The Longest Memory

Group G1

Putting aside the subject matter (which is "compelling" and all that) for a moment, it is hard not to admire the way that the author successfully uses a jigsaw approach to build up the total story.

D'Aguiar patches this together using everything from first person memoir to poetry to newspaper editorials to construct a story in which the reader is left with some (limited) options as to what they think about things.

From the perspective of finding books which are a useful addition to understanding the craft of writing, this is one you should read. ( )

36/2009. Set book for the Helsinki department entrance exam in one of my teaching years. Even for a slavery book, it's a downer and took me another five years to read straight through. It was originally conceived as a poem cycle from different points of view, and the best lines are poetic. D'Aguiar doesn't strive for accurate research or contemporary sounds/logic but concentrates on describing simple, timeless sensations.

The Longest Memory tells the story of a pivotal event in the life of an antebellum Virginia plantation - the whipping to death of a young slave - from the perspectives of several different characters.

The aged slave Whitechapel is central to the narrative. He has learned the art of compliance, of accepting the slave's lot without complaint. For this he has earned the admiration and respect of the plantation owner, and acts as an elder to the slave population. For Whitechapel, existence, despite its sorrows, has become comfortable. In the context of the novel, Whitechapel is an ambiguous character. He ultimately loses his status in the eyes of the slaves, for it is he who has revealed (following a promise of leniency) to the plantation owner the location of Chapel, the runaway slave, whom he regards as his son, but whose lineage is more complex. Chapel has committed one of the great sins of slavery. The plantation owner's daughter has taught him to read, and fired by this Promethean knowledge, his head becomes full of his own verses, and of visions of freedom.

I will avoid any further synopsis. This is a short book, imbued with the poetic sensibilities of its talented author, a Guyanese poet. Mercifully, D'Aguiar does not attempt to recreate the vernacular speech of the characters, but rather allows them to speak to us with a precise clarity well suited to the narrative. Despite its brevity, The Longest Memory speaks eloquently of the universally corrupting effect of slavery.