An American Visitor

by Joyce Cary

Drawing upon Cary's own experience as a member of the Nigerian political service in 1913, An American Visitor records the impressions and awakenings of Marie, an idealistic anthropologist who believes she has discerned the Kingdom of Heaven in the village of Nok. Colonial betrayal, white prospectors who stake claims within Birri territory, and a deepening relationship with the eccentric District Officer lead Marie to re-examine the perils of her own charmed position.

Genres: Fiction

230 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Cary now undertook his great works examining historical and social change in England during his own lifetime. The First Trilogy (1941–44) finally provided Cary with a reasonable income, and The Horse's Mouth (1944) remains his most popular novel. Cary's pamphlet "The Case for African Freedom" (1941), published by Orwell's Searchlight Books series, had attracted some interest, and the film director Thorold Dickinson asked for Cary's help in developing a wartime movie set partly in Africa. In 1943, while writing The Horse's Mouth, Cary travelled to Africa with a film crew to work on Men of Two Worlds.

Cary travelled to India in 1946 on a second film project with Dickinson, but the struggle against the British for national independence made movie-making impossible, and the project was abandoned. The Moonlight (1946), a novel about the difficulties of women, ended a long period of intense creativity for Cary. Gertrude was suffering from cancer and his output slowed for a while.

Gertrude died as A Fearful Joy (1949) was being published. Cary was now at the height of his fame and fortune. He began preparing a series of prefatory notes for the re-publication of all his works in a standard edition published by Michael Joseph.

He visited the United States, collaborated on a stage adaptation of Mister Johnson, and was offered a CBE, which he refused. Meanwhile he continued work on the three novels that make up the Second Trilogy (1952–55). In 1952, Cary had some muscle problems which were originally diagnosed as bursitis, but as more symptoms were noted over the next two years, the diagnosis was changed to that of motor neuron disease, a wasting and gradual paralysis that was terminal.

As his physical powers failed, Cary had to have a pen tied to his hand and his arm supported by a rope in order to write. Finally, he resorted to dictation until unable to speak, and then ceased writing for the first time since 1912. His last work, The Captive and the Free (1959), first volume of a projected trilogy on religion, was unfinished at his death on March 29, 1957.

Reviews

[Ian Laird · Rating 3 out of 5]

Several authors dwell just outside the borders of my literary experience, for example: John Steinbeck, Elizabeth Bowen and Cormac McCarthy.

Such authors are known to me by repute but not yet read. Up until An American Visitor, Joyce Cary belonged in this category. So, I approached this work with some anticipation. But I have been in this position before. Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter, turned out to be slightly disappointing. James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans was rather more than slightly disappointing. An American Visitor – slightly disappointing.

I just never got into the story or the characters despite the obvious attractions. On the face of it an enticing scenario: a liberated American woman journalist / anthropologist is a long term visitor in a British colonial territory in equatorial Africa, who bathes in the river in the full view of the natives, enters the company of the local district administration, and in particular the intimate company of the gangling red-headed, yet charismatic District Officer Bewsher, who has spent the dozen years following the end of World War One, maintaining an uneasy equilibrium between the local tribes - Nok, Birri, - the British mineral seekers (Cottee and Jukes), his own superior the Resident, going by the splendid name of Alabaster, the local military led by Captain Stoker, his own subordinates, especially Gore, all of whom are guided, more or less, by the resident missionaries, the Dobsons.

Among the natives Obai is a young firebrand, Uli a wife beater, Umeki a wise chief and Henry a slippery opportunist.

The burden of the story is the application of mineral rights for tin and antimony which Bewsher attempts to prosecute with a mixture of bonhomie, bluster and a quite deeply sophisticated understanding of human nature.

I was not able to engage with the characters. And I find myself hard pressed to articulate why, for example the American woman Marie is a breathtaking concept in a 1930’s novel set in British colonial Africa. I expected to learn much more about her, I expected her personality and works to emerge and develop: more of the contrasts between her and the people she was mixing with, more of her journalism /anthropology.

She remains a little nebulous and she is one of the better developed characters. The lesser ones drift in and out or pop up eg way into the book we get a physical description of Cottee’s round pale face. There is nothing wrong with this as such; it’s just a bit startling at that point: we met him much earlier.

Bewsher is the character who works best, the most fully developed; because he is the person who best understands the mentality of the tribespeople, the intricacies of the bureaucracy he is part of, the value of keeping the military in check ie not going out to shoot the natives.

Bewsher’s fate, he is speared (12 times Cary tells us) is as inevitable as the Tsetse fly, and once I realised this was going to happen, I just wished it would.

Three stars - just.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joyce Cary is one of those strange novelists whose sensibilities span two centuries. On one hand, he is very much a Victorian novelist in his approach to the subject; on the other, he writes about the decay of the 20th century British Empire in one little corner of Africa. This is only Cary's second novel, and it shows. The author deals with a multiplicity of characters -- European, American, and native African. At times, he has some difficulty achieving the proper focus.

One interesting comparison is with Joseph Conrad's Almayer's Folly and The Outpost of the Islands, in which all fat is neatly excised. Whom do we follow here? The American Marie Hasluck, the British colonial officers Bewsher and Gore, the evangelical missionaries, the capitalists Jukes and Cottee looking to make a fortune from the country's mineral resources, or the Birri natives who are being torn between European and their native civilization.

Still and all, it is worth reading; and it makes we want to read Cary's more famous novels to follow, especially his two trilogies.

[F Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

The third of Cary's African novels, I found An American Visitor more satisfying than either Aissa Saved or The African Witch, although it has elements in common with both. Visitor, however, is more focused on the well-meaning but ineffectual missionaries and government functionaries. The British and American characters are well drawn, and a couple of the African characters are more than mere caricatures. Recommended.

[J.S. Watts · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had forgotten how much I enjoy Cary's style of writing and An American Visitor reminded me of that. The prose is clean and gem sharp. The characterisation jovial, but mostly thoughtful, although there are probably a few too many caricatures present for the book to be wholly satisfying. Like many of his later novels, this book deals with grim issues of colonial existence in Nigeria with apparent humour and lightness of touch, but underneath there is a bitter and at times cynical note.

Cary straddles the Victorian era and the 20th Century in terms of his writing and approach to colonial life. At times I wasn't totally comfortable with the expressed colonial attitudes, but then the book is a constant undermining of that mind set, so it may be that my occasional queasiness is as intentional as the more obvious irony and cynicism elsewhere in the book. Though the fact that the book was written in 1933 must be indicative of some of the culture clashes this reader experienced.

Whilst this is not Cary's best novel, it is an interesting, always entertaining and ultimately thought-provoking read.

[Gabriel Clarke · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a novel, it's less than the sun of its parts; some characters (and there are too many as someone else commented) are finely drawn, most are cut-outs and caricatures. The issues relating to race and colonialism are interestingly handled. Cary at this stage of his career (this is his second novel, I think) wasn't so much a racist as a cynic. There's too much here to cover in a short review, in fact.