MORROW: When I was working on the Music Issue of Conjunctions, there was a lot of talk about World Music, about the system of communications now being so developed and sophisticated in the world, so advanced among different cultures and peoples, that music -- the universal language -- has now become deeply inter-linked. As a result of this you hear the influence of Moroccan music on Norwegian jazz composition, or the influence of Indonesian music on American classical composition, or the influence of Indian scales and rhythms on British pop music, and so forth. Do you think that there is chance for something like a World Literature?

ACHEBE: Yes, as long as we don't rush into it by silencing the less loud manifestations of literature. This is another way of stating the fact of what I consider to be my mission in life. That my kind of storytelling has to add its voice to this universal storytelling before we can say, "Now we've heard it all." I'm worried when somebody from one particular tradition stands up and says, "The novel is dead, the story is dead." I find this to be unfair, to put it mildly. You told your own story, and now you're announcing the novel is dead. Well, I haven't told mine yet. Therefore, we must hear all the stories. That would be the first thing. And by hearing all the stories we will find in fact points of contact and communication, and the world story, the Great Story, will have a chance to develop. That's the only precaution I would suggest -- that we not rush into announcing the arrival of this international, this great world story, simply based on our knowledge of one, or a few traditions. For instance, in America there is really very little knowlege of the literature of the rest of the world. Of the literature of Latin America, yes. But that's not all that different in inspiration from that of America, or Europe. One must go further. You don't even have to go further in terms of geography -- you can go to the American Indians and listen to their poetry.

MORROW: This ignorance among Americans of other literatures of the world seems to me to be the result of attitude. And I wonder whether the attitude that has created this doesn't have at least something to do with racism, with an acculturated sense of racial superiority. One can't read your essay identifying the underlying racism of Conrad's vision in Heart of Darkness without being dumbfounded. The racism is so clearly there, and yet we missed it. How do we create an awareness of racist elements that are present in other Western classics besides the works of Conrad? How do we educate readers to identify racism in a work of fiction, say, or poetry?

ACHEBE: It is difficult because there is a strong resistance to what needs to be done. You can understand the reason why. People have been brought up to believe in certain things, to admire certain books. All their lives, as with their parents and grandparents, these things have been canonized. So when somebody comes up to them and says there is racism in this book, the other person thinks, "Well if there is racism in this book, I should have seen it. But, since I didn't see it, there can be no racism there." Or else he says, "If there is racism in this book and I didn't see it, it means, perhaps, that I am a racist." These are positions that many people are not ready to contemplate, so they shut off, and that's why this problem is so difficult. I've had some interesting encounters since that essay of mine came out. I should say, in all fairness, that many people have come to me and said, "I'm sorry, I didn't know, I really didn't see this. Thank you very much." But there have also been people who have been furious, who have said, "How dare you? This is nonsense. This is obtuse." But it is a battle which must always be fought, and we must push on. I can't see an easy end to it, but while it's going on conversions are made. And that's all you can ask, that some people come to these books now with a different awareness, and that they may carry that awareness to other things that they see or read, because all we are saying is do not treat any members of the human race as if they were less than human. That is the minimum of human respect which every person deserves and is entitled to. They may be different, they may look different, their cultures may be different, but they are all people. Once you accept that, the battle is won. I'm not suggesting that any books be pulled out and banned. That, in fact, would be meaningless. These books should be read. Especially those that are famous. But people should read them with an open eye, and the consequences of this would show in other things, how we relate to our neighbors and to the rest of the world.

