South African Writers – Coetzee, Brink, Gordimer, Paton et al.

Off to beautiful Cape Town for a holiday and a bit of research I packed my novels: one of the best bits of the holiday – wall to wall reading. A last minute panic that these might run out, I looked on my bookshelves for unread paperbacks. Coetzee. Perfect. A South African author. Immerse myself in the culture sort of thing.

Now I have read a few books by Coetzee. Brilliant writer if not a bundle of laughs. Disgrace was a novel that certainly gets to the heart of South African life and the violence that wrecks lives. But what did I pick up? Slow Man. I should have checked first.

I am going to South Africa. I want to read a South African writer writing about South Africa. What do I do, I pick up a novel by Coetzee (A SA writer alright) but find the novel is set in Australia. That’s where he lives now. Australia.

It’s good, no doubt about it. Slow novel about Slow Man. Very readable, touches of humour and perception. But as Slow Man never leaves his flat he could be living anywhere. I suppose he could even have been living in a suburb of Durban, Port Elizabeth or Cape Town.

Of course, I could have chosen to read some of the other great names of SA literature. One of the most well known books must be that of Olive Shriener – The Story of An African Farm – made famously into a film. Although it describes a fate that has befallen women throughout the centuries, her character makes a choice that we do not often read about. However, the life she describes hardly exists anymore in the Cape.

Ask any Capetonian whom one should read when visiting the Cape and those of a certain age will suggest a favourite of theirs, Laurence Green. His easy style travelogues are a pleasant read but leisurely travel, drawn out three course lunches and descriptions of picturesque spots are largely a thing of the past for South Africans. Set from the nineteen twenties on his stories are now period pieces.

Of course, there are later famous novelists. Nadine Gordimer, for one, an exceptional writer, so perceptive, but she gets down to some pretty gritty realism in her work. A bit dated now, in some ways, but sadly totally up to date in her descriptions of shanty towns and life for the average unemployed South African.

Andre Brink, another big name, can also be a bit of - well, how can I put it – a depressing read. The Other Half of Silence is pretty brutal and his others are also fairly heavy work in my opinion. In an attempt to be more upbeat I could perhaps suggest some younger or more recent South African writers.

There is Barbara Trapido’s book, Frankie & Stankie, detailing what life was like in the Cape in the fifties. She doesn’t do the ‘great work of literature’ bit but what a good story teller she is. This novel is a much lighter read than the others I mention and one (at last) with laugh aloud humour. And Mark Behr; his first novel The Smell of Apples is very good. Definitely an insight into modern African life in the Cape – but an unsettling one for several reasons.

But to choose just one, after all these, I would still plump for Alan Paton’s classic, Cry, The Beloved Country. In my opinion it still deserves the prize for epitomizing life in South Africa. A more simple, moving and sad story would be hard to find. Although, as in Gordimer’s short stories, it is heartbreaking to notice the lack of change for the better in such an absolutely blessed and beautiful country.

Lucy
www.lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

PS If you can suggest other authors you think give a good picture of the Cape please comment but if you prefer to make a private point you can always email me at LucyAnnWhite@googlemail.com

Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel

Well before Hilary Mantel won the Booker with her epic Wolf Hall, our Book Group had chosen to do her novel, Beyond Black, about ghosts and ghouls. Well, fiends actually.

Mantel has the most amazing imagination and a wonderful way with words. Her main character, Alison, is an overweight, nervous but successful and gifted physic. She cannot remember what she did as a child, nor can she forget that it must have been something terrible. As a result Alison lives in a constant state of Purgatory.


Alison’s admits that her life as a child was disturbing. The illegitimate and unwanted child of a bitter and drug crazed prostitute, her family life was dysfunctional to say the least - she was maltreated and ignored in turn. And her surroundings were just as awful – she lived in a slum with no vestige of comfort, surrounded by the bleakest landscape, peopled by abusers, users and misfits.

