Nigerian writer and author of ‘Ndidi Dike’s Thesis on the Nigerian Condition’, Chimezie Chika believes that fidelity to the quality of work is what makes an artist or artwork timeless: ‘I think art has a lot to do with quality—and I mean quality as substance: the quality of colour, the quality of light, the quality of strokes, the quality of mood, the quality of thought, and the quality of ideas. All great art possesses these qualities.’
First Draft is our interview column, featuring authors and other prominent figures on books, reading, and writing.
Our questions are italicized.
What books or kinds of books did you read growing up?
As a child, I read all kinds of things, but I recall vividly that my reading started with my innocuous fascination with the pictures in a red book I found on my father’s nightstand. The title of the book was You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth. Of course I couldn’t read the title at the time, but I picked up the book every day to look at its illustrations of well-dressed happy people living blissful lives. The world I saw in those illustrations seemed vastly different from the one I knew. With time, I became curious to know what the book was saying about those happy people. I used to ask my dad a lot of questions about them, which he found amusing. When I finally learnt how to read and began to read the book earnestly, I realized it was a tract of the Jehova’s Witnesses. The illustrations, too, as I came to realize, were an ideal. My dad was not a Witness by any stretch, but he was interested in their doctrine and allowed their preachers to talk to him, as I would too many years later in university. Growing up, I read all the Awake! and Watchtower magazines my father kept in my parents’ room. At the same time, I was also reading his newspapers, mostly Punch, Guardian and Vanguard. Dad later added Daily Sun to that list when they started publishing. As usual, I started with pictures: the comic strips, which I followed with avid interest. Shortly after, I started reading the articles in newspapers cover to cover. I should add that my father’s friends were always amazed to see me reading the newspapers. It was strange to them—mind you, my dad and his friends were trailer drivers—but it came from the circumstance from which I learnt to read. I read a lot of books in the Lantern and Macmillian children’s series later, as well as abridged illustrated versions of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist and George Orwell’s Animal Farm. I remember the first Macmillian I read was A Lucky Chance and the last I read was Mezie the Ogbanje Boy, which I liked enormously because the protagonist bore my name. The defining event of my childhood though, as far as reading goes, was my discovery of an old copy of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Weep Not Child on that selfsame nightstand of my father’s. That book changed my life and showed me, even so early in my life, what was possible with literature.
If your life so far was a series of texts, which text (fiction or non-fiction) represents you at this moment?
This is a good question. I have a vast array of interests; there is a certain kaleidoscopic quality to the things that interest me. By which I mean, things that can mean many things at once. One book that defines me at present is probably Teju Cole’s Open City. It is a book about a young self-indulgent psychiatrist. But it is intimately a book about art, photography, cities and social geography, immigration, music, and the style and craft of writing. That sort of eclecticism is me.
What’s the last thing you read and disagreed with?
I have disagreed with several things lately, but the most recent one is unavoidable: The New York Times’ ‘100 Best Books of the 21st Century’, which I first came across in Eric Karl Anderson’s channel on YouTube. That list is more remarkable for its curious omissions than for anything else, and of course for being very American, which shouldn’t be too surprising. But how long are we going to keep complaining about such things? Lists are inherently subjective, no matter how much effort the compilers make to the contrary, if they make any efforts at all. The important thing for Africa is to build powerful institutions; that’s how you put yourself in the vanguard of things.
The defining event of my childhood though, as far as reading goes, was my discovery of an old copy of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Weep Not Child. That book changed my life and showed me, even so early in my life, what was possible with literature.
What’s the last thing you read that changed your mind about something?
