Ngugi: Timeliness confirms authorship?

Weeks ago, Peter Wasamba, professor of oral literature at the University of Nairobi, spoke in our postcolonial literature class. We had been reading Ngugi's novel Devil on the Cross, and Wasamba, in his lecture, shed light on the Kenyan cultural contexts which (should) affect its reading. He described the conflicting traditional and imperial tides which, to this day, pull formerly-colonized Kenyans to breaking points. He spoke of the cult following Ngugi garnered with the publication of his novel, how he became a sort of national hero, Kenya's writer. "Ngugi is the best writer to come from Kenya," Wasamba said. He described Ngugi's radicalism, his advocacy of offensive force to accomplish social change, his Marxist leanings. All of this clarified the novel for me - it gave me the contextual information I needed to understand the novel's purpose.

(And then, I wonder, it's an interesting thing that context makes such a difference to my understanding. In this case, knowing the author helps me know the literature. Without it, significant holes in my historical understanding prevent me from "getting it." It's clear that we've been molded to think Romantically [Formalistically?] on the topic of author's pertinence to work. For example, we're preparing a presentation for Thursday - an analysis of Roy's novel The God of Small Things; of course, we'll spend about a fourth of the time discussing Roy's biography. An author's essential to the work, right? That's what we've learned.)

Anyway, Wasamba went on to describe Ngugi as "a writer produced by a specific historical epoch," and noted that students imitated him because they found him "relevant."

This very comment addresses a question I've had since the beginning of the semester: need a writer acquire some eternal value in order to be considered an author, or need he be simply/merely/only contextually relevant? How accessible should a writer be to his present history and to his eternal history to be considered a writer? Need an author possess an element of historical endurance to claim the title? Ngugi, after all, was relevant for postcolonial, newly-liberated Kenyans searching for identity. Yet, as Wasamba himself mentioned, Ngugi's popularity - the popularity of his novels - has fallen by the wayside in the past decade. So, is Ngugi still an "author"? And, I don't read Ngugi with the same understanding and empathy as Dr. Wasamba does; my cultural and historical contexts prevent me from experiencing that connectedness - thus, Ngugi isn't as "relevant" to me. Is he still an "author"? What kind of time-value relationship should a true author have?

In his essay "On the Abolition of the English Department," Ngugi himself equates relative contextuality with excellence, writing "For any group it is better to study representative works which mirror their society rather than to study a few isolated 'classics,' either of their own or of a foreign culture." According to him, contextual relevance - of time and place, both - determine literary excellence. Perhaps one need not achieve an enduring 'classics' status to excel to authorship.