"A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA" HAS HIT A SNAG

“A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA” HAS HIT A SNAG

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© July 10, 2012

MY LOYAL READERS

Repeatedly, you have been told that this novel would be ready for publication, that it was going through yet another rewrite or reediting, or reconfiguration as if it were an old engineering project, or a psychological treatise.  It has, of course, risen out of both disciplines, as that has been my conditioning. 

Recently, I read a biography of Albert Camus, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1957), dying tragically in an automobile accident in 1960 at the age of 47.  It surprised me to learn that he had been working on “The First Man,” published thirty-five years after has death, since he was in his twenties. 

Hopefully, this will not be the same trajectory of “Green Island.”

As indicated earlier, we had chosen a publisher after much hesitation, as we wanted total control of the novel, feeling our only possible obstacle might be the censors.  That is now academic.  We have withdrawn from this publisher as the expense of publishing was well beyond our expectations. 

“The First Man” was published as the “final work” of Albert Camus when it was his first work.  I can relate to that.

In a manner of speaking, I left South Africa as a young man in 1969, and created notebooks then, as did Camus from the start.  CONFIDENT SELLING (1971) was my first published book with many nonfiction books to follow, with the exception of IN THE SHADOW OF THE COURTHOUSE (2003), a memoir written as a novel. . 

Camus kept coming back to “The First Man,” as he believed his only real truth was registered on his soul.  He claimed his other works gave him fame and acclaim, but were periphery to this work. 

Obviously, I am no Camus.  That said many of my readers are writers or in the process of becoming writers, philosophers or in the process of becoming philosophers, or readers who, like Camus, desire to get in touch with that beguiling soul that reveals all. 

It is a mind dance in every age, and each age has its own challenges and interpretations of that dance, individually and collectively.  Mine has been “Green Island.”

“Green Island” is about the conflicting war between a good people, the Afrikaners, and another good people, the Bantu during apartheid.  It is also about the conflicting sides of paradise, which South Africa clearly is, and, in turn, the conflicting sides of innocence and darkness in the characters in the story in a time of remarkable change. 

Paradoxically, South African Brits, drifting as colonial empire expires, are central and peripheral to the story at once. 

It would be comforting to believe that what the story illustrates is behind us when it seems we are irrevocably fixated on the same obsessions.  Stay tuned.  I’ll update you as to where we are in this publishing saga.

Be always well,

Jim