Then as an adult she is constantly visited by ghosts. This is because, Mantel leads us to believe, when people are no longer earthside (alive) they don’t just go to Heaven or Hell. They hang about as spirits – like the fiends - for a long time in a state of neither here or there. In other words in Purgatory. The ghosts – fiends – that haunt Alison (and many of her fellow physics) are very real and thoroughly destructive. She hates them but is scared of upsetting them.

The horrors of her childhood slowly emerge as Colette, her PA, records her memories for a book. Alison has repressed these – not surprising when you find out what they are – and as a result is constantly goaded by the ghosts of her mother’s (and therefore her) former associates.

Mantel’s use of dialect and speech is particularly good – the sort of speech you might hear rogues use at a dodgy fair – the seediness palpable. But I did wonder if the non-Brits in our group might find it difficult to imagine the characters or appreciate the colloquialisms and turns of phrase. When our hostess read out sections the scales fell from their eyes. That makes it all sound so much better than it did in my head, they said. But too late, they had not gotten a feel for the book. So it did turn out to be a cultural thing.

Most of us enjoyed the book. The majority also thought it a bit too long. It was generally felt that a chunk out the middle – or more exactly two thirds of the way through – would have done the story no harm and the readers some good. But others enjoyed it less. They found some of the descriptions (mostly of the fiends’ behaviour) a bit too graphic and gross.

What I found most interesting was reading an interview and a review of Mantel’s autobiographical book, Giving up Ghosts. The parallels between the main character, Alison Hart, and Mantel’s own life were clear. Beyond Black is a very clever, amazingly imagined and well written novel. No doubt. But, for some in the book group, it was just too much of a good (or rather too much of a bad) thing.

Lucy
lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

J.B.Priestly, Harold Brighouse and Terence Frisby – Three Of A Kind.

In our local churches, halls, barns and pubs we enjoy all sorts of cultural musical performances, from large choral works, to soloists, violin recitals and, just lately, actors performing excerpts from various works. This latest took the form of a revue with Prunella Scales and Timothy West (keen to raise money for the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury) performing ‘Battle of the Sexes’.

The programme consisted of over a dozen excerpts from various plays, essays and letters. All were chosen to fit the theme but some were more entertaining than others. I shall mention the funniest as we need something to laugh about on cold winter days: days when the news seems only to consist of dreary events and terrible disasters.

The piece I found particularly funny – along with the rest of the audience I might add - was from It’s All Right If I Do It by Terence Frisby. Frisby is a novelist and playwright: his long running comedy There’s A Girl in my Soup is well known but his novels not so much so.

The latest, Kisses on a Postcard, is apparently a funny and touching account of his experiences as a young WWII evacuee. West and Scales have now made me acquainted with him and having laughed out loud at the performance I am looking forward to reading his memoir.

Then a piece from Hobson’s Choice was moving and amusing. And the humour not dated at all. Prunella Scales had played the part of Maggie Hobson on the stage as a young actress and in this excerpt her husband, Timothy West, was very well cast for her partner, Will Mossop. As usual, it highlighted my ignorance of some writers. Hobson’s Choice is a play by Harold Brighouse first performed in 1916.

Maggie’s father is a dictatorial drunkard cobbler who refuses to help his daughters marry. Maggie proposes to Will, Hobson’s young and talented bootmaker, he accepts grudgingly, they marry, create a successful business and help Maggie’s sisters to marry.

The third I liked was from When We are Married, by J.B.Priestley. Priestly, born in 1894, became a well-known humourous writer and critic. The Good Companions, 1929, his first novel and his best known play, An Inspector Calls, 1936, must both be classed as classics now. When We Are Married is about three couples about to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary when they find an administrative slip means they have not been married at all.

We are given a glimpse of one couple’s reaction to the news. Timothy West plays Councillor Albert Parker (as he did in a 1987 production), a bombastic, sanctimonious, self-satisfied character with Prunella Scales playing his bored and brassed off wife, Annie. Albert says he will do his duty and marry Annie again – Annie says, no thank you, she’s had enough.

