Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time

by Teju Cole

A profound book of essays from a celebrated master of the form.

“Darkness is not empty,” writes Teju Cole in Black Paper, a book that meditates on what it means to sustain our humanity—and witness the humanity of others—in a time of darkness. One of the most celebrated essayists of his generation, Cole here plays variations on the essay form, modeling ways to attend to experience—not just to take in but to think critically about what we sense and what we don’t.
 
Wide-ranging but thematically unified, the essays address ethical questions about what it means to be human and what it means to bear witness, recognizing how our individual present is informed by a collective past. Cole’s writings in Black Paper approach the fractured moment of our history through a constellation of interrelated concerns: confrontation with unsettling art, elegies both public and private, the defense of writing in a time of political upheaval, the role of the color black in the visual arts, the use of shadow in photography, and the links between literature and activism. Throughout, Cole gives us intriguing new ways of thinking about blackness and its numerous connotations. As he describes the carbon-copy process in his epilogue: “Writing on the top white sheet would transfer the carbon from the black paper onto the bottom white sheet. Black transported the meaning.”
 

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Art, Writing, Photography, Philosophy, Criticism

288 pages, Hardcover

First published October 27, 2021

About the author

I was born to Nigerian parents and grew up in Lagos. My mother taught French. My father was a business executive who exported chocolate. The first book I read (I was six) was an abridgment of Tom Sawyer. At fifteen I published cartoons regularly in Prime People, Nigeria’s version of Vanity Fair. Two years later I moved to the United States.

Since then, I’ve spent most of my time studying art history, except for an unhappy year in medical school. I currently live in Brooklyn.

Reviews

[emma]

sometimes reading one book by an author is all you need to want to read everything else

[Roger DeBlanck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Teju Cole is an important writer and an even more important voice of advocacy. His essays in Black Paper are exploratory, observant, and most essentially they offer examinations about our conscience and humanity, both individual and collective. Cole searches for meaning about who we are as interconnected humans throughout the realms of history, photography, painting, music, architecture, and literature. The concerns he addresses in Black Paper force us into vulnerability, into thinking about our conscience and humanity in how we accept others. Cole’s essays compel us towards developing greater compassion for those in peril, and he directs us towards action in the decisions we make regarding who we support, particularly those in positions of economic and political power.

In “After Caravaggio,” Cole recounts his journey to experience Caravaggio’s paintings. Witnessing some of the originals in person evokes in him the realization of how Caravaggio’s exile and personal struggles mirror “flashpoints in the immigration crisis,” which we see unfolding everywhere around the world, especially at borders and ports where displaced people seek out hope of entering a place that may offer an opportunity for a new life free of the suffering from the place they fled from.

Cole makes clear his reasons for seeking out Caravaggio’s art: “When he showed suffering, he showed it so startlingly well because he was on both sides of it: he meted it out to others and received it in his own body. Caravaggio is long dead, as are his victims. What remains is the work, and I don’t have to love him to know that I need to know what he knows, the knowledge that hums, centuries later, on the surface of his paintings, knowledge of all the pain, loneliness, beauty, fear, and awful vulnerability our bodies have in common.”

In “A Quartet for Edward Said,” an elegy to the renowned Palestinian American writer, scholar, and activist, Cole reminds us of this truth: “It is possible, and necessary, and essential to be firmly opposed to anti-Semitism and to recognize, at the same time, the suffering of Palestinian people, and to do whatever must be done to bring that suffering to an end. There is no justice under the occupation.”

Cole’s tribute to Said also reminds us of a deeper truth about the vitality of human differences: “I love Edward Said’s idea, drawn from his comparative study of literature, that difference is not about hierarchies but about the possibility of contrapuntal lines. Difference, at its best, interweaves and creates new harmonies . . . a plea to reject stereotypes and to accept the irreducible complexity of the other. Understanding this, putting it into practical action, is the best hope for both our democracy and our ecology. Is it too much to say that we can love one another, and that we must?”

In “Pictures in the Aftermath,” Cole asks us to reflect upon our conscience when viewing photographs of human suffering: “Something terrible has happened far away, a flood, an airstrike. Soon, there’s footage of people picking through the wreckage of what used to be their homes. It is easy to pity them, but difficult to imagine that this could be you, that you are the one suddenly bereft of a solid place in the world. And yet it is precisely this expectation of solidity, this notion that things are probably going to be fine, that I sense falling away from us once again.”

Also from “Pictures in the Aftermath,” Cole offers more alarming observations: “I think of the reckless policies being rushed into law all around us, the undermining of scientific consensus, the breakdown of diplomacy, the tweeting president and his confrontational temperament, and I wonder which events we in America are doomed to undergo in our own turn, events we may already be well in the middle of, whether by an act of war or by an act of God, whether with a nuclear element or not, events that will expose our utter unreadiness, alter our experience of the world permanently and require us to find new ways of seeing, and new ways of mourning.”

