Content and Form in Selvon's The Lonely Londoners: Representing Cultural Contact, Mixing, and Creolization Daisy van der Post College

Selvon's 'The Lonely Londoners' not only explores processes of cultural contact, but is in itself the product of and inspiration for future mixing of cultures: it is a novel which ‘forged a shift in perspective which would not only change the way the city was seen, but ‘Englishness’ itself’ (Nasta, xii). Selvon's text is fundamentally about the differing ways in which cultures interact, whether through the creolization of the novel’s structure and narrative voice, through exploration of the ways in which West Indian and traditional British culture mix, or through contemplation of the way middle class, lower class, English and Trinidadian cultures engage in contact with one another.

Selvon's use of a highly episodic form of writing which centres around roguish, yet ultimately likeable characters, can be seen to incorporate elements of both the picaresque novel and calypsonian ballads to reflect cultural mixing at the level of form and structure. One critic writing on Selvon's allusions to ‘the native calypso ballad’ describes calypsos as ‘preoccupied with race, especially with racial stereotypes. Its major themes are sex… and the strategies used for survival. The calypso delights in… [the] exaggerated rendering of humorous...