Matthew Krouse Down the tube
Not since the National Book Development’s 1997 programme, Rise Up and Read, has there been any television time given to matters of literature.
It’s an area inadequately covered by overseas talk show divas, who present a diet of quack writers, promoting whatever quick-fix solution they’re offering the desperate and needy. We’re so behind the world that, late in July, Gayle King hosted a home economist whose debut book dealt with last-minute Christmas gifts women can give to uninvited guests.
Between the Lines, however, is a newish book programme on e.tv at 2pm on Saturdays, which is sticking other magazine programmes in the mud. It’s pacey, intelligent and relevant without being patronising. But it’s as oriented to suburbanites as a gardening programme.
Like Rise Up and Read, the programme’s links are chattily conducted from between the staid shelves of Johannesburg’s bookshops. Rise Up, however, at times ventured to places popular with a broader spectrum of youths, like Newtown’s Cultural Precinct and township libraries.
Some attempt was made to delve into alternative culture in the first episode when the programme looked at Bitterkomix, the Afrikaans comic producer who recently brought out a compilation in English translation.
Generally though, Between the Lines targets book people of the moneyed mainstream. It’s not about development, rather it identifies the book as an extramural, luxury item of the comfortable few.
Among other subjects, for example, the second episode dealt with coffee-table books – and we know their prices start at about R300 these days.
The third took viewers off to a book club of a thirtysomething clique who showed a youthful amusement at the old-fashioned nature of their hobby. As one member put it, the book club has been regarded mostly as, “a secret organisation run by women for women”.
While the nouveau book club may not be run like a Masonic lodge, it appears no less elitist that those of the past.
The programme’s regular items – the top 10 bestsellers and book reviews – are no less interesting than its features. But one gets the feeling that the abundance of uppity hot-potato-mouthed whiteys, reviewing their favorite bestselling authors, is going to become a little tiresome. Hopefully directors Tara Cleary and Wessel van Huyssteen will get in a broader range of people to do reviews, such as kwaito stars, or even soap opera stars.
But make no mistake, there is still an abundance of interesting people on Between the Lines, from township poet Lesego Rampolokeng to artist Willem Boshoff. The programme’s presenters, Rebecca Waddell and Zaa Nkweta, are so terribly natty, it’s hard to believe they’re only talking books.
Next week expect features on the Zimbabwe Book Fair, community newspapers from all walks of life and literature in schools.