In “A Crime Scene at the Border,” Cole confronts the ongoing tragedy at the U.S. southern border by linking what is happening there to our attitudes and more glaringly to our lawmakers and their inhumane policies that produce the tragedy: “But a photograph of a dead child on the United States-Mexico border is not, by itself, the bitterest truth. A bitterer truth might be to convey that what we are looking at is a crime, not an accident. The bitterest truth might be to show that the crime was committed by the viewers of the photograph, that this is not news from some remote and unconnected reality but, rather, something you have done, not you personally but you as a member of the larger collective. It is you who have undermined their democracy, you who have devastated their economy, you who have denied their claim to asylum. These are not strangers requesting a favor. They are people you already know, confronting you with your misdeeds.”

Also from “A Crime Scene at the Border,” Cole offers further troubling observations about our inhumane responses to human suffering: “The photographer of the spectacularly terrible image is immediately congratulated by his or her peers, for some glory is surely on its way: a Pulitzer Prize perhaps, or a World Press Photo award. And this slope slips down to that ever-louder demographic that exults in making America great again, among whom the brutal images do more direct work. The images show foreigners getting what they deserve; far from being an indictment, they portray a natural order. ‘Reality is don’t be illegal,’ as one commenter on the Times site put it. Another wrote, ‘The bad judgment of the father in attempting to swim a river with a toddler on his back is his responsibility.’”

In “Ethics,” Cole asks each of us to examine our own conscience as we choose which lawmakers and policies to support: “People who are in a state of abjection are often the same people who are said to ‘threaten our security.’ And indeed, they do: they threaten our sense of ourself as secure, as non-abject. They show the loss of security that always threatens the human self. People we have made to suffer extremely are reminders of something of which we don’t want to be reminded: that we can suffer extremely too. Our security is threatened not because there is something they will do to us, some kind of attack, but rather because of what we are: beings as vulnerable and insecure as they are. This is knowledge that must be suppressed at all costs, knowledge that is therefore met with disgust. The abject is disgusting because it comes from us, because it is our unstable selves externalized, the intimate fact we cannot bear to smell.”

In “On Carrying and Being Carried,” Cole again asks us to examine our own conscience: “[Do] we believe that the people on those endangered boats on the Mediterranean are human in precisely the same way we are human? When I visited Sicily and watched a boat of rescued people with bewildered faces come to shore, there was only one possible answer to that question. And yet we are surrounded by commentary that tempts us to answer it wrongly, or that makes us think our comfort and convenience are more important than human life.”

I admire Cole’s work, and more so than any insight that my words can express about his extraordinary essays, hopefully sharing Cole’s own resounding words will compel fellow readers to seek out Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time and examine alongside Cole our collective conscience and humanity.

[emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

'But I don’t go to Caravaggio to be reminded of how good people are, and certainly not because of how good he was. To the contrary: I seek him out for a certain kind of otherwise unbearable knowledge. Here was an artist who depicted fruit in its ripeness and at the moment it had begun to rot, an artist who painted flesh at its most delicately seductive and its most grievously injured. When he showed suffering, he showed it so startlingly well because he was on both sides of it: he meted it out to others and received it in his own body. Caravaggio is long dead, as are his victims. What remains is the work, and I don’t have to love him to know that I need to know what he knows—'

Better RTC later. A few excerpts for now.

'After observing the foreign policies of the so-called developed countries, I cannot trust any complacent claims about the power of literature to inspire empathy. Sometimes, even, it seems that the more libraries we have over here, the more likely we are to bomb people over there.'

'It does not stop bombs. It does not, no matter how finely wrought, change the minds of the fascists who once more threaten to overrun the world. So what is it good for—all this effort, this labor, this sweating over the right word, the correct translation? I offer this: literature can save a life. Just one life at a time. Perhaps at 4 a.m. when you get out of bed and pull a book of poetry from the shelf—Something deeply personal happens there, something both tonic and sustaining.'

'On my way to becoming African, I also began to become Black, which proved a more complex journey. “African” had been about mutual spaces with Africans: friends from across the continent, or people with whom I’d been placed in the same category. It had something to do with finding ourselves strangers in the strange American land, but also with our shared experience of the background radiation of colonialism. The formalized White supremacy of colonial rule ended in Nigeria only fifteen years before I was born. It was still fresh. “African,” whatever else it was, was about collectively undoing this assault. “Black” was something else. It was, in a sense, more inclusive. In the inclusive sense, it took in all that colonial hangover and added to it the American experiences of slavery, slave rebellion, Jim Crow, and contemporary racism, as well as the connective tissue that bound the Black Atlantic into a single pulsing bruise—which brought all of the Caribbean into its orbit—as well as European, Latin American, and global diasporic Blackness. But “Black” was also more restrictive because, in everyday language, “Black” (or “black”) was American Black, and “American Black” meant American Black descended from enslaved people. It wasn’t about every Black person in the world; it was localised to the American situation. To be Black in America, that localized tenor of “Black” had to be learned; it had to be learned and loved. Black skin (sometimes just a shade or two off-white) was the admission to the classroom, but Black American cultural codes were the lesson. So, I learned Black—like Black British living in LA learn Black, like Jamaicans in Brooklyn, Haitians in Miami, Eritreans in DC, and Gambians in the Bronx learn Black. We learned Black and loved Black—knowing all the while, though, that it wasn’t the only Black.'

