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Hey Aryan,

Have just bought and have started reading uselessly - you’re a fuckn genius - it’s the SA Catcher in the Rye and so much more!

germaine moolman

Shaun de Waal tries to get the elusive Aryan Kaganof to explain what his multifarious works add up to

it’s the coldest night of the Johannesburg winter and Aryan Kaganof is hanging naked, upside down, from the ceiling. This is a multimedia/performance piece called The Shooting Gallery, about how the media exploits people’s suffering (I think). It’s striking enough in its own right, but it’s only one of the plethora of works of different kinds produced by Kaganof.

There are the many films (about 80, including features, documentaries and shorts), some made when he was still Ian Kerkhof and living in Holland to avoid the apartheid army. Newer movies under the name Kaganof include SMS Sugar Man, due out next year — the first feature film to be shot entirely on cellphones. There are the performance pieces, the gallery-based artworks, the digital-media works, the net poems. Get on his mailing list and he’ll bombard you with news of his latest cultural productions.

There is the stream of books (poems, stories, novels, musings) that have appeared in the past few years, under names including Abraxas, “the prophet of nothing”, a sort of Aleister Crowley manqué, and Acéphale, the notional group-author of an almost late-19th century decadent text called The Corpse-Grinders of Berlin. Books bearing Kaganof’s own name include Hectic!, Stones Again, Jou Ma se Poems, Drive-Thru Funeral and Sugar Man and Other Bitter Stories. There’s even something called Laduma by AK Thembeka, who may or may not be Kaganof. (Ask him and he’ll say: “Thembeka wrote it.”)

Kaganof is a maverick, a law unto himself, even an “outsider artist”. Perhaps the only comparable figure in South African literary (or artistic) culture is Zebulon Dread. It all seems obsessive, excessive. Kaganof throws off these works in a punk spirit, with a do-it-yourself ethic; they often seem slapdash, less concerned with their own production values than some overall conceptual game about authorship and oeuvre. He excoriates contemporary media culture, yet yearns for widespread acclaim and financial success. That’s if what he writes about himself in some of these works is anything to go by; it may be a complex joke about artistic status and commercial success. Who knows?

buy uselessly now (in south africa) (in united kingdom)

It’s hard to come to terms with such a slew of works. He talks of digital culture, and implies that linearity is past its sell-by date and each artefact is an entry point into a network that has no centre and an indeterminate periphery. His latest book, Uselessly, is published by Jacana (instead of his own Pine Slopes), and it echoes elements of Hectic! while recycling or remixing a poem in Jou Ma se Poems, with phrases from elsewhere in his writings popping up like samples. His works seem to bleed into one another, but a coherent whole remains elusive.

Uselessly is narrated by JJ Uselessly — the author is the title. It is, in part, the story of his reconnecting with his father, who abandoned his mother soon after she became pregnant. After years of exile in Holland, JJ Uselessly returns to South Africa to be reunited with his father, who has cancer. This basic narrative frames a host of memories and meditations — the similarities between the feckless Uselessly and his father, JJ’s hatred of his mother, or just the enigma of existence.

The book describes itself as “a very funny book about me, my dad, the Devil and God” — dad, in fact, being “the Devil” (occasionally a “Nazi”), and God being the addressee of the letters from JJ that form the book. It is indeed funny, off-the-wall, often beautifully done, as in the hospital scenes or a restaurant scene in which fragmented overheard comments feed into JJ’s scattered consciousness. It’s sometimes even rather touching.

That’s as far as Uselessly goes. It’s hard, though, to extract self-reflective commentary from Kaganof himself. Either I’m an insufficiently coercive interviewer or he’s very adept at evasion, in turning the question on the questioner — or moving the conversation elsewhere. If characters such as Red Kowalski in Hectic! or JJ in Uselessly are alter egos, they are there to generate slippage between the author and his creations. Aryan Kaganof may have changed his name to take his lost-and-found father’s name, but Kaganof is also as much a fiction as Red or JJ.

And he’s dead. The biographical (and critical) notes in some of his works are obviously part of the fiction itself, and Kaganof is frequently declared dead. Perhaps this is a way of doing what one author advised, which was that writers should write as though they were already dead, as though all their work were to be published posthumously. (And much of his work is resolutely shocking, uncensored.) If, for Kaganof, the author is already dead, culture is too: “There’s a kind of drive to produce. Adorno describes it as the twitchings of a dead culture, and these twitchings get more and more ecstatic, and faster, as the culture moves towards its end.”

It’s liberating to be dead, he says. This may be a way of escaping some of the constraints of authorship and authority, even selfhood. One gallery work of his was called The Staging of the Artist as the Work Itself; for another show he got six other artists to make work and claimed it as his own: “It was the most personal art I had ever done,” he says. But, also, he asks: “Whenever you get something from an artist, what are you getting? The artist or the work?”

When I ask Kaganof about his writing, he gives me instead a copy of Stones Again — all the answers are in there, he says. Or are they? One’s not sure how to take utterances such as this: “I don’t know what I’m doing when I write, nor do I have destination. I merely join the dots between the dust of scattered inspirations.” Maybe I’m being too rationalist, too Enlightenment. He says in Stones Again that “the problem is the quest for meaning. This generates a parasitical language of alibis. Finding words to replace the absent reasons that were never there in the first place.”

He also writes: “I lack the necessary imagination for invented writing. I can only write what I know; what I have experienced.” This experience seems to include his fantasies — surely a kind of “imagination”? When I ask him about Uselessly as a text that sits on the limits of fiction, this is what emerges: “That’s the kind of question only you could answer, as a literary critic. I as a mere novelist can’t answer that question.”

I say: “But the fact that you are now answering me ‘as a novelist’ answers the question.”

“That’s in quotation marks, of course.”

“But you’re telling me it’s fiction.”

“I always say, when people ask me this question: everything I write is fiction, except for the stuff I make up myself.”