MORROW: And the experience of reading, say, Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust, in which the same kind of thinking is operative as in Conrad's book, though the dark continent of savages happens to be South America rather than Africa, need not in some ways be altered. That is to say, we can appreciate its structure, the language, and in many ways the story itself, even while we comprehend that Waugh was subject to a somewhat racist vantage point, like a mild fever. The presence of sentiments which we find untenable in a work of art can also help us to define for ourselves the author's culure, the world in which he or she grew up and lived. In this way, a novel, or any work of art, can become historical, an aesthetic document that mirrors, no matter how distanced the individual artist might have been from his community, a cultural milieu. Literature remains living if the reader is as alive to its faults, its humanity, as he is alive to its perfections. I've always felt that the best readers are those who read a book as if it is being written at the moment, right there in their imaginations. Joyce and Virginia Woolf and others have talked about the ideal reader being somene who completely gives himself over to the writer, and that to me is where the trouble begins. I'd prefer a more vigorous reader, not negative or resistant, necessarily, but someone who brings their own skills and knowledge to the document. And here is what we're agreeing on -- that yes, there's no need to suppress any works by anyone. One must simply stay wide awake to all the subtle levels of discourse, of rhetoric, aesthetics, of politics, emotions. Only then is literature valuable and educational. In a way it has to do with learning to appreciate the otherness of others.

ACHEBE: I think what you called a mild fever --I like that expression -- there are symptoms of that in a lot of literature. Some extremely mild. The reason is that the mindset that created the works is not created by the artist -- it is something in the cultural environment, the educational environment, in their upbringing. So without being aware -- they were not necessarily trying to hurt anybody.

MORROW: In other words, we are learning more about Oxford, Mississippi, as a whole than we are about Faulkner specifically when we read his novels.

ACHEBE: Exactly. Faulkner was reflecting the environment in which he worked in a unique Faulknerian way.

MORROW: So that's a part of the beneficence of literature, that he would reflect his time?

ACHEBE: Yes, and what is important in the long run is not really what Conrad thought, or Faulkner thought, but how today's people can read their work and see nothing wrong in the way their characters were relating to the world, the complex world of races, a world of peoples. How can our world function with that kind of blind spot -- that's the issue. And that's why people are angry about it. They feel threatened that you are showing them up, and they don't want any of it. But they need to be able to operate and function more creatively, more usefully, in the complexity of the final years of the twentieth century.

MORROW: What is racism like in Nigeria? Are British whites the object of racist hatred?

ACHEBE: Racism is not a problem in Nigeria. It does not occur to Nigerians to describe anybody as non-black!

MORROW: It seems to me that racism has always had more behind it than skin pigmentation. Economics, politics, religion fueled all this, too. Class hatred and racism are twins, aren't they? They're joined at the scrawny hip.

ACHEBE: I think it has to do with all of that. It has to do with difference. Power -- military, economic, and so on, all these were determining factors in the end. And we, in the colonial situation, were the victims in the end. We were the victims. If there is any anti-white feeling in Nigeria, what you find is that it is usually a response to something that was there before. It's what Jean-Paul Sartre called anti-racist racism. That doesn't make it any more pleasant but one ought to know where it's coming from. We are not committed racists in my country. I don't know of any instances in recent times in which you can cite someone going out, for instance, and shooting someone because he is different. If someone does, I'd like to hear it. Racism, in the sense of really bitter hatred against people of another color, does not exist in Nigeria.

MORROW: What are your thoughts on new developments in other art forms in American culture besides literature, for example, young black Americans' impact on film --directors like Spike Lee and John Singleton, director of Boyz N the Hood -- and on the rise of importance of rap music in this country, music which restores narratives, ghetto narratives, race narratives, often violent narratives to what was before a trend toward anemia in rock lyrics?

ACHEBE: It's interesting. It seems to me, in fact, that this is a continuation of what was going on from the very beginning. The difference is that now people are ready to acknowledge the sources of what is happening. The black presence in America has always contributed in a rich way, in music, in poetry, in speech. It was never acknowledged openly, though, that this was a contribution from the black sector of the population. Coming as I do from Africa, far away, it seemed to me, from the beginning, I could hear overtones in American music from Africa. Like listening to Louis Armstrong, I could hear the masquerades, the masked spirits, talking, singing, the way he made this Western European instrument sound.

MORROW: How so?

