Wole Talabi, in his brilliant story collection Convergence Problems, offers an intriguing idea about how stories can be told. It contrasts sharply with the method made famous by James Joyce in Dubliners where characters reach a climactic moment of epiphany in which they grasp some great truth about themselves. That approach has been done to death in the hands of lesser writers who push their characters to a great realization by means of fictional device rather than earned life experience.
In his work as an engineer, Talabi says in his introduction, convergence problems refer to “bringing an approximate (simplified) solution close enough to a true solution within a given tolerance during an iterative procedure.” In engineering, as well as in fiction, problems can arise when complications make it difficult to converge to a solution. It’s a good metaphor for the problems that characters in a story encounter when trying to make sense of their lives. The part of this idea I find most intriguing is the difficulties that can arise just when approaching the point of convergence.
In some of Talabi’s best stories, the characters reach a point of resolution without telling us exactly what they will do. It may be clear what course of action they will follow, but we do not see all the complications of how things finally work out. It’s not the cheap trick of keeping the reader guessing but rather a rich explanation of everything in the character’s life that has brought them to the point of decision. Getting to that point is far more interesting than having a neat ending that ties everything together or that leaves the protagonist with an epiphany that will change their life forever.
Talabi prefers, as one character puts it, to head for a goal asymptotically, on a line approaching but never able to touch what they aim for at any finite distance or, in fiction, period of time. Life is too complicated and puts too many variables in the way to have everything resolved.
But the real test for any story is how compelling are the characters and their reactions to the complications in their lives. Among my favorites are the novella-length “Ganger,” “Saturday’s Song,” “Embers” and “Tends to Zero.” But almost all the others in this sixteen story collection are excellent. There is only one that I felt pushed for an ending that was just too neat and unconvincing.
“Ganger,” short for doppelganger, kept reminding me of Zamyatin’s We in its portrait of someone trying to break out of a seemingly perfect world. Thousands of people have been saved from the ravages of a post-apocalyptic world by the wealthy owner of what had been an exclusive tower complex built for the rich of Lagos. This mini-world is run by an AI, Legba-6, that monitors every detail of its inhabitants’ lives by means of chips installed at the bases of their brains. It tries to ensure that all are grateful for their regimented existence by constantly adjusting their moods and thoughts.
Yet we are introduced to this apparent paradise with the attempted suicide of a young woman, Laide, who feels her life has no meaning or purpose since everything is regimented and pre-ordained. L-114, a robot in a neighboring apartment is alerted by Legba-6 at the first sign of faltering vitals and punches through a wall to save Laide’s life. When a stranger, Issa, who says he is part of a resistance to the AI, offers Laide the means to move her consciousness into the body of a robot, she takes the chance and shifts into L-114. This helps her explore the full extent of the tower complex and visit the outside world, where she is able to see at last the real sun rising.
Interspersed with Laide’s story is a Yoruba legend about a great hunter who grows desperate as his body weakens with age, preventing him from doing the one thing that gives meaning to his life. He, too, is given the chance to shift his mind into another bodily form, so we follow the choices that Laide and the hunter have to make as they face unexpected complications.
“Saturday’s Song” also draws on Yoruba myth and explicitly concerns story-telling itself. It contrasts the limited versions of stories that humans tell themselves and the comprehensive view of seven other-worldly siblings, who sit in a place “beyond the boundaries of space and time where everything is made of stories.” But unlike humans, these siblings know all the stories that have ever been told, anywhere, and they seem to have a special power in their ritual of telling them.
They are named for the seven days of the week, and one of them, Wednesday, has committed the crime of changing part of a story. So Wednesday now sits in chains as punishment, though she still takes part in story-telling. Each sibling tells part of a story of love, revenge and forgiveness that Saturday has chosen. She prescribes how it should be told in a series of visions transmitted to her siblings, emphasizing that it should start in the middle with the woman, Saura, first encountering the nightmare god Shigidi (this gives more insight about the titular character of Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon) . She wants a story that involves the imprisoning of Shigidi so that it will have resonance with their own situation. Again, the method of telling parallel stories works to great effect.
In “Embers,” a man is determined to rebuild an abandoned oil refinery all by himself in order to prove to his more successful brother-in-law, who has prospered by going to work for an alternative energy company, that he is not a failure. So he lies when teased by his rival about when the village could expect the completion of his project. He gives a hopelessly early date, one he knows could have potentially disastrous consequences.
In the beautifully lyrical “Silence,” a man has to wait for the love of his life to consider whether she loves him after she has broken up with his rival. “Tends to Zero” tells the story of a man whose life is falling apart and who meets the embodiment of the city he is living in. That entity, appearing in more than one form, seems to hold the key to his existence.
With its excellent story notes, Convergence Problems offers not just a lot of great stories but interesting insights into Talabi’s approach to each one. As someone who has had much trouble juggling a day job with writing I could do for myself, I am in awe of writers like Talabi who move so well from complex engineering to brilliant fiction. As he makes clear once again, he is able to use his engineering background as inspiration for new approaches to his stories. Convergence Problems is a fine collection that makes me want to get his earlier book of stories, Incomplete Solutions, right away.
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