MeyerBros

I just finished Athol Fugard’s one and only novel - recently recovered from his archives and edited for publication despite his claims that it wasn’t worthwhile. Very good except for the ‘now a major motion picture’ cover art with a heavily airbrushed clean/faux-gritty photo of a South African youth. I hope the movie isn’t in that style (I hate the super-clean look that tries to be gritty but has all the blemishes and specs removed. Disgusting. Like Crash - but now I’m way off topic). The book is very good and you should read it.

Fugard talks about it in his notes as being a novel ‘a la Beckett’, and I see what he means, but in reality it is pure Fugard. I then realized why I connect so well with all of Fugard’s work. We both think of ourselves as writing ‘a la Beckett’, but when it comes down to it neither of us can muster the grim absurdist nihilism that defines Beckett’s writing. We borrow the sentence structures and that Camus-like detachment and harsh situations with nihilistic characters, but then we can’t quite follow through. Our characters find some sort of redemption before we jump back into Beckett mode and either kill them off or insinuate that every day will be just as bad. It’s Pollyanna absurdism - life is absurd but still entirely worth the effort if you can find love.

Tsotsi is also classic Fugard in terms of the beautiful language - mixing various SA dialects and languages. It is extremely personal and locally rooted - making no claims to political relevance, while letting political realities play huge relevance to the world. I love his refusal to write either agit-prop or anti-political ‘psychological realism’.

Next up: Love by Toni Morrison.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 18th, 2006 at 11:43 am by eric and is filed under books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.