ACHEBE:Well, the sounds were, for me, an attempt to transfer into a new form and a new instrument sounds that came from very ancient music in Africa. I don't know enough about music to be more specific, but this is how it struck me. It sounded to me like the voice of the masked spirits. I'm not sure that Louis Armstrong -- since he is the example I give -- was aware of this. It was something that stayed in the black community, that was brought over. Whether they were conscious of this or not, it remained part of their life.

MORROW:When Louis Armstrong or any other jazz musician takes a solo, he is creating a narrative of sorts -- an abstract narrative, ranted -- and there is a theme, a development, you build through a crescendo, perhaps, to a climax, and then take it back out. It occurs to me that the blues, in America, has as one of its primary accomplishments an ability to combine the abstraction of music with story --

ACHEBE: Which is events --

MORROW: Yes, and this is why I bring up rap. Because it seems to me that after the so-called British invasion in the sixties, most song lyrics took a downward turn, and what was being narrated in the lyrics was diminished, became even maudlin, codified, starched. Rap music at its best restores stories to popular music, and in this way it is like the blues. I wonder if that's what you are hearing in jazz, too -- stories.

ACHEBE:That's one part of this general feeling I'm trying to express, which is somewhat nebulous. Art and community in Africa are clearly linked. Art is not something that has been so purified and refined that it's almost gone out of real life, the vitality of the street, like European art and academic art tend to be. In Africa, the tendency is to keep art involved with the people. Among my own Igbo people it is clearly emphasized that art must never be allowed to escape into the rarefied atmosphere, but must remain active in the lives of people. Ordinary people must be brought in, a conscious effort must be made to bring in the life of the village in this art.

MORROW:And this is exemplified in the masquerades?

ACHEBE: Yes. The masked figures are the representatives of the ancestors. They represent the link between the living and the dead. Therefore during the masquerade they are the highest authorities, and human beings become subsidiary. They speak with the authority of the past, of the culture, of the ancestors, of the history of the people.

MORROW: So there is a fusion of art and religion that takes place.

ACHEBE: Art, religion, everything, the whole of life is embodied in the art of the masquerade. It is dynamic. It is not allowed to remain stationary. For instance, museums are unknown among the Igbo people. They do not even contemplate the idea of having something like a canon: "This is how this sculpture should be made, and once it's made it should be venerated." No, the Igbo people want to create these things again and again, and every generation has a chance to execute its own model of art. So there's no undue respect for what the last generation did, because if you do that too much it means that there is no need for me to do anything, because it's already been done. The Igbo culture says no condition is permanent. You must go on. Even those who are not trained artists are brought in to participate in these artistic festivals in which the whole life of the world is depicted. The point I'm trying to make is that there is the need to bring life back into art by bringing art into life, so that the two are mixed. And rap music does that precisely. The purists may say rap is no good, it's too direct, but in fact the highest examples of it will stand out, in the end, as really significant. In a novel such as Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard, you can see the same thing. There is no attempt to draw a line between what is permissible and what is not, what is possible and what is not possible, what is new and what is old. In a story that is set in the distant past you suddenly see a telephone, a car, a bishop --all kinds of things that don't seem to tie in. But in fact what you have is the whole life of the community, not just the community of humans but the community of ancestors, the animal world, of trees, and so on -- everything plays a part.

MORROW: So the Igbo artist is to you the ideal artist?

ACHEBE: I think so, yes. It's not the only way of looking at art, but it's an important, positive way.

MORROW: I'm reminded of the concept of musée sans murs, where everything in the world has art as a part of its nature and fabric. Except that in the case of the Igbo, there is no need for a manifesto that would storm the museum walls, since there are none. And what of these new filmmakers?

ACHEBE: They are providing a welcome injection of vitality into an art form that is powerful but is in danger of becoming stereotyped and flat and repetitive and dead and unrelated to the needs of society. When you talk about art in the context of the needs of society, some people flinch, thinking you are introducing something far too common for a discussion of art. Art shouldn't be concerned with purpose and reason and need, they say. These are improper. But if you go back to the dawn of man, making art was not so as to escape from himself. It was to make his passage through life easier.

