Author Marlon James on never outgrowing the magical

Transcript

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Judy Woodruff: Now: a new fantasy novel, the first in a forthcoming trilogy set in a mythic Africa.

Jeffrey Brown brings us the latest entry on the “NewsHour” Bookshelf.

It’s part of our Canvas, our regular arts and culture series.

Jeffrey Brown: In the writer Marlon James’ Brooklyn apartment, African masks he’s collected over the years, superhero toys.

So here, your love of comics.

Marlon James: Yes. When I was growing up, I gobbled up so many comics and graphic novels.

Jeffrey Brown: And lots of books, including the comics and fantasy stories he’s long loved.

The Jamaican-born James is best known for his literary fiction, including “A Brief History of Seven Killings,” winner of the prestigious Man Booker Award.

Now comes “Black Leopard, Red Wolf,” a tale of magic, shape-shifting characters, bloody battles and fantastic adventures, familiar in some ways, but through a less familiar lens

Marlon James: It’s almost like an African “Arabian Nights,” in that it’s a story about stories.

What happened? This man is telling you what happened, and he gets very digressive along the way, telling you all other sorts of stories, other sorts of folktales, because, if you read stuff like “Arabian Nights,” a story leads into a story leads into a story leads into a story.

Jeffrey Brown: I have seen you describe yourself as a fantasy nerd. What did that mean?

Marlon James: It means I read everything. Even my vocabulary of sci-fi cinema, I realized, wasn’t even cinema. First time I saw “Return of the Jedi,” I was like, oh, my God, I have never seen this. And I know everything about that film…

Jeffrey Brown: Yes.

Marlon James: … because I have read the books, I have read the movie tie-ins and I read the comics. So, even my cinematic language was books.

It was reading whatever I could get my hands on. And, usually, that’s stuff like comics or, again, “Dragonslayer,” which, again, was a movie tie-in.

Jeffrey Brown: Yes.

Marlon James: A lot of the crucial books, like “Lord of the Rings” and “Dune,” I read as an adult. Whatever had words and I could get, I would grab it and read it.

Jeffrey Brown: What was it and what is it about the fantasy genre that grabbed you and made you want to write one?

Marlon James: I never took kindly to the idea that you outgrow the magical and the surreal and the fairy tale. And I still don’t.

And I have always found it weird that you’re supposed to get the point where you mature beyond Brothers Grimm. I never did that. I never…

Jeffrey Brown: You’re supposed to grow up, right?

Marlon James: Yes.

Jeffrey Brown: Grow out of it?

Marlon James: I never had that literary puberty. And I don’t want it either.

And I think, because of that, I have always still — I never let go of that, always wanting that fantastical. So, I mean, I will watch even bad fantasy films. I don’t care. Just give me a sword and some sorcery.

(LAUGHTER)

Marlon James: I think, at some point, though, I did start to react to people that may being not included or erased.

Jeffrey Brown: People like you?

Marlon James: You know, black people, people of color being erased from those narrative — or not even being in them in the first place.

And there’s a part of me that always wanted — always wished to see just one, somebody like me in a story with dragons and elves and so on.

There is a thrill, particularly when you are young, to see somebody like yourself in a story. There is. And it’s something you notice when there’s the absence of it.

Jeffrey Brown: The stories that went into this book from African mythology, from history, where did you find it all?

Marlon James: Everywhere, including online. Thank God for the Internet.

Jeffrey Brown: Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

Marlon James: Old folktales. I found recently translated epics, and historic — history books written now, and the recent archaeological finds, sources.

And as a novelist who has written historical novels before, that’s something that’s just part of the work. I mean, I will read the ship logs. I will read the tax records. I want to read the original information and inform my own story.

Jeffrey Brown: You’re clearly playing with language in many different ways. So where does the language come from?

Marlon James: It comes from everywhere.

A lot of it is being Jamaican. The thing is, I’m not — I’m not from the continent. I’m not from an African country. And my literary sensibility is as much shaped by Amos Tutuola as it is by Charles Dickens.

Jeffrey Brown: Yes.

Marlon James: And I wasn’t going to lose that. That’s who I am. And that’s how I write.

At the same time, I’m writing a novel that is trying, at least attempting to put forward a vision that is not European and is not influenced by European values, not even by a European counting system.

So the dilemma is, how do I use this language I know, English — that’s what I write in, that’s what I speak — but try to come up with something that is very foreign?

It has to read — if anything, the novel has to read almost like an English translation than English.

Jeffrey Brown: Yes.

Marlon James: So, for example, some characters speak only in the present tense, even when they’re talking about the past, which is also very Jamaican. All our verbs in Jamaican English stay present tense, regardless of tense.

I thought that was just bad English.

(LAUGHTER)

Marlon James: And fantasy does give me the freedom, the kind of playground, to mess with — not mess with — to play with all of that, but also to be true to the structure of languages.

Jeffrey Brown: Did you think much about who this is intended for, who the audience is? I mean, you have mostly had a literary following, I think, right?

So, is this for the — is this fantasy for the literary lovers?

(LAUGHTER)

Jeffrey Brown: Or — and what about fantasy lovers? Will they think it’s too literary? What…

Marlon James: You know what? I still think I write for everybody. I put a lot of trust in the reader, which is — I will say, yes, there are parts where you might feel you’re out without a paddle. Don’t worry. The current is coming.

So, I still think I write for everybody.

Jeffrey Brown: You are giving the world a trilogy, right? You think people still have the attention span to read it, stay with it?

Marlon James: Well, my theory is that all those kids who read “Harry Potter” are grown up now, so they have already read 900-page novels.

(LAUGHTER)

Marlon James: So, it’s an odyssey. Of course it’s episodic, but also something that has a sort of a through-line. And if nothing else, there are good battle scenes.

(LAUGHTER)

Jeffrey Brown: All right, “Black Leopard, Red Wolf.”

Marlon James, thanks very much.

Marlon James: Thank you for having me.