080808

080808

One of the first things about 080808 that hits you is how many syllables it takes to say the name. If you say it properly, nine syllables, if you shorten it, six. And if you were to write it out, it would contain twenty-seven characters minus spaces. With spaces it would have twenty-nine characters.

Another thing that would probably hit you is its packaging. The novel is dinky and has a pleasing, non-threatening typeface set in an eye-pleasing and bibliophobe-calming point size. It has good packaging.

By this point you are probably wondering what this has got to do with me slapping 080808 or by extension Leke Alder, or maybe even by a further increment, his publisher, which brings us back to Leke Alder as he published his own book.

Well, before I get to the slapping, which will surely come in due course, I need you to understand why the book, and by extension the author need a good slap back to reality.

The above was an exercise in ironic post-modern writing. I have written the first couple of paragraphs in Leke Alder’s inimitable ‘faction’-prose style, imitating him in order to let you the reader know that I have read his book, and indeed understand his style. I also just threw out another reference there by assuming that you would not have picked up on that just as he would have. Lots of tiny insignificant details that in the end don’t add up to much more than padding to a book that turned out to be pretty humble in size anyway.

080808 is ostensibly a book about a military dictator who plans to extend his rule in a country called Ingera, and how his plan draws the attention of various international agencies, and the talents of the protagonist. Larry Hamilton.

What 080808 is really about is Leke Alder, and what he could (would/wished he could) have done during some of the political turmoil that have occurred in our great country. Don’t believe me? Please look here. Study the logo. Read the summary and the rationale behind it. Got it memorised?

Good. Now let us turn to page 041. “Larry had one elbow on the table, his body slightly diffident to the table at a slight angle. The arm on the table was over his mouth, a familiar posture when trying to take things in.”

No. He. Didn’t.

Oh. Yes. He. Did.

This book ladies and gentlemen, and I apologise to the ladies in advance, is Leke Alder’s masturbatory gift to us his fellow Nigerians. And, on a meta-narrative level, it is a cautionary tale on the pitfalls of surrounding one’s self only with people that are stupider than or just plain defer all the time to you. One could get an inflated sense of self worth you know.

Where to begin?

“HE CAME INTO THE OFFICE THAT MORNING, all geared up for the Monday morning meeting. Normally business starts at 9am but Monday mornings are different (In case you didn’t get the memo, it’s Monday, and its in the morning). The business review meeting starts at 8am and it can go on for up to 6 hours. At this meeting, all client instructions are reviewed, including the status of different jobs. Client difficulties are discussed, and strategies mapped out for the week. The entire group meets on Monday mornings: Specialty Practices, Strategy, Media, IT, Design…the works; and if you’ve been tardy on your job, you will dread Monday mornings at HDL Consulting. (HDL is the acronym of the first names of the founding partners – Harold, David and Larry).”

Leke Alder introduces us to his main character, right off the bat, one of the three controlling partners of a consulting firm called Alder Consulting…sorry, I mean HDL Consulting, on a Monday morning no less, and yes, you just read a word-for-word quote of the first paragraph. Who is this ‘HE?’ Let’s check the second paragraph –

“He is known to be extremely impatient with the niceties of greetings on Monday mornings. Hardly acknowledging good mornings from the receptionist and one or two junior partners milling about the reception desk, he walked briskly past reception, down the oak paneled[sic] corridor, into the lobby of light leading to the elevator. He rode the elevator up the 7th floor[sic] where the partners’ offices are located. It is also where the general conference room is situate[sic]. The joke in the office is that he takes very strong coffee on Monday mornings, (possibly mixed with Redbull some say). He always seems charged and ready to go. The truth of course is that Larry Hamilton…”

Success! We have a name for our mysterious ‘He’, as well as a peripatetic description of his office, office ‘jokes’, and office culture. Now, I am not bemoaning the fact that it took him two paragraphs to introduce the character’s name, oh no, I am bemoaning the fact that he doesn’t introduce him, not because he is building up some sort of mystery or suspense, but because he got carried away with the sundry details of his office environment (his being most likely Leke Alder) and some character traits (that are obviously there to make this character seem quirky and hence lovably/admirably eccentric). This occurs throughout the book –

“He had landed safely. No, he had no knowledge of a plane crash. That year he travelled to Montreal, London, New York, Paris, Barcelona, Rome, Dubai, Johannesburg, Accra, Dakar…about 21 countries and 45 cities in all, some repeatedly. Even though he travels first class, it was still uncomfortable. How comfortable can you be on a padded camping bed, which is the way he sees airplane seats. And the flights were sometimes too long. China was a total of 24 hours including switch-overs. He’s really impatient with long flights. The endless waiting for the plane to touch down, the terribly over-cooked and tasteless airline meals…And he hated immigration desks. Same stupid questions because he looked younger than his age. He suffered jet lags as he zoomed in and out of time zones: it can be so disorienting. That was last year. Today is Saturday, and he would relax.”

