Anthony Winkler (1942-2015)

Biography

Born in Kingston in 1942 of Hungarian and Lebanese parentage, Anthony Winkler attended the Excelsior High School in Kingston, the Mt. Alvernia High School and the Cornwall College in St. James. He emigrated to California in 1962 where he attended the California State University earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1967 and a Master of Arts degree in 1968. After a brief interval where he taught at the Pasadena City College, he returned to Jamaica where he married. After a year, he returned to the United States where he seriously began his writing career authoring and co-authoring several college textbooks on rhetoric, English grammar and writing that are widely used in American colleges and universities. It is as a result of his work in fiction however that Anthony Winkler has earned critical acclaim and enduring admiration.

To quote fellow Musgrave Medallist and author Marlon James: “Every country (if she’s lucky) gets the Mark Twain she deserves, and Winkler is ours, bristling with savage Jamaican wit and heart-stopping compassion.” To describe him as a ‘comic genius’ is to limit the scope and reach of his work as well as its overall impact on the Jamaican literary landscape. Mr. Winkler has sought to examine, explain and ultimately ridicule traditional societal norms. His writing is, in fact, an act of resistance against, according to him “the dead weight of an imposed culture.” His first novel, The Painted Canoe published in 1984, was an exercise in perseverance, as it took several years to write and ten years to get it published. Submitted to numerous publishers in the United States, the book was finally accepted by a local publisher, Kingston Publishers and proved to be a success, garnering much critical acclaim. It was his next book, The Lunatic, published in 1987, however, that earned him fame and sealed his legacy. Not simply a comic novel, The Lunatic is social satire at its finest, examining through the eyes of its titular protagonist, Aloysius, the behavioural mores informed by the traditions of class and race. It is, underneath the hilarity, a sharp criticism of Jamaican society and by Winkler’s own admission, an attempt “to understand that part of the poor Jamaican’s character that I have never fully understood – the enduring, forgiving, compassionate part.” The book proved to be so popular that a film adaptation was made and released in Jamaica in 1990, followed a by a premiere in the United States in 1992.

The Lunatic was followed by The Great Yacht Race published in 1992 and Going Home to Teach published in 1995, an autobiographical work which chronicled the consequences of his [then] unusual decision to return to Jamaica in 1975. After co-authoring Bob Marley: an intimate portrait by his mother in 1996, The Duppy (1997) and The Crocodile (1999) followed in quick succession. In 2004, a collection of short stories, his first, The Annihilation of Fish was published in 2004. The titular story in this collection had been adapted into a critically acclaimed film in 1999 which starred acclaimed actors James Earl Jones, Lynn Redgrave and Margot Kidder. Next was Dog War in 2004, followed by another more comprehensive autobiography – Trust the Darkness in 2007. In 2012, Winkler embarked upon his first foray into historical fiction with Dog Carlos an exploration of Spanish brutality towards the Taino population in early sixteenth-century Jamaica. For this work Winkler won the 2014 Townsend Prize for Fiction. In announcing the winner, the judges commented that “God Carlos does everything you want a great novel to do. It entertains, it educates, it makes you laugh, and it makes you cringe. Winkler has an uncanny ability to make his readers care about truly despicable characters. It’s a masterfully told story, as rich in texture as it is economical.”

He is “out of order”, “feisty” and brimming with humour which often belies a sharply satirical sensibility. He writes out of an absolute love for Jamaica and Jamaicans and seems never to tire of finding stories to tell about the island. In commenting on The Painted Canoe (Winkler’s first and favourite book) Chinua Achebe makes the point that “like all good and important art, this book achieves a deeply profound meaning from ostensibly simple matters.” This can be applied be applied to the entirety of Anthony Winkler’s literary achievements and qualifies him as a national treasure.

For his contribution to literature, the Council of the Institute of Jamaica awarded Anthony Winkler the Gold Musgrave Medal in 2014 for distinguished merit in the field.