Entertainment

No free book brunches and entertainment's not on everybody's literary menu

December 13, 2009 Edition 1

Maureen Isaacson

Petina Gappah, from Zimbabwe and living in Switzerland, said she did not want to be called an "African writer" when she won the Guardian First Book Prize for her short story collection, An Elegy from Easterly.

She said Dambudza Marechera, also Zimbabwean, had said much the same thing when he won the Guardian fiction award for The House of Hunger in 1979.

In an interview with a Danish journalist in the Guardian five years ago, Philip Roth said he did not want to be called a Jewish-American author.

He said:".You can't talk about this without walking straight out into horrible cliches that say nothing about human beings. Identity labels have nothing to do with how anyone actually experiences life."

Roth has also spoken about the difference between writers who provide entertainment, and those who have genius, markedly distinguishing between, say, James Patterson and Charles Dickens.

Since there is no such thing as a free Jennifer Crwys-Williams end-of-year book brunch, I will submit that this year's event was the most entertaining I have attended. (It was my second.)

This is not because Dickens was not present, but because the authors interviewed by Crwys-Williams and Radio Highveld personality Sam Cowen were on top form.

Chris van Wyk said that his abridged children's version of Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom (translated into all official languages) contained the essentials, and Mandela's version the extraneous matter. Joanne Brodie talked about sado-masochism in "a dungeon", and her subsequent recovery from a variety of addictions. Emma Chen spoke of a Taiwanese childhood filled with food and an absence of touch. Madam and Eve were horrible to Rian Malan for having arrived late. Dion Chang spoke of the new modalities of communication, a feminine trend.

Joost van der Westhuizen announced that his book, ghost written by David Gemmel, had possibly saved the life of a potential suicide - "It had planted a seed". His wife, was a terrific person, he himself was now a better person. I thought, who cares?

Herta Muller's Nobel Literature lecture, "Every word knows something of a vicious circle" by no means fits the entertainment bill but it's fascinating.

She described the acute solitude and loss of dignity experienced under dictatorship. She described, the way "her grandparents' son", Matz, had broken his parents' hearts by becoming a Nazi.

His death in war left his mother with a double image - her son the Nazi; her son, the dead soldier. Muller's own life story is bound by symbols - the handkerchief her mother reminded her to take out with her; the handkerchief with which her father died; the trumpet, symbolising his complicity with fascism, that Muller refused to blow.

"Can we say that it is precisely the smallest objects - be they trumpets, accordions, or handkerchiefs - which connect the most disparate things in life?"

The objects are in orbit, she says. Their deviations reveal a pattern of repetition - a vicious circle - what in German is known as a devil's circle.

"We can believe this, but not say it. Still, what can't be said can be written. Because writing is a silent act, a labour from head to hand."