Marechera's writing

When I decided to study Marechera for my PhD, I was attracted to his writing from the outset by the sense of honesty I found in various quotes of his I'd found. I immediately felt that this was a person who knew himself very, very well, and was not afraid to say something just because it didn't fit a pattern of socialization or acculturation which might have been more acceptable. I thought this  subject was worthy of my PhD studies. Since these early stages, my esteem for this writer has only grown in multiples. I find him a difficult writer because he is not lacking in depth.

It is hard for a person to read a writer of another culture whilst understanding his or her depth. I chose Marechera to study, specifically, because he came from the same region of the world that I did. I thought that this would help me to understand him. It did-- but psychologically, at times, I've felt almost that I had bitten off just as much as I could chew. Specifically, I have been shocked at what I have understood -- the viciousness of poverty, the extremity of social alienation which leads to madness.

I approached Marechera with a sensibility of one who is also alienated. (For a further elucidation of the nature of this, read the end part of my autobiography, which is attached to my profile on this blogger.) I followed his writings through the logic of my own alienation, with the implicit understanding that alienation is actually a form of logic. What I read and saw in my mind's eye appalled me. I saw someone who believed in himself -- despite overwhelming social pressures not to. This was someone who saw the preservation of his sanity as being dependent upon staying the course of personal independence from dominant and dominating social forces. He stayed the course -- and paid the ultimate price with his life.

This was my  mind-shattering insight into the persona of Marechera. He refused to submit -- and a price was subtracted for that. Marechera's own life speaks to us about the violence of society.

Trying to relate to Marechera's writing requires mental and emotional conditioning. It is as if, I -- being a semi-contact fighter -- decided one day, for reasons best ascribed to a sudden spark of daring masquerading as madness, to go up against a full contact amateur fighter.

Marechera writes in many ways like a self-trained, intuitive fighter. He ducks and weaves a lot -- it can be hard, at times, to find a "self" within his writing. As a reader, you find his self evades you, time after time. Sometimes you manage to pin him down, to land some contact with the subject hiding behind the text -- but not for long. A close reading of Marechera's Black Sunlight will leave an engaged reader feeling the gasp and retraction of far too many body blows. He is a hard writer -- in all too many senses.

One can learn a lot about writing from reading Marechera. I learned enough from him about the hardness of life in order to finish my autobiography, which had been screaming, in the half-birth position, for a number of years.

Marechera's writing is audacious and nothing if not confrontational. He deals with the ongoing issue of preserving human dignity in the face of extreme unfairness, poverty and oppression.

His writing is not only rich thematically, but also stylistically. He adopts a casual and extremely bold approach to style -- appropriating aspects from all different stylistic systems; often with the effect of a humourous juxtaposition of anomalous cultural ideas and content.

His writing has been underestimated because he chose not to be constrained by notions of conventionalism (artistically and socially) -- especially ideas about how someone of his race and (originally, peasant) class ought to write. He is still not read as widely as he should be read today because of various unconscious social prejudices -- not just literary prejudices, which concern style.