MORROW: Easier in what way?

ACHEBE: There are bottlenecks in life, impossible situations, there are things that cannot be explained and if you think about them too long you get into a state of depression. You can't make this or that happen, the futility of death, and all that. How do you deal with all these things, and still go on living? The way man attempted to deal with this was to create, to create stories and visions so that he could handle difficult, intractable problems.

MORROW: Two questions. One, why should we trust the artist's version of reality, of good, evil, how communities should work, any more than that of anyone else in the community?

ACHEBE: It's not a question of trust. The artist presents his version. He has no power to impose it. He gives it, and it is up to the community to use it or not. The artist is not an emperor. He does not have a police force or prisons.

MORROW: The second question is this. Is there a moment in a man or woman's life where art becomes no longer necessary, where the bottlenecks disappear sufficiently so that art becomes useless?

ACHEBE: I don't think so. Art is like a second handle on reality, on our life and the world. That is an alternative that is provided by art. It does not cancel life, it does not eliminate life. It gives us this possibility for contrast, even for escape. So if a life is going to be meaningful -- I don't see a point where life is going to be simpler; I think we can dream of such a period, but I doubt that it will come -- it is our destiny that we must wrestle with difficult problems. The very nature of life is struggle. That's why this need for an alternative -- something that can be used as a foil -- will always be a necessity to a life well-lived.

MORROW: I'm curious what you think about the popularity -- enormous and continuing popularity -- of Things Fall Apart , given what a dark book it is finally. There is a darkness in the vision that seems to me less often commented upon than it might be. This is true of the other novels as well. How do you reconcile your audience's response to the novels as inspirational with the darkness of vision that informs them?

ACHEBE: Well, the popularity of Things Fall Apart in my own society can be explained simply, because my people are seeing themselves virtually for the first time in the story. The story of our position in the world had been told by others. But somehow that story was not anything like the way it seemed to us from where we stood. So this was the first time we were seeing ourselves, as autonomous individuals, rather than half-people, or as Conrad would say, "rudimentary souls." We are not rudimentary at all, we are full-fledged souls. In trouble, in trouble. There's no question about that. Life is full of trouble. We don't live in a world in which we marry and live happily ever after. That's only in fairy tales. This dark side is real. Whatever experience we have in the world confirms that this dark side exists. This bitterness is there. No matter how lucky one is you will at one point encounter this side of life. This is the side that philosophers and religious thinkers have not succeeded in explaining. Why do the righteous suffer? Why does a good cause fail? Why if there is order and pattern in the world shouldn't goodness succeed and evil fail? It doesn't work out that way. It is a puzzle, but it is there. That, it would seem to me, is the reason.

MORROW: I suppose it is as good a moment as any to ask you how you are doing after your automobile accident. Has the accident changed your view of life in any way? How are you doing, and what are your plans for the future as a writer and as a man?

ACHEBE: Actually, it was almost as if everything I had ever done in life was a preparation for my accident. I had never been in doubt about this dark side of life. But it was almost as if it were academic, something I was told. I knew it by reputation, by rumor. The difficult part of life, however, I had not experienced. Little disappointments along the way, but this accident was the real thing. The real break in my life. It was, of course, very severe. I was near death. It was touch and go. And in the end I was paralyzed in the legs. Some people in the hospital said to me, "Why should such a thing happen to you?" And I said, "Why not?" Those to whom this sort of thing happens, did they commit any sort of crime? Not necessarily. That is what our experience of the world has been from the beginning. So when my friends ask why do the righteous suffer -- making me out to be one of the righteous -- I can only say this is a question that has never been answered. Children are born deformed. What crime did they commit? I've been very lucky. I walked for sixty years. So what does it matter that I can't for my last few years. There are people who never walked at all. That's one way of looking at it. But when you begin to wrestle with the physical problems of not being able to get up and move, and all kinds of other things, and having to learn your body again, that's a terrific difference to what I'd known, and I'm still dealing with that.