'In a speech Albert Camus gave in Uppsala, Sweden, in 1957, he described the collective value of our seemingly disconnected lives: Some will say that this hope lies in a nation; others, in a man. I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history.'

'What are we to do in a nation that surpasses all others in turning suffering into entertainment? I propose a resistance made of refusals. Refuse a resistance excised of courage. Refuse the conventional arena and take the fight elsewhere. Refuse to eat with the enemy, refuse to feed the enemy. Refuse to participate in the logic of the crisis, refuse to be reactive to its provocations. Refuse to forget last year’s offenses and last month’s and last week’s. Refuse the news cycle, refuse commentary. Refuse to place newsworthiness above human solidarity. Refuse to be intimidated by pragmatism. Refuse to be judged by cynics. Refuse to be too easily consoled. Refuse to admire mere political survival. Refuse to accept the calculation of the lesser evil. Refuse nostalgia. Refuse to laugh along. Refuse the binary of the terrible past and the atrocious present. Refuse to ignore the plight of the imprisoned, the tortured and the deported. Refuse to be mesmerised by shows of power. Refuse the mob. Refuse to play, refuse decorum, refuse accusation, refuse distraction, which is a tolerance of death-dealing by another name. And when told you can’t refuse, refuse that, too.'

'Death sets off a flurry of reading and writing. Of rereading. How come so-and-so feels so alive in my inbox? What is the last email so-and-so wrote to me? Archive fever.'

[Abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Conversations between characters are all well and good; countesses must, I suppose, sweep into rooms, as they do in certain novels. But the secret reason I read, the only reason I read, is precisely for those moments in which the story being told is deeply alert to the world, an alertness that sees things as they are or dreams things as they could be. Those moments that are like a dark forest, a wide sky, an unplumbable mystery, or, in Heaney’s words, a ‘hurry through which known and strange things pass.’”

What a gift, to read Teju Cole in the longest month. He never fails to lift the spirits. This serious, broad-ranging collection includes reflections on international travel, migration, photographers, literature, translation, and culture. Importantly, it also includes his dazzling essay “The Blackness of the Panther,” which alone makes this book worth buying. His writing is always a balm, even when it is as weighty as this.

[Sini · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Open City" van Teju Cole vond ik een prachtige roman, vooral door de flanerende open geest en de wagenwijd voor alle associatieve indrukken opengesperde zintuigen van de hoofdpersoon. Coles later geschreven essaybundel "Known and strange things" had precies diezelfde zo charmerende openheid van geest, oog, oor en alle andere zintuigen. Net als "Blind Spot", zijn fascinerende bundel vol raadselachtige foto's en al even raadselachtige teksten. En dat geldt misschien nog wel sterker voor zijn net verschenen essaybundel "Black Paper".

Deze essaybundel bestrijkt een wel heel breed scala van onderwerpen: van de kleur zwart in beeldende kunst naar de troost van architectuur en muziek; van suggestieve schaduweffecten in experimentele fotografie tot de epifanie in het werk van Joyce, Woolf, Pamuk, Sebald, Toni Morrison, Bruno Schulz en Teju Cole zelf; van oorlogsfotografie tot misstanden aan de Amerikaans- Mexicaanse grens en de wanhoop daarover; van de duistere ondergrond vol raadselen onder elke zogenaamd heldere betekenis tot het zwart van de dood; van het zwart als rouwkleur naar de zwarte huidskleur van tot slaaf gemaakten; van de schaduw als zone van angstwekkend duister naar de schaduw als zone van koelte en geborgenheid; van het fascinerende late werk van Beethoven naar het voor Cole zo uitzinnig inspirerende werk van Edward Said; van de vele genegeerde misstanden in de huidige duistere tijden naar de bonte veelvormigheid van de films van Fellini; van Caravaggio's onrustige leven en zo imponerend- duistere schilderkunst tot de ontworteling van bootvluchtelingen; van de ongrijpbare sferen van nachtmerries en mistige dromen tot verbazing over de mysterieuze schoonheid van Utoya jaren na de aanslag van Brejvik.... Enzovoort, en zo verder.

