Alan Finlay
TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS by Phil Crow (Wordsure, R20); THE END OF THE LINE by Craig Lock (Minerva, R49,99); AFTER THE ECLIPSE by Tom Rymour (Discobolus Readware, R70)
SET in the English department of a certain Rondebosch University, Twilight of the Idols is an uneven text of sometimes accomplished ideas but, on the whole, bad writing. When Phil Crow gets descriptive, he’s at his worst, but there is some power in the pivotal scene of a young up-and-coming academic’s impassioned parting lecture to academe:”What quality of mental, emotional, and moral life are we smothering in our students in the name of English?”
The cover of Craig Lock’sThe End of the Line features South Africa’s old flag, looking like it has been coloured in with crayon and koki. Chapter six’s opening paragraph gives a sense of Lock’s style: “I was stunned – totally numb with shock … The impact then hit me like a thunderbolt out of the blue … Was a life so insignificant? What drove him to do this desperate act? … The thoughts raced through my head like wildfire.”
A publishing venture we’ve been threatened with for a while is the novel on computer diskette. Tom Rymour’s After the Eclipse is such a novel. You could print it out yourself, or scroll through its 352 pages. Either option would seen unduly tedious.
As for the tale itself, it is hyped in this way: “Sex, sorcery and starvation: is this Africa’s future after the eclipse?” and we are warned: “This astonishing tale is far more bizarre than anything you could imagine.”
Bizarre it is, but After the Eclipse is not very readable, and the publishers have a long way to go yet to pull off such a venture.