioneering critic, was involved in ‘the scramble for African literature’ and produced critical writing on various African authors that was published (mostly) by British publishers ‘staking claims’ in the field of African literature. Below, I have begun to draw attention to some of the projects he was involved with, and I have tried to identify some of those benign and malign presences, fairy godmothers or greedy vultures, that clustered around the ‘cradles of the new literatures’. Along the way, I take note of conferences funded by the CIA that Moore attended during the early 1960s and imply that it is misleading to regard the conference of ‘writers of English expression’ held at Makerere in 1962 as simply a ‘Writers Conference’. This is because a glance at the list of those present and a look at some of the encounters that took place at that conference reveal how essential it was that various ‘agents’ were also present. Neglected by organizers of ‘anniversary conferences’, Moore would have had important insights to share with those interested in the 1962 Conference. He had been a privileged observer of the emergence of African literature and was aware how very vigorously it was promoted in English and French.
In 1963, Oxford University Press published Moore’s pioneering Seven African Writers. It appeared in the Three Crowns series and showed him writing with authority on a clutch of the authors who were becoming familiar to those interested in what Africans had to say: Leopold Senghor, David Diop, Camara Laye, Amos Tutuola, Chinua Achebe, Mongo Beti, and Ezekiel Mphahlele. Some nine years later, Evans Brothers turned to Moore as a groundbreaking critic and published his monograph on Wole Soyinka. This was the first title in their ‘Modern African Writers’ series, and in it Moore set the tone for that series both implicitly and explicitly. The book embodied his approach, and his prefatory essay about the series indicated how he expected it would develop.
Moore began that essay by referring to the ‘initial excitement and misunderstanding surrounding African literature in English and French’ and went on to draw attention to the ‘small but growing number of writers who may be called “serious”’. He then anticipated that the MAW Series would be varied in approach. (‘No single school or method of criticism will be favoured in the selection of contributors.’) He went on to express his intention that the selection of subjects for study would respond ‘to every major development in African literature and criticism.’ He might have added ‘in English or French’ to that, for the basic assumption was made that the concern was African writing in European languages.
Just five titles followed Moore’s Wole Soyinka from the critic’s desk to the bookshops, and the subjects chosen were limited to Nigerians or Southern Africans. These were Christopher Okigbo: Creative Rhetoric (Sunday O. Anozie, 1972); Cyprian Ekwensi (Ernest N. Emenyonu, 1974); Doris Lessing’s Africa (Michael Thorpe, 1978); Nadine Gordimer (Michael Wade, 1972), and Peter Abrahams (Michael Wade, 1972). This was not, by any means, covering ‘every major development’, but it was responding to some of the more important ones in some of the wealthier countries! It is apparent that, for Evans, GDP was a consideration.
Proper assessment of the impact of the Modern African Writers series will have to await the scrutiny of various sources, including the critical responses to individual titles and the sales figures for each volume. However, even from a glance at Moore’s study of Soyinka, one can gather something of what Moore wanted the series to achieve. He wrote with exemplary vigour and confidence and with admiration that stopped short of adulation. I think he expected those invited to contribute to the series to follow his example.
In preparing to write on Soyinka, Moore, the ‘old Africa hand’ who had worked in Nigeria during the early 1950s, drew on conversations with those close to Soyinka, including Wale Ogunyemi and Segun Olusola. As a personal friend of the Nigerian author, he was able to ‘acknowledge’ the ‘kind assistance of Mr Wole Soyinka who (had) read the manuscript and commented on several points of detail’. While this confers a certain ‘authority’ on the critical study, it should not be taken to mean that Soyinka approved what Moore had written. In the half century that has passed since Moore’s study was published, Soyinka has written extensively about his life and his ideas, and those writings have added immeasurably to our knowledge of the poet/ playwright/ novelist/ critic/ ‘interventionist’. It is to Moore’s credit that, even without access to that material, his study still reads well and makes valid points.
Gerald Moore’s monograph for Evans was an innovative, sustained, and critical assessment of a substantial body of writing by an African author, and it contributed to consolidating Soyinka’s status as a ‘serious writer’. The critic’s independent assessment was particularly significant in a world in which there were some who argued, and who continue to argue, that Soyinka’s reputation was fabricated by sinister forces determined to derail African self-realization.
At an early stage in Soyinka’s career, Moore recognized the Nigerian writer’s precocious achievements and wrote about them with insight.