The audience recognises these well-observed characters that are as real to us today as they were when Priestley wrote it in 1938. Again, the humour is timeless and the acting by West and Scales excellent.

It’s not often you spend a couple of hours in church on a Sunday afternoon and come out laughing your socks off – hats off to the vicar for allowing it. And now it’s off to the bookshelves (or the bookshop) for me to find what I have got written by this lot, and several hours of very happy reading in the dull winter weeks ahead.

Lucy
lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

Rabbie Burns Night

What is it about the English that when they have even an ounce of Scottish blood they like to boast about it. And, of course, it gives them an excuse to take part in any Robert Burns' evening going. I can’t talk, I’m as guilty as the next ‘One Quarter Scottish’ Angle. Perhaps it’s just that we like any excuse for a party. And, let’s face it, the Scots know how to enjoy a dram or two.

But to hear a true blue Scot read out ‘wee sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie’, in that wonderful pure lilting brogue is so romantic and evocative of a period now gone. It’s like the first time you hear Shakespeare acted and spoken properly. Suddenly everything makes sense. Years of studying the bard at school can often put a person off for life.

Shakespeare is so wooden, it’s so meaningless, you often hear school children say. But take them to a first class performance of a Shakespeare play and you will hear the laugh out loud, watching it all with rapt attentive faces as they have never done in class. It’s the nuances, the breaths taken in the correct places and the humour that the actors manage to imbue it with.

Watch amateurs enact Shakespeare, then watch a professional troupe - it is often as different as chalk from cheese. The first – no matter how polished - can be stilted, the second lively and funny, bawdy and deep. I personally don’t like Shakespeare on television or the radio – I think his plays are made for the live stage. Only there do you get that wonderful feeling of being part of it, which is how the plays were intended.

Listening to the poems of Robert Burns can be much the same: unintelligible to the English ear. In To A Mouse Burns is assuring the terrified little field mouse that he means him no harm, and goes on to apologise to the mouse for all the harm man does and the sad state of his own life.
Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,
O, what panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murd’ring pattie!

But translate it and it loses it’s charm completely. Difficult to follow or not, just one phrase from this sad and moving verse, has been quoted by many of us at some stage, without us even knowing it came from this poem.
But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

Another equally well known poem of Burns, Address to A Haggis, loses all when Anglicised. The Haggis, to Burns, was a symbolic part of Scottish culture. A student of politics or history can enlarge on all the reasons why this was so important to Burns – and all Scots – at the time. But for the rest of us we simply enjoy the dialect, vivid language and humour of the poem.
Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftan o’ the pudding-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o’ a grace
As lang’s my arm. ‘

So here’s to Robert Burns on his special night and all of you too, Slanj; Lang may yer lum reek!

Lucy

I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith

Come Christmas time, when the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even, what I wanted was something to read that was easy on the senses. The ground was covered with a blanket of snow. I fancied cuddling up under my own little eider and snuggling down with a gentle read.

Last year there was a list of the country’s favourite books published in the newspaper. The great and the good listed theirs. It’s always satisfying to have your own taste reinforced and quite forgivable to feel just an eensy bit smug that you have read many of the classics chosen. But it’s also thoroughly shocking to find that there are just as many gaping holes in your reading.

Now I’m not about to confess to all those titles I did not recognize, had not read or have not been able to conquer. It is a list that could be embarrassing. But I will admit to feeling a bit stupid that I had not read a novel so many cited as their favourite. How come I never read I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith? It was one of the books that all age groups enthused about as their absolutely favourite read.

The books we’ve read lately in the Book Group have featured a little heavily on death and destruction. Either that or Islamic angst. We’re all feeling a bit war weary and have decided we should choose a few titles that are a little lighter, a bit more uplifting. So I suggested to a few groupies at our Christmas bash that perhaps I would do I Capture the Castle.

One thought it a great idea (she hasn’t read it either - I felt better - she’s a brain) another dismissed it as a children’s book. A third was lukewarm and wondered if there would be enough to discuss. Perhaps my idea was a non-starter, I’d choose a classic instead. As usual.

