Linking this to ALGO he says: “for me, it was important to hone in on the things that were everyday and average about his life and about the lives of all the characters. “I feel like we are always so focused on big broad aspects of life that we often miss the little things that make it so terrible, and at times, wonderful.
John reflects on this during our conversation., “I really do find some poetry in the mundane aspects of life,” he muses. The police eyeing which cars to pull over to extort hawkers shouting at the top of their lungs in hopes of finding their next customer people desperately cleaning windscreens with liquid soap in the hopes of getting a little change or finally reaching the front of the traffic jam to realise the holdup was bad roads that could (and should) have easily been fixed a while ago, but have gotten worse from negligence, corruption and bad governance.
During my conversation with John I realised that from my car, I could see all the intersections and interactions of Lagos’ sociopolitical climate. Surprisingly, these surroundings were insightful. I had underestimated how long it would take me to get home, and Lagos traffic had other plans. It was not intentional, but my meeting with John ended up happening while I was in the middle of Lagos’ Monday evening traffic.
In the background, Xavier is also contending with his white father’s end-stage Alzheimers and the revealed latent racism that has accompanied his decline. Pugllistic dementia is a form of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) more common among – but not limited to – atheletes who sustain concussions, and manifests with characteristics of dementia. When we meet Xavier he’s battling pugilistic dementia while coming to terms with ageing in a sports career. You know when you read a good book and wish you could speak to the author about it? Well, imagine my excitement to speak to John Vercher, the writer of After the Lights Go Out (to be referred to as “ALGO” from this point), a 2022 novel published by Pushkin Press.ĪLGO explores the life of Xavier Wallace, a mixed-race Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighter.
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