I put it to him that, regardless of the play of multiple personae, the narrative fragments to which he repeatedly returns can be read in terms of an individual’s psychology or history. “Does that make sense to you?” I ask.

“Yes it does. It makes sense to me that you’re interested in that.”

“But it’s not about me.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. It’s all about you. And I think that’s the point of me, that I’m all about you.”

He talks about Michael Moorcock, the author of many, many sword-and-sorcery novels, all of which are part of a larger “Multiverse”. Is that a search for an ultimate coherence, or an acceptance of incoherence?

“What totally changed my life about Moorcock,” he says, “was the notion that all those books, 70, 80, 100 books, are merely episodes, devices, interlocking elements … he was a digital author in the 1970s already. That’s how the digital world works — everything is an episode.”

They may be episodes, but of what? Are they parts of a whole that doesn’t exist?

“There are definitely loads of hooks in the book,” he says of Uselessly, “leading out into other work — works of fiction, but also documentary works — but I do believe the work has its own internal containment.”

Perhaps it does. If Uselessly is the most conventionally satisfying of his written works, then one’s conventional response is wanting to know more about the father and less about the son. Is there any point in trying to trace the links between Red, JJ and Kaganof?

“What I think is very important is the notion of masks. I’ve got a poem for Nietzsche which says:

Most of my poetry
Is a mask
I hide behind
The rest is a mask
I hide
In front

There is a very conscious choice of masking in all the work.”

In terms of his multifarious work as a whole, he goes further: “The whole idea of joining all these dots, the whole idea that the universe, the meta-politics of all the work, [is that it] might be connected — I say ‘might be’ because it’s not finished yet, and one doesn’t want to be paranoid by assuming it’s all connected, or paranoid by assuming it’s not connected. Hopefully that’s also the narrative drive, to get the next instalment. I’ve always described it as a sculpture in time. All of it is a time sculpture, and this is one element in the total grid.

“The performance work is the most important, because what’s beautiful about it is that generally it’s not recorded, so at the end of the day the only person who’ll make sense of Kaganof’s work is me.”

this interview first appeared in the mail and guardian on 8 september 2006

buy uselessly now (in south africa) (in united kingdom)

buy uselessly now (in south africa) (in united kingdom)

Michelle McGrane reviews Uselessly by Aryan Kaganof
Jacana ISBN 1-77009-100-9

buy uselessly now (in south africa) (in united kingdom)

All things are delivered unto me of my Father:
and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father;
neither knoweth any man the Father, save the
Son.
- Matthew 11:27

Often the subject of controversy, artist and visionary Aryan Kaganof has abundant energy and enthusiasm. He works constantly at interpreting creative processes and developing a new language of art. Kaganof defies categorisation, living creatively, devoting his skills to absorbing the world around him and transmuting what he touches into the unusual and revolutionary.

Uselessly, Kaganof’s most recent novel and his first to be published by Jacana, takes the form of a collection of letters to God. As once might expect from a multi-media artist, the humorous, idiosyncratic cover is imaginative and visually appealing. The book comes with recommendations from both God and the Devil.

Dear God, Sorry I haven’t written for so long. It’s been a bad time. I’ve been hurting inside and I just couldn’t put pen to paper. I hope you’ve been okay. I noticed some world wars and stuff. Guess you’ve been busy enough. Had your own shit to take care of without worrying about mine.

The letter writer and protagonist, J J (James Joyce) Uselessly, is born in the South Rand Hospital, Johannesburg, in 1964. He is the illegitmate son of Daphne Nobody, The Sinner Lady, and Harry Uselessly, The Devil. His aptly named mother plays a far from nurturing role, while his father flees the scene before his birth when Daphne refuses to have an abortion.

Like Kaganof himself, Uselessly Jnr. leaves South Africa as a young man to avoid conscription into the apartheid army. We find him aged thirty-five in Amsterdam, indulging his considerable hash habit and penchant for the feet of very young girls, while sending out begging letters to fund his louche lifestyle. That is, until a letter arrives postmarked Sea Point, Cape Town, from his estranged father’s girlfriend, S Cohen. It is a letter which is to change the course of his life.

Harry Uselessly is recovering from the removal of a malignant Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, the “ultimate status symbol” in cancer circles. Uselessly Jnr. takes up an invitation to stay in Cape Town, returning to the country of his birth, both native and foreigner, to spend time with the father he has never known. It becomes apparent that the journey he has embarked upon is more internal than geographical as the novel focuses on the intricacies of a developing emotional involvement between father and son. Through this unexpected connection and the establishment of a paternal bond, Uselessly Jnr. discovers his true identity.

Uselessly Senior is a “shrivelled-up old Jewish man whose brush with cancer has cost him thirty kilos.” Sixty-nine year old Harry is a marvellous paradox. He is an irresponsible, self-absorbed miser, but also a charming Libran with a wonderful sense of humour and frequently unconventional, sage advice for his son. The eccentric old man exhibits an unconstrained zest for life and this, along with the dignity and lack of self-pity with which he faces his illness and consequent chemotherapy treatment, make him hard to dislike.

J J’s letters to God include evocative childhood reminiscences, hard-won insights from lived experience, poetry, philosophy and instances of keenly observed social hypocrisy. Under his unflinching gaze, sometimes abrasive exterior and the shock value of misogynistic sentiments such as “if the bitch is old enough to bleed she’s old enough to butcher”, he is an essentially likeable and profoundly sensitive protagonist. “I’m not a nihilist. I’m not a cynic. I just don’t believe in bullshit anymore,” Uselessly writes in his opening letter. In a later missive he writes: “Finding my dad has made me happy. I never felt this happy before … When I laugh I cry, and I don’t need to cry any more unless I’m laughing. I love you Dad. I love you.” It is in this novel, perhaps more than in any other of his works, that the author reveals his own complex psyche, vulnerability and personal ambivalence.