Een enorm pluriforme bundel dus, temeer omdat ook in elk essay zelf associatief heen en weer wordt bewogen tussen geheel verschillende onderwerpen en sferen. Maar juist door die associatieve pluriformiteit staat Coles essaybundel, volgens mij, in het teken van "a guesswork that fostered a different way of knowing, one that allowed for ranges rather than insisting on points". Niet voor niets zegt Cole ook: "I love Edward Said's idea, drawn from his comparative study of literature, that difference is not about hierarchies but about the possibility of contrapuntal lines. Difference, at its best, interweaves and creates new harmonies". Ook Coles gevarieerde, associatief heen en weer bewegende essays zijn vol contrapunten, en op zoek naar nieuwe harmonieën, naar nieuwe betekenispatronen die nooit helemaal worden onthuld. "Counterpoint is also related to Said's concept of late style. Tension is sustained, stubbornness is unaccommodated, and difficulty is permitted. [...] The rest is music", zo zegt Cole over Edward Said, en naar mijn idee is dat helemaal raak. Maar ook zijn eigen stijl is hiermee heel raak beschreven: alle perspectieven in zijn essays zijn complex, al zijn essays staan vol verschillende perspectieven, en de spanningen tussen die zo verschillende perspectieven maken die essays nog complexer en intrigerender. Zodat alle essays pogingen zijn om de complexiteit van de wereld voelbaar te maken zonder die complexiteit te reduceren. En zonder dus de contrapuntische spanningen ervan te willen oplossen.

Veel van de essays gaan bovendien over duistere en verhulde beelden. Cole, zelf fotograaf, is erg gefascineerd door fotografie, maar dan vooral door foto's die werken met schaduweffecten, vreemde perspectieven en raadselachtige verhullingen. Foto's dus die niet ernaar streven om alles helder af te beelden, maar om zich te verhouden tot werkelijkheden die te tragisch of onbevattelijk zijn om in een beeld te vangen. Zoals bijvoorbeeld de foto's of liever fotogrammen van Takeda, die ons, via een ingewikkeld procedé, een indruk geven van de radioactieve vervuiling rondom Fukushima. "These enigmatic images make visible the otherwise unseen toxicity of the grounds", aldus Cole: we "zien" die toxiciteit op een manier die we via normale foto's helemaal nooit zouden kunnen zien, en precies dat maakt deze foto's zo aangrijpend en raadselachtig. En juist dat raadselachtige is voor Cole uiterst essentieel. "We make images in respons to disaster. Seeing is part of our coming to terms. Oblique responses, like those by Imai, Takeda, and Kawauchi [...] are especially resonant because they are reactions to a tragedy, but they also reach beyond it and give us new language", aldus Cole. Maar die "new language" is dan niet een taal die klip en klaar alles verklaart en verheldert, maar een taal die de complexiteit en de onopgehelderde schaduwzones bewaart. Een taal dus die de duisterheid der dingen respecteert.

En bovendien een taal die de raadselachtige veelvormigheid van de dingen recht doet. Niet voor niets vult Cole een van zijn essays met uitgesponnen voorbeelden van opsommingen uit het werk van veel verschillende schrijvers: opsommingen waarin de veelvormigheid van met name het leven in de grote stad overweldigend naar voren komt. Want deze opsommingen zijn tevens enorme tableaus, die de lezer verbazen door hun wijdsheid, hun veelheid aan details, en ook de verrassende heterogeniteit en ogenschijnlijke onsamenhangendheid: alsof je als lezer iets onder ogen krijgt dat te groot, wijds heterogeen en veelvormig is om bevat te kunnen worden. Maar juist dat dwingt tegelijkertijd wel onze aandacht en gecommitteerde interesse af. Niet voor niets schrijft Cole daarover: "Cities are made of multiplicity, and they invite inventory. To list is, somehow, to love". Zulke opsommingen en tableaus vindt hij dan ook van cruciale waarde voor literatuur, en voor de leeservaring: "But the secret reason I read, the only reason I read, is precisely for those moments in which the story being told is deeply alert to the world, an alertness that sees things as they are or dreams things as they could be. Those moments that are like a dark forest, a wide sky, an umplumbable mystery". In dat verband spreekt hij ook van een epifanie, een ook door James Joyce vaak gebruikt begrip dat duidt op een nieuw licht en nieuw inzicht dat je raakt als een overweldigende openbaring. Maar Cole ziet dit begrip nog breder: "Epiphany is not only relevation or insight, it is also the reassembly of the self through the senses. It is an engagement with the things that quickened the heart, through the faculties of the body, the things that catch the heart of guard and blow it open". En dat begrip wint nog aan kracht door Coles eerdere passages over de rijkdom van onze vijf zintuigen, die alle vijf in verbinding staan met de geest en met elkaar (bijvoorbeeld in de door Cole betoverend beschreven ervaringen van synesthesie), en die bovendien alle vijf heel veel verschillende modaliteiten kennen. Zodat we niet vijf zintuigen hebben, maar wel tientallen. En al die tientallen met elkaar verbonden zintuigen worden wijd en vol ontvankelijkheid opengesperd in de epifanie......

