Austin | Lloyd Brown (essay date 1989)
Lloyd Brown (essay date 1989)
SOURCE: “A Sense of Style,” in El Dorado and Paradise: Canada and the Caribbean in Austin Clarke's Fiction, University of Western Ontario Press, 1989, pp. 152–85.
[In the following essay, Brown discusses Clarke's conception of style and spiritual power.]
Clarke's mastery of the Barbadian dialect as a narrative form has always been one of his most obvious strengths as a writer, and this talent has become a somewhat tired commonplace in popular reviews of his work. In fact, Clarke's facility with his dialect forms is rooted in a strong self-consciousness about language and style, one that encompasses standard English as well as the Barbadian form of English-Caribbean creole. William Jefferson's fascination with “the power of the word,” in “The Man” is not unlike Clarke's own life-long experience with language (When Women Rule, p.96). His colonial education and his early interest in...
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