In an essay entitled “Politics and the English Language”, George Orwell offered the following rules for good English: “Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.” Kaganof’s writing is an example of precise, economical prose. Although Uselessly is written in a non-linear fashion, shifting between past and present, his deceptively simple writing style and colloquial tone make for easy, compelling reading. Short sentences are delivered with intelligence, originality and conviction within the paradigms of an engaging and morally complex book.

Uselessly is challenging, funny, mystical, tough and touching. Kaganof has created a courageous and unapologetic portrait of the relationship between a father and son in a story about freedom and the redemptive power of laughter and love. An inimitable novel by an agent provocateur, put this book on your reading list. Even go out and buy it now.

this review first appearred in green dragon #4

USELESSLY
ARYAN KAGANOF
published by JACANA
ISBN 1-77009-100-9

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“Uselessly is an enjoyable, engrossing and sometimes disturbing novel, which throughout its almost 200 pages never loses momentum. Written in a casual, colloquial style, it is a definite “must read”.”
Gary Cummiskey
The Star

“a very South African book: rough, corrosive, and a complex mix of literary and low-brow”
Fred De Vries
The Weekender

“Ek is nie seker presies hoekom ek in die loop van die 192 bladsye verlief geraak het op Kaganof se manier van werk nie. Ek weet ook dis nie enige leser se koppie tee nie. Maar daar is iets in sy prosa – die soort varsgeid wat mens laas ervaar het met die vroeë werk van Kurt Vonnegut, gemengd met die kinderlike sinisme van Darrel Bristow-Bovey, wat jou eenvoudig om die hart gryp en meesleur, meesleur. Aan die einde van ‘n boek soos hierdie is jy of ‘n Kaganof-fan vir altyd, of jy wil jou polse sny. Of beide.”
Koos Kombuis
Rapport

“a poignant, moving, intelligent and irreverent portrait of the father:son dynamic”
Mick Raubenheimer
Contempo

“scathing on the new South Africa, on its economic injustice”
Chris Dunton
Sunday Independent

“Uselessly is, unfortunately, my first encounter with Kaganof and his seemingly shotgun delivery that gets uncannily to the point. I loved this book and as soon as I can, I am going to read it again.”
Laura Melville
Natal Witness

“rebellious attitudes, events and imaginings”
Gary Minkly
Dispatch

“The book has a bittersweet tinge to it mixed in with moments of high hilarity, irreverence and irony. It’s also inventive, combining elements of different literary styles. In short, the tale of JJ Uselessly is a playful, laugh-’n’-cry, roller-coaster cocktail of a book that entertains quickly and quietly.”
Tymon Smith
Sunday Times

“Kaganof’s novel is ultimately one of longing and grief, but it is told with moments of laughter and poetry.”
Maureen Ewing
Cue

read the full reviews on http://kaganof.com/kagablog/category/uselessly/

Uselessly
Aryan Kaganof
Jacana

buy uselessly now (in south africa) (in united kingdom)

You may have spotted him in Melville coffee shops, having a lonely spaghetti for breakfast, scribbling away in his strange cubist handwriting or reading Nietzsche. You may have seen his artworks, his movies or his performances. Or you may have come across some of his self-published books.
Now Aryan Kaganof, a man with more flair for self-promotion than Jacob Zuma, has managed to interest a “real” publisher in making his new novel more widely available. Apparently, the need for money became bigger than the urge to do-it-himself.
One has to admire Jacana for taking on Uselessly, because it’s not an easily digestible book and certainly not a potential bestseller.
While there’s not much in terms of plot or narrative, the protagonist JJ Uselessly, and his father Harry are mysogynist souls, who excell in absurd dialogues.
The story, written as a series of letters from Uselessly Jr to God, basically revolves around the son finding his father after the old man has abandoned mother and child at an early age. It’s quite a miracle that Uselessly is with us at all, because dad insisted on an abortion. Mother, however, decided to keep her son, who now feels he was “born by accident”.
Uselessly grows up in Joburg, and when the time for military service arrives, he goes to Amsterdam, where he disappears into a haze of drugs and underground culture - which doesn’t prevent him from producing offspring.
In Holland at the age of 35, and now the father of a daughter, he gets a letter from someone called S Cohen, telling him that his dad has been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, a type of cancer. Uselessly flies to Cape Town to meet his prodigal father finally, after so many years.
What follows is a tale of father and son reunited and bonding over a similar iconoclastic lifestyle and philosophy. Both never wanted to grow up. Both abhor work.
Uselessly was visited by angels at the age of five, and decided to become a sensualist instead of joining the rat race. Adulthood is the living dead. His philosophy: live to slow things down. He idolises his womanising, horse riding, playing the stock market and playing dad.
JJ and his father Harry (”a jaded Jewboy from Joburg”) agree never to be mundane.
They are nonconformists.
They also concur that “neither of us had been prepared for fatherhood and neither of us had a clue how to be a good son. Prodigals. A pair of prodigals. Uselessly the both of us.”
And so the story goes on, shifting forwards and backwards in time until the inevitable death of dad. In between, Kaganof throws in bits of Nietzsche on the verge of madness.
He lets his useless alter-ego ridicule Cape Town’s “white clique”, shopping malls and the senseless conversations other people engage in.
Women, in his world, are only in it for the money. The “thrive on the amount of effort you’re willing to expend on gaining and keeping their favour”.
All this in letters to God - whose answers we never see. All very post-modern.
But does it work?
Sometimes. Kaganof can be quite funny and his outsider status enables him to point out society’s hypocrisies. Some of dad’s one-liners and his not so politically correct observations are certainly good for a laugh and a nod.
And when the author occasionally deals with genuine emotions he can be surprisingly touching.
It’s also a very South African book: rough, corrosive, and a complex mix of literary and low-brow, and in more way than one way between Good and Evil.
But too often it feels like Kaganof wants to be rude and misogynist for the sake of being rude and misogynist. The targets of his derision are too easy. The puns about James Joyce’s Ulysses are too obvious. And the fact that God is the receiver of Uselessly’s endless stream of letters doesn’t add to the story.
Morevoer, why address Him as if it’s a 13-year-old writing instead of someone aged 39?
Surely God can handle more profound thoughts?
When you close the book after 191 pages, one nagging thought remains: was the choice of form, these often childlike letters to God, really the best way to deal with such highly emotional, rich and autobiographical material?