De essays in "Black Paper" staan bol van geëngageerd protest tegen uitsluiting, hypocrisie, discriminatie en de vele andere misstanden in deze wereld. Cole maakte mij daarmee alert op allerlei ongerechtigheden waar ik mij veel te weinig bewust van was. En op vormen van solidariteit en empathie die bij mij veel te weinig zijn ontwikkeld. Maar nog indrukwekkender dan dat vond ik zijn pleidooi voor een maximale openheid van geest en van alle zintuigen, en daarmee voor een "receptivity and indiscriminate attention" die ons toegang geeft tot " an overwhelming pileup of detail that shakes the sensible self to its core". Want bij Cole gaat het om onverdeelde aandacht voor het onbegrijpelijke, het onbevattelijk andere, het peilloos en pijnlijk duistere, het ongrijpbaar pluriforme, en soms ook het angstwekkende en abjecte. In zijn essays laat Cole bovendien heel mooi zien wat voor duistere en pluriforme rijkdom een dergelijke aandacht kan opleveren. En vooral daarom vond ik deze essaybundel enorm inspirerend.

[Sandeep · Rating 5 out of 5]

Teju Cole's latest collection of essays is an exercise in profoundness, an examination of what humanity means in today's context.
Literature, photography, and art feature prominently in this collection much like his previous outing. Yet again he makes us introspect deeply and feel immensely. Challenging us and showing us an intriguing way of thinking.
The world writing is sublime as ever, and the breadth of topics is limitless. I am truly in awe of this man as a writer and his thought process and world view

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Watch me tot in den eeuwigheid naar deze essays refereren. Dit is super.

[G1001XD · Rating 4 out of 5]

Glad I persevered with this. Parts 3&4 are particularly spectacular. I’ve never experienced such amazing writing about photography, really brilliant stuff. Extremely rich and sensuous writing, a true joy to read.

Specific essays that really shivered my timbers:
• A Crime Scene at the Border
• The Blackness of the Panther
• Restoring the Darkness
• Experience
•Epiphany

[E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful and often heartbreaking work. Trying to read things that are outside of my comfort zone, and this was definitely once such journey.

[Joanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Collected essays are strange books -- odd scraps of the writer's working life, sometimes coherent, sometimes not; not everything still holds up, or holds the reader's interest. At times, Black Paper: Writing in a Dark Time feel a bit like that. He leads with his flagship piece -- the Caravaggio/ Lampedusa article he wrote for The New York Times Magazine, but in the subsequent pieces, he flounders a little. The writing is less polished than that of Open City; topics feel a little remote (although perhaps that's a me problem). However, the book definitely gathers steam in the second half of the collection. Themes become more coherent - race, photography, migration - but each piece has its own style -- and some of those styles are quite audacious. He's not an easy writer; the links between the sections of an essay are not obvious, and sometimes the reader has to go back over them a few times to see where he's going. He has encyclopedic knowledge in many areas, and just kind of assumes the reader can keep up with his allusions and cross references. A challenge at times, but also a pleasure.

[Maureen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Teju Cole is a professional writer obviously, but I also believe him to be a professional observer, as that is ultimately is what allows him to write about the things he does in the way he does. (And is evident in his photography, as well.) The pieces on the dramatic life and masterpieces of Caravaggio, Oslo as a city in the wake of the tragedy of the massacre on Utøya, and on migrants suffering endless indignities and crimes against human rights at the border of the United States and Mexico will stay with me for a long time.

The thing about this book that struck me most is that it of course is written about dark times, in a dark time, as most times are dark- but doorways continue to exist to new realms of possibility. This book was bleak at times but overwhelmingly meaningful.

[Nausheen · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I am more fascinated by Nairobi than by Africa, just as I am more intrigued by Milan than Europe. The general is where solidarity begins, but the specific is where our lives come into proper view. I don’t want to hear “Africa” unless it’s a context in which someone would also say “Asia” or “Europe.” Ever notice how real Paris is? That’s how real I need Lagos to be. Folks can talk about Paris all day without once generalizing about Europe. I want to talk about Lagos, not about Africa."

[Luciano · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cole's beautiful prose and erudition are things of wonder, though the analyses of his own books are often too much ego to bear.

[Iza Cupial · Rating 5 out of 5]

6/6

[Miriam Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I fucking love Teju Cole. I wish I could say something more eloquent than that, but that’s simply what it is. His words and mind are amazing.

