Jane Rosenthal
If giving books as presents is a matter of principle to you, then prepare to part with a fair bit of money this Christmas. But console yourself that relatively speaking at least you get value for your money with a book. If you consider that a ball of common string costs R7,50 and a movie ticket about R18, from R40 to much more is worth it for some of the wonderful books that have been published this year. After all, how long is a piece of string and how ephemeral is one viewing of a
In the supremely wonderful category is The Life and Work of Thomas Baines by Marion Arnold and Jane Carruthers (R250 from Fernwood Press). It is richly illustrated with excellent reproductions of Baines’ work, allowing a better examination of the paintings that one usually gets.
Arnold and Carruthers are distinguished academics in the field of art history and environmental history and seek to do more that romanticise Baines, the artist-traveller. This book not only examines Baines, but also the existing literature on him in a readable and engaging fashion. They say early on that “Because history is intrinsically a continuous process of reinterpretation, each age has distinct concerns and priorities, and asks different questions of the past.”
While you have your brain in gear you might like to tackle The Road Ahead by Bill Gates (Viking). One information technology fundi I know commented: “Bill Gates gets on my bloody nerves. He thinks that because he’s one of the richest men in the world he can start pontificating about the future …” And more in the same vein (he’d had a bad day).
But if you’re a technophobe like me and beginning to feel that capitulation is inevitable, this book provides a clearly written and rather infectiously enthusiastic introduction to the history of computers, and goes on to explain how the information revolution is challenging our world. I suspect this book will rearrange the inside of your head permanently, but make the future a little less intimidating. Useful, if not absolutely
>From the prosaic to the sublime: Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts by Milan Kundera (R100 from Faber) is a book to give to any lover of fairly serious novels. Which should not imply worthy or dull, since he begins with an examination of humour and moral judgment in Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses and the work of Rabelais.
Kundera considers the writing of novels to be “Europe’s art par excellence” and elaborates on Octavio Paz’s statement that “Humour is the great invention of the modern spirit” — an invention which Kundera maintains is “bound up with the birth of the novel”.
He avoids the woolly jungles of obscure literary theory; for all his erudition he is accessible, succinct and fiery in his assertions about the profound importance, as he sees it, of artists and their rights to control their work.
Speaking of novels, J M Coetzee’s The Master of Petersburg, is now available in paperback (Minerva, R40,95). As ever Coetzee’s prose is near to poetry, pared down to perfection. It is strangely compelling reading. Set in St Petersburg in 1869 and developed around an incident in the life of Dostoyevsky, it deals with love, death, grief. Coetzee, it seems, can do anything; if you didn’t know it was he writing, you’d swear this was some nineteenth century Russian. Mesmerising and
On a lighter note is Barrie Hough’s collection of pieces written for Rapport, “Skimmelstreke”. Reflective and anecdotal, they seem to be fragments of autobiography. I enjoyed the piece on ANC-koeksusters which he ate in the home of an exiled communist in London in 1885. Likewise the coffee drinking in Melville on a lonely Sunday morning in the company of a rather scruffy angel under the noses of the designer people who want their
Finally, Ravan Press have issued a second edition of Yvonne Burgess’ bitter-sweet comedy novel, Say a Little Mantra For Me (R30,95). It was originally published in 1979, the story of three women cooped up in a tiny flat together: Girlie, her mother, Iris, and Gran. They narrate int urns the events surrounding Girlie’s unplanned pregnancy: few have ever caught so exactly the way families do speak to and about each other. The mantra they need could be “oherewetti, oherewetti” which means “go on, go on” for this novel, with all its comic pathos, shows women keeping on keeping on. It is quite a celebration.