I didn’t go into writing to win prizes – Teju Cole

I can tell you about myself briefly. The first thing is that I write; not just my book but things that go into the public and into my heart. I’m also a private individual. So the first thing about myself is that I am a little shy (laughs). I keep biographical details to a minimum. […]

I can tell you about myself briefly. The first thing is that I write; not just my book but things that go into the public and into my heart. I’m also a private individual. So the first thing about myself is that I am a little shy (laughs). I keep biographical details to a minimum. I also I lived in Nigeria until I finished secondary school in Lagos, then I moved to the United States. So, I think those are the two essential experiences in my life; living in Nigeria and living in the United States.

Why do you prefer to keep biographical details to a minimum?

Because I am a writer and what interests me is creativity, not what was given before, not what was imposed on me without my own participation. So, my parental, my family life does not really matter because when a reader picks up a book, all the reader cares about is; do I want to keep on reading, what effect is this having on  my mind, what is this telling me, what is the author’s level of creativity or innovation? It doesn’t matter if I am a guy that climbs trees to get palm wine or I am a vice president at City Bank.

What do you make of this argument about experience and perception as it relates to a writer; does your experience matter in your writing?

Absolutely! My background and my experiences are very important to me, to the reader, they are mildly important and not really that important. What is important to the reader is what have you done with that background? Have you dealt with it?

Are you married?

I am married.

How many kids?

None.

Any plans to have any?

Like I said, I am shy about biographical details (laughs). So, married without children.

How would you describe your experience growing up in Nigeria?

I had a very rich childhood in the sense that Lagos is a very interesting place to be but of course you wouldn’t realise that at the time because you are just getting through the day but you know, Nigeria has for a long time been a complicated country and in retrospect, I won’t say it is has taught you a lot but it has showed you a lot about life, about how societies organise themself or fail to organise themselves. One significant aspect for me, is that growing up in Nigeria is very difficult because most of my childhood was under military dictatorship, one or the other. What I also learned, even through SAP and everything that was going on then, there was also a sense of my own possibility, which is something I got from  my parents and which is also something I got from a society that did not discriminate against me on the bases of my ethnicity, on the bases of my race. The reason I mention this is that if I had grown up in the United States, my life would have been different. I think you get a very dif-different set of messages as a black person growing up in the US. I think there is always a suggestion to you that you are a second class citizen and that effects your psyche negatively. So that’s something you have to struggle against. But going to the US as an adult, you still have to struggle against those things but you’ve already been informed, you already have a sense of your possibilities. I think that’s why, economically speaking, African immigrants tend to do better than African-Americans because they come from a society where they have no reason to doubt that they are as good as anybody else. So, that was a formative experience for me.

So, what motivated you to go into writing?

(Thinks). An urge for creativity came first, to take experiences and remix it and bring it out there as a work of art. It could have taken other forms. It could have been architecture, could have been music, it could have been acting but my first form of creative activity was visual arts and only later did I move into writing itself.  I think the vision is more important. You need to have a sense of where you are and a bit of a sense of the artistic problem you are trying to solve before you can do anything about it. A lot of people are talented but they don’t know where to go with it. To whatever extent I have a talent for writing, I think it has been there for a long time but the vision is more recent.

In that regards do you consider yourself a born writer or a made writer?

Made.

How did you achieve that?

Probably a series of accidental discoveries. I never studied literature, not even in secondary school but at some point I was reading books for pleasure and from those books I was learning something about how to express the stories that I also have, so, you write and write and write and probably the first few years of your writing, your stuff is not good because you have not yet learned to remove the things that don’t belong in there, you have not yet gained the necessary skills.

What challenges have you overcome so far?

Well, I think there is the challenge of saying this is what I want to do whether or not other people are used to it. I don’t think it’s easy for young people in Nigeria or young people of Nigerian background because there is an expectation that you should do things that are financially rewarding, that are guaranteed of more financial reward, you know, an engineer, a doctor, a lawyer or a politician (laughs) because everybody knows there is money there but if you say you want to be a writer, people are going to say; well, how are you going to live off that. So, the first challenge was that internal one of saying I want to do this and I trust my ability to do well in it, I trust the satisfaction I am going to get from trying to do something creative.

Would you say you have been fulfilled in writing?

There are two ways to answering that question, in terms of external validation, external rewards, I think that’s a long term story. If you are ambitious as a creative person, rarely do you reach the peak of your work until you are in the middle age or beyond that. You want to have substantial pieces of work behind you. But that form, of winning prizes and all that, all of that is good but that form of being fulfilled interests me but interests me less. If I never get there I will be OK. But there is another form, which is to have a creative vision and to achieve it. I think of a novel or novella as telling a long story. Whether or not the story reads simply, the act of putting that story together is a fairly complex one. To do it and to do it right is a fairly complicated task. If you come close to the mark with a given book, to what your vision for the book was, that’s what is important and I would honestly rather write a book that satisfies me artistically than to write a book I dislike and win the Booker Prize, what am I going to do with it? I didn’t go into writing to win prizes, I went into it because there is a push inside me to create works that satisfy me artistically but if you do a work that satisfies you artistically and your artistic instincts are developed to a certain extent, those works will satisfy some people artistically.

So, where does your inspiration come from?

My inspiration? Nigeria is inspiring because there are so many stories around. Literatures is inspiring because when other people  write and they write well you feel a little bit of creative envy and you say, I want to sit down at my desk and write better because you want to replicate the way that book made you feel in the mind of another reader.

Which authors have made you feel this way?

Very, very many of them. Let me mention just one; Vladimir Nabokov, a Russian-American novelist, Marguerite Yourcener a novelist.

Why did you decide to publish your book here in Nigeria?

It was a decision to publish and this seemed like the right decision and it seemed my publisher understood what I wanted to do with this book,they believed Nigerians are going to read this book and they have been right. People have been reading this book. So, that’s why I published the book. And the book I have just finished is going to be published in the US because the US publisher is very interested in it and they believe they could do it right. They convinced me. It will probably be published in Nigeria afterwards.

Your book touches on typical Nigerian problems, power outages, fuel scarcity; for someone living in the US, how do you relate to these problems?

The first distinction to make here is between me and the narrator; we are not the same person. My experience is different from the ones I have recounted in the book, which is through the eyes of this narrator, who in a way is more an outsider than I am and one of the reason is that his mother is not a Nigerian. And I certainly did not feel as alienated from Nigeria as he did. The only thing is that on my visit back, there are things that are a little bit distant from me and there are things you also experience. If I experience the inconvenience of daily life in Nigeria, I experience them the same way other Nigerians do.

What advice do you have for aspiring Nigerian writers?

I would say find a way to make a living, to meet your financial responsibility, get a job and then every spare moment you have, write.