two touchy takes on “un-african” sa lit from laurice taitz
Irked by folks who grumble that there is nothing to do in Joburg, Laurice Taitz decided to set them straight. She certainly has plenty to say right now, and talking books is high on her list.
Two recent blog posts alight on a debate that South African readers and writers are currently discussing in numbers. Or that is my personal experience at least, engaging with writers and editors as I sally around the country meeting bookish folks. But both arguments sound a little grumpy and I don’t entirely agree with her.
Laurice’s post Indian-nish and Indian-ness bewails the dearth of literature with a clearly established South African flavour. She writes: “It left me thinking I would be hard-pressed to come up with a list of 10 books that carry a sense of South African-ness. There are whispers of it in JM Coetzee’s early work, and in Patricia Schonstein-Pinnock’s Skyline, Fred Khumalo’s Bitches’ Brew and Phaswane Mpe’s Welcome to My Hillbow but a few titles do not a canon make.” Can’t find 10 books? I can think of 10 author’s that fit the bill: Consuelo Roland, Ivan Vladislavic, Susan Mann, Marlene van Niekerk, Niq Mhlongo, Ingrid Winterbach, Aryan Kaganof, Zakes Mda, Imraan Coovadia and Nadine Gordimer immediately come to mind. I’m not sure I quite get the point:
Then, in her post Writers in trouble, or just living in troubled times she reflects on the recent Sunday Times Literary Awards and says: “South African writing is flourishing with more novels being published than ever before and yet having followed its rise I can’t help feeling disappointed in its “un-Africaness”, it’s seeming dislocation from place and time, its lack of experimentation with form.”
Indeed we are seeing more and more “un-Africaness” (is that in concert with or in contrast to “Indian-ish”?) in local titles - think Michiel Heyns, Sarah Lotz, and recent JM Coetzee; and we’re seeing books like Alex Smith’s Drinking from the Dragon’s Well that treat home and away in ways that expand upon and and contextualise both:
The Sunday Times book awards were held at Summer Place on Saturday night. I used to be an organiser and now have joined the ranks of the guests — which I have to say is infinitely more pleasant as I didn’t have to sweat any of the detail. The theme of the night was “Writers in Troubled Times” and it left me wondering why South Africa’s writers seem so dislocated from the place, mostly unable or unwilling to engage with this country or to attempt to define some part of it.
this article first appeared on books.co.za
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