Fred De Vries

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review by Koos Kombuis
 
 
Daar is heelwat Suid-Afrikaanse kunstenaars wat baie graag naam wil maak oorsee. Daar is ouens wat liedjies komponeer oor plekke soos Brakpan, maar eintlik droom hulle van ‘n uitverkoop-aand in die Royal Albert. Daar is skrywers wat boeke skryf oor longdrops in die Karoo en drug trips in Seepunt, maar in hulle harte voel hulle dat hulle die script vir “Trainspotting” sou kon doen.
 
Dan is daar Aryan Kaganof.
 
Reeds vir jare lank is hy bekend oorsee. Hy hou kunsuitstallings in New York, vervaardig kultus-flieks in Amsterdam. Onder die naam “Ian Kerkhof” behaal hy roem en respek  op die internasionale front; helaas nie ‘n huishoudelike naam soos Tretchikoff of Steven Spielberg nie, maar nou ja. Ian Kerkhof is iemand om mee rekening te hou. Hy is cutting edge.
 
Toe, een dag, ontdek hy sy roots. Toe, een dag, onthou hy dat hy eintlik in Suid-Afrika gebore is. Toe, een dag, word hy “wedergebore” as ‘;n Suid-Afrikaner, verander hy sy naam na Aryan Kaganof, en koop ‘n vliegkaartjie hiernatoe.
 
In Seepunt word hy herenig met sy biologiese vader, en hy trek by hom in die woonstel in. Hier begin hy sy mees persoonlike gedagtes neerskryf in ‘n reeks notaboekies. Uitiendelik groei hierdie aantekeninge tot ‘n roman; ‘n Suid-Afrikaanse roman. ‘n Roman gevul met karakters uit Seepunt, Stellenbosch, Alberton, en allerhande mundane plaaslike plekke.
 
As Aryan Kaganof probeer die voormalige Ian Kerkhof nou naam maak as ‘n Suid-Afrikaanse skrywer.
 
Die roman “Uselessly” is sy eerste vollengte literêre poging.
 
Daar was ook ander pogings. Hy het ‘n hele rolprent in Johannesburg geskiet op selfone en dit versprei op die Internet. Daar was ook digbundels, uitstallings, selfs pogings tot mode-ontwerp. Aryan Kaganof is ‘n Renaissance-man, en as sulks deel van die Afrika-Renaissance; miskien nie op presies die manier wat Thabo Mbeki dit sou wou hê nie, maar, nou ja, you can’t keep a good man down.
 
Anders as J.M. Coetzee, wat die Pullitzer-prys gewen het toe hy nog hier gewoon het, en toe Australië toe getrek het om alleen te wees tussen die skape en die kangaroo’s, het Kaganof besluit om hiernatoe te trek en sy inernasionale loopbaan vireers “on hold” te sit.
 
Hierdie gegewe alleen behoort genoeg te wees om enigiemand se nuuskierigheid te prikkel. Ek moet egter erken dat ek “Uselessly” gelees het voordat ek enige van hierdie feite geweet het. Ek had geen benul Kaganof en Kerkhof is dieselfde persoon nie. Ek was onbewus daarvan dat die grootste deel van die roman inderdaad autobiografies was, en het dit gelees soos fiksie. My reaksie op die teks was totaal en al gestroop van enige vooropgestelde idee’s.
 
Eerstens: ja, daar was hinderlikhede. Was ek ‘n uitgewer, sou ek ‘n boek soos “Uselessly” dalk ‘n bietjie meer ge-edit het. Daar is geweldig baie herhalings – soms tot ‘n hele bladsy – en die voor-die-hand-liggende woordspeling tussen die titel “Uselessly” en die James Joyce-werk “Ulysses” is ietwat deliberaat en boonop nie vreeslik snaaks nie. ‘n Te groot deel van die boek bestaan uit slimmighede en one-liners; goeie one-liners, okei, maar hel, mens kan net soveel genialiteite hanteer voor jy begin voel dit hinder die verloop van die storie.
 
Ten spyte van hierdie slaggate (wat Kaganof nie vermy nie, en waarteen sy uitgewers hom klaarblyklik nie gewaarsku het nie), is “Uselessly” ‘n boeiende, eerlike, interessante, en werklik vars leeservaring.
 
Ek is nie seker presies hoekom ek in die loop van die 192 bladsye verlief geraak het op Kaganof se manier van werk nie. Ek weet ook dis nie enige leser se koppie tee nie. Maar daar is iets in sy prosa –  die soort varsgeid wat mens laas ervaar het met die vroeë werk van Kurt Vonnegut, gemengd met die kinderlike sinsime van Darrel Bristow-Bovey, wat jou eenvoudig om die hart gryp en meesleur, meesleur. Aan die einde van ‘n boek soos hierdie is jy of ‘n Kaganof-fan vir altyd, of jy wil jou polse sny. Of beide.
 
‘n Ou wat dinge kan kwytraak soos die volgende, verdien ons volgehoue aandag:
“Life in Cape Town is an ongoing soap about waiters and menus. It’s a bit like sitting in a Peter Stuyvesant ad.”
 
“My entire childhood, I longed for abuse. Everywhere I went, I was always hearing how some kid got abused, and gradually I began to believe that I was the ugliest, most unappealing child in the world, because nobody ever took time off from their busy schedules to interfere with me.”
 
“I have raped, I have battered, I have lied, I have cheated, I have stolen, I have betrayed, I have perjured, I have bullied, I have depraved, I have run away. In short, I have led a very normal life. But I have never committed genocide. Not yet.”
 
Nou ja, wat kan mens hierop sê?
 
