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A Review by Omoseye Bolaji

Uselessly is a very interesting book, readable, irreverent, witty, iconoclastic, zany, reflective, spontaneous, brimful of earnest affections. Or otherwise!

There is a hoary argument that works like these are essentially autobiographical, perhaps what respected African literary doyen, Es’kia Mphahlele suggested as “fictional autobiography, or autobiographical fiction”. It scarcely matters. There is a tendency for many “pundits” to assume that once a work is written in the first person,, it smacks of autobiography. It is a theory that can be pure balderdash, tosh. Dick Francis’ and his dozens of thrilling, convincing novels written in the first person – what fool would suggest such works are strongly autobiographical?

Uselessly is a humorous book, but not as funny as it is touted to be. But there are dollops of wit or humour scattered throughout the work alright. From the beginning we are told how the protagonist “used all the furniture for firewood. Damn these Jo’burg winters!” Also “the coke dealer who became a politician…his slogan was POWDER to the people!” “my girl’s bald, but not because of chemo” The humour is often irreverent. “God, why did you divide the year into four seasons? Couldn’t you have…left out the winter altogether?” Also “God, do you have a dad? And a mum?”; and “Goodnight (God), and God bless you”!

The attention to detail, or minutiae, is sometimes quite jarring. The obvious example is the warren of details on cancer/its treatment. But consider this too: “I vomited from 4.14 am to 5.03 am”

For those of us who relish African black literature, when we read in Uselessly, “dry shit caked on my arsehole” our mind goes to Ayi Kwei Armah’s classic, The beautyful ones are not yet born, where human manure is an integral part of the whole novel. Who can forget the latter part of the work when Koomson “the fat party man” is reduced to a cowering, flatulent mess, escaping via horrific, disgusting, soiled, caked toilets?

In Uselessly, there are many examples of frank, disarming honesty. “I was secretly glad (that the husband of Dorothy, his then nanny) was in jail for two years, because it meant that Dorothy and I would be going for our weekly walk for a long time still,” Also “Aunt Nelly’s…never had a maid because she doesn’t trust blacks”

The protagonist muses on the new South Africa intermittently; “It began to dawn on me that the so-called liberation had made SA a cheap and attractive holiday destination for the Europeans and Americans. Democracy meant that the masses could service the tourist industry. The freshly liberated slaves had been freed only to become slaves once again,” An exaggeration no doubt, but point taken!

It might well be that many of the ‘wisecracks” or even banalities in Uselessly are clichés; but as renowned African author Chinua Achebe comments in Anthills of the Savannah: “A cliché is a cliché only if you know it is a cliché!” Trumpeted ideals like “freshness and lucidity of language” mean little or nothing to 2nd, 3rd language users; or most non-academics if the truth be told.

The author of Uselessly, Kaganof, is often stated to be “a foremost counter culture revolutionary in SA” In Uselessly the mind boggles as the pupil protagonist tells his teacher: “Your parents and your teachers and your governments are murderers…ruthless assassins”

Not that the protagonist in Uselessly ever has a high opinion of himself: “My name is JJ Uselessly. Abuser of women, phoney artist, conman, liar, bum…my litany of crimes” But hardly any reader would believe his self-confessed “murders”

On a personal note I loved the succinct comment (page 145): “the brotherhood of chemotheraphy. Hallowed be Yul Brunner”. It immediately brought to my mind the magnificent old movie, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS where Charlton Heston starred as “Moses”, and Brunner as Moses’ half brother, Pharaoh Ramses.