Sipped Ink vol 7 issue 2

Fellow readers, how are you? I trust that you got something out of the second week of reading. I need to add a caveat up front here for this issue: I’m travelling this weekend, and as such I’ve had to accelerate the schedule on which this issue of the newsletter was composed. At the time of writing it is Thursday evening, and I’m hoping to get this all put together and set for distribution to you without a hitch on Sunday. If you’re reading this, everything worked out just fine!

It was pointed out to me following last week’s newsletter that I had made a substantial omission from the discussion of power dynamics in the novel thus far: that of gender. It is increasingly clear that one of the most prominent themes of A Brief History of Seven Killings is to be masculinity in various forms. Already we have noted the sexualised nature of much of the patois slang, and it is inescapable the degree to which many of the novel’s male central characters are operating (whether out of fear, anger, desire / need and so on) to establish, bolster, or reassert their masculinity. This is something I think we’ll benefit from spending some time thinking about further into the text; we have already seen nuance being introduced (e.g. through the complicating treatment of Weeper’s homosexuality), and I’m confident that James will continue to interrogate the theme as the novel progresses. However, it certainly warrants noting at this stage the way in which women are treated in the novel. Frequently thus far we have seen women disparaged in speech, and subjected to emotional, physical, and sexual abuses. All of the central actors of the Jamaican society to which we are introduced are male, and the pervasive marginalisation of women is often conducted in a violent manner. It will be interesting to see whether James introduces more female voices later in the book, though the setup as presently constructed makes it feel unlikely. (NB. Though regrettably I have not read it, the reputation of Marlon James’s previous novel — The Book of Night Women (2009) — is that it also deals directly with the power dynamics of subjugation, but features a more prominent female perspective.)

The most prominent female voice in A Brief History of Seven Killings to this point is that of Nina Burgess, so let’s focus on her a little this week. At the beginning of the week’s reading we find her finally abandoning her watch at the Singer’s house, and through her narration we observe the psychology that results from a culture of oppression. Echoing the ‘wait and see’ / ‘see and wait’ dichotomy first introduced by Sir Arthur George Jennings, Nina laments:

you can’t do anything else in Jamaica but wait for something to happen to you. (p103)

And this sense of powerlessness, of not being an agent in one’s own life, is explicitly connected first with place (in microcosm the back of a police car, but readable in macro as Jamaica more generally):

You have all the time in the world. Because when this happens it’s your fault. Why didn’t you get out? Why didn’t you leave? (p121)

and secondly with gender:

Well who told you to be a woman when three gunman came calling? Your rape is your fault too. (p122)

Nina has internalised this mode of thought to the extent of fatalism, wondering at her own lack of fear:

A part of me knows that I am supposed to be afraid and wishes it; after all, what does it say about the kind of woman I am if I’m not? (p124)

The fact that the police officers in this instance do Nina no harm does nothing to convince the reader that she was incorrect to assume she was in danger. Her felt vulnerability is not acute but chronic, and is an expression of wider female vulnerability in the Jamaica we are shown. Indeed, the more time we spend with Nina, the more I find myself reading her less as a distinct individual and more as a symbol. She appears to function as an avatar through which James can give voice to a certain section of Jamaican society. She is not merely a synecdoche for Jamaica’s women, but also those educated, intelligent, and with ambitions beyond Jamaica, who nevertheless find themselves stuck. This is brought into stark relief in an earlier chapter by her run-in with Alex Pierce, an outsider who has very positive feelings towards Jamaica, but who is free to come and go as he pleases.

As an aside, the antithesis of Nina’s vulnerability is seen in the form of another white man: the individual who visits the Singer’s house. As we read on this week we may have come to the assumption that this is likely Mark Lansing, but James makes the interesting choice to keep the visitor’s identity ambiguous enough (and his appearance / disappearance mysterious enough) that it is open to the interpretation that Papa-Lo alludes to: that this was a visitation from the Devil himself. The comparison we are invited to make is between the Devil’s underhanded dealings in human affairs, and the presence of the CIA in Jamaica.

—Now the devil, he doesn’t need acknowledgment, in fact, the more hush-hush the better. (p129)

What do we make of Nina’s call with her sister Kimmy? On one hand, the dynamic here is common sibling stuff: the differences between the two sisters are amplified by their similarities, and as each criticises the other she is also criticising a part of herself that she dislikes. Nina’s criticism of Kimmy’s shallow and inauthentic commitment (‘livication’) to Black radicalism is undergirded by the shame she feels about her own lack of convictions. It is also noteworthy that it is in this context that Nina recalls the Rastafarian gathering she once attended with Kimmy:

A lot of women but they are all moving. It takes me a while to see that they are all getting something to give to the men, food, a stool, water, matches for their weed, more food, juice from big Igloos. Livication and liberation my ass, if I wanted to live in a Victorian novel I at least want men who know how to get a decent haircut. (p. 159).

James knows, and we feel that Nina also knows, that she is making this criticism having just returned from a full day spent outside the Singer’s house in the desperate hope of attention and assistance.

A number of other things also happened, or began to happen, this week. The reader gets the distinct feeling that a storm is inextricably gathering, with the Singer at its eye. James has done an excellent job of placing much of the novel’s action in relation to the Singer, without having his singular presence be large in the text. Everyone and everything in the book seems in some way to move about the Singer — at least in this first third of the novel — and I, for one, am beginning to feel the tension mount as the attempt on his life draws closer. Perhaps it’s a trick of the primacy placed on this particular incident by the blurb on the back of the novel, but I can foresee a possible shape to the narrative that draws inward towards the assault on Marley’s house, and then explodes outwards from there to show us how it affects each of the text’s players, and Jamaica as a whole. I guess we’ll find out!

A couple of notes on which to end:

My thanks to MC for sharing an image of this reading & listening combo:

and also to CS for digging this tome out of their library (more info here):

I really enjoyed this short video of Marlon James walking in Kingston; it gave me a better sense of both the place and the author:

No additions were made to the playlist¹ this week. It was a light week for music references, and I’ll be darned if I’m putting Eric Clapton on a playlist — that guy was the worst in the 70s, and remains the worst to this day.

All the best to you for the week ahead. This is the slightly tricky milestone I warned of in the intro edition of the newsletter; there’s just not a great breakpoint this week without distorting the rest of the schedule. For that reason, I’m planting the flag on p299, and specifically at the words ’when he put on the reel of The Opening of Misty Beethoven’. You may, of course, choose to continue reading beyond there (I’ll never know!), but that’s the spot that I’ll be discussing up to in the next issue of this newsletter. See you then!

---

1. this playlist has subsequently been deleted  ↩︎