Baie, baie welkom in die Nuwe Suid-Afrika, Aryan Kaganof. Jy sal beslis tuis voel hier.
 
 this review, in a slightly altered form, was first published in the rapport newspaper. the review was incorrectly attributed to “Kaganov” due to an apalling fuckup by the publicist of Jacana , one Sahm Venter, who sent out a mailing to all the magazines and newspapers in the country with my name incorrectly spelled. Instead of committing suicide, as she would have done if she had any self-respect, the dreadful cunt actually sent me an email with my name incorrectly spelt again and the explanation that she “wanted to see if I had a sense of humour”. That Jacana did not fire her remains a mystery to me. That I did not belt her one can only be attributed to the calming effects of the lobotomy and all those mysterious Buddhist poems that Suchoon Mo sends in to the blog.

uselessly by aryan kaganof (jacana R138)
review: chris dunton

buy uselessly now (in south africa) (in united kingdom)

To kick off, the cover. At the left, a sketch of the narrator, JJ Uselessly - age indeterminate, stubble on his chin, looking pretty truculent. At the top, a photo from a 1950s male physique mag, labelled “my dad” and the pledge: “If you buy this book you will get muscles like these, honestly” GOD.
Down below, a puff from the Devil: “Uselessly is a very good read, very funny. I recommend it.”
In the centre, more punting, printed as if it were the book’s subtitle: A very funny book about me, my dad, the devil and God.
Go o n then, prove it, I think, remembering the film Johnny English, Rowan Atkinson’s spoof on the Bond series, the poster for which was, by a long, long way, funnier than the film itself (”He knows no fear. He knows no danger…He knows nothing.”)
“Dear God,” the narrator begins, “sorry I haven’t written for so long. It’s been a bad time. I’ve been hurting inside and I just couldn’t put pen to paper. I hope you’ve been okay. I noticed some world wars and stuff. Guess you’ve been busy enough. Had your own shit to take care of without worrying about mine.”
Thus speaks JJ (for James Joyce) Uselessly, 39 years old and his dandruff getting worse, priding himself on his arrested development, hankering after reversion to the womb. As the world goes too fast, his mission in life is to slow things down, to live his life at the tempo his sould deserves and demands.
Forty-three of JJ’s letters to God make up Uselessly, studded with the occasional postmodern fling (such as a couple of dialogues with Nietzsche). God remains a silent character, despite that fact that each of JJ’s letters begins: Thank you for your reply.”
Much of the book is about the writing of the book, and its central self-description is spot on: “I’m starting a novel. The Dutch word “staart” means tail. The start is the tail end of this tale.
This is a tale that keeps on starting over. It doesn’t have a surprise ending. It doesn’t have an ending at all. Just when you think it’s finally ended, it simply starts up again.”
Material is repeated and chronology is absolutely fluid. One incident though, is key to the whole.
Living in Amsterdam, doing the usual stuff, JJ receives a letter from his Dad’s girlfriend, telling him the old man has just survived a major operation. Illegitimate, JJ has met his father only once before, but he immediately takes up the invitation and flies to Cape Town. Arriving, he tells us “from the minute my Dad came to the door, everything was okay.”
Dad’s professed role model is Scrooge. More, he’s a man who “uses women for as long as it suits him. Then he dumps them. Gets them to make over their money first, though. He’s an icy, calculating Libran snake.”
As JJ’s relationship with his father fills out, they come to adore each other.
The son identifies the father with the devil and, in between accounts of chemotherapy sessions, fantasies about the torture, murder and rape they might both have carried out.
The tonal instability of Uselessly is pretty extreme. There are continual slides into mega-macho, as in an elegy on super-strength coffee: “Fuck cappucino an espresso, that’s wop shit for pussies. A man drinks coratado.”
At other points the voice is sweet and genial: “I don’t know the answers to any of (my) speculations, God, and I’m not pressing you for them. I love you all the same, mysteries and all. Good night and God bless you (hee hee).” There are also passages of great tnederness, as when the father and son stand side by side on a Cape Toiwn balcony, watching the waves break, listening to a rag by William Bolcom, each aware of the tears in each other’s eyes.
A string of absurdist speculations works very well, such as a line on the over-use of Dippity Do hairspray: “I am quite sure that Aunty Nelly’s thickly lacquered beehive was responsible for the whole in the ozone layer.” But a lot of the material is far harsher than this.
JJ is scthing on the new South Africa, on its economic injustice, seeing only “a highly sophisticated version of the same-old same-old.”
Yet his focus is not really trained on the big causal things - rather, on the inanities of Cape Town cafe and Sunday lunch chatter (at the level of “who’s your gynae?”).
There’s far too much of this stuff - once the needle’s in, Kaganof just keeps pumping away. And wisecracks on identity - “What came first, the deli of the Jew?” - get to be a pain in the butt. Bring back Joseph Heller.
Most of the way thorugh I didn’t know what to make of Uselessly and I don’t think that’s going to cause me sleepless nights.
Much of the Borsch Belt humour is slack and thin. But then there are fine things, like the second, and shocking Nietzsche scenario. After the father’s death, one of his friends comments “he was one of a kind”, and JJ”s account certainly gets that across.

this review appeared in the Sunday Independent of august 20 2006

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Uselessly is artist, film director and writer Aryan Kaganof’s fifth book and a gallop through South Africa’s post-apartheid counter-culture.
J.J.Uselessly narrates his experiences of encountering his father for the first time through a series of letters adressed to God. J.J. is 39 years old, he still doesn’t have a proper job and he has unresolved issues with his parents. An ex poet, he was living in Amsterdam when his father’s girlfriend, S. Cohen, wrote to tell him that his father has Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Will he come to stay with them?
From there, Kaganof casts a shrewd and often poignant eye on what it means to be South African as he trails J.J. through the emotional upheaval of finding a father and a country he is not yet ready to deal with. It is a look that is highly irreverent, outwardly cynical but yet infused with the idealism that only the true cynic is capable of.
The book is especially poignant as Kaganof has drawn from his own experiences of his relationship with and reconciliation to his formerly estranged father.
Uselessly is, unfortunately, my first encounter with Kaganof and his seemingly shotgun delivery that gets uncannily to the point. I loved this book and as soon as I can, I am going to read it again.

