Cut Guavas

by Robert Antoni (Contributor)

Evading the wrath of company lawyers zealously protecting their franchise, Robert Antonis novel, written partially in film-script form, pays fan-fiction homage to that famous simian brand, whilst at the same time deconstructing the saga for what it has to say about race in the film and in American society. Austin Stoker a character based on a real-life Trinidadian actor in Hollywood is shooting the sequel to Assault of the Civilization of the Simians in his old age, the Hollywood film that launched his moderately successful acting career. But Stoker, drinking back-home Trinidadian remedies but not taking his prescribed dementia medicine, finds separating reality from fiction to be an increasingly difficult task. Intercut with this film script and the often funny backstory of the ageing actors lives is a moving novella about Austins mother, Madeleine, a servant in a rich French Creole house in Trinidad in the 1940s, and her affair with Austins white father, Barto, a colonial narrative that is in its own way as much about a vanishing fantasy life as the world of Hollywood. Theres still another layer, which readers of Antonis Bocas prize-winning As Flies to Whatless Boys will anticipate with the presence of wickedly comic metatextual authorial notes and commentary. Cut Guavas is written in a spirit of fun that nevertheless makes serious points about race in the New World imagination. A master storyteller, Antoni combines its multiple strands in a way that feels both effortless and seamless.

18 pages, Paperback

Published October 25, 2018

About the author

Robert Antoni was born in the United States in 1958, and he carries three passports: US, Trinidad and Tobago and the Bahamas. His fictional world is the island of Corpus Christi, and to create it he draws upon his two hundred years or family history In Trinidad and Tobago and his upbringing in the Bahamas. His first novel, Divina Trace, was published in 1991 by the Overlook Press in New York1 and by Quartet in London. It received the Commonwealth Writers Prize, an NEA, James Michener and Orowitz fellowships. His second novel, Blessed is the Fruit, was published by Henry Holt in 1997 and in London by Faber & Faber. His story collection, My Grandmother’s Erotic Folktales was published in London by Faber & Faber in 20OO and in New York by Grove/Atlantic in 2001. My Grandmother’s Erotic Folktales appeared in French translation (Du Rocher)-, and it has been translated into Finnish (LIKE) Spanish (Anagrama). His most recent novel, Carnival, was published in New York by Grove/Atlantic (Black Cat) in 2OO5 and it has appeared in French translation (Denoel) and in Finnish (LIKEO). Carnival will appear in Spanish (Anagrama) and it will be published in London by Faber g Faber to coincide a reprinting of Divina
Trace in 2006. Carnival was short—listed for the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2006. Antoni’s short fiction has appeared in Conjunctions, The Paris Review, Ploughshares and other periodicals and it was included in the Editors Choice for 1985, The Oxford Book or Caribbean Short Stories in as well as other anthologies. He was awarded the Aga Khan prize for Fiction in 1999 by the Paris Review, where he is a Contributing Editor. He is also a Senior Editor or Conjunctions where he was co-editor, along with Bradford Morrow, of an Anthology or Caribbean writing titled Archipelago (Conjunctions 27). Antoni has given upwards or a hundred readings around the United States and the Caribbean, in addition to the ICA in London and the Harbourfront in Toronto. He holds an MA from Johns Hopkins University, an MFA and a PhD from the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa. He is a former Associate Professor or creative writing and Caribbean 1iterature at the university or Miami where he taught for nine years until flay 2001. While at the university of Miami he acted as Associate Director of their Caribbean Writers Summer Institute. He presently 1ives in New York and he teaches Fiction Writing at Columbia University.

Reviews

[Jeanine · Rating 3 out of 5]

huh?

[Paula David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was tempted to put this novel down about one-third of the way in, but “did not finish” culture does not sit well with me. I am programmed to persevere; partly because I'm fearful that the novel will turn itself around and I'll miss something good, and partly because if I'm going to condemn a novel as not worthwhile, I want to give it a fair hearing. Having finished it, I still don't quite know what to make of this novel, nor quite how I feel about it.

What I do know is that the novel refers to itself as fan fiction. I would describe it as surrealist. Structured (at least partly) as a film script for a sequel to “Battle for the Planet of the Apes”, I suspect the author may be more a fan of Austin Stoker, a Trinidad born actor who played a role in the film, than of the film itself.

I used to be a big fan of experimental literature, but I'm becoming progressively less patient with experimentation. Or maybe I'm just impatient with this species of experimentation. This novel felt kitschy. And kitschy doesn't work for me. But I became very interested when, in Part II (entitled “The Movie”) the novel suggested that Austin Stoker was related by blood to the author - the result of an affair between his white creole grandfather and the household’s black creole maid; said maid being a great favourite of the author's grandmother, wife of said author's said grandfather. I became even more interested when the novel enquired into whether the relationship between employer and employee, rich man and poor woman, white male and black female, could have been consensual and happy, rather than inevitably uneven and exploitative.

It appears to me that Austin Stoker's relationship (or more correctly, lack of relationship) with his father may be the central concern of this novel, but I'm just not sure. I'm also not sure I like the choice to deliver this story in the form of a film script. It is a severely limiting format; necessarily more pithy than pretty, and since I'm partial to pretty writing, it did not work for me.

So yeah, I'm not sure about this novel, but read it. It's not without its charms.