Austin clarke author biography examples

On another evening, he led us to the home of a good friend and helped her prepare supper for us, all the while regaling us with tales of the Don Valley area near the home of our hostess. The following evening he showed us the family home, where his wife Betty lived, and introduced us to a second library housing another impressive collection of books, and a leather divan on which, as he proudly informed us, the American activist Malcolm X had once sat.

The primary objective of the evening, though, was the enjoyment of a delectable meal Betty had prepared. In the course of a long, lively evening, with jazz in the background, he demonstrated how to make cou-cou , a kind of polenta, which he later served with fried trout, roast pork, peas and rice, as well as other West Indian dishes, among them sweet potatoes and pone.

It was a gastronomical delight, served in genteel English fashion in his well-appointed dining-room amid elegant silverware and glittering crystal glasses, with wine flowing freely. It had become clear to me by then that, while he habitually toiled late into the night at his own writing, he also loved good food and lively companionship.

Returning to Toronto to see Clarke in the early summer of , I soon discovered that nothing had changed in our relationship. I had spent a month at McMaster University in Hamilton working my way diligently through his papers, photocopying critical documents and making copious notes from others. The main purpose of a short visit to Toronto was to obtain clarification regarding particular matters emerging from the documents.

Despite the demands of his own writing, Clarke was again unsparing with his time, dutifully responding to my every query. Again, too, his effervescence appeared boundless, as he arranged a party for a group of his friends visiting from Barbados, extending an invitation to me. It was a characteristically lively event, with an abundance of food and drink, with calypso music blaring about the house, and with young women merrily reliving their girlhood by playing hopscotch in the backyard.

Clarke was inevitably at the centre of things. When a debate arose among the men about a particular cricket score, he impulsively telephoned a friend in Winnipeg who was an authority on cricket and asked him to settle the issue. The very next day, I again found myself in his company, this time in a restaurant in the Greek Quarter of Toronto along with two elderly bachelors who apparently lived lonely lives in small apartments and who, with my acquiescence, had been invited to enjoy some companionship.

His inclusion of the two men, I thought, was a touching act on his part, one that revealed much about his basic humanity. As a writer of international stature, he drew a substantial audience which included local writers as well as faculty and students from across the university. The event was a resounding success, with his listeners responding enthusiastically to both comic and serious segments from his novels.

Afterwards, he autographed the numerous copies of his novels that had been sold and then, cutting a rather fatherly figure, engaged warmly with students who had lined up patiently to chat with him, an indication no doubt of the love of young people he had developed in his forays into university life. That evening, as guest of honour at a party organized at her home by a member of the English Department, Clarke was soon in his element.

Austin clarke author biography examples

He seemed to enjoy the setting, as the house was located in the historic downtown of the city and boasted a splendid view of the harbour. Clarke helped himself to the scotch. Soon, no doubt assisted by the warmth of traditional Newfoundland hospitality, he was moving steadily from one group to another, sharing jokes and laughter, relating anecdotes about his experiences, in absolute comfort amid a sea of white faces.

And he remained at the party deep into the night. Clarke spent three days in my family home and he was as keen and diverse in his interests as ever. He took pleasure in our garden, with its dahlias, lilies, phlox, roses and other flowers still thriving in the gentle weather of a Newfoundland fall. A successful athlete in his youth, he still maintained a lively interest in sports and, fortified by Bombay Gin, he spent hours in our family-room watching videotapes of recent cricket matches in which the West Indies had demolished England.

He expressed pride in the West Indian performance and, in particular, in the feats of Barbadian compatriots like Gordon Greenidge and Malcolm Marshall. Again, his interest in food made him receptive to different culinary experiences. On another day we took him on the inevitable tour of St. At Cape Spear, the easternmost point of the continent, he relished the salt air streaming in from the Atlantic and the sound of the waves crashing against the shore.

It was the view from the top of Signal Hill, though, which appeared to take his breath away, as the poet within him — and he had written poetry long before he turned to prose — drank in the power of the landscape, with the ocean spreading out to the horizon and the jagged line of headlands baring deep cliffs as they strained toward the sea.

It is entirely possible that some who did not know Clarke well might have regarded him as acerbic and cynical. Such a representation is perhaps not entirely without merit, since he has long been a loud and persistent voice protesting the injustices of the Black experience. Indeed, his writing is in large measure a bold indictment of both Barbadian and Canadian society.

Memorial University Research Repository. Browse By:. Department theses only. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. Toronto Star. Archived from the original on 3 June Revisiting Austin Clarke's novel about memory, migration and a chance encounter Radio program.

Clarke" , Gale Contemporary Black Biography. National Post. Archived January 29, , at archive. The Daily Nation. Archived from the original on 1 April Archived from the original on 13 August CBC News. Archived from the original on 3 January The New York Times. Associated Press. Archived from the original on 24 October For years afterword, Clarke would be referred to as the angriest black man in Canada.

Nigel Thomas. Even though life for black people was brutally, explicitly racist, our souls were enriched, we were warmed by the expression of beauty by our artists. Clarke is often described as a literary outsider. I am not sure to what extent this was true. He was certainly the only major black Canadian writer publishing in the s and he most definitely experienced the chill of Canadian racism.

Yet he was published quite early in his career by major houses, even though dissatisfaction caused him to change publishers regularly. He was also invited to teach at Yale and Harvard—an uncommon honor for a Canadian writer in those days. He led marches against apartheid and spoke out against police brutality, an issue that would emerge in future works like In This City and his final novel More.

In addition Clarke served as cultural attache to Washington for Barbados in and then returned to the island to head up the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation. In he took a run at Ontario politics as a member of the Conservative Party. From — he took a nine-to-five job with the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. He later told me he would never forget the cruelties endured by many of the female refugees.

The Prime Minister about a corrupt Barbadian government was written after his dispiriting stretch with the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation. Likewise, The Origin of Waves about two boyhood friends from the Caribbean who run into each other in a Toronto snowstorm was written after Clarke had lived in the city for forty years. I still remember going to his house to interview him for that book.

He lived on McGill Street then. It was late February and his Christmas tree was still standing.