Sam Selvon\u27s fifth novel Moses Ascending addresses the ethnic experience with dual prongs: linguistic and racial. Although the situation of the novel is not new -- the plight of the subject come to the motherland -- having been treated by George Lamming and others, this handling of the basic theme is: all the sacred cows fall before Selvon\u27s iconoclastic pen. Moses, the  I  protagonist, is but a faintly veiled, highly disillusioned Selvon who dares look at the present world situation: the emperor has no clothes

González, LaVerne

English

VCU Scholars Compass

reasoning that makes her finally talk to the adults about the incident. Their responses are loving and reasonable,  another reassurance to the younger reader who might be experiencing this predicament. Kentucky Daughter has enough good writing in it to keep the reader going past some awkwardness in the early pages ,  where the dialogue seems strained and uncomfortable .  Scott appears to gain fluency and confidence in the course of the novel .  Particularly apt is  the C hesapeake crab migration-the females first cradled by their m ates until their shells h arden, then eventually migrating alone to their destiny with " strength, dignity, courage" (p. 1 43)-as a metaphor for both M ary Fred' s  j ourney to Virginia and her mother' s growth as a folk artist after the death of her husband.  M ary Fred at one point says ,  "I wish I had someone to hold me while I grew strong" (p. 1 22 ) ,  but she does not, and she still goes on. She is such an engaging character, such a complex and interesting person to know, that we end the book feeling that both S aks and N orman are only temporary way-stations on h er drive to be s omebody, and that that somebody will do worthwhile things. - Elizabeth Hanson·Smith C alifornia State University, S acramento S amuel Selvon. Moses A scending. (London: H eineman, 1 975) 1 4 1  pp. ,  $5.50 p aper. Sam Selvon's fifth novel Moses A scending addresses the ethnic experience with dual prongs:  linguistic and racial. Although the situation of the novel is not new-the plight of the subj ect come to the m other­land-having been treated by George Lamming and others, this handling of the basic theme is :  all the s acred cows fall before Selvon's iconoclastic pen. Moses ,  the " I "  protagonist, is  but a faintly veiled, highly disillu­sioned Selvon who dares look at the present world s ituation:  the emperor has no clothes.  An assault on the King's E n glish,  this book is  a linguistic experience in many ways:  disrupted syntax,  dialects, cliches fro m  m any cultures,  sounds.  The author' s m astery of the v arious dialects ,  not to m ention langu ages , represents a certain evolution in his writing.  For example the early work ( 1 952) The Brighter Sun laid in his n ative Trinidad m akes use of dialect strictly in dialogue. The Lonely Londoners to which Moses A scending is  a sequel often employs the Trinidadian speech p atterns .  Explorations in Sights and Sounds No. 5 (Summer 1 985) 73 But this novel m erges, meshes,  inverts,  explodes language into a composite of our contemporary world. And we are plunged into a linguistically orgiastic chaos. S o  the language intensifies the s atire-J uvenalian s atire, not so n arrowly focused on Jonathan Swift 's  A Modes t Proposal perhaps. Racism ,  along with m aterialistic upw ard mobility, is the primary target. The attack on religion begins early. Moses of Biblical fam e  led the Israelites out of E gypt but never entered the Promised Land, negating the " Ascending" idea.  Thus com bining "Moses" and "Ascending" in the title sets up  an immediate and irreconcilable tension. This Moses,  an aspiring writer, "rises" to purchase a house in Shepard's Bush;  the Biblical Moses,  a shepard, saw God in the Burning Bush.  Moreover it is in the backyard that Moses assists the Pakis,  whom he helps to smuggle  other Pakis  into  Brit 'n for twenty pounds a head ,  in ritualistically s laying the sacrificial lamb,  but it is a Muslim ceremony and Moses keeps muttering "There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet ."  Clearly the black rising middle  c lass  is satirized in the character of this black Moses who formerly lived in a basement and who buys a house so that as a l andlord he  m ay terrorize his ten ants. Seeking to sever all  ties with his race,  he retires to his penthouse ivory tower to produce his memoirs.  