kagablog

“One of the main problems of the picaresque is what to do with the hero, who is moving from episode to episode. Should he be a picaro, that is, a more or less mild rogue, who comes to a good or bad end, thus exemplifying various kinds of achievement or failure? Should he be put through an education sentimentale, or should he remain a mere cypher linking the satirical sketches together? Kaganof adopts the most poetic solution by giving his anti-hero Cool Red an incorruptible purity, which represents the hope for good that springs eternal in every breast. The character becomes a symbol of the soul voyaging naively through the welter of the Absurd world, and the various forms of evil fall into a pattern in relationship to his central innocence. Cool Red, undergoes some curious changes. At first, he is an average no-go-getter with moments of boyish decency; later he turns into a more deliberate rogue; but then – just when he is at his most roguish – the book ends. Kaganof leaves us screaming for more. Hectic! cries out for a sequel.”

cècile lomer
the african book publishing record

hi aryan

had a dream last nite
of Hectic!
i was walking down Raleigh Street, Yeoville
and went into the FNB
and there was a copy of
Hectic!
on a display stand
so i picked it up and it was
a printer’s proof
with your corrections and
loads of annotations
in the margin
i then asked a woman at
the enquiries desk
if it was for sale and if i
could buy it
but she said: ‘ we’d have to ask
the credit department about that.’

gary cummiskey

“i want to let out a fart but this is the non-smoking section…”

jeez, ive only read 3 pages and already i can see why this book has attracted attention. its SIZZLINGLY funny…
koos kombuis

Aryan Kaganof, previously known as filmmaker Ian Kerkhof, offered his debut Hectic! to various established publishing houses - in vain. ‘We can’t publish this book, they said, because we’re not sophisticated enough to read it, because we’ll think you’re an AWB-writer. I couldn’t believe it’, says Kaganof. He then ended up publishing it himself, followed by a Dutch translation.
With Hectic! Kaganof further penetrated the literary space that Coetzee had opened up. He wrote an anti-moralistic novel that is set in Cape Town, and deals with the subculture of young people who hang out in pool halls. That’s where Kaganof found the essence of the white South African. ‘The whites in this country are all white trash. No European who was on any level a worthwhile human being came into this country. The shit, the detritus and the dirt came here and invented the Negro, the kaffir, because then they could feel better about themselves. So if you want to find those things out you have to go to the lower classes, because that’s the history of the country, all the rest is affectation. Culture is very skin-deep with the white South Africans, all ersatz culture. Real South African culture is fighting and drinking and sports.’
He wanted to get to the heart of a subculture he was part of. ‘There was no other mission. To show people as they really are, not these people talking political things of change and all this rubbish. And nothing about guilt from the past. Most of the people I know live their life and don’t give a fuck about anything. They’re pissed off with all that shit.’

this interview first published by the muse apprentice guild

http://www.uwc.ac.za/arts/bushvibes/index.htm

REVIEW

Possibly the most daunting postcolonial novel to emerge from South Africa, Hectic most certainly lives up to its name.

The main character in the novel is a character called Cool Red Kowalski and all of the action is seen through his eyes. 

Cool Red is his 30s, but with no job, no money, no driver’s licence, no girlfriend and positively Neanderthal attitudes to other people,  his prospects are, ah, limited shall we say ?  Yet Kaganof uses this horribly flawed character to take us on a gut-wrenching picaresque journey through the various subcultures that inhabit the low life part of Sea Point,  Cape Town.

Kowalski lives on Carling Black Label, cadged sex, whatever drugs are going and through all this, he nurtures an ambition to marry the bizarre Miss Absa Mallurby, the barmaid queen of Stones pool hall.  Along with his buddy Sven and occasionally the ugly and horribly screwed up girl, Spacey, Cool Red Kolwalski endures a number of excruciating incidents, all of which are building towards the novel’s explosive ending.

Couched in a deliciously wicked ironic framework, this novel blazes along at warp speed.  Beware though, it’s not for the faint hearted as Kowalski appears to have a full frontal go at anything that crosses his path.  Car guards, Afrikaners, politicians, Rasta’s, the magic mushroom Observatory hippy types and pretty much everybody in between, are pulled apart by a character with no obvious moral framework.  This, ironically, is what gives the novel its strength.  The humour borders on the grotesque most of the time, but in fine postcolonial style, the function of the humour is to subvert entrenched conservative values and challenge supposedly enlightened or democratic attitudes.

Hectic is tough meat.  Some will find the text too “18 SVL” for their liking.  But Hectic needs to be read; it deserves to be on an underground list of “must reads” along with Bitterkomix and the recent stuff by Koos Kombuis.  If there was a single novel that could signal a spiraling breakaway direction in SA postcolonial writing, then Hectic must rank as the groundbreaker.

The writer, Aryan Kaganof, is a South African filmmaker who went into exile during the apartheid years.  Whilst living and working in the Netherlands, he established a global reputation for aggressive underground documentaries and in your face short films.  Hectic represents something of a first for independent or self publishing in SA.  It has been through 5 printings since 2002 and is a product of the new technology of print-on-demand.  Basically print-on-demand requires that a text be completed in digital format and copies are printed as and when required; there being no need for vast print volumes as in a conventional print run.  This process permits an author to bypass traditional publishing routes and take control of the entire book production and marketing process for him/herself. 

I bought my copy at Exclusive Books, ironic proof that even the most radical and subversive things run the risk of being embraced by the establishment!

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