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www.richarddenooy.com

Check out the “News” tile for updates on upcoming events. You’ll also find a tile for the Dutch edition of my latest novel “Zacht als Staal”.

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I like the ebb and flow of online communities. Out in the real world, we almost invariably meet new people via our familiars, affiliations and preferences, which usually means there is a certain amount of pressure to conform to the unwritten rules of those groups, if only because we know we’ll be confronted with these people again and again, unless we sever the bond, or terminate our affiliation, or seek to sate our preferences elsewhere. Online communities, on the other hand, manifest themselves in almost endless varieties and allow us to come and go as we please. We are free to choose the intensity of our own participation, and we are free to reveal as much of ourselves as we like. We can choose to stay at a five-star hotel, giving private parties, or we can opt for a nudist colony, where private parts are on display. Neither of these options really appeals to me, because I prefer the challenge and joy of engaging with those who take similar pleasure in voicing their opinion on any number of topics, from the very loftiest to the most banal. That said, I consider any opinion or snippet of personal information I divulge in Cyberia to be in the public domain and therefore free of copyright within that domain. The same applies for any email I send to more than one person (although it’s always nice if permission to cite is requested).

More recently, I have begun restricting my responses (would you believe), especially when I fear they might incite further discussion demanding my attention. So I usually only take the plunge when I know I’ll be able to see the discussion through to its end, or if I know I can express my opinion briefly, without any pressure for further response. Consequently, I sometimes feel like a latter-day court jester who spouts supposedly witty asides for the audience to take as they please. Of course, this in no way reflects my full opinion on the topic, it merely says: “I have read your remarks and found them worthy of rejoinder.”

In my case, the expression of opinions and personal experiences seems to be shifting from the dining-room table to the keyboard. I find this disconcerting at times, but I put it down to the fact that online topics often present themselves within more narrow confines, attracting commentators from a much larger pool of potential participants, who are drawn to the topic like moths to a lamp. And so we swiftly find ourselves fluttering among kindred spirits, united by our interest in a topic, however different our opinions on that topic may be.

As we bathe in this newfound light and warmth, we are sometimes inclined to reveal more about ourselves than we might do out in the sun, in the real world. Consequently, I know more about some of my fellow Cyberians than I do about my friends on Fleshbook. Moreover, the fact that I am composing this on my keyboard, alone, far from most of the people who will read it, also lends an aura of privacy to what I write. In a sense, this piece will only truly enter the public domain when it attracts its first comment. Until then, it is little more than a notion, a whisper, a brainfart, incompletely expelled.

(Possibly to be continued…)

“Mister Mombassa?”

The girl with the ginger beard stared out over the dunes. The long grass bent in gentle rows under the wind. Her head was tilted to one side, as if she was studying a painting. Bright shards of emerald shone between her copper lashes. She smiled and stroked the air, her fingers playing with the grass.

“Was this his room?”

“His view. He was a fire eater. At least, that was his dream. He’d never performed. He practiced indoors because he didn’t like the cold and wind. A shivering giant. Black as coal. Burnt to a cinder when the curtains caught fire. At least, that’s what we suspect. He always locked the door. Didn’t want anyone stealing his tricks. They came running with the skeleton key and fire hose, but you can’t beat forty bottles of spirits exploding simultaneously. You could smell the fumes in the corridor. He always looked a little too happy. Droopy lids, glazed eyes, liquorice pupils. My father met him at the market in Mombassa. He had Coquette in a bathtub that stood in a wooden cage on a wagon. He had dragged the whole contraption into town from the hinterland. My father was hooked on the hippo straight away, but Mr. Mombassa couldn’t bear to part with his pet, so they came on board together.”

The girl with the ginger beard stroked her nose and drew it out to mime a snout, then spread her fingers wide to form a gaping maw.

“And he rode the hippo?”

“She followed him round the ring at first. Later, he would hop on her back. His feet dragged on the ground. That made people happy. They came from far and wide. We put on extra morning shows in summer. But they didn’t only come to see ‘The Hutu and his Hippo’. Our posters screamed of other wonders to behold.”

“A bearded girl, for instance?”