But his Black Power friends occupy his basement from which they organize party activities and publish subversive m aterials-all  of which Moses disregards. In turn they criticize his writing:  Galahad insists that a writer must experience the movement and Brenda scorns,  "The only s entence you know, Moses,  is what criminals get .  Your conj unctions and your hyperboles are all mixed up with your syntax . . .  , you should stick to oral communication and leave the written word to them what knows their business ."  Nor does the movement itself escape,  for it is the Bl ack Panther speaker from America who absconds with the p arty 's  funds.  And Moses observes that those who are strongest in the movement "usually have a white woman in tow ."  Of the  police who raid  the  rally throwing Moses ,  an observer, into prison,  Moses remarks , "It  doesn't seem to a black m an that though he is as pure and white as the driven snow-if you will pardon the expres­sion-that it got something, somewhere, sometime, what he do wrong, and that even if it don't exist, the police would invent one to trap him . " When a black man is locked up ,  the J ailer throws away the keys ,  and ki l l ing a bl ack man is as easy as "swatting a blue arse f1y what got into the house in the summer. " Whites,  l ike blacks,  are satirized in the portrayal  of characters . B l ack Moses'  servant is white Bob who becomes almost an anti-hero. Called "Skinhead" by Moses,  Bob embodies all the worst stereotypes applied to blacks; he is an ill iterate, fi lthy, sex maniac who will do anything for 74 Exp lo rations in Sigh ts and Sounds No. 5 (Summer 1 985)  "bl ack pussy, " whom you can fool with " any shit if he believes it will  prolong the sex act ,"  and who given an inch will  take a mile .  When he's not working, h e  slouches in a chair, leafing through comic books.  Moreover, as a member of the "party , "  he  possesses all the loathsome traits of the white bleeding hearts and sob sisters. However, at last after Bo b' s marriage to white Jeannie and Moses'  obliging act of " lending" the newlyweds the penthouse as a " bridal suite , "  the roles are reversed. Bob, now " Robert ,"  orders Moses about:  Moses again lives in the basement, and Robert is writing the book. But Moses fears that black power militants will misconstrue the moral to be:  "that after the ballad and the episode, it is the w hite man who ends up  Upstairs and the black m an who ends up Downstairs ,"  so he  concludes the  novel  by letting us in on his  revenge plan.  C learly this book s atirizes man and his institutions;  the condition of cities, of humans,  of relationships.  Nor does Selvon lie when he asserts "None of this n arrative  is fiction:  if ! lie I die. " People living in cities do live in a dream world, refusing "to believe or accept the things that h appen under their very noses . "  Yes,  we have h ere satire, stinging satire, delightful satire that combines language and situation to give us Selvon's truth:  humans are a sorry lot.  - La Verne Gonzal ez San Jose State University Sipho Sepamla. A Ride on the Whirlwind: A Novel of Soweto. (London: Heinemann, 1 9 8 1 )  244 pp., $7.50 p aper. South African poet ,  playwright, and teacher Sipho Sepamla has in his second novel ,  produced a fictional but tensely revealing narrative  of events surrounding the 1 976 Soweto riots. Dedicated to the young heroes of the day, the novel chronicles daily life in an atmosphere of fear, suspicion, distrust and terrorism.  The fundamental themes ofthe book,  identity and trust, are developed through vignettes exploring the interplay of black and white, age and youth, male and female.  Il luminated by the glare of h ate-filled extremity, these relationships,  shorn of subtlety, reveal in  their starkness the pathos of terrorized life. The novel covers a brief period in the summer of 1 976 when a series of terrorist acts challenged the stability of white rule in Soweto.  The youthful M andla and his loosely organized band of teenage saboteurs take great pride in  their ability to embarrass the h eavily armed and Exp lo ra tions in Sights and Sounds No. 5 (Summer 1 985) 75 

