Africana Votes & Views #25
In my younger days I was
introduced to that wonderful literary genre – the short story. I devoured
volumes of O’Henry, Conan Doyle and Somerset Maugham among numerous other,
English speaking writers, as well as compilations of the best that world
literature could offer, from Russia,
to America, from Italy and France
to Malaysia and the Far East. As well as a few modest anthologies of South
African authors, mainly early 20th century writings. It was drummed
into my head that a short story required almost as much precision and
constructive technique as a classic sonnet. It had to have an introductory
paragraph, setting the scene; a tightly knit plot which was developed in the
body of the work and a sharp, decisive end – if at all possible, with a ‘twist
in the tale/tail’.
I became enamoured of the short story and aspired one day to rank with
my icon, Somerset Maugham. On my 13th birthday, I was presented with
my first Olivetti portable typewriter, and my path lay clear and straight ahead
of me. I would write short stories. That became a lengthy process, lasting over
fifty years, so I won’t pursue that story any further in this essay. I still
love reading short stories, especially as my memory is getting a little abbreviated
in the short–term, and my attention span for reading a book with ever
diminishing print size is getting less. At least, I console myself, I can
remember the protagonists and the development of the plot sufficiently well to
enjoy the ending, which is not always the case with a thousand-page
blockbuster. These have become almost as futile to attempt as watching weekly
episodes of crime serials on the box.
Having said that, there have been very few short stories from our
continent that have satisfied my quest for entertainment. Obviously one can’t
remember them all over a period of half a century, so I started by re-reading a
number of volumes to remind me in which way I found them lacking in substance,
structure or finish. Let me start by treading on very thin ice from the outset.
I reread Guy Butler’s collection Tales
from the Old Karoo (A D Donker,
1989) once more, and while I found them moderately entertaining, they were a
strange assembly; firstly a curious number of biographical anecdotes, mostly of
Olive Schreiner, with whom the author must have had both a familial connection,
as well as a literary affinity. Then there were rustic tales, of the simple
folk that populated the farms and villages of the region. Vignettes possibly,
often caricatures, but solid plots seemed to escape the author, an
autobiographer and poet of note. Then there were the inevitable ghostly tales
as told and retold by travelers. One or two of these had a solid conclusion,
even if they were very subtly implied, rather than strikingly portrayed. Others
were left open to whatever the reader wanted to find in them, but there was no
direction. Obviously an academic of his stature cannot be faulted on his prose,
but I often found incongruity with his insertion of classical, academic and
even scientific snippets, which detracted from his portrayal of the harsh
landscape and its rustic inhabitants.
From having the temerity to write about a
professor of literature, let me get even more foolhardy. The Nobel Laureate,
Nadine Gordimer has not been one of my favourite writers. I have read a few of
her novels with great difficulty. Somehow her prose reminds me of a bleak
Highveld dusk over the burnt stubble of a mealie-field, where a razor breeze
slashes ones face and the musky smell of charred veld assails the nostrils.
Everything is shades of grey and black, with a bloody sky brooding over the
scene. Yes, her portrayals of white suburban life with its black un-people that
lurk everywhere, are a faithful reflection of the apartheid era and its
manifold injustices and affronts to human dignity. Nobody can fault the writer
for eliciting an uncomfortable wriggle from the reader of her bleak stories now
and then, but it took me a few days to get through her Selected Stories (Viking Press 1976), so depressing did I find
them. Once again, the elements of the short story were mainly lacking. Here was
a collection of episodes – all grimly reflecting the spirit of the mid
twentieth century in the subcontinent. In some Gordimer runs right over an
ending and spoils it all by adding that extra paragraph or page of text; in
others she never reaches a conclusion of any sort, though there are one or two
exceptions, where she gets it spot-on, such as the story where a woman’s chance
acquaintance with another on a train end s in the latter’s death and the
traveller sends her chauffeur-cum-houseminder a curt telegram to say ‘It’s not
me’. Gordimer has the tendency to write about inhabitants of fictional towns,
which I find irritating – even more so because the neighbouring towns are real,
with their proper names. The same goes for suburbs in Johannesburg; here you have the action taking
place in Greensleeves, but Kensington is on the other side of town. Whatever
for, I ask myself? Personal names, also, are often clumsily altered so that no
one can feel they need to identify with her characters and feel slighted by any
of the attributes the writer apportions to them. My last gripe with Gordimer’s
writing would be that she includes passages of completely irrelevant
environmental detail which contribute nothing to the story whatsoever, but they
do lengthen her narrative to a degree that I just lose interest in the story.
Setting the stage is one thing, but painting it with a number ten camel-hair
brush is overdoing it.
Somehow one gets to wonder why there is no
love, no kindness and no beauty in the writer’s world. Though our lives have
overlapped in the same environment, and while I can remember a number of
incidents which resonate with the episodes she relates, there are also numerous
others where I can recall giving, friendship, learning, sharing, love and an
appreciation of the wonders of life, which involved all of those around me. So
why aren’t some of these scenarios included for a rounder, multicoloured
portrayal of the South African human experience?
At last we can have a look at black writers
– on the subject of Africans in Africa. I’ve
dipped into several volumes during the past twenty years, and have found the
offerings unmemorable to a degree that I can’t even remember the subject
matter. Then I met Michael Phoya, a young man from Malawi; writer, publisher and
person of many ideas, many of which were quite new to me. I read his
handcrafted book, Walks of Life, which
relates the adventures of a young man in search of life and experience along
the city and rural roads of Malawi.
