Taking the Drawing Room Through Customs: Selected Stories 1972-2002

E. A. Markham

ISBN 10: 1900715694 / ISBN 13: 9781900715690

Published by Peepal Tree Press Ltd, GB, 2002

About this Item

When E.A. Markham writes a story about the Other World Cup (Montserrat loses 4-0 to Bhutan - the volcanic eruption has destroyed all the football pitches in Montserrat) and a few months later is actually invited to a literature festival in Bhutan, this chimes in with his fiction. In 1972, his alter ego, Pewter Stapleton, invented the island of St Caesare (next door to Montserrat, but more independent-minded) as part of an elaborate scam to enjoy the rich perks of a UN conference. Since then, the island has been pencilled in on a couple of maps; and a handful of people claim to have been there.Nothing is straightforward in Markham's fictive world. His stories constantly deny conventional expectations and make us rethink both how we interpret experience and what we expect of fiction.Conventional narrative could never convey the complexities of the recurrent and entertaining cast of mainly Caribbean characters as they make sense of their remembered and reinvented lives. Digression becomes an art form both in Pewter Stapleton's narration and in their stories. It is the rich web of words they weave that leads Markham to his image of the drawing room as a repository of the talk of family and friends as perhaps the most valuable possession taken by Caribbean people through Customs.This collection brings together new and uncollected stories and selections from E.A. Markham's two previous collections, Something Unusual (1984) and Ten Stories (1992). Each of the stories has its own crafted completeness, whether in the observant humour of 'The Pig Was Mine', the bleakness of 'Skeletons', the audacious mythologizing of 'A Short History of St. Cesaire', or the absurdist magical realism of 'Digging.' They confirm him as one of the most original users of the short story form in both British and Caribbean fiction.E.A. (Archie) Markham died unexpectedly in Paris on 23rd March, Easter day. Born in Montserrat in 1939, E.A. Markham worked in the theatre, in the media and as a literary editor.

Seller Inventory # LU-9781900715690

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Taking the Drawing Room Through Customs: Selected Stories 1972-2002
• Publisher: Peepal Tree Press Ltd, GB
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1900715694
• ISBN 13: 9781900715690
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 420 grams

About this title

Synopsis

The stories in this collection have as their core the motion of travel, primarily from Montserrat to Britain, but also to continental Europe. For Markham, the drawing room is both the repository of memories and of family network, and the refuge of a West Indian from a society that had its own social graces in a Britain that harbors the stereotype that nothing of value has been brought to the country. Each of the stories has its own crafted completeness, whether in the observant humor of “The Pig Was Mine,” the bleakness of “Skeletons,” the audacious mythologizing of “A Short History of St. Cesaire,” or the absurdist magical realism of “Digging.” But within the great variety of tone, there are recurrences of character, alter egos, and location.

About the Author

E. A. Markham was born in Montserrat in 1939 and migrated to England in 1956. He is the author of several collections of poetry and of the novel Marking Time, and was the editor of the Penguin Book of Caribbean Short Stories. He is professor of creative writing at Sheffield Hallam University in England.