[Review of] Samuel Selvon. Moses Ascending

reasoning that makes her finally talk to the adults about the incident. 
Their responses are loving and reasonable,  another reassurance to the 
younger reader who might be experiencing this predicament. 
Kentucky Daughter has enough good writing in it to keep the reader 
going past some awkwardness in the early pages ,  where the dialogue 
seems strained and uncomfortable .  Scott appears to gain fluency and 
confidence in the course of the novel .  Particularly apt is  the C hesapeake 
crab migration-the females first cradled by their m ates until their shells 
h arden, then eventually migrating alone to their destiny with " strength, 
dignity, courage" (p. 1 43)-as a metaphor for both M ary Fred' s  j ourney to 
Virginia and her mother' s growth as a folk artist after the death of her 
husband.  M ary Fred at one point says ,  "I wish I had someone to hold me 
while I grew strong" (p. 1 22 ) ,  but she does not, and she still goes on. She is 
such an engaging character, such a complex and interesting person to 
know, that we end the book feeling that both S aks and N orman are only 
temporary way-stations on h er drive to be s omebody, and that that 
somebody will do worthwhile things. 
- Elizabeth Hanson·Smith 
C alifornia State University, S acramento 
S amuel Selvon. Moses A scending. (London: H eineman, 1 975) 
1 4 1  pp. ,  $5.50 p aper. 
Sam Selvon's fifth novel Moses A scending addresses the ethnic 
experience with dual prongs:  linguistic and racial. Although the situation 
of the novel is not new-the plight of the subj ect come to the m other­
land-having been treated by George Lamming and others, this handling 
of the basic theme is :  all the s acred cows fall before Selvon's iconoclastic 
pen. Moses ,  the " I "  protagonist, is  but a faintly veiled, highly disillu­
sioned Selvon who dares look at the present world s ituation:  the emperor 
has no clothes.  
An assault on the King's E n glish,  this book is  a linguistic experience in 
many ways:  disrupted syntax,  dialects, cliches fro m  m any cultures,  
sounds.  The author' s m astery of the v arious dialects ,  not to m ention 
langu ages , represents a certain evolution in his writing.  For example the 
early work ( 1 952) The Brighter Sun laid in his n ative Trinidad m akes use 
of dialect strictly in dialogue. The Lonely Londoners to which Moses 
A scending is  a sequel often employs the Trinidadian speech p atterns .  
Explorations in Sights and Sounds No. 5 (Summer 1 985) 73 
But this novel m erges, meshes,  inverts,  explodes language into a 
composite of our contemporary world. And we are plunged into a 
linguistically orgiastic chaos. 
S o  the language intensifies the s atire-J uvenalian s atire, not so 
n arrowly focused on Jonathan Swift 's  A Modes t Proposal perhaps. 
Racism ,  along with m aterialistic upw ard mobility, is the primary target. 
The attack on religion begins early. Moses of Biblical fam e  led the 
Israelites out of E gypt but never entered the Promised Land, negating 
the " Ascending" idea.  Thus com bining "Moses" and "Ascending" in the 
title sets up  an immediate and irreconcilable tension. This Moses,  an 
aspiring writer, "rises" to purchase a house in Shepard's Bush;  the 
Biblical Moses,  a shepard, saw God in the Burning Bush.  Moreover it is in 
the backyard that Moses assists the Pakis,  whom he helps to smuggle  
other Pakis  into  Brit 'n for twenty pounds a head ,  in ritualistically 
s laying the sacrificial lamb,  but it is a Muslim ceremony and Moses 
keeps muttering "There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his 
prophet ."  
Clearly the black rising middle  c lass  is satirized in the character of this 
black Moses who formerly lived in a basement and who buys a house so 
that as a l andlord he  m ay terrorize his ten ants. Seeking to sever all  ties 
with his race,  he retires to his penthouse ivory tower to produce his 
memoirs.  But his Black Power friends occupy his basement from which 
they organize party activities and publish subversive m aterials-all  of 
which Moses disregards. In turn they criticize his writing:  Galahad 