Then came the snow. I trawled through my bookshelves and there was a copy - pristine, unopened, brand new – of Dodie Smith’s classic. That’s what the list called it, a modern classic. Somebody (it must have been last Christmas) had obviously thought I should like it. It might not be Book Group material but only a few pages read on the hoof convinced me that it was just what I needed to go to bed with (so undemanding, a book).

I won’t bother to give you the story. There must be hundreds of reviews of it or possibly you have all read it (all except me!). It is an impossible and implausible story anyway. But so what. I don’t think Dodie expected her readers to believe it. The protagonist, Cassandra, is so charming she is a pleasure to get to know as she gets to know herself. And mature: seventeen going on thirty-seven.

Most of the other characters are less believable. Some totally unbelievable. But I can see why optimistic young (and not so young) girls like it – everything about it is so sweetly romantic from the unrequited love to the Bohemian family who live in the sublime ruined castle.

And it is a very easy read. Now, this is not a criticism. Quite the contrary. It is very difficult to tell a tale simply but well. The prose is good – written in 1948, says it all – and without great dramatic effects the reader still wants to carry on reading. Now that is a skill. Finally, there is humour, just a little pathos and the ending is not as corny as one expects.

In short, I enjoyed it. It was like having a soothing massage. Pleasing, light and totally undemanding. Well enough written not to injure the senses of the literary snob, but not so soppy as to make any but the most cynical groan. I couldn’t begin to call it my favourite novel – I like a little more depth and challenge and preferably a bit of drama in my choice of reading material.

But it’s the perfect holiday paperback or thing to read after one has been ill. So when the snow outside demands you stay inside, tuck up warm and chill out with a cocoa, then throw into the mix a copy of I Capture the Castle. You may not be excited, but you won't be sorry.

Lucy
Lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

PS Finishing this I googled I Capture the Castle and yes, there are hundreds of reviews. So I was the only person never to have read it!! If you want to find out about the plot just read them.

Switch OFF for a Happy New Year!

Another Christmas, another year over: I just cannot believe 2009 has been spent. The sages among us say that it goes faster as every year goes by. But even the next generation – in my case the prodigal and the princess – say the same thing. So it’s not just that. It’s all to do with pace - the pace of our lives to be specific - that’s what I think.

And that pace is getting faster every year. Although out in the sticks here (where telephonic reception is pants) we are now on broadband and able to join the internet highway. Even if we can’t break the speed limit. If there is no reception for even ten minutes I get tetchy and panic. How will I be able to send photographs, transfer any copy, advise contacts of events, check my accounts, order my mother’s shopping and.....publish my blog!

‘Doing research’,well, with the internet it’s taken on a whole new meaning: plodding off to the library, rooting out museums, dredging up texts from all sorts of strange places? Dead. I used to argue that when digging about in books and journals, indexes and archives I would often come across stuff I would never have thought of looking for. The old argument that perhaps one doesn’t always know what one is looking for.

Forget it. Go onto the World Wide Web and you’ll get information up to your ears. Search engines will magic some web page or other and that will lead you onto something else. Although what is still needed is that gut instinct, inspiration and application. It remains basic detective work. But there’s no footwork, no travel costs, no having to fit your research into open days or opening hours: it can be done at 2am. Tonight, any night, every night if you want.

And as for snail mail: dead as a squashed gastropod. Gone are the days when ‘It’s in the post’ gave us a little time to get the task done. Here is rural Kent we were snowed in just before Christmas but was that an excuse to get out of the saddle - no way. Sorry, no post. 'Just email it,’ is the riposte.

If you’re sent an email this morning the least that person expects is a reply this afternoon. And worse. If it arrives in your inbox during the evening or over the week-end you can forget any lame excuse about out-of-work-hours. That’s a phrase as old hat as top hat. You better reply asap or you’ll get another one.