(This is an excerpt from a short story, available in English and Dutch, which is up for grabs. Editors are welcome to contact me if they’d like the full story. Don’t all rush…)

I first read Things Fall Apart (TFA) as a teenager at school in Johannesburg. This was back in the early 1980s when Apartheid was girding its loins for the “Total Onslaught” from “Commies” gathering on our country’s northern borders. The following passage gives you some idea of the anxious atmosphere that had been contrived at the time:

“Boys in blue and grey uniforms are marching in the afternoon sun. Ten sad rectangles move back and forth between the rugby posts, like human concertinas easing out a tune as the back rows lag, catch up, then lag again. These are the men who will fight the acronyms that have launched a Total Onslaught on The Border: SWAPO, PAC, ANC, MPLA, FNLA, ZANU, ZAPU, UNITA. Some are bad, others good, say the papers, “but when push comes to shove, each and every one of them would rape your mother and hang you little white turds upside down by your balls,” says Mr Cloete, our PT teacher, an ex-drill sergeant.”

The question that has plagued me since the 50th anniversary of Things Fall Apart is: why was this book prescribed to us at school? In retrospect, it seems odd that a book intended as a counterpoint to racist perspectives and narratives of Africa espoused in European literature should be placed on the reading lists of students who were, quite frankly, being overtly and covertly brainwashed with a view to perpetuating white dominance and privilege in South Africa. This seemed so implausible that I even began to doubt whether I had actually read TFA at school. But when I expressed these doubts in a previous blog post, others confirmed that they too recalled having read the book at school. I soon decided that the only way to unravel this conundrum was to re-read this classic novel. Having done so – more than a year after announcing my intention – I fear I am not much closer to the truth.

The world described in Things Fall Apart is not a pretty one. Much of the story revolves around Okonkwo, a power-hungry, wife-beating, son-killing potentate, whose only redeeming feature seems to be an unwavering struggle against more perverse forces encroaching on his realm. While there are other characters who represent a variety of alternative perspectives and moralities, the story paints a grim picture of a community governed by customs, traditions and superstitions threatened by an influx of white missionaries and colonists bringing their own customs, traditions and superstitions. To put it bluntly, the average reader might quite easily characterise the book as: black savages being threatened by white savages carrying more powerful weapons.

Because I am not untainted – I was suckled on Apartheid’s grotesque breast – I began to wonder whether deep-seated remnants of racism may be causing me to miss the point of this story. Surely Achebe never intended to confirm or perpetuate common prejudice about Africans as savages eking out an existence on the edge of the forest, threatened by drought, war and disease?

This question led me to the author’s essay “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’” (Massachusetts Review. 18. 1977. Rpt. in Heart of Darkness, An Authoritative Text, background and Sources Criticism. 1961. 3rd ed. Ed. Robert Kimbrough, London: W. W Norton and Co., 1988, pp.251-261), which wasn’t too difficult to find online In this critique of Conrad’s classic, Achebe writes: “Heart of Darkness projects the image of Africa as ‘the other world,’ the antithesis of Europe and therefore of civilization, a place where man’s vaunted intelligence and refinement are finally mocked by triumphant beastiality.”

Achebe subsequently cites various passages from Conrad’s book illustrating the racism underlying the author’s perspective on Africans. I have not read Heart of Darkness, but I am more than willing to take Achebe’s word for it that a white author, writing about Africa in the 19th century, would harbour some downright prejudicial views of any culture beyond his Anglo-Saxon frame of reference. Achebe himself arrives at a similar conclusion, but ultimately aims his sharpest arrow at the fact that Conrad’s book still ranks as a classic and is still a setwork for students of literature.

“The real question is the dehumanization of Africa and Africans which this age-long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world. And the question is whether a novel which celebrates this dehumanization, which depersonalizes a portion of the human race, can be called a great work of art. My answer is: No, it cannot.”

All of which brings me back to Things Fall Apart, which is, to the best my knowledge, today considered as much a classic of English literature as Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. It is often argued that Achebe wrote his book as a counterpoint to the narrow portrayal of Africa and Africans in European literature. One online study guide characterises TFA as follows:

“Its most striking feature is to create a complex and sympathetic portrait of a traditional village culture in Africa. Achebe is trying not only to inform the outside world about Ibo cultural traditions, but to remind his own people of their past and to assert that it had contained much of value. All too many Africans in his time were ready to accept the European judgment that Africa had no history or culture worth considering.”

