Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jul 21, 2013 Letters
Dear Editor,
I refer to Davis Casavis’s response to my review of his book. Unlike Mark Benschop who knows Mr. Casavis and has announced in a letter that he is selling Mr. Casavis’ book, I do not know Mr. Casavis at all. Therefore I have no reason to hate or dislike him. I know absolutely nothing about Mr. Casavis. I reviewed his book and I stand by evaluation
It is downright silly and borders on stupidity that someone can say that people have a right to buy a book and judge it for themselves but it is wrong for a reviewer in his assessment to advise readers not to purchase a book. Movie critics and book critics all the time advise against people seeing a film or reading a book that is not up to standard.
Some reviewers are so harsh that after their critiques, the novelist may not get a publisher to show future interest or a movie actor may not get future contracts. I remember movie critics literally destroyed the acting career of Sofia Coppola, the daughter of the famous director of mafia films, Francis Ford. She never acted in another movie and constantly speaks about the effects on her life of those reviews
Of course, if you are a friend of the actor or the novelist and you are helping to sell the writer’s publication, then you will not be able to objectively judge the flaws of the work. And instead of concentrating on the flaws of the reviewer’s work you personally attack the messenger. I am accustomed to people attacking me personally.
At the end of the day, the Guyanese people know who has intellectual substance from those who cannot even write a paragraph of intellectual analysis. Caribbean politics has been harsh to activists and politicians who lack intellectual qualities and some of us will find that out as we try to convince our fellow citizens to entrust us with power.
I stand by my review with emphasis that Mr. Casavis’ volume did not make use Carroll’s cooperation statement with the DA and that such a statement is more informative to the Guyanese people than the book. Mr. Casavis quite strangely does not respond to the constant charge of mine about the Carroll cooperation statement.
As to his qualifications, Mr. Casavis is very sparse with details
I can only find one paper from him in 2009 on Equatorial Guinea and he did a paper in the same year on the same country at Hofstra University on the 40th anniversary of that country’s independence. From 2009 to the present, there is no Google information on Mr. Casavis. In, November 2012, he put up a page on his election campaign for local office in New York. And his qualifications are not dwelled upon. It states he has two Masters but did not spell out in what area. With due respect to Mr. Casavis, no right thinking person would ask voters to choose him based on that kind of little information. I think he lost.
Let me end with a conversation I had with the man of the moment in Guyana, Vincent Alexander. In his job as Registrar of the University of Guyana, I approached three times with my curiosity that the contents of the curriculum vitae of the Director of the Berbice campus, Dr. Samad, I am unable to verify.
This was based on the large amount of journal articles and books that were stated in the CV. Google should assist you because all journals today are online and you can freely read the content page. I wasn’t saying anything about Dr. Samad except I couldn’t find the stuff on the net that was in his CV. The same for Mr. Casavis. I wish him well in his future academic work but if he continues to write on Guyana, I think my pen will be deeply probing
Frederick Kissoon
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
Apr 19, 2024
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