Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Soyinka, Wole (Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka) - Alan Brien

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ALAN BRIEN

Mr. Soyinka is a fluent, funny and angry West African, but he has not yet begun to understand how to work out a verse or to organise a play….

Mr. Soyinka's verse was mainly in the cata-Logue manner with clumsy pamphleteering phrases ('untransmuted emotion,' 'venery,' 'chillun worse than their sires') leading into unusual and unprecise images ('the moon bounds like a fried egg in oil'). The humour was occasionally attractively raw and tough…. The farther away from the Chelsea street-poet he went the more natural and affecting Mr. Soyinka became. His play, The Invention, revealed his limitations even more embarrassingly. The original idea was quite sharp and provocative…. But now the idea has been kicked off, it must be passed from player to player until it smacks the goal. Mr. Soyinka has no way out of the narrative dilemmas he has set himself. Eventually he tries to abolish them all with a version of the Emperor's-New-Clothes device....

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1. Introduction
2. Alan Brien
3. Martin Esslin
4. John F. Povey
5. Margaret Laurence
6. John Updike
7. Copyright

1. Wole Soyinka