A sort of African Jack Kerouac, without quite as much booze, bop and old
bangers. I was charmed by the whole production of his photocopied manuscript,
handsewn onto sheets of handmade paper and then cobbled into book-shape, but
this was no short story, so it doesn’t really belong here. Michael told me that
he also wrote short stories, and since paper is scarce and expensive in his
country, he carried a copy with him on a flash drive and sold copies on CD’s.
So in no time at all, I was listening to an American drawl reading African
stories – which was somewhat disconcerting – but she was a friend, he said.
Here was modern African city life as seen
through the eyes of a young and passionate man. The stories spoke of his love
for his country, his aspirations, the 21st century that both
attracted and repelled him as well as an underlying resentment towards the
remnants of the inequalities of a colonial past that persisted in his society.
I was interested; though in the main the stories were naïve, one-dimensional
and sounded stilted. Though they painted quite a vivid picture of the passing
scene, there was a tropical languidness and again a lack of a strong story
line. I listened to more than an hour of stories, and I was not bored – but
neither was I fascinated. The time had come to dig out a wider spectrum of
African stories.
Among my stock I found three candidates, and
started with the oldest African/English
Literature, edited and introduced by Anne Tibble, (Peter Owen, 1963). Her
introduction to the indigenous authors, and their use of an acquired language
to display their talents, was the most interesting part of the book. With very
few exceptions, the literary contributions were passages from longer works, and
therefore didn’t have the structure that I wanted to find and compare to the
classics I had read in my youth. What did impress me was the almost universal
theme of the perceived differences between black writers’ literary images of
black people, and that which they attribute to whites having of black people –
or of themselves, for that matter. Much of the writing expands on the theme of
race-relations as well as the differences of culture, while the basic common humanity
of the protagonists is downplayed to express the writers’ profound indignation
and resentment of being assigned second-class citizenship by the colonizing
Europeans. Interesting pictures of the colonial era, but not what I was looking
for.
I skipped thirty-odd years of publications
and consulted a book of ‘modern African stories’ entitled Under African Skies, edited and introduced by C R Larson (Payback
Press, 1997). Immediately I seemed to be confronted by a different genre
entirely. African mythology, magic, the tribal milieux, all blended into tales
that, quite frankly, didn’t make a great deal of sense or grab my attention.
Finally, in between were some ‘proper’ short stories, still on the central
theme of race-relations between administrators and the populace, or the
inexcusable treatment meted out by white employers to their workers,– then a
shift of emphasis to the aspirations by blacks to emulate and partake of the
twentieth century lifestyles of their colonisers. From this it is just a short
jump to rebellion, the liberation struggle and the polarization between those
who have made the transition and the greater mass of resentful poor that are
left behind.
Eventually the European oppressor is
replaced by warring factions of Africans themselves – the warlords, the
gunrunners, the manic butchers and the dictators – and then the ultimate misery
of AIDS strikes. Here and there a rare touch of humour in between the stark
reality of life in the ghettoes, slums and villages and more of the dreams,
hopes and emotions of the protagonists of the African scene are portrayed.
Still, I found that a lot of the stories seem autobiographical or anecdotal.
Like life itself, there is often that realistic lack of a strong plot, and who
is to say where a story starts or ends – except at the inevitability of death
itself. However, while I can’t say that I was greatly entertained by the book,
mainly due to the harrowing subjects treated, I was not bored.
Lastly I tackled Writing Still – New Stories from Zimbabwe, edited by Irene Staunton
(Weaver Press, 2003). The subject matter again ranged forwards and backwards
through the recent cataclysms that the population of the country had
experienced. From a white Rhodesian’s encounter with an insurgent, to a
fancy-dress party on a farm during the Bush War, to the ethnic cleansing in
Matabeleland and the decay of the economy, the increasing burdens borne by the
ordinary people and the multitude of
ways by they manage to conquer the obstacles thrown in their paths. The
stories are pervaded by violence, death, injustice and hardships. Citizen has
turned against citizen and there is mistrust and resignation about the new
structures of power. The events of the last thirty years have been so
destructive and penetrating to the fabric of society in Zimbabwe, that the tales verge on
reportage of a litany of horrors. No, one can’t be entertained by this reading
matter. One can only read and learn, and try to understand what it is that our
northern neighbours are enduring in varying degrees from Beit Bridge to the
Bight of Benin and beyond and the centuries of exploitation, dispossession and
oppression have not come to an end – neither have they been banished south of
the border.
So I am left still searching for tales of
our continent. Tales that span the centuries and weave the foibles of human
nature, our emotions and interactions into the multifarious landscapes and
societies of Africa, but which are interpreted to make them palatable to
readers from different cultural backgrounds – mine included. Instead of seeking
entertainment to pass some idle hours among the writers of the last five or six
decades, I’d rather go back a little further and console myself with Herman
Charles Bosman; the ‘takhaar’ tales as related through the words of Oom Schalk
Lourens. Although the era, the people,the culture and the social environment
described is not one that I am over-familiar with, I can enjoy the stories and
appreciate the gentle ironies and wit – and here and there a masterful end to a
cleverly-spun twist in the tail.
