All too often, the cult of personality dammed up what should have been a decade of invigoratingly free-flowing narratives about South Africa’s “big men”, writes the Mail & Guardian’s Darryl Accone – but SA Lit’s biography and memoir industry did produce a few gems over the last ten years. Accone, who slates the big books by Mark Gevisser, John Allen and others, names Chris van Wyk’s Shirley, Goodness and Mercy as his top SA-history-writ-personal read of the noughties:
Conventional wisdom has it that South Africa is blessed with stories. In the last years of apartheid, and the country’s first half-decade of freedom, “Tell our stories” was the cry, mantra and clarion call.
Since the turn of the century, politicians, biographers, ghostwriters and authors have been doing just that.
Autobiography, biography, memoir, family history, life-story-as-told-to, celebrity self-justification and corporate narcissistic rationalisation: life-writing is alive, and sometimes well, in South Africa.
Politicians, sportsmen and sportswomen, and so-called captains of industry have waded in, telling not all but rather just barely enough. When biographer replaces autobiographer, the resultant life remains impressionistic.
Book details
Please register or log in to comment
» View comments as a forum thread and add tags in BOOK Chat
December 30th, 2009 @13:43 #
Well said and a great choice by Darryl Accone. Shirley, Goodness and Mercy was clearly written from the heart with no other motive than telling that South African story.
I wonder what Accone will make of Home Away (Zebra, April 2010 - punt punt, no Helen this is not spam). I think he'll like it. It's full of honest tales, true and made up, and no hats are tipped or nods nodded.
December 30th, 2009 @15:25 #
I adored Shirley, Goodness and Mercy -- one of the best bios of the noughties. However, there's a gaping omission in Darryl's list of good bios -- In Our Lifetime, the story of Walter and Albertina Sisulu. One UK critic considered it a hagiography (of Walter, at least -- he conceded that the portrayal of Albertina was well-rounded and fascinating), but everyone who ever knew or met Walter pointed out that he was indeed as lovable as portrayed. This broke all sorts of barriers in the bio genre, not least because of its insistence that the personal was political and that the domestic and intimate interactions of this remarkable couple were worth scrutiny. Darryl doesn't mention Pippa Green's bio of Trev either, or Pregs Govender's memoir, unusual for breaking the silence with horrifying details of what the Shaik brothers (thinly disguised) apparently put her through during the 80s. Or maybe Darryl did include these, and they were cut by a sub.
December 30th, 2009 @17:00 #
Maybe Accone's point is that we'd have far more interesting biographies if we didn't focus on Names, and more on people. Dig up a few enlightening and illuminating stories of people you haven't heard of but who you won't forget and who illustrate an age. Sort of like The Surgeon of Crowthorne or E=mc2. Do some mining instead of compiling tedious newsclips and everyone-who-knew-him anecdotes.