Similarly, another establishment poll recently came up with a list of the best 160 (or so) works of fiction published in the past 10 years. Not even mentioned was Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow, a novel that could justifiably make a list of the top 10 most accomplished and vital novels of the past century. The norms of literature that bury such novels (like Banjo and Wizard of the Crow, not to mention novelists and cultural workers like Claude McKay and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o) are greatly degraded, in a variety of ways.

There is also this desire on Ray’s part not to surrender his intellect, while being refreshed by the earthiness of the black boys, in which he comes close to ascribing a naturally state of ignorance and irresponsibility (appropriating prevailing Western stereotypes of primitive peoples?) as a virtue of the highest order, but as a crime in the eyes of civilization: “He was a challenge of civilization itself. He was the red rag to the mighty-bellowing, all-trampling civilized bull.”

There he penetrates in his analysis and we can see that he has turned “civilized” values on their head to fine effect.

Stylistically, I find it much more an extended essay than a novelistic vision. The boys and Ray are more ideological abstractions than characters, for he seems at this point less concerned with saturating us in the world of people than expositing his ideas about them.

I find the language in turns inventive and dull, sophisticated and careless. If you were to lay some equivalent pages of Gatsby side by side with it, I doubt Banjo could compare line upon line. I would conceed that subject matter and perspective has a hand in this work’s complete obscurity, a good bit, however, is due to the inconsistent quality of the writing and lack of narrative focus. I was growing weary quickly of its fuzzy focus, and its expository fixation (even with the interesting ideas and bursts of fresh and tantalizing language).