insists that a writer must experience the movement and Brenda scorns,  
"The only s entence you know, Moses,  is what criminals get .  Your 
conj unctions and your hyperboles are all mixed up with your syntax . . .  , 
you should stick to oral communication and leave the written word to 
them what knows their business ."  Nor does the movement itself escape,  
for it is the Bl ack Panther speaker from America who absconds with the 
p arty 's  funds.  And Moses observes that those who are strongest in the 
movement "usually have a white woman in tow ."  
Of the  police who raid  the  rally throwing Moses ,  an observer, into 
prison,  Moses remarks , "It  doesn't seem to a black m an that though he is 
as pure and white as the driven snow-if you will pardon the expres­
sion-that it got something, somewhere, sometime, what he do wrong, 
and that even if it don't exist, the police would invent one to trap him . " 
When a black man is locked up ,  the J ailer throws away the keys ,  and 
ki l l ing a bl ack man is as easy as "swatting a blue arse f1y what got into 
the house in the summer. " 
Whites,  l ike blacks,  are satirized in the portrayal  of characters . B l ack 
Moses'  servant is white Bob who becomes almost an anti-hero. Called 
"Skinhead" by Moses,  Bob embodies all the worst stereotypes applied to 
blacks; he is an ill iterate, fi lthy, sex maniac who will do anything for 
74 Exp lo rations in Sigh ts and Sounds No. 5 (Summer 1 985)  
"bl ack pussy, " whom you can fool with " any shit if he believes it will  
prolong the sex act ,"  and who given an inch will  take a mile .  When he's 
not working, h e  slouches in a chair, leafing through comic books.  
Moreover, as a member of the "party , "  he  possesses all the loathsome 
traits of the white bleeding hearts and sob sisters. However, at last after 
Bo b' s marriage to white Jeannie and Moses'  obliging act of " lending" the 
newlyweds the penthouse as a " bridal suite , "  the roles are reversed. Bob, 
now " Robert ,"  orders Moses about:  Moses again lives in the basement, 
and Robert is writing the book. 
But Moses fears that black power militants will misconstrue the moral 
to be:  "that after the ballad and the episode, it is the w hite man who ends 
up  Upstairs and the black m an who ends up Downstairs ,"  so he  
concludes the  novel  by letting us in on his  revenge plan.  
C learly this book s atirizes man and his institutions;  the condition of 
cities, of humans,  of relationships.  Nor does Selvon lie when he asserts 
"None of this n arrative  is fiction:  if ! lie I die. " People living in cities do 
live in a dream world, refusing "to believe or accept the things that 
h appen under their very noses . "  Yes,  we have h ere satire, stinging satire, 
delightful satire that combines language and situation to give us 
Selvon's truth:  humans are a sorry lot.  
- La Verne Gonzal ez 
San Jose State University 
Sipho Sepamla. A Ride on the Whirlwind: A Novel of Soweto. 
(London: Heinemann, 1 9 8 1 )  244 pp., $7.50 p aper. 
South African poet ,  playwright, and teacher Sipho Sepamla has in his 
second novel ,  produced a fictional but tensely revealing narrative  of 
events surrounding the 1 976 Soweto riots. Dedicated to the young heroes 
of the day, the novel chronicles daily life in an atmosphere of fear, 
suspicion, distrust and terrorism.  
The fundamental themes ofthe book,  identity and trust, are developed 
through vignettes exploring the interplay of black and white, age and 
youth, male and female.  Il luminated by the glare of h ate-filled extremity, 
these relationships,  shorn of subtlety, reveal in  their starkness the 
pathos of terrorized life. 
The novel covers a brief period in the summer of 1 976 when a series of 
terrorist acts challenged the stability of white rule in Soweto.  The 
youthful M andla and his loosely organized band of teenage saboteurs 
take great pride in  their ability to embarrass the h eavily armed and 
Exp lo ra tions in Sights and Sounds No. 5 (Summer 1 985) 75 


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[Review of] Samuel Selvon. Moses Ascending

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