And it doesn’t stop there. It follows us about. My laptop is portable (well, it is if you call lugging the equivalent of a big bag or two of potatoes around with you) taken on every trip away from the home hub. And if there’s no wireless connection when I’m on the hoof, oh horror, what will I do. How will I cope without electronic communication. (Amazing how I survived before The Net concurrently holding down two jobs, bringing up a family and keeping house.)

Now my biceps have been given respite. I have a new phone – well mini computer really – that I had to work very hard convincing Best Beloved was absolutely essential to maintaining my lifestyle. Obviously I have to be able to telephone mates at all times and I have to be able to track down BB when he goes walkabout (which he does whenever we’re meant to be shopping or sightseeing). But I also need to make bookings, search the web, advise when a meeting is running late, pick up business emails, text the kids, etc etc etc.

Yet I’ve chosen these deliverers of the digital age: those gainfully employed expect them. Not only do they expect the latest gismos but their employers expect them to be plugged in to the things twenty four seven. (It may be that this turns out in time to be a poisoned chalice - I reckon it’s not long before employees start to sue employers for overloading their personal wiring)

What it means is that - for all of us - the passage of time has become something that can be manipulated but not slowed. And what this boils down to is that the pace of life is pacier yet: not allowed to do nothing, no time for vacuous thoughts or voluminous ideas. No time to stand and stare. For a happy new year perhaps we should simply SWITCH OFF.

Lucy
lucyannwrites.blogspot.com

Shameful Sculptor Eric Gill

If you walked around the recent sculpture exhibition at the Royal Academy whom might you think was a sinister sculptor? Knowing no facts on the matter, you could be forgiven for thinking it Jacob Epstein, whose menacing iron sculpture Rock Drill, has been recreated. This piece, unbelievably constructed 1913-1915, is a prelude to every robot that we have seen in movies over 50 years later.

The work of Eric Gill (1882-1940), on the other hand, is beautiful in its simplicity. His works demonstrate the affinity between art and architecture perfectly. We know his pieces without ever knowing they are ‘pieces’, so well do they meld with the building.




The Art Deco façade of the BBC (Broadcasting House) incorporates Gill’s sculpture of Ariel & Prospero. This is a perfect example of how his artistic work integrates with the building: we perceive it as a whole, a part, of the architecture.

There was a talk at the RA entitled Saint or Sinner? Re-assessing Eric Gill. Now, I haven’t heard the talk nor have I read Fiona McCarthy’s biography of him. All I know is that Gill is guilty of some very unsavoury practices that have ruined his reputation as a godly man and an artist.

Gill’s behaviour was thoroughly reprehensible but he was also a genuinely talented artist and craftsman. He did some marvellous illustrations that remind me of Aubrey Beardsley and some of the artists who were doing lino cuts in the first quarter of the last century. An excellent letterer (he designed the typeface Gill Sans) he also carved the letters and designs on war memorials, gravestones and in churches.

I first became aware of him when I saw his linear two-dimensional sculptured panels not unlike the ancient friezes that decorated the buildings of Rome and Athens. Gill’s figures and animals, however, are simple, naïve and primal. And all the more striking because of this.

But when I visited this exhibition – which was excellent – I felt very uncomfortable. I like his work. I think he was a designer and sculptor of great talent. But I couldn’t help thinking about the dark side of him and this cast a shadow over enjoyment of his pieces.

I tried to tell myself that I must disassociate the artist’s predilections from his work. I must not let it cause a barrier between me and the pieces. I tried not to let my dark thoughts affect my enjoyment of his work. Unfortunately, they did. His talent is now tainted for me.

If only those of us who feel we have little natural talent could have one small piece of the gift that these artists display. We wouldn’t squander it, would we. We would revel in our gift, embrace our talent, nurture it and let it flourish. And it would be something pure, would it not. Or would it.

Could it be that the great creative force and superb style that a few artists have are only kindled by dark, sinister and wicked acts. Are these deeds and the shame of them, the price they (and sadly others) pay for the beauty of their art. I don’t know if it is a truth or a convenient excuse but I think, given the choice, I might just settle for mediocrity.

Lucy