That will most likely be Deborah Bright’s utterly compelling ‘Of Mother Nature and Malboro Men: An Inquiry into the Cultural Meanings of Landscape Photography’. I came upon that essay by a stroke of gracious serendipity while researching ecological photography and, for a long time, I was positively consumed by it. On the level of the writing, there are not many more excellent pieces of art criticism out there. It made me see the connections between the material world of natural phenomena and the prevailing prejudices that shape our perception of them. In short, I had to reconsider a lot of things I took for granted after I read that essay. I didn’t agree with all of it, but it changed my mind about the role of public art in defining the perceptions of the public. A close second is Ernest Ogunyemi’s now notorious essay, ‘Is Contemporary Nigerian Poetry Nigerian?’ I don’t know if changing my mind is the right way to put it, but that essay did put things in perspective for me where my own muted thoughts about Nigerian poetry did not suffice.
What is your writing process: edit as you write or draft first, then edit?
Most of the time, it is the former. In fact, I adhere religiously to the former. That is the only way the writing makes any sense to me. Writing may read coherently when finished, but most of the writing process is a lot of stumbling and groping around (to use Chinua Achebe’s analogy); I stumble around a lot because the writing itself is, most of the time, a process of figuring out tangents of thoughts. Thoughts and ideas in the head are never as organized as they may seem, at least for me. Thus, the figuring out. And I like to see my way clearly as I go, by going back frequently, elucidating points and fleshing out half-thoughts. But that is not the end of it. Usually, when I get to the end, I go back immediately to work from the beginning. Then I close the document afterwards and forget about it for a while before getting back to it days or weeks later. I read an interview last year in which Paul Lynch, the 2023 Booker Prize winner, said he edits as he goes along and by the time he gets to the end, he considers the writing edited and complete. That’s not me.
What was your process for writing your essay ‘The Artist of Beauty and Mystery: Ben Enwonwu’s Indelible Mark on African Art’?
I researched as I wrote until I completed it. I had one month to write the essay, but I spent the first three weeks not writing it at all. I took flaneur trips around Onitsha in that time, viewed art, and worked on other things. When I finally sat down to write the essay, I was in a sort of benign hysteria. I had three parts which I worked on separately before bringing them together: one historical part, one about the art in focus, and another that conflates the earlier two with culture.
What inspired this story?
Before I began that essay, I was looking at early Nigerian art and trying to think about them. My study of Nigeria’s artistic antecedents led me to think about Ben Enwonwu, whose art I first encountered in the early years of secondary school. While working on that commission I immersed myself completely in Enwonwu. I was agitated at one point, but it is not in a bad way. My creative periods often put me in a state of feverish agitation—something I have called a ‘disturbed state of mind’ elsewhere. Over the years, I have come to realize that this is when my mind is trying to organize its ungovernable thoughts. When working on a story, I make efforts to study the historical or environmental context, even if little of it makes it to the final draft (If you read around a bit about writers, you will see this is not peculiar to me). As a writer, you have to know more than the written piece; the written piece is only a fraction of the knowledge you have on the subject, the most important though. With the Enwonwu piece I visited Enwonwu’s ancestral neighbourhood in Onitsha, visited the shrines in Onitsha, and re-acquainted myself with the city’s historical landmarks. Not all of this is relevant to the essay, but they helped the process of putting me in that historical and cultural frame of mind that allowed me to probe Enwonwu’s era, his art, and the culture that heavily influenced it. By the way, Enwonwu is from Onitsha, and I have spent over two decades of my life in and around Onitsha. So, we have a mutual stake in the city. The city was the inspiration.
When working on a story, I make efforts to study the historical or environmental context, even if little of it makes it to the final draft. As a writer, you have to know more than the written piece; the written piece is only a fraction of the knowledge you have on the subject, the most important though.
Your essay, ‘Ndidi Dike’s Thesis on the Nigerian Condition’, features in our latest print issue, Nigeria Imaginary. What drew you to Ndidi Dike’s work?
Without doubt it is her artistic dedication to Nigeria. Ndidi Dike’s art is representative of Nigeria in every respect; it is very familiar and yet, at the same time, profoundly thought-provoking. She is always driving us to look more closely at the things around us and to ask questions about it. Here is an art that brings us to that crossroads where we are not just docile viewers but active participants in the process of diagnosing the problems of our society and thus take the first steps in enacting the process of making it better.