Laura Melville
Natal Witness, 19 july 2006

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KAGANOF, we are told on the back cover, is the “foremost counter-culture revolutionary in South Africa” and a one-man cultural industry, producing paintings, books, clothes, films, music, photographs and criticism.

This novel is based around a set of letters to God, written by JJ Uselessly, 39, whose estranged father is dying. Through a series of reminiscences, meetings, journeys, conversations and reflections we are asked to engage with “being” in South Africa today – with whiteness, with being Jewish and with various social and personal family relationships. There is little in the novel, though, to confirm the claim about Kaganof being a foremost counter-culture writer, except for a series of rather unimaginative and contrived rebellious attitudes, events and imaginings.
Gary Minkley

this review first appeared in the dispatch

23 July 2006

Performer, film maker and blogger Aryan Kaganof has a new incarnation, that of author.
Tymon Smith talks to him about playing the fool

‘Previously the rings around his eyes were the result of his efforts to hawk his self-published books at a pool club in Melville’

THE ANTI-ANTI: Kaganof believes ‘one should always be outside in order to have a good take on the world’

ONCE upon a time there was a guy called Ian Kerkhof. He was born in South Africa in 1964 and then one day he upped and left in order to avoid conscription into the dreaded South African Defence Force.

Time passed and Kerkhof found himself in the Netherlands. He studied film at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy where he learnt enough jargon to last a lifetime, made a few award-winning films that drew attention, often simply by virtue of their seemingly shocking subject matter, hosted film screenings, was a DJ, and generally made the most of life as a South African in exile.

He returned to South Africa in 1999, with a fluent command of Dutch that may have confused some people, and lived in Cape Town, a place that’s “… not here and it’s also not there, it’s nowhere.” He made some more films and then in 2001, Ian Kerkhof disappeared. In his place arose a stocky, wavy-haired character who shoots Glock and likes to play pool.

His name is Aryan Kaganof and in his five-year existence (following a rebirth in Randburg in 2001) he has variously been a filmmaker, poet, artist, front man for a band called Freedom Fighter (a task he performs like a spirited Louis Armstrong impersonator) and a writer, most recently of a book called Uselessly.

When we meet at a Newtown coffee-shop, Kaganof arrives in his 1966 Valiant 200, wearing his Mongolian coat. He is slightly dishevelled, has big rings under his eyes and is a few days’ worth of shaving short of a smooth face. He’s being kept busy with rehearsals for a play called The Shooting Gallery directed by Catherine Henegan. It’s a digital performance piece. He tells me that the work is hard, rehearsals long and Henegan a demanding director who’s teaching him a lot about the art of directing. He’s only got an hour to spare in between being hung upside down and all the other physical exertions that the piece demands.

“Whatever I’m doing is the most important thing to me while I’m doing it,” he says between gulps of filter coffee. Kaganof doesn’t so much talk as do what Lenny Bruce used to do, he does shtick; words pouring out one on top of the other, jokes and ironic digs flying thick and fast and pauses taken only for breath and coffee. He also has the inflections and cadences, though not the accent, of an old Jewish guy who likes to throw Yiddish in at every turn.

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We’re really supposed to be talking about Uselessly, a book that consists predominantly of a series of letters to God from one JJ Uselessly, a recently-returned South African artist dealing with an ill father and his own personal neuroses, while living in Cape Town. The book has a bittersweet tinge to it mixed in with moments of high hilarity, irreverence and irony. It’s also inventive, combining elements of different literary styles. In short, the tale of JJ Uselessly is a playful, laugh-’n’-cry, roller-coaster cocktail of a book that entertains quickly and quietly.

However, if you’re looking to read the book as an autobiographical piece of sentimental confession, then forget it. “None of my work is autobiographical. Everything I write is fiction, except for the stuff I make up.”

The rings under his eyes are the product of a new project. His blog, www.kaganof.com, is updated daily and has sections like KagaBlog, KagaMP3, KagaVerse and so on. It also highlights the work of a plethora of local and international artists and writers, from Stephen Hobbs, Christo Doherty, Catherine Henegan, Caroline Suzman, Michelle McGrane and Luiz Hernandez to a Nigerian poet named Dike Okoro. “The site reflects what I like. Obviously a lot of the stuff that people send is no good and you might find some of the stuff that I publish is not good, but that doesn’t matter, it reflects what I like. It’s called Great Art Daily and there’s 20 pieces of great art daily. It’s what I always wanted but never found because I consume a lot and I want to see something different every day so now I’ve actually put out what I’ve always wanted to read. It’s as simple as that.

Previously, the rings around his eyes were the result of his efforts to hawk his self-published books at the Stones pool club in Melville.

And it’s his devoted attention to self-promotion and his willingness to work in a variety of different mediums that has allowed him to survive as an outsider artist who’s always busy making something; whether it be a film, a book, a series of paintings or Internet fiction. “I’m always in a state of supporting myself and I think that’s the way one should be as an artist. As soon as the state supports you then you’re just a propagandist and you may as well cut your leg off and be stupid … I think one should always be outside in order to have a good take on the world, precisely for the people who are inside. The outsider sees the system better and the only way to stay outside is to stay financially free of the strings of the system, in as much as possible, because it’s impossible to be totally outside without starving. But playing the fool is very important because that’s what artists do, they play the fool in order to tell the truth.”

Kaganof refuses to see himself as an artist challenging the political and social orders of South Africa. “I live in Westdene behind a wall with Nazi wire on top of it. What can I say about social issues? It’s all hypocrisy if I do. I have a wonderful life. I’m not outside of myself.

“All these artists who have opinions but then end up sending their stuff to the gangsters at the Brett Kebble Awards? It’s bullshit. Everyone is an opportunist and a hypocrite, so why should I be any different?

