{"id":120229,"date":"2018-01-15T09:00:59","date_gmt":"2018-01-15T14:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=120229"},"modified":"2018-01-12T17:54:09","modified_gmt":"2018-01-12T22:54:09","slug":"chinua-achebe-martin-luther-king-died-young","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/01\/15\/chinua-achebe-martin-luther-king-died-young\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinua Achebe on Martin Luther King: He Died Too Young"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_120231\" style=\"width: 1010px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/chinua-achebe.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-120231\" class=\"size-full wp-image-120231\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/chinua-achebe.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"667\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/chinua-achebe.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/chinua-achebe-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/chinua-achebe-768x512.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-120231\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chinua Achebe<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In honor of Martin Luther King Jr., we bring you audio from an unused portion of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/interviews\/1720\/the-art-of-fiction-no-139-chinua-achebe\" target=\"_blank\">the Art of Fiction No. 139<\/a>,\u00a0an interview with Chinua Achebe conducted for issue no. 133 (Winter 1994) of\u00a0<em>The Paris Review<\/em>. In this clip, Achebe discusses the legacy of none other than Martin Luther King Jr. A transcript follows:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/130481071&amp;color=ff6600&amp;auto_play=false&amp;show_artwork=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Yes, I think certainly, in my view, that Martin Luther King is an ancestor. And although he died at the age of thirty-nine, this is something we do not often remember\u2014how young he was when he was cut down. But his achievement was such that some who lived to be a hundred didn\u2019t achieve half as much. So he does deserve that status, that standing. If he were in my country, he would be worshipped \u2026 I did not meet him, unfortunately, and I think one of the reasons was what I have just said, that he died too young. He was thirty-nine. Gandhi, with whom he is often compared, had not even returned to India at thirty-nine; he was still studying. We are thinking not about a sportsman, who can achieve his peak at eighteen, we are thinking of a philosopher, a thinker, who had to mature into action. I have been lucky in the past few years to be invited, again and again, to speak on his day\u2014two years ago at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and then last year at the Smithsonian, so I\u2019ve become something of an expert on Martin Luther King.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; In honor of Martin Luther King Jr., we bring you audio from an unused portion of the Art of Fiction No. 139,\u00a0an interview with Chinua Achebe conducted for issue no. 133 (Winter 1994) of\u00a0The Paris Review. In this clip, Achebe discusses the legacy of none other than Martin Luther King Jr. A transcript follows: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7646],"tags":[3870,24962,4711,11963,459],"class_list":["post-120229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-look-2","tag-chinua-achebe","tag-dartmouth-college","tag-gandhi","tag-martin-luther-king-jr","tag-smithsonian"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Chinua Achebe on Martin Luther King: He Died Too Young<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u201cWe are thinking not about a sportsman, who can achieve his peak at eighteen, we are thinking of a philosopher who had to mature into 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