But does Achebe’s novel indeed achieve this high-flown objective? Or does the fact that TFA was prescribed to us at high school in Apartheid South Africa point towards a more sinister side-effect of Achebe’s effort to redress Conrad’s one-sided perspective? Was it perhaps prescribed because it inadvertently confirms white prejudices about savage Africans eking out an existence on the edge of an evil jungle?

One thing is certain, this book has set me scouring the internet for further analyses. Some of these have offered new insight into how the text should be read, and I have every intention of seeking out other texts on the topic. More specifically, samples of African scholars’ perspectives on this book. However, I doubt whether the average reader will take the trouble to do so. And I wonder whether they will be able to extract the true essence and meaning of this book without a guide to put things into perspective for them.

In the closing passage of his essay, Achebe writes: “Although the work of redressing which needs to be done may appear too daunting, I believe it is not one day too soon to begin. Conrad saw and condemned the evil of imperial exploitation but was strangely unaware of the racism on which it sharpened its iron tooth. But the victims of racist slander who for centuries have had to live with the inhumanity it makes them heir to have always known better than any casual visitor even when he comes loaded with the gifts of a Conrad.”

Is it possible that Achebe too was “strangely unaware” to what extent his book might be misinterpreted or misrepresented? And to what extent is my own re-reading of his novel tainted by the frame of reference from whence I come?

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

When I was thirteen, we moved out to a smallholding on the outskirts of Johannesburg. We still refer to it as “The Farm”, but only about a third of the land was arable, the rest was slate, covered with a thin crust of dust and scrub. There was a borehole and an orchard, a vegetable patch, chickens, three horses, two donkeys, a cow, and two pigs. There was also a family of nine – Wilson and Rebecca M. and their seven children – living in two small rooms behind the three garages that sheltered our Japanese sedans from the harsh African sun.

Within a month, my parents had arranged to build two extra prefab rooms, one for the boys and one for the girls, and had ensured that all the children could attend the little mission school behind the quarry. The warm winds swiftly spread word of this charitable new family and soon people from surrounding farms came limping in with sick and injured relatives in need of medical attention. Clothes, food, transport and advice were also liberally dispensed.

Let me stop there, because this is not intended as an ode to my parents’ compassion, but rather as a counterpoint to Coetzee’s vivid examination of the contention that there is freedom and even joy to be found in utter destitution. The author tempts the reader to ask himself: Do those who want or need next to nothing become irrelevant and therefore exempt from subjugation? Although it is risky to assign intent to the work of any author, this is the burning question I have taken from The Life and Times of Michael K – a book about a man who turns his back on an emaciated urban existence and seeks to return to the soil of his ancestors, carrying his dying mother on this back.

On his way, Michael encounters numerous obstacles in a war-torn country – roadblocks, robbers and a detention camp, where one of the inmates has a truly novel perspective on the sinister motives underlying the charity of a regime that cares for its poorest by incarcerating them:

“After that they started dropping pellets in the water and digging latrines and spraying for flies and bringing buckets of soup. But do you think they do it because they love us? Not a hope. The prefer it that we live because we look too terrible when we get sick and die. If we just grew thin and turned into paper and then into ash and floated away, they wouldn’t give a stuff for us. They just don’t want to get upset. They want to go to sleep feeling good.” (p. 88)

Food for thought, in more ways than one. To what extent is our own sense of charity fuelled by such selfish motives? Who hasn’t turned the sick and dying into paper and ash by simply switching channels on the remote? But Coetzee refuses to tread such beaten tracks. Instead, he takes the reader down the road less rutted. Michael escapes from the detention camp and makes his way out into the boondocks to the abandoned farm where his mother grew up. Here he finds a sense of place that lies somewhere between Freedom and Oblivion, digging a hovel for himself and living off the land, his sole purpose in life being the cultivation of pumpkins. This bucolic idyll is disturbed by a band of rebels, seeking to replenish their water supply at the farm, and later by a company of soldiers who capture and incarcerate Michael, because they suspect he is in cahoots with the guerrillas.

