A New World Order: Essays

Phillips is the next thing, all right, right up there with the most exciting young intellectual novelists, very much like Coetzee, but black and lacking Coetzee's Eurocentric sensibility. The perspective is that of an Englishman from the colonies, a bit like Orwell, Naipaul, or Lessing. Phillips is, in fact, a Caribbean author, with African roots and an education rooted in the fields of Eton. He is a gentlemen scholar, an amateur, if you will, and not an academic. In this regard he reminds one of Sontag or Vidal, perhaps even of Camus. Unlike Sontag and Coetzee, however, his center of gravity is post-colonial rather than central European. He doesn't reveal an affinity for Kafka, as much as for American jazz and an affection for Marvin Gaye. He is very good, however, on major literary figures such as James Baldwin, Gordimer, and Derek Walcott. Clearly, he is drawn to African -American lit and culture, but this collection's greatest contribution may be in his appreciations of lesser known figures such as Glissant, James, and Chamoiseau. He is well-read, witty, even erudite, but he can be tough and penetrating, harsh, but never mean. His dissection of V. S. Naipaul is hard-going but persuasive. These are well-written essays, a fine collection of pieces from a versatile, generous writer who loves literature.