Are there any artists or art movements you’re particularly passionate about?
Certainly! There is a lot to say about surrealism or, more particularly, neo-surrealism, which I am intimately drawn to for its foreboding quality and spiritual overtones. Cubism which, in its fragmentation, replicates Pablo Picasso’s study of African masks. I have a special interest in classical art—I don’t see why any artist or art enthusiast should not be really. It is the mother of all perfection of form, shape, and detail.
What do you think makes an artist or artwork timeless?
Fidelity to the quality of the work. I think art has a lot to do with quality—and I mean quality as substance: the quality of colour, the quality of light, the quality of strokes, the quality of mood, the quality of thought, and the quality of ideas. All great art possesses these qualities. You will not look at Paul Cezanne or Picasso or Michelangelo without considering these. Or the quality and mystery of the ordinary you find in the photographs of Seydou Keita and Dorothea Lange. In fact, all these qualities are the exuberance of genius; the overriding genius to capture a remarkable, hidden quality in the world, the quality of ‘awareness of the possibilities of life’, to borrow from F.R. Leavis.
What’s the most interesting reaction/feedback you’ve had about your writing?
I think it was this time last year when I published an essay about my spiritual awakening. That essay received so much reaction that it was even difficult, at some point, to keep track. One reaction struck me though. An acquaintance sent me a message on WhatsApp and said that my prose was mystical, spellbinding, and had a ‘measured rhythm’. It was good to hear that and to hear from others from time to time, but I try not to think too much about praise.
When I was 19, I came across these words: ‘Do not tell me the moon is shining, show me the light on the broken glass.’
What is the most meaningful piece of writing advice you’ve ever received?
I didn’t so much receive it as read it. When I was 19, I came across these words: ‘Do not tell me the moon is shining, show me the light on the broken glass.’ Those were Anton Chekov’s famous words, and it is a good thing I saw them when I did, for they had been my guiding principle ever since. Even the taciturnity of that statement is a lesson. Another important advice came when I attended the Writivism Workshop in Lagos in 2015. One of our teachers—I cannot recall whether it was Mazi Nwonwu or Dami Ajayi—told us to avoid assuming a piece of writing is done and dusted after the first draft. In the world of the writing craft, nothing is exactly a given: you can break rules and undue things, as we have learnt from some of the masters. But there are basic principles too. Nothing improves a piece of work as reworking and editing, because, as I have said before, the first draft is usually a process of figuring out.
What’s your favourite book (fiction or non-fiction) about art?
I read Irving Stone’s Lust for Life, which is about Van Gogh, when I was 20. It was an epiphany, to say the least. At the time, I was bingeing on Irving Stone, who built a reputation for his large factual novels about important figures. I had just finished reading his Passions of the Mind—that one is on Sigmund Freud—and my next read turned out to be Lust for Life. It is hard to put that kind of discovery into words. But reading about Van Gogh—his world, his temperament, his suffering—is a lesson on how art is entwined irrevocably with life.
If you could interview any artist, living or dead, who would it be and why?
That will be Demas Nwoko. He is a towering figure of Nigerian modernism. A true Renaissance man, he went out of his way to bring in novel ideas in Nigerian art, architecture, and theatre. Such varied interests in one person resonates with me. I’d like to discuss his early art with him. Particularly, the conceptual basis of ‘natural synthesis’ in his experimentations with surrealist and fauvist expressionism.
What’s the best book you’ve read so far this year?
I am still reading Richard Cork’s Face to Face: Interview with Artists. The interview form is one of the most indispensable in teaching and revealing the principles of any art form (I have raised myself on a diet of interviews, especially ‘The Art of Fiction’ series in The Paris Review.)
In terms of a book, I have finished: I thoroughly enjoyed Michael Chiedoziem Chukwudera’s debut novel Loss is An Aftertaste of Memories. It has all the attributes of a significant new voice in Nigerian fiction and, at times, reminds me of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, one of my favourite works of fiction.