Later, we find Michael in a rehabilitation centre, where he becomes the object of fascination of the doctor who is in charge of guiding him back into society. The second part of the book consists of the doctor’s observations and musings, which again bear testimony to Coetzee’s ability to distil crystal-clear metaphors from murky realities, letting his characters do the thinking and talking:

“He is like a stone, a pebble that, having lain around minding its own business since the dawn of time, is now suddenly picked up and tossed randomly from hand to hand. A hard little stone, barely aware of its surroundings, enveloped in itself and its interior life. He passes through these institutions and camps and hospitals and God knows what else like a stone. Through the intestines of war. An unbearing, unborn creature. I cannot really think of him as a man, though he is older than me by most reckonings.” (p. 135)

All of which brings me back to The Farm, where Rebecca, Wilson and their children were tossed randomly from hand to hand like pebbles. Driven by curiosity rather than compassion, I went back to take a look several years after my parents had returned to the suburbs and I had emigrated to Holland. After negotiating passage with the farm’s new owner, I found Rebecca in her room behind the garages. She embraced me warmly and then gave me a bleak update on the rest of the family – the dead, the dying, the incarcerated, the subjugated – pebbles reduced to dust by poverty’s sledgehammer, a brilliant system of disenfranchisement that constantly reinforces the belief that some are destined to spend their lives as members of an underclass, a caste who could or should have no higher ambition than to seek joy in utter destitution.

And so Coetzee has led me down the path less-rutted, causing me to reassess my own memories, ideas, morals and motives. Tomorrow, when I re-read this review, I will undoubtedly find much to be at fault or at best imprecisely surmised or argued. But perhaps that is greatest strength of Coetzee’s work: it cannot be pinned down and made to reveal its intentions, but continues to provoke new questions and interpretations by remaining always open to new perspectives.

I’ll get out of your limelight now, but will return to defend your honour if need be.

————————————————

UPSIDE DOWN

I’m hanging upside down in the rings.
Lovely.
They’re not looking for me yet.
Good.

They say: stop doing that,
The blood will go to your head,
So what, did you know you see more, not less
Hanging?

They won’t miss me yet
Only when it gets really dark
When Dad cuts the meat
He tries to give me an extra piece
A nice red slice, it doesn’t always work

Ma says he mustn’t spoil me,
I have to eat everything
I know she loves me, that is what mothers do,
But does she like me, that’s the question
There is much she would like to change,
In me, that is.

I love reading and climbing trees
High trees, so nobody can find me
I don’t like school; Ma says I dream too much
Maybe, is looking out of the window dreaming?

I am not saying school is not important
But they go about it in such a funny way
They keep repeating themselves
Like a gramophone that’s stuck

Who wants to know where they plant rice
At my age?
If we ever get that far from home
I am sure we’ll see it
If they still plant it, I mean

And all those place names
Rows of them, along the railway lines
You can see them in big letters
And they call them out as well
And were I ever to go deaf and blind
I’m sure I would not travel on my own.

I am swaying softly
No extra blood in my head
As far as I know
Maybe I have less than others
I’m so skinny

Ah, there it starts
The blackbird concert
All the other birds are silent
You think birds can be jealous
I know dogs sometimes are

I know exactly where he is
Top of the apple tree,
In the neighbours’ garden
Same spot that I would choose

He is quite small
But what a sound
And perfect pitch
That’s what Dad calls it
He knows about singers
Used to be a choirmaster
Or something

Every night I listen
And every time I feel so strange inside
As if I want to cry
But that is something that I never do

How can a bird be so intensely sad
And every night again
Is this what they call nostalgia
And does it help to share?

————————————————

STRETCHED

Stretched full-length on the forest floor, I’m not aware
Someone might pass and see me there.
Much later I will find that though the moss is soft,
It’s also wet, it is not summer yet.

I wish you could have seen the cloudless sky.
Those silver birds migrating
The vapour trails so white against the blue
You would have felt the world vibrating.

My heart beats slow and seems to swell,
My rib cage seems to shrink, my throat is tight,
I want to shout out loud and laugh with joy,
But deep inside a warning sounds,
It is not over yet, don’t drop your guard,
Not yet….

But here they are full daylight, on their way
They will fulfil the promise, Churchill made
It seems eons ago,
We will be back, and then to stay.

