ON MONDAY NIGHT/Tuesday morning, Wayne Brown, author of In Our Time, the column that declared and defined literary newspaper writing in the West Indies, Wayne Brown, poet, Wayne Brown, biographer, Wayne Brown who made track for so many o’ we ’gouti to run (to borrow the words of Kevin Baldeosingh, alumnus summa/magna cum laude of the Wayne Brown School of Influence), Wayne Brown, teacher, thinker, tutor and trusted friend, too besides, became Wayne Brown, cadaver.
The women who loved him, his daughters and wives, will miss him more than the rest of us but we are his family too, who toil on in this most unproductive of vineyards; there is no one working at writing in Trinidad or Jamaica today who was not either essentially formed or strongly influenced by Wayne; no one worth reading, anyhow.
All families are dysfunctional and the Caribbean literary one is no exception. If there is no one worth reading that he was not friends with, there are few of us he didn’t fight with, either. Indeed, the two most promising of his protégés fell out with him publicly, in one case leading to (unjustifiable) accusations of misbehaviour, in the other leading to an actual court case of assault & battery (subsequently withdrawn). At one time or another, he quarrelled, ’in the papers’ with just about everyone he considered, at all other times, his partners or co-conspirators; including me.
When I began writing Thank God It’s Friday in the Express in 1988-because Wayne showed me the career of ’newspaper columnist’ existed, could be made viable by dint of artifice & tears-Wayne was writing five columns a week to my one, if memory serves (but mine usually prefers to let me get it myself); which meant he had five times as many chances to get at me than I had at him.
We fell out over a column written in 1988 by then journalist, Christine Lee, which explained why she was moving to England from a Trinidad very much like the Trinidad of today-one perfectly described by Wayne, at the time, in a column titled, A Place to Leave.
Wayne and I took potshots at one another in our columns that I thought were private jibes. I would like to pretend it was pure amusement on my part but honesty forces and hindsight allows me to confess that my pride, like his, was not just involved but at stake. Years after, another friend explained that ’Town’ was following the fight closely, picking up the most throwaway of jabs that we made at one another.
After Wayne dedicated three columns to the dismantling of the myth of ’white or whitish’ cultural superiority, as illustrated by me, I sought him out; and, particularly in the context of our semi-public dispute (I think I was ahead on points at the time), he was a gentleman. We talked to one another like equals; which is to say, he was kind to me. Unlike the other two friendships/mentorships, our relationship did not implode. As a result, it grew. I would like to think he gained much from it; I know I did.
For the thing that we all know, in our heart of hearts, those of us who do the work he did, was that he was the best of us, by far; and there is nothing like working with the best.
He did not have, perhaps, the most substantial writing gift, the greatest craft, the clearest insight into the human condition, the greatest empathy, the most natural knack for dialogue, the best business head or bedside manner, etc of our time (though he was the best writing tutor I know).
And, though different ones of us might claim superior natural talent or a stronger or more disciplined work ethic or a better facility for turning words into dollars or a greater ability to suffer fools gladly, Wayne Brown beat us all back in the final analysis: he was by far the best residentall-round writer of prose the region has produced since Hemingway; it’s almost galling he was also one of its leading poets and would make most people’s Top Five and everyone’s Top Ten lists.
(He was entirely unmatched in one area, in my experience: he had literally the most penetrating vision I’ve ever witnessed,. He could look at you -take one, long look at you - and ’see’ you were horning your spouse, or had money worries, or disliked your own child, or wished your best friend would fail; it made mouths drop open in shock, his casual revelation in conversation of another’s deeply hidden secrets, carefully concealed desires, long-brained schemes.)
Pick up A Child of the Sea or Landscape With Heron, his two column collections, and you will see, on every page, the best writing of any of us. I may turn a phrase or an idea or two with more daring, from time to time, perhaps (or may just be more boldfaced); another may deploy stats and quotes to buttress argument; someone else might employ greater wit, deploy more iconoclasm; yet another might make up with acidity what he or she was lacking in perception; still, none of us could touch Wayne. But we could be touched by him; and were. Some admit it grudgingly; others never will; I make it a boast: when Wayne Brown could find no fault in something I wrote, I knew it could not be made better.
Wayne’s greatest gift, though, was the illustration of the relationship between the artist and his work; (well, Wayne and Andre Tanker.) If you google his name, you’ll see the early official recognition of his talent in prizes and posts; what you will not find is his de facto dismissal of them. Wayne Brown showed me what the great Lord Kitchener, who died pining for the Trinity Cross, never learned: that, beyond a certain level (which lay beyond the perception of the clerks who give out national awards), there was no reward needed more or greater than the work itself.
Like Andre Tanker, Wayne Brown knew just what he was doing all his life; and, perhaps unlike Andre, who died suddenly, Wayne knew what he was doing in death. Next week, if God and the murder rate spare life, I’ll relate for you the last conversation I had with him. It may not change your life; but it may change your death.
BC Pires is reefing his sails.
The BC Pires Column appears with permission from the author. See thank god it’s friday online at www.BCRaw.com