[death spiral · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cole remains a significant writer to me personally for at least two reasons.

The first is the faith his critical writing keeps with two critics—John Berger and Edward Said, both memorialized here—who insisted that close analysis of the artistic achievements of the Global North must be held in tension with the violence that has been and contributed to be leveled by the North on the Global South.

Like those writers, Cole is committed to a mode of cosmopolitan intellectualism (the range of his travel is impressive, as are the extent of his connections and associations, so much so that it brings to mind both the Enlightenment dream of a republic of letters and less limpid visions of jet-setting Ivy League elites). Specifically, he does not shy away from high culture but is committed to a mode of cultural exchange (a la Said’s contrapuntalism) that is democratic in spirit and desires to recognize difference without forcing it into a hierarchy. He writes clear and direct sentences with the purpose of opening previously cloistered realms of culture to attentive people generally. I really love his Spotify playlists, which not only blend jazz, classical, and African musics but make them feel accessible—like all these styles could be part of one’s daily life.

Thus, his essays here consistently place high cultural touchstones (e.g. Caravaggio) alongside observations on the incipient fascism rippling through the North in the wake of migration from the impoverished South. Cole emphasizes that cultures develop modes of quiet attention in tandem with their modes of force (e.g, a Viking studies the clouds to determine if the weather is right for pillaging), and he acknowledges that reading or looking at art is never enough, but he insists on the ability of culture to push an individual toward what he calls bearing witness: “The one who merely raises awareness can still pretend to neutrality, while the one who bears witness has already taken sides, has already committed to being unprofessional.”

The second reason I like Cole is because his novel Open City forcefully illustrates that culture, rather than enable us to bear witness, can actually prevent us from doing so—that the life of art and literature sometimes offers a form of worldliness without any of the power.

At least, that’s how I understand how Cole’s protagonist, Julius, is “invaded” (Cole’s term) by literature. For all his remarkable sensitivity, and he really is an incredible reader and contemplative, Julius uses the immersive qualities of art as a kind of shield against the world—he collects moments and experiences and epiphanies, but none of these succeed in bringing him any closer to living people. In other words, it is his liberality itself that prevents him from solidarity.

Cole confirms this on some level. He has a remarkable article from around the time of OC’s publication that meditates on Obama’s literary bona fides alongside his extralegal drone program, and there’s a recognition that, like the Viking’s attention to sea patterns enables his raiding, this mode of quiet attention cooperates systematically with violence.

Then why doesn’t his lecture on “Epiphany” address that limitation? Is it enough, for Cole, to encourage liberal education in an illiberal age? (At the university of Chicago?) And to his readership, which I presume to be already made up of enlightened liberal subjects like Cole and myself?

What goes unmentioned here, and maybe for lots of good reasons, is the possibility of realigning one’s cultural liberality toward confrontation with this system as a whole. To take only the example of Cole’s forebears, we could ask why he doesn’t mention Said’s lifelong engagement with Palestinian liberation or Berger’s many contacts with Marxist and anarchist groups. But I say that hesitatingly, because those are two figures who got off relatively easy in a twentieth century full of messy and horrific experiments in political commitment (and I don’t necessarily mean writers who were killed, although that too, but those whose support for parties and states meant their work was used to justify violence of one kind or another).

That means true risk, putting your soul at hazard, and it’s not to be evoked lightly. But on the other hand, bromides like “bearing witness”—like believing women, saying their names, not crossing picket lines, stopping Asian hate—often feel vague and dispersed, more capable of producing the feel of solidarity than the real thing. I often wish commitment could be as simple and definitive as joining a party or putting my name on a list, though history tells us it never is, and that every moment and every action must be analyzed on their own terms.

I think I ultimately do agree with Cole that art and literature—under present conditions— are things that must be wrestled with individually, in the depths of our beings as separate and distinct selves. But all the same, as Cole gets at here, that inner wrestling can and should be oriented toward some vision of collective life—as in Auden’s refrain: “in solitude, for company.”

Chill out I’m not doing this every time

[Nelliamoci · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ci sono tantissimi e infiniti spunti in questo saggio di Teju Cole, così interessanti che è quasi un peccato passare da un argomento all'altro. L'arte, la fotografia e quindi il vedere le anime delle persone attraverso lenti speciali, sono sicuramente le protagoniste principali, anche se non mancano riferimenti alla letteratura e a vicende personali, alla sua vita fra Nigeria e Stati Uniti.
Ci sono riflessioni che colpiscono, come il legame fra le città toccate da Caravaggio durante il suo esilio e che oggi, a distanza di secoli, sono punti nevralgici della crisi dell'immigrazione. Ci sono pagine commoventi nelle sue elegie, quando tramite la scrittura cerca di capire cosa mi rattrista, non per cancellarla, ma per renderla meno intensa, e capitoli dedicati al guardare, al significato di reportage, con le sue immagini strazianti in luoghi dove non c'è nessuna giustizia sotto occupazione.
Un buon modo per conoscere questo autore, di cui ora sarei molto curiosa di leggere qualcosa in prosa.