Yeah we get it. Larry hates flying (does Leke Alder?)

This, is my favourite infodump in the whole book –

“He settled on a sofa in his living room, kicked back his feet and unbundled “Helen’s pack” as he calls it. The files were about twenty in all. He began to go through them. He signed some letters, reviewed proposals, read reports and annotated instructions. He doesn’t really like reading files but it’s an executive necessity. He was through in one hour. Having sorted out the files, he settled down to his magazines. The first was of course The Economist. The lead stories in the January 27 – February 2, 2007 edition were Barack Obama? The Wandering Palestinian: 60 years soon; How bad is Russia’s oil industry? Myanmar’s miserry; The proud father of LSD. As he flipped through to read the article on the upstart Senator Barack Obama, he came across this advertisement spread on pages 64 and 65

(below this he inserts a scanned black and white image of the economist)

The header intrigued him. It asked, Does Science make belief in God obsolete? It was an advert by the Templeton Foundation and it featured the abbreviated opinions of eight scholars, some in favour, some against, and others noncommital. “It depends”, said Michael Sherman, a Professor at Claremont Graduate University and author of Why Darwin Matters. “Absolutely not!” said William Phillips, a fellow of Joint Quantum Institute of the University of Maryland.”No, and yes”, said Christoph Schonborn, the Archbishop of Vienna who was lead editor of The Catechism of the Catholic Church. “No, but it should”, said Christoph Hitchens, Author[sic] of God Is Not Great and the editor of The Portable Atheist.“No”, said Robert Sapolsky, a Professor of Neurological Sciences at Stanford University and author of A Primate’s Memoir.…”

He proceeds to list two more comments and then focuses on one more to expand upon. If I have to tell you what is wrong with that, then you should send me your name and contact information so that I can slap you too then recommend some creative writing courses and books.

This is even the okay stuff. I am not going to type out sections where he focuses on how wonderful, deep and intelligent Larry Hamilton is – to the detriment of any proper character development or story progression – or how all the female characters are one dimensional, or how the actual plot of the book does not start (and I do mean this. not even some foreshadowing) until the last paragraph of chapter 5, and then in chapter 6, instead of building on this, we get a paragraph on Larry’s BMW Z4 and how it can do 0-60 km/hr in 6.2 seconds and loads and loads of exposition on Larry’s meeting with one of the organisations that make up the ‘intrigue’ of the book. Chapter 7 is two pages long and introduces the general. A thinly veiled Abacha analogue, down to the fact that he keeps nocturnal hours.

Come on Mr. Alder, you can do better than this surely? The book is all over the place. In all the promotional material it is touted as a fast-paced thriller. In the book, it is touted as a ‘faction’, it starts of reading like fiction with long expository and highly descriptive scenes, and then in one amazingly odd scene on page 041, becomes a report on the events of this ‘Ingeran conspiracy’ by Leke Alder.

“Please forgive me for running ahead of myself. My name is Tomilade Brown. I run a group of companies with interests spanning finance, telecoms and oil. I am the Chairman of this group. To my right is …” [Editors note: The names of the other members of The Committee of Twelve are withheld for security reasons. But they control the media, oil and gas, banking, real estate, manufacturing, telecoms and IT sectors of the Ingeran economy. To reveal their names is to jeopardise their interests as well as Leke Alder’s source, Talking Drum, in the CIA].”

Make up your mind man! Are you writing a book about ‘real events’ with fictional characters? Or are you reporting on an actual event? Or are you writing a fiction with the added conceit that you are reporting on this fiction? This is the first I heard of Leke Alder and his ‘source’ since beginning this book.

I could continue on this tangent and begin talking about Leke Alder the man behind this rubbish, but I think I have mentioned his name enough already.

080808 is a silly, not engaging, amateurish, neurotic, self-aggrandising and badly edited piece of writing and I pray that it does not leave these shores in appreciable numbers as it could undo all the work that our current crop of Nigerian writers and their predecessors (like Chinua Achebe) have worked so hard to achieve.

Then again, maybe I am giving it too much credit. Most people will begin reading, get perplexed, get more perplexed, laugh at places they are not supposed to, and promptly forget about it and its place in Nigerian Literature (read: the wannabe pile).

194 slaps to the hand that wrote this book (one for every page) and another to the face of its editor and publisher…oh…they’re all probably the same person. Sorry Mr. Alder, you shouldn’t have written and published a crappy book about yourself and your fantasies (reality? schizophrenic nightmare landscape?) because when critics start tearing into it, they will inevitably tear into you as well.

Or, as in our case, slap you and your book really hard.

080808 you had it coming

For more bizarre, existential comedy, you can visit his website at www.lekealder.com