MORROW: I suppose it is an opportunity, in a way.

ACHEBE: It is an opportunity It's a lesson. It's so much. It is an enrichment. I've learned so much. I've learned how much we depend on each other. My wife, who is a professional in her own right, and has carrying on her life as an academic, was summoned to the hosital -- and at that moment she simply dropped her own life and came to me in England and has been with me since. That's an inredible sacrifice. Sometimes I think, if it had been the other way round, would I have been able to do it? So, one learns as one suffers, and one is richer. The good will of the world is something I had never experienced in the same way before. The world was there at my bedside. Messages, flowers. So this accident added a new dimension to what I'd known before. The other question is how much work I can get out of it. There is the problem of not being physically able to do as many hours as I used to. There is the business of lying down, taking breaks, that wasn't there before. This is something I'm leaming to do, also. I have to use whatever life I have to a good purpose.

MORROW: I understand that you'll be writing your memoirs. Do you have other books in mind as well?

ACHEBE: I have always had a number of projects in mind. I would have started working on a novel by now. The idea of the memoir was always there, but it seemed to have become more urgent after this experience in which one realizes how fragile life is. Of course, as long as one is alive there is work to do.

MORROW: What is the idea for the novel?

ACHEBE: It is based on an incident that took place in my village at the turn of the century, when the women took their stand in the political arena. This is something which usually did not happen. Our mythology tells of times when men fail, and women take the reins of power and get the world through the crisis, the bad patch. There are references in myth and proverbs about the power of women. Mother is Supreme is a common name among Igbo people: Nne ka . There is no name, Father is Supreme. God is Supreme -- Chuku ka -- is another common name. So you see exactly where mother is placed. You can speak of mother and God in the same breath. But the story I want to use in the novel is fascinating. It was at the beginning of the colonial period, and women had not been involved too much in politics with the British up until then. Women would over the next fifty years play critical roles. But I see this first incident, in which the Igbo women stand together against the British, as a sort of full dress rehearsal for the important roles they would play in Nigeria later in the century.

MORROW: Have you started it? It sounds a little like you're already well into it.

ACHEBE: No, this is the way I work. The germ of the story grows over years in my mind until I begin.

MORROW: When did you get it in mind to write novels?

ACHEBE: I didn't think of becoming a writer for a long time because I didn't grow up in a society in which there were writers. But I did live in a society in which there were stories. I began to read European novels, and the ones that worried me were those that were supposed to be about us, about Africa. People wonder why I go back again and again to Conrad. His were some of the books that were available, and the stories he told of the Europeans wandering among savages bothered me. In the beginning it wasn't clear to me that I was one of those savages, but eventually it did become clear.

MORROW: So what you're saying is that you were motivated less by wanting to emulate any given novelist than by a need to fight back, in a way, and correct the portraits of Africa that European novelists were making.

ACHEBE: To oppose the discourse in those novels. It was a moral obligation. When I saw a good sentence, saw a good phrase, of course I wanted to imitate. But the story itself --there weren't any models. If they were not saying something that was antagonistic toward us, they weren't concerned about us. I read Dickens, and all the books that were read in the English public schools. But these were novels and poems about snow, and daffodils, and things I didn't know anything about. So it was a very special kind of inspiration that motivated me.

MORROW: How do you feel about your work, looking at it as a whole?

ACHEBE: Well, it's an effort to tell my own story. And I'm satisfied that at least I've broken through, been a pioneer, made a start. The performance itself is never as successful as the thought. That, of course, one has to live with. I'm sure this is true for every artist. The Igbo people have a proverb that tells of the difference between the vision and the achievement, and the achievement is never up to the vision. What the eye sees can never be reached by the stone the hand throws. The stone always falls short. I've learned to live with that. I don't make too much about it. The language of the dream is always superior to the language when you wake up and try to recapture the dream. One need not waste one's life lamenting that. One must be grateful for what one has achieved, and always try to do better, or at least try not to rest.

MORROW: Well, I hope you dream long and tell many more stories, Chinua.