South Africa must have the biggest mall culture in the world. I discovered this on arrival. If you want to check out what the different classes and cultures of South Africa feel like, go hang out in the mall. Any mall. (Well, any northern suburbs mall. The malls in Soweto and the southern suburbs are a bit different, of course.)
Everything happens in the mall. Not so long ago I had two different experiences in two different northern suburbs malls on two different days, involving two very different individuals from two different countries who find themselves locked in a typical South African rough-and-tumble as we speak.
One is Nobel laureate and novelist Nadine Gordimer. I was coming out of Rosebank Mall one day when I saw Nadine walking briskly in, contained, casually elegant, tiny but not frail. Her eyes were almost cast to the ground, as if she were meditating on the morning’s writing that was behind her, and where she would be taking it to the next day.
I was inclined to cross over and greet her, but something about her self-containedness (if there is such a word — well, there is now) made me hold back and watch her disappear into the crowds. No one recognised her. And she, in turn, was not asking to be recognised. She was just herself, out shopping in a mall, which is where shopping happens.
Some weeks later I was wandering around a bookshop in Killarney Mall. I happened to glance up and saw Ronald Suresh Roberts sitting in a highly visible corner with a laptop computer on his knee, obviously working on something very important — probably his much-talked about authorised biography of Nadine. His eyes appeared to be glued to the screen as he tapped at the keyboard, but he was clearly peeking out of the corner of his eye all the time to see who was noticing him. It was one of those poses you know are supposed to read: “Look at me: I’m a Writer (with a capital F). I am busy working on something far more interesting than any of you assholes will ever get close to. What’s more, I do my writing in a bookshop, so that it can hit the shelves as soon as I have typed the final sentence.”
Is Ronald Suresh Roberts (it seems you have to use his full name at all times because it is so long and important — unlike Nadine who is just “Nadine”) going to sue me for this? I am merely following his example and spilling the beans regardless of the feelings of the person in question. But let’s get to that later.
Roberts (oops, I slipped into the familiar mode) has the pouting look of a minor tropical gangster. I never knew what Nadine saw in him anyway.
I came across him in the front room of her house when I was visiting her one day, and wanted to shout out a warning to her: “Watch out! This guy has ‘sticky’ written all over him!” But I reined myself in by sheer force of will. Things must take their course.
And now, of course, they have.
Gordimer has withdrawn Roberts’s (is it “Roberts” or “Suresh Roberts”? And if the latter, where the hell is the hyphen?) licence to call his biography the “authorised” biography. Some of the stuff that stuck to his fingers as he wheedled his way through her diaries and papers has been inaccurately transposed, or turned into damned lies, to say the least, according to her.
Worse than that, Suresh Roberts has, according to one source, introduced “into what was intended to be serious literary work bits of unworthy gossip”.
Gordimer’s American publishers have added that, quite apart from her own objections to the way information supplied by her had been used, they had their own “independent objections to the manuscript … mainly to do with the meandering quality of the narrative and the author’s gratuitous insertion of himself into it.”
One is not in the least bit surprised to hear about the gratuitous self-insertion, even without having read the manuscript. But, instead of answering these allegations with solid proof of the worthiness of his work, Suresh Roberts responded by accusing Gordimer of trying to censor his work. He lumped her together with others who had leapt to her defence, and accused them all of racism: “Haven’t we had enough of New York editors scolding the natives to be rational?” he asked the Sunday Times. “Is Gordimer part of that?”
Well, now, here’s a thing. The man comes over from Trinidad, proceeds to insinuate himself with oleaginous charm into the heart of her intimate and public life and memoirs, and then accuses her of being a racist when she tells him the book he so studiously worked on in Killarney Mall is not up to scratch.
So why did he bother in the first place?
The decent thing, one would have thought, would have been to listen to the objections of the person whose biography you had been working on for the past decade or so, discuss them with frankness and openness, and then see where compromises could be reached — or not, as the case may be.
That would have been the way, at least, if he had been operating on a basis of respect for and trust in his subject. And one would have imagined that the only reason for wishing to embark on so daunting a task as a biography of a living author was precisely that respect for both the individual and her work.
The snarling spat that ensued seems to throw the entire original premise out of the window. You don’t come into someone’s house (as he literally did), drink their tea and then tell them they’re a damn racist fool when they point out that you’ve got some of your facts wrong. Ubuntu doesn’t work like that.
Nadine must be terribly hurt. But I’m sure she’s better off with the ungrateful Ronald Suresh Roberts off her back.
I understand Ron has now been commissioned to do the authorised biography of President Thabo Mbeki. It remains to be seen how he will insert himself into Thabo’s childhood in the Transkei.