I whisper: here they come, they’re on their way
And not a lonely fighter looking for a military car.
But hundreds of them, climbing in each others’ track
No, thousands of them, stack, on stack, on stack.

I do not know how long it took,
To watch those legions fly
At last the deep drone fades
There‘s just the deep blue, empty sky.

Deep silence reigns,
And then the forest comes alive
A cuckoo far away, the haunting call of doves
And closer by the sound of axe and saw
Yes, back to work, the end is near, but it is not over yet,
Don’t drop your guard, not yet, not yet.

————————————————

MEMORY

I wake, faint echo of a song remains,
One phrase, but oft repeated sweet and clear
Hinting of love, but never near
Closer by far too – yes, I care.

And suddenly I do recall those near forgotten days,
When eyes would meet and could not disengage,
No purpose there, no flirt, and no intent to share
With anyone this secret meeting of the eyes.

From whence came this link of personality
that made so sure no one would ever know
and who designed our destiny so it would stay
a mystery into eternity.

Once, during an exam, I turned to look at him
Over a sea of heads bowed over paper
How did he know? He sat up straight
and time stood still, it seemed so long

And then he smiled. not hesitant, not shy,
Not triumphant, the winner in a dare,
But warm and, if I may say, tender
His smile assured the secret was still safe
And yes, I know, and yes, I care

We met once more a few years later,
No meeting of the eyes this time
and no, no furtive touch of hands
but still the magic stands.

The time stood still again
The evening sped by, he walked me home.
No promises were made
None were expected

This was the time when life was totally disrupted,
The danger constant, secrecy a must
There were too many things we dare not share
For you might harm the one you trust.

And then – the Germans killed him,
The one who told me cried
For me the time stood still again
I could not speak, and did not break the pact.

Now, after more than sixty years
I learned about his death
A senseless deed of retribution
Played havoc with our destiny
Cut future short, left only memory

A Stalker’s Prayer

(Ode to Maurice Doubleday)

Because I have no god to worship
I have decided to appoint one –
An ailing poet dwelling
On a hillside in Vermont (I think)
Sometimes my prayers are heard
And he replies with obscure
Allegorical subterfuge and
Witticisms replete with
Pent-up rage against creation.
I do not need to check whether
I have used those terms correctly,
I have only to believe
With all my heart
That they are right
And my ailing god will
Understand and bless them
If he is listening.
You too may know my ailing god
Whom I have carefully selected
For his power to embrace
The sheer absurdity
Of deification.
Amen.

PS: If he does not suffice,
I shall forsake him
and select another.
Perhaps I’ll build
A pantheon.
(Please submit
Applications
In triplicate
By telepathy.)

Because my recent literary exploits have caused me to become flabby and withdrawn, I went for a run in the park this morning. As always, my mind raced on ahead, turning occasionally to egg me on, bouncing ideas back at me like little tennis balls. The only one I managed to catch might be of interest to Read SA as a fundraising and promotional campaign: an Annual Book Olympiad.

Many authors and other bookish folk enjoy running and swimming to keep the life support systems for their brains in shape. Most of them prefer to do these things solo, but dream of performing in front of a live audience. Okay, maybe not, but this might be a great way to bring the literary set and the sports set (and their ghost-writers) together to promote books and reading.

I’ve come up with four classic events, each with a unique literary dimension. Feel free to shoot and supplement as you see fit:

The 100 Metre Dash & Verse would see participants sprinting this classic distance and then writing a poem or piece of prose. Instead of a starting shot, they would be primed with a word or phrase they must incorporate into their writing, which they would have two minutes to complete. A panel of judges would rank the writing, which would be combined with the rankings for the race to establish the overall ranking.

The 50 Metre Swim & Verse would be the aquatic version of the above.

And then there’s the Chapter Marathon & Review, which would see runners and swimmers trying to cover as much distance as possible as a pre-recorded chapter is read out loud over the public address system. Participants would subsequently get five minutes to write a 100-word review of the chapter. A panel of judges would then rank the reviews to get an overall ranking.

Naturally, there are many other events imaginable – author vs reviewer boxing matches, for instance – but it would probably be best to start small. Perhaps the event could be held before or after one of the larger athletics/swimming events, which would save the hassle of having to arrange all the equipment and officials.