“Yes, Aryan Kaganof is anti-anti, but he still needs the public’s shekels to buy clothes and cars and booze.”

So what, exactly, does he want readers to take away from his latest literary endeavour? “I hope another copy and that I would take away another eight bucks … It’s an entertainment, I want you to have a laugh and a cry, it’s good, schmaltzy, sentimental stuff that’s coming from the heart … Whatever I make, I make to make one person happy. I’m very specific in who I try and please, I always try and please me.”

As we wrap up I’m let in on future endeavours: the release of SMS Sugar man (a feature film shot entirely on cellphones and due to be released by Ster Kinekor). Kaganof maintains it is, “The kind of film you’re gonna see twice. Somewhere between the analytical insight of Leon Schuster and the tremendous gut-wrenching humour of JM Coetzee.”

He’s also working on completing his series of Palimpsest paintings, which consist of layers upon layers of paint scratched over with text to reveal the works’ hidden histories. And then there’s Teasers, a collection of Internet fiction that deals with sex in Joburg. If possible he’d also like to work in monumental sculpture before he dies, preferably making something in concrete.

Whatever is next on the Kaganof horizon, you can be sure that it will be interesting (at least to the author) and dedicated to its creator’s belief in truth and beauty. “If a work doesn’t have an internal truth and logic that’s beautiful then I’m not interested.”

Who knows how long it will be before Aryan Kaganof resurfaces as yet another incarnation of himself?

In the meantime, South Africans can be glad that he’s devoting his energy to keeping the local underground scene refreshingly irreverent. And if you’re looking for something interesting to read, you could do worse than the sentimental, bittersweet playfulness of Uselessly. Whatever happens next, you can be sure that Aryan Kaganof will be playing the fool and telling the truth at a pool hall near you.

•Uselessly, Jacana, R135. The Shooting Gallery is at the Market Theatre until August 8

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dear aryan, i’ve just read your book, uselessly. i have to do a review for rapport, but its very hard to be objective about it. you cover two topics i feel passionate about: the after effects of too much drugs, and the collective emotional problems faced by the sea point jewish community of the late 20th century. also you are the first writer to ask (in effect) the very important question: the government may be taking steps to protect children from rape and abuse, but what are they doing to protect children from normal happy homes and ordinary affluent schools?
what a relief to encounter the work of a published author who is crazier than myself. i feel vindicated. i sincerely hope we never meet in person, for we wont get along at all.
nevertheless: discovering your work has opened a door in my soul which should have remained shut forever. thank you so much.
koos kombuis

anton krueger is puzzled whilst reading “uselessly”, during the book’s launch at the national arts festival, grahamstown, 2 july 2006

rose lombard is visibly touched whilst reading “uselessly” at its launch during the national arts festival, grahamstown, 6 july 2006

bistra velinova roaring with laughter whilst reading “uselessly”, book launch, the old gaol, grahamstown, sunday, 2 july 2006

this interview originally appeared on dave’s blog on monday june 26

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After enjoying a laid back weekend of unparalleled fun and relaxation, I decided in a fit of bonhomie and what have you to interview Aryan Kaganof for the blog this morning. What follows is quite, hilariously funny and an important reading. i have not edited this e-interview at all, to protect either myself or Aryan.

 The Interview:

DC: After so many years of self publishing and independent publishing, why an established publishing house for this novel?

AK: Strictly for the money.

DC: Compared to a large amount of your previous work in other fields as well as writing, this novel is the gentlest and least controversial you have released. Does this indicate some kind of sea change in your attitude to the world at the moment?

AK: Well I’m a lot gentler and less controversial now that I’ve had the lobotomy.

DC: Uselessly and his father The Devil are cast as somewhat amoral anti hero types in the novel. Why? Do you think the traditional mythic hero figure has outgrown its use?

AK: I was going for verisimilitude.

DC: There is a lot of prejudice, misogyny and moral flexibility in the novel. Is this a reflection of yourself or of the environment we find ourselves in?

AK: This question reminds me of a poem I wrote recently:

the poetry magazine did not publish poems
that were racist, sexist or homophobic
and therefore
I did not submit this one

DC: Bearing in mind your own personal history with you father, some may be looking for much in the way of autobiographical content in this book. Is this true, or did your experience merely provide a jumping off point for the narrative and plot?

AK: When people ask about the autobiographical thing my standard reply is “everything I write is fiction, except for the stuff I make up”.

DC: Ultimately, are you happy with the novel? Do you feel that it addresses the core issues you wanted to cover? What are those core ideas?

AK: I’m always suspicious of authors with core ideas. Like Adorno, I believe that the novel IS the core idea. If I could have expressed it in any other form, in any other medium, in a more compressed way, more “core” so to speak, I would have done so. Uselessly is the core expression of the novel Uselessly.

DC: The market for art, books and music of an intellectual, left of centre nature is very small in South Africa. How are you finding working in this environment compared to your experiences in Europe?

AK: I agree with your statement which is one reason why I want to get out of the intellectual, left of centre ghetto. Those dull, dour, badly dressed leftists with the anti-capitalist rhetoric are the first people to queue up when there’s a sale, frenziedly grubbing for discounts. Essentially the leftists are resentful because they have never figured out a way to earn enough moolah to afford the goods at full retail. I broke with the left when I read the Unabomber’s Manifesto. It’s one of the most important documents of the twentieth century. He analyzes the phenomenon of the “chinless left”. That book woke me up with a start. Every so-called “revolutionary” toying around with “otherness” should read that Manifesto.

DC: How do you feel we are doing out here as artists? Are we coping with the demands of our environment? Are we keeping up conceptually, practically?

AK: I think south Africa is the most wonderful place to be living in as an artist. We are not interfered with by the government by way of tedious, creativity stifling subsidies and grants, and we are not messed with by big corporations who want to buy us up and own us and we are not even messed with by that vast, amorphous mass known as “the people”, who, are too busy watching ball games on television and beating their wives up, to be concerned with our trinkets.