[Rebecc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Teju Cole is the author I would most like to meet & share a meal with. His books are addictive & thought provoking for all the right reasons & this book of essays ranges across a lot of topics including the first chapter, an outstanding essay on Caravaggio's late works & Cole's journey around the port cities that host the paintings where he writes arrestingly about the artist, his works & the modern cities that still play host to migrants. Cole strikes me as a 'global citizen' that is clearly well travelled & interested in learning & absorbing as much as he can in ways too many other people are now closed off to. His chapters on how much German classical music means to him is surprising but then Beethoven & Brahms are powerful too in their own right & his insights had me thinking about my reactions to Handel, Rossini, Stravinsky, Arvo Part, James MacMillan & Judith Weir. For a slim-ish book he covers a lot of ground & I was sorry to reach the end, but I feel enlightened & challenged & delighted that there are still intellectuals out there that can write with such fluency & panache.

[Livia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think my brain was mature enough to really understand what a masterpiece this is when I read it the first time. Cole dives all the way down to the heart of the meaning of things and observes and writes in a way that's both sharp and gentle. You know when you read something, and you can feel that nobody else in the world writes the way they do, and it feels like you're really inside that person's brain? That's what this reading experience was like, and I'm so glad I picked it up again.

Some of my favourite passages:

"But I don’t go to Caravaggio to be reminded of how good people are, and certainly not because of how good he was. To the contrary: I seek him out for a certain kind of otherwise unbearable knowledge. Here was an artist who depicted fruit in its ripeness and at the moment it had begun to rot, an artist who painted flesh at its most delicately seductive and its most grievously injured. When he showed suffering, he showed it so startlingly well because he was on both sides of it: he meted it out to others and received it in his own body. Caravaggio is long dead, as are his victims. What remains is the work, and I don’t have to love him to know that I need to know what he knows, the knowledge that hums, centuries later, on the surface of his paintings, knowledge of all the pain, loneliness, beauty, fear, and awful vulnerability our bodies have in common."

"Have you ever heard anything so absurd? Africa, sun-stunned and light-inundated Africa, described as the "Dark Continent"? Something more than metaphor must be at play here. It must be some other darkness being displaced or reassigned."

"On the train back into Zurich, a group of five young people in their late twenties. Two couples, and one spare. The spare looked longingly at one of the boys. The boy's girlfriend didn't notice, the boy, terribly handsome, didn't notice, but I noticed and the spare noticed that I noticed, they got off the train not long after, swallowed up by the night. That girl's soft sadness, her longing, the things that cannot be said, the cold river flowing past, the empty room, writing this in darkness."

[Dawson Escott · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mix of solid essays and some that I found a little too meandering to say anything totally substantial. I had previously read a solid chunk of the middle section for class (a photography history class focused on African diaspora), and I wanted to see how the book worked as a whole. It takes a second for the book to actually feel like a unified work, and I think it ultimately does, but there are a couple duds that stuck out.

Cole's taste and experience are probably the strongest part of this book. I appreciated being introduced to great new art or reading a new perspective that allowed me to reapproach familiar artists. The work and history discussed stretches continents and centuries in a very exciting way, opening communication lines between Edward Said and Beethoven, Dura-Europos and Santu Mofokeng. As such, to me the strongest section is the more art-criticism focused part 3: Shadows. The Kerry James Marshall essay is creative and very strong. I also appreciated Cole's overall political message and his look at how to allow art (and viewing) to still be a means of connection rather than of numb familiarization. I do think this union between art appreciation and contemporary political understanding is at times clumsy in the book-- for example, the Caravaggio introduction section, IMO, does not ever fully gel his art with Mediterranean migration, and the Norway essay "Passages North" kind of baffling. His style was also sometimes a little too poetic and broad brush for me. I crave specifics and lucidity in writing, and sometimes there's a line or two here that are so sweeping that it feels almost cliche or unanswerable.

I do think Cole is a really impressive writer and thinker that broaches a lot of interesting content, but the style of his writing itself just does not click with me all the way.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just a fantastic, essential exploration of art, race, and how to remain human by bearing witness to inhumanity. Made me rethink a few of my most basic assumptions and often moved me to tears. Some of these essays have appeared elsewhere, but I’m glad to have them collected in one place, and the previously unpublished essays are by themselves well worth the purchase price. Please, please read this book.

[Stephen Schenkenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was knocked out by Teju Cole’s “Blind Spot” in 2017. Just finished “Black Paper,” and it’ll surely be a highlight of 2022. Sensitive, probing essays about humanity and the humanities. Such a privilege to be in his close-looking company.