Personally, I’m looking forward to thrashing Ryk Neethling in the 50 Metre Swim & Verse, and I think I could have Joost in the 100-meter Dash & Verse, too.

Doping would be encouraged, of course.

“The Reformnation happened when German nobles resented the idea that tithes were going to Papal France or the Pope thus enriching Catholic coiffures. Traditions had become oppressive so they too were crushed in the wake of man’s quest for ressurection above the ­not-­just-­social beast he had become. An angry Martin Luther nailed 95 theocrats to a church door. Theologically, Luthar was into reorientation mutation. Calvinism was the most convenient religion since the days of the ancients. Anabaptist services tended to be migratory. The Popes, of course, were usually Catholic. Monks went right on seeing themselves as worms. The last Jesuit priest died in the 19th century.”

Facts are funnier than fiction.

“History, a record of things left behind by past generations, started in 1815.”

Dear Sally,

Let me start by confessing that I began reviewing the books of fellow authors to sate my own hunger for reviews and success. Nothing startling or unusual about that, except that I have chosen to admit it openly. In fact, I’m even prepared to take this one step further by admitting that, as a keen observer of human nature, I not only know exactly what people want to hear, but also how to present it in such a way that it has a semblance of veracity – the irony-clad truth, as it were.

This irony-clad truth is forged at the edge of a fiery abyss that embodies my desire to explore human nature by exploring myself, warts and all. Your book (and my promise to review it) has reminded me that I initially pledged to follow the bleak track of truth that spirals ever deeper into the abyss. I also realised that I may have wasted time dawdling along the rutted edge of the chasm. And so, without further ado, I shall now plunge headlong down the path, although I do not know the way and cannot promise that I will not stray.

All of which brings me to your book and a further confession: I had to consult Wikipedia to confirm what ‘young adult fiction’ is. To my surprise, I am not wholly unfamiliar with the genre, because the oracle lists Catcher in the Rye as a ‘young adult classic’. This got me thinking about genres and classification – again! – and why it annoys me when books pander to the supposed tastes, interests and intellectual capacity of a specific group of readers. While Salinger’s Catcher is certainly not one of my favourites, I’m pretty sure he didn’t write his book with young adults in mind. This probably explains why his work has such universal appeal. It’s classification as a ‘young adult classic’ simply confirms that authors usually don’t have a hand in choosing which section or shelf their book is displayed in/on.

Having read your book, however, I’m pretty sure you moulded the story and style to appeal to readers of a certain age. The stepbrothers Justin and Kendall are both rather stereotypical – the popular Prince Charming and the shy, somewhat grotesque Frog Boy – but they are painstakingly sketched. This in contrast to the other characters in the book, who seem to be little more than two-dimensional whoopee cushions for the boys to bounce off. Consequently, I never gained any real insight into what drives these people. And so the ‘bad guys’ (Daddy Mullins, The Headmaster, Bomber Craig and Cousin Gavin) are little more than caricatures neatly matching the supposed perceptions of ‘young adults’ and confirming the notion that they are understandably locked into an Everyone- Is-Against-Me-So-Fuck-Them state of mind. In short, no prizes for guessing who adolescent readers are expected to identify with.

This is not necessarily a problem, of course. Readers invariably identify with one or more characters in a book. However, I felt you could have done so much more with the plot and secondary characters. Your writing has great pace, clarity and balance, which leads me to conclude that you really have what it takes to add further depth to the story and offer readers insight into the actions, desires and intentions of secondary characters. I’m not sure whether you write bios for all your characters. If you do, this usually prevents them from becoming cardboard cut-outs. And by giving the extras more body, it becomes easier to flesh out your main characters, thus making them less stereotypical and adding novel dimensions to the interaction between them.

Having re-read the above, after letting it rest for several weeks, I’m acutely aware that some of my remarks are based on assumptions that may be wide of the mark. In a way, the above is more about me and my preferences than it is about your book. But I suppose this applies to all reviews. Whatever the case may be, I sincerely hope you stand to gain more from a slap in the face than from an irony-clad pat on the back. Feel free to slap back. I probably deserve it.

(SA Partidge’s Fuse is published by Human & Rousseau.)