DC: Is it possible that the unique circumstances that are South Africa are the breeding ground of something totally new and dynamic in the field of art and music? Or is that to over state the possibilities of the rapid change that our society is undergoing?

AK: There is incredible stuff happening in this country. Just one example, our most radical contemporary music composer Michael Blake is presenting his new composition Wringtones at the National Arts festival in Grahamstown. It’s a 5 minute composition for violin that will be performed by the Japanese virtuoso Yasutaka Hemmi, who is flying out for the concert. This is a piece that invents a genre “thrash classical” that simply hasn’t been heard before. It brings to mind great hardcore bands like the Bad Brains, Spy Vs Spy era John Zorn, as well as the apocalyptic thrash improv of Killing Time (Fred Frith-Bill Laswell-John Maher). It’s utterly wild. It reflects Joburg – the urban environment, car jackings, the constant paranoia of our life here, but also the exuberance, the buzz of Jozi. It is the most ruthlessly virile urban African music I’ve yet heard. Utterly distinctive. Utterly from here, but free of all simplistic “African” cliches - that curio shop mentality that pervades so much of the saccharine garbage pretending to be “music” in this country (Pops Mohammed etc). I recommend all readers of your blog go see the concert during the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown next week.

 DC: You are a film maker, writer, poet, singer/musician and artist. How do you find the mental energy and space to handle all of these things?

AK: I stopped doing drugs  six years ago and decided to quit finding excuses for not achieving my full potential.

DC: Do you ever worry that maybe by crossing genre so much you are depleting the effectiveness of your work, and that maybe you agendas would be better served if extrapolated to the nth degree in one discipline?

AK: It’s an interesting question, because I believe that it is the genre crossing that is the work’s effectiveness. I’m highly disciplined in all the media I work in. I believe discipline is the key to any artist’s success and development.

 DC: You seem obsessed with your Valiant and your Glock. What is with these two things?

AK: Beautifully designed machines that represent the peak of their respective disciplines.

DC: Who else out there do you rate as doing really interesting work, be it film making, writing or music?

AK: Michelle McGrane recently sent me a copy of Houellebecq’s novel The Possibility Of An Island that I enjoyed reading and I was also deeply moved by Anita Brookner’s Leaving Home. I’m not much of a reader these days, too busy with my own work, although I read The Little Prince (by Antoine De Saint-Exupery) every year in order to remind me what it’s all about, in case I forget.

I got rid of all my cds, dvds, books etc about five years ago, and I live in almost complete silence, filling it up with my own creations. Every now and then a cd finds its way to me and most recently it’s been the mechanical music of Gyorgy Ligeti, who passed away a couple of weeks ago. It’s extraordinary music, way ahead of its time and I think we will be hearing a lot more of it, and its ramifications for other composers, in the future.

I almost never go out to see movies anymore because I hate malls. The most interesting recent South African film I’ve seen is I Love You Jet Li directed by Jaco Bouwer and written by Stacy Hardy. Massive talent on display there and if I was a film producer I would give that team a blank cheque and let them get on with it.

DC: What other projects are you working on right now, and what can we expect from you next?

AK: I’ve recorded a couple of songs with that great unsung hero of South African music, Neill Solomon. These are part of an album of song versions of poems by Beat poets. (Alan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac etc) that he is producing. Am also working on my solo cd project and it is my greatest dream to do a duet with Koos Kombuis who really is a much more interesting South African novelist than that over-rated Kangaroo fucker J.M.Coetzee.

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Uselessly, by Aryan Kaganof (Jacana)

Subtitled “a very funny book about me, my dad, the Devil and God”, this tells the story of JJ Uselessy in the form of letters to God. His dad has Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, the ultimate status symbol in cancer circles, Uselessly assures us. Uselessly himself is nearly 40, lives in Johannesburg, and doesn’t want to grow up. He doesn’t want to work either and wonders why God made that part of the deal.

Vivien Horler

this notice originally appeared in the cape argus

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Finally, The Kaganof review!
Uselessly – Aryan kaganof
Jacana

Uselessly is the 5th novel that Aryan Kaganof has published. It is also the first one that has been published by a main stream publisher in South Africa. And I am not sure if these two things are linked, but it also probably the least confrontational and most accessible thing he has ever had published.

Uselessly tells the story of one JJ Uselessly as he encounters his father for the very first time as an adult and the growth path that this triggers in his psyche. It is written in the form of a series of letters from JJ to God, discussing his father and the events surrounding their meeting.

The book is not a hectic read, although some of the occurances and ideas discussed are pretty outrageous. The father figure, referred to as The Devil mostly, is an old school cad of the worst kind, some kind of Zen master, sexual predator and scrooge. While Uselessly remains a fairly ill-defined free loader with a nefarious past. This combines well to create a new world where the ideas and discussions between father and son blur into some kind of plan for a fulfilling life, but with anti social and atypical goals as the end.

The temptation to read this as an autobiographical tale must be resisted, I think. While it is indeed true that Aryan himself had an adult encounter with the man that he never knew as his father until then, this is a story in itself, and whatever parallels that might exist do not detract from the nature and content of the book.

The book is immensely readable. And is actually very funny too, as the cover claims. I suppose because I was given the book by the publisher, and didn’t buy it, I won’t get the muscles the cover promise, but then I don’t really believe in God anyway, so I wouldn’t have expected that.

this review was first published on dave’s immensely readable blog the chiz

SYNOPSIS
J.J. Uselessly returns to South Africa after 16 years of exile in order to meet his biological father who is dying of cancer. Uselessly senior and his equally useless son enjoy a blissful period together. Their outrageous adventures are always hilarious and long after his death Harry Uselessly’s words ring out in his son’s ears - “Cancer can be fun!”

buy uselessly now (in south africa) (in united kingdom)

dear friends
as of today it is in all the bookshops in south africa
my new novel
please buy it, and buy an extra copy for everyone you love
the more people you love, the more chance i need never work again
ISBN 1-77009-100-9
published by JACANA

soon to be published by jacana