[Rafael Borrego · Rating 2 out of 5]

"¿Qué significa realmente el negro? ¿Es ausencia de luz, un color lleno de matices, o una forma de mirar el mundo?"
En Papel negro, Teju Cole explora este color como un hilo conductor que conecta arte, historia, fotografía, violencia y memoria. Desde Caravaggio y sus claroscuros hasta las sombras de la colonización y la fotografía contemporánea, el negro aparece como símbolo de dolor, duelo y también de resistencia.
Cole mezcla reflexiones sobre la pintura barroca, las imágenes del fotoperiodismo, la representación del cuerpo negro en el arte y su propia experiencia vital. El resultado es un recorrido amplio, lleno de asociaciones sorprendentes: de Sontag a Azoulay, de Rothko a Lorna Simpson.
Ahora bien, quizás el libro carga con demasiados temas, que no siempre terminan de encajar. Cole alterna lo personal con lo teórico, pero a veces lo hace de forma dispersa. La idea del negro se mantiene, sí, como un hilo constante, pero la estructura puede sentirse deslavazada.
Aun así, lo que queda es un ensayo provocador: nos obliga a pensar no solo en el color negro, sino en lo que representa en la historia del arte, en la violencia contemporánea y en nuestras propias sombras.
Si busca un libro para reflexionar sobre la oscuridad y sus múltiples significados, Papel negro es una lectura necesaria, aunque no siempre cómoda.

[Blake Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

When he quotes his other book (literally for pages), I’m not so sure why he’s writing. There’s great stuff in here, and I’m thinking that Cole is often attempting to be a writer of the senses. But he quotes many other writers unproblematically, like (for example!) when he drops a Mircea Eliade quote to find THE meaning of immersion in water, without explaining why or how it relates to his own experience.

The last couple essays are very bad; when he says he shares, through translation, a readership with Primo Levi or Walter Benjamin or Sebald, and continually refers to his book written ten years prior, I cannot believe him (his writing, in this book, is not that good!). “Literature can save a life,” he says, without saying exactly how.

His photography essays are wonderful, though. I wish he would dig a bit more. I’m not sure his writing style does it for me though; it feels undercooked.

[Victor Osehodion Anolu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Black Paper explores the flickering of light and shadow in photography, classical music, painting, and literature, and applies the same theme to elegies for departed artists, and intellectuals, and the kind of rambling but penetrating meditations on cities that have characterized his novels. The title refers to the making of carbon copies, where “black transported the meaning” from page to page; Cole is intent on finding meaning in the dark. These things shadow Cole’s work: the exclusion of people from nations and from personhood and the sense that art cannot possibly do enough. What lights his way is his certainty that, on occasion, it can. A fantastic read for anyone interested.

[Sofie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somehow, this particular feel of the paper between my fingers adds to my experience. The writing is excellent, beautiful. As before with Cole's essays, I enjoy the ones with the personal touch the most. A lot on photography and art, some interesting, but many also very nerdy. I would highlight "A Letter to John Berger", "Pictures in the Aftermath", "Through the Door", and "Passages North" as my very favorite.

The women of Kabylia will cover their faces and return to themselves as they wish to be. The oba's beaded crown will fall back into place, shadowing his face. Photography writes with light, but not everything wants to be displayed. Among the human rights is the right to remain obscure, unseen, and dark. (159)

[Filippo Petriliggieri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leggere Teju Cole non è facile, ma dopo ‘Tremore’ a cui non ero molto pronto (essendo in forma di romanzo ma con tantissime divagazioni), questa ‘raccolta’ di scritti, pensieri, interventi pubblici etc l’ho trovata più in linea con le attese. Lui riesce ad essere nello stesso tempo colto, pieno di riferimenti, arguto, ma anche a scrivere come se ti stesse parlando in quel momento, in modo molto diretto. Può incuriosire, provocare piccole epifanie, e anche annoiare, ma è difficile restare indifferenti.

[Catherine Mustread]

“ . . . [Cole] uses lyric essays to write about dark times. . . . The form’s beauty, its hope and its power lie in its lack of rigidity, its defiance of preconceived notions. What we see is an individual taking stock of their surroundings. . . .” — Simukai Chigudu in The Guardian Weekly 5Nov21

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The secret reason I read... is precisely those moments in which [Teju Cole] is deeply alert to the world, an alertness that sees things as they are or dreams things as they could be. [His writing is] like a dark forest, a wide sky, an unplumbable mystery."

[Sigrun Hodne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great collection! My favourites:

1) “After Caravaggio”, a work of art in its own right.
2) “Gossamer World: On Santu Mofokeng”, a beautiful text introducing me to a wonderful body of work I didn’t know existed.
3) “A Time for Refusal”, short, sharp, disturbing.