Remember Mongo Beti.(Book review)

Remember Mongo Beti ED. AMBROISE KOM Bayreuth African Studies Series 67. Bayreuth, 2003.

During our last meeting in his office at the Peuples Noirs bookstore, Mongo Beti surprised me by offering me a beer, thereby submitting to the Cameroonian tradition of hospitality. Mongo Beti's generosity at that moment was another confirmation of the graciousness he had shown me on many previous occasions, especially the positive responses he had given me the numerous times I had solicited his assistance. Nevertheless, since my first meeting with Mongo Beti, I have been--and remain so--overwhelmed because the meekness of his temperament is in such stark contrast to the incendiary prose of the militant author. The present commemorative volume, among other things, sheds precious light on the multidimensional personality of 'Tun des combatants les plus acharnes de notre independance et de notre souverainete" 'one of the fiercest fighters for our independence and our sovereignty' (Ntonfo 254). Gustave Massiah, Mongo Beti's companion in the trenches of the anti-imperialist struggle, draws the contrast between "la gentillesse, la modestie, l'humilite et la prevenance d'Alexandre Biyidi et la violence flamboyante du pamphletaire Mongo Beti" 'the kindness, modesty, humility, and thoughtfulness of Alexandre Biyidi, and the flamboyant violence of the pamphleteer Mongo Beti' (133). It is Bessora who attempts to find a rational explanation for this paradox: "La douceur du regard de cet homme si virulent dans ses textes me frappe. Et je pense: c'est logique, la violence est la reponse des tendres a la brutalite du monde" 'The sweetness of the face of this man who is so virulent in his writings strikes me. And I think: It's logical, because violence is the response of the tender-hearted to the world's brutality' (42). The dissidence that informs Mongo Beti's writings is situated in a long tradition of what the Cameroonian novelist Patrice Nganang calls "l'intelligence critique du peuple camerounais qui aura toujours su lire dans les diverses formes de la realite qui vivait le Cameroun une usurpation repetee, une illegalite instituee" 'the critical intelligence of the Cameroonian people that has always been able to read in the diverse forms of reality that Cameroon has experienced a …