During the early 1960s, Moore became director of Extra-Mural Studies at what was then the University College of Makerere, Uganda. In that position, he hosted the (CIA-funded) Conference of Writers of English Expression held during June 1962, and, as host, he was in a good position to observe how British and American agents of various kinds interacted with creative Africans. Better than anybody, he knew that there were publishers and editors at the ‘writers’ conference’ and that these men were scouting for talent, waving contracts, dangling offers, and ‘making arrangements’. Among those present were representatives of publishers, such as Oxford University Press (OUP) and Northwestern University Press. There were also editors and critics. (For the names of those who attended see the Makerere Conference list on the Chimurenga Chronic website.
1 Conference of African Writers of English Expression. https://chimuren gachronic.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/excerpt-congress-for-cultural-freedom-1962-conference-of-african-writers-of-english-expression.pdf (accessed 3 July 2023); Otosirieze Obi-Young. ‘55 Years After Makerere Conference, University of London’s SOAS to Host Memorial Gathering’, 27 October 2017. https://brittlepaper.com/2017/10/50-years-makerere-conference (accessed 10 July 2023).)
Some of the ways in which the conference made publishing history are well known. These include the ‘story’ of about how Chinua Achebe recommended Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s work to a Heinemann representative at the Conference, Van Milne, and how Van Milne then phoned Alan Hill in the UK, with the result that Ngũgĩ’s book was accepted for publication ‘sight unseen’. (See, for example, the account quoted in James Currey’s
Africa Writes Back.
2 Africa Writes Back: The African Writers Series and the Launch of African Literature. Woodbridge: James Currey, 2008.)
Other ‘stories’ remain, as far as I am aware, untold, or, perhaps, locked in the archives. I have wondered what passed between J.P. Clark, Cameron Duodu, Wole Soyinka, and André Deutsch. Those four men were together at the Makerere Conference, and Deutsch, who had already established the African Universities Press, subsequently published The Gab Boys (Duodu, 1967), America, Their America (Clark, 1964), and The Interpreters (Soyinka, 1965). I can’t believe that was pure coincidence. Is there a ‘story’? Were addresses exchanged, understandings reached, or arrangements made in Uganda? Following up on that I wonder what, if anything was said about Reflections: Nigerian Prose & Verse in Kampala? That 1962 anthology was published by African Universities Press and included work by the following who were at the conference: Achebe, Clark, Gabriel Okara, Christopher Okigbo, and Soyinka. It was to be, edited by one of the very few women present: Frances Ademola.
Ademola, incidentally, subsequently took a position at the Transcription Centre in London. That organization was funded by the CIA and headed by Dennis Duerden – who was present at Makerere. The university campus in Uganda provided, it would seem, opportunities to not only meet up but also, perhaps, to talk about the future. There are also ‘stories’ connected with the Americans present. That diverse group included the energetic anthologist Langston Hughes, Otis Redding, and Robie Macauley, who is the one I want to say a few words about here. In his biography of Okigbo, Obi Nwakanma writes that, while in Uganda, Okigbo and Macauley discussed the possibility of publishing the former’s
Limits in the US.
3 Nwakanma. Christopher Okigbo, 1930–67: Thirsting for Sunlight. Oxford: James Currey, 2010; Okigbo. Limits. Ibadan: Mbari Publications, 1964.Tantalizingly, Nwakanma adds ‘nothing came of it’ but does not say why not. Macauley, it is important to know, was not only a novelist and university teacher but also editor of the Kenyon Review, and a government operative. During the Second World War, he had been an agent in the Counter Intelligence Corps and, from 1953, worked for the International Organizations Division of the Central Intelligence Agency. His links with clandestine organizations were not referred to on the published list of those attending the conference! However, I think we can assume that he was in touch with the newly established CIA base at Langley and was reporting from Kampala to a ‘higher authority’. In interacting with Okigbo, he could have been working as an editor, or as spook, or as both. Moore was present at Makerere in several roles; he was, for example, a host and a speaker. Significantly, he continued his contact with CIA-funded conferences by attending gatherings in West Africa (Dakar 1963; Freetown 1963), and, for good measure, he actually edited the proceedings of those conferences. In other words, he had a part to play in how the conferences were remembered and how their stories were told.
Because of the many roles he played during the early 1960s and indicated in part above, Moore must have had privileged insights into the forces at work on African writing at that time. These forces became visible at the ‘out-dooring’ conference held in Makerere during June 1962. It is very regrettable that Moore did not contribute to either the London conference of 2017 – that marked the fifty-fifth anniversary of the out-dooring, or to the Ibadan Conference of 2022 that marked the sixtieth anniversary. Moore would have been in a good position to distinguish the fairy godmothers from the greedy vultures that gathered for the event, one that was clearly much more than (just) a ‘Writers’ Conference’. It may be that the formidable, industrious, ubiquitous, pioneer critic of African writing in European languages carried his observations to the grave.