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the complete review - fiction

Eddy the Coal-City Boy

by
Ogali Ogali

general information | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

C+ : occasionally entertaining cautionary tale

See our review for fuller assessment.

The complete review's Review:

       In Eddy the Coal-City Boy Edward Johnson, "the one-time atomic bomb of Enugu", offers fatherly advice to his son Robert, recounting his life in order to teach his boy that all that glitters isn't always gold.
       Eddy managed to already get himself in trouble while at boarding school, sneaking out at night to go out on the town with his friends rather than concentrating on his studies. Caught by the principal, he was expelled. He eventually became a clerk at the post office, but can't give up the high-life: "I continued to bomb the city with my atomic energy", as he says. He juggled a number of women and continued to live beyond his means. A careless mistake at the post office gets him fired, and he is reduced to being a "truck-pusher".
       Eventually, properly humbled, he is able to start a new life, helped by beloved Jane -- Robert's mother, who stood by her man. Eddy learned his lesson and became a good (and successful) capitalist. Ogali doesn't worry too much about realistic details: Mom gave Eddy some money to start up a business, and Eddy had all the right connections -- "Having worked in the Post Office before, I became very used to certain overseas addresses", which was apparently enough for him to become a successful importer.
       By the end Eddy became (as Ogali had announced in his preface) "financially, socially and economically overhauled." Whether his son -- or the reader -- can learn much from this vaguely cautionary tale is an open question. Overall, the presentation is simply too simplistic -- though bits are certainly entertaining.
       It is also bizarre to find even in such a pamphlet from western Africa from the 1950s unfortunate characterizations such as Eddy saying of the man he borrowed money from: "I call him a Jew because he was after my blood."

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Links:

• Onitsha Market Literature: From the Bookstalls of a Nigerian Market - at the University of Kansas
• Indiana University Library collection

• The collection Veronica My Daughter and Other Onitsha Plays and Stories, which includes:
  • Adelabu
  • Caroline the One-Guinea Girl
  • The Ghost of Patrice Lumumba
  • History of Item: Past and Present
  • Long Long Ago
  • Mr. Rabbit is Dead
  • No Heaven for the Priest
  • Okeke the Magician
  • Patrice Lumumba
  • Smile Awhile
  • Thirty Years for the Director
  • Veronica My Daughter

• Emmanuel Obiechina's introduction to An African Popular Literature
• Life Turns Man Up and Down, edited by Kurt Thometz
• Index of books relating to Africa

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About the Author:

       Nigerian author Ogali A. Ogali was born in 1935 and was a leading author of the pamphlet literature sold at Onitsha market.

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