And what’s your literary pet peeve?
I am completely invested in the perfection of prose style and that makes me fixate obsessively over sentences. I work at the sentence level. The sentence has to say exactly what I want it to say and it needs a rhythm, a beat, a metre—or a quality that makes it flow with the complexity of my thought process (and this peculiar striving is not always successful, but I keep at it). In my writing, you’d see a lot of em-dashes and a fest of commas, which helps the coherence of my long sentences. In short, there is a rhythmic patterning to the commas or, at least, that is what I am trying to achieve: sonorous meaning.
Which contemporary books do you think will become classics in the future?
There are very good African titles that have strong stakes. All of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novels, but especially Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun, which I suppose are already classics. Chigozie Obioma’s The Fishermen and Damon Galgut’s The Promise. Teju Cole’s Open City is strategic here. A novel has to achieve the highest levels of storytelling and prose to be considered a classic. It has to appear to do something new, even if there is really nothing new. Bloom says it has to have a quality of strangeness. And this is not limited to novels. There is Noo Saro-Wiwa’s Looking for Transwonderland. A book like Hisham Matar’s The Return is an envious achievement.
Imagine you’re starting a book club. Which three writers would you invite (and why)?
Living writers? Zadie Smith, for the intellect with which she discusses the literary, and the forthrightness with which she captures the multivocality of the British experience, which is relevant to us today, because the world is a shifting wheel of human movements, cultures, and political allegiances. Teju Cole, for his erudition and the perceptive quality of his observations about the world. Adichie, for her natural fervour for such highly accomplished storytelling and the largeness of heart you find in her prose.
Which three books from/on Nigeria should everyone be reading at this moment?
Abubakar Adam Ibrahim’s When We Were Fireflies. Noo Saro-Wiwa’s Black Ghosts. Ike Anya’s Small by Small.
And who are the Nigerian writers you’re most excited about today (and why?)
The future is exceptionally bright when you encounter such prodigious talents as Ernest Ogunyemi, Ancci, Chukwuebuka Ibeh, Michael Chiedoziem Chukwudera, and Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto. Ogunyemi is quite frankly the most erudite Nigerian still in his early 20s; Ancci is not far behind. These guys are making the art of criticism fashionable again—and of course there’s Oris Aigbohaevolo who has been paving a way for us since the middle of the last decade. Most of his work is in film. Don’t ask me why he doesn’t have a book yet. Ibeh’s Blessing is a testament to his undeniable talent. Then there is Chukwudera, whom I have mentioned before and Ezenwa-Ohaeto, who has what I consider a very important poetry collection coming in 2025.
What is your favourite topic to write or read about these days?
I read a lot of criticism, art and literary. I have spent more time reading literary criticism this year than anything else. A lot of stuff in The New Yorker, mostly by Merve Emre and Adam Gopnik. I also read The New Republic, where I catch up on all things culture, and then The Republic, my go-to for all things African. Other magazines too. I spent months reading slowly through Edmund Wilson’s first book, Axel’s Castle, which I only finished weeks ago.
I read a lot of criticism, art and literary. I have spent more time reading literary criticism this year than anything else.
What are you currently working on?
The main thing: I am working on a novel. But I am also working on several essays. One is an essay about Onitsha, which is more or less near completion; an essay on some young artists; another is an essay about the writing craft.
Question from Emmanuel Esomnofu: Does writing fulfil you? If given the chance to start all over, would you still be a writer?
Yes, writing does fulfil me. Writing is a process of thinking, and thinking is living. How can I live life without thinking, without the priceless gifts of the imagination? Such a life will be droll and uninspiring. Would I want to be a writer if I were to start all over? I don’t think so. I think I would choose something else, not just for the immediate financial security, which writing wouldn’t give you most of the time, but also because I am an eternally curious being.
Bonus: Please suggest a question for a future author’s First Draft
What do you want your work to represent in the world?
Who do you think we should interview next?
Michael Chiedoziem Chukwudera⎈
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