I was required to read Long Walk to Freedom for a
class in school. I had heard from students who were previously required
to read the book that it was too long, and very bad. I did not go into
this book with high expectations, which made Long Walk to Freedom a
pleasant surprise.
Written by Nelson Mandela over the course of several
years, beginning with a first draft written in prison (which was lost
to authorities), the book covers each stage of Nelson's life. Beginning
with his early childhood in an African tribe, through his education
and career as one of the first black lawyers of Africa, and eventually
his decision to join the famed political party, the African National
Congress, where Nelson began his struggle for equal rights for his people.
From there Nelson goes on to describe his life fighting for the freedom
of the native people of Africa. Harassed and `banned' by the authorities
for his actions, Mr. Mandela's struggle is not an easy one. He would
be put on trial three separate times for crimes stemming from his political
views, his third trial landing him a life sentence. But with Nelson's
natural resiliency in bad situations, and nations all over the world
calling for his release, he did not fear spending the rest of his life
in prison. His years spent in prison would be long and hard, but he
knew upon his release that the long walk to freedom would near an end.
The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela is written well,
and its length is not of issue, especially when taking into account
how expansive the story of his life really is. The pacing of the story
is actually very well done, years are written away in a few pages without
anything seeming to be missed. In my opinion, even if this book had
the worst writing of any novel, it would still be worth reading; its
story holds so much importance and teaches so much about so many aspects
of life, that it would lose nothing.
Long Walk to Freedom leaves one feeling refreshed;
if the racist policies of the government of an entire nation can be
taken down by a group of common citizens, perhaps there is hope for
reform in any nation that is going through a period of strife.
Heart wrenching scenes and some that make your veins
boil!
It is a book that brings back the disharmony and
racialistic view of the Whites aginst the Coloureds. And in this point
of view we see the struggle of a Coloured mother protecting the safety
and haven of her White child like a tigeress over her cub. This is a
book about romance, about the individual hearts and philosophies; it
is also about greed and chauvinism, yet most importantly Fiela's Child
is centered and wrapped in but one word - love. The love of Benjamin
over Fiela and Nina, Elias' love over money, the love of Nina towards
nature and many more. Those who are sentimentalists and with a touch
of feminism in them, you will experience a world so real and yet with
such illuminated beauty.
In J.M Coetzee's brilliant novel, "Disgrace"
David Lurie is a professor of communications at a Cape Town University.
David is 52, and divorced (twice). He's never had a problem finding
women, but now, rather suddenly, he discovers that women aren't quite
so ready to fall into his lap: "without warning his powers fled."
David has turned to the services of a prostitute, and this is a very
satisfactory arrangement. His once-a-week meetings are defined very
clearly, and he is free from any emotional responsibility while able
to create whatever fantasies he pleases. But when this convenient arrangement
comes to an end, David rather abruptly initiates a liaison with a young
female student.
David is fired after a sexual harassment complaint.
He decides to write a long-planned book on Byron, so he travels into
the country to see his only daughter, Lucy. Lucy maintains a small holding
where she boards dogs and sells produce. David rather begrudgingly begins
volunteering at the local animal refuge. It's a simple life--one that
Lucy is apparently attached to, but after a hideously violent event
occurs, David finds himself re-evaluating his life, and in particular,
his relationships with women.
Coetzee presents two Africas--there is the city of
Cape Town--a place that has its own rules of society. And it's a society
full of upstanding people who all agree that David no longer belongs
amongst them. The second Africa exists in the country, and it's a totally
different world. The law has no place here, and the area is returning
to tribalism. Lucy's role in this new South Africa is troubling, and
David struggles against the inevitable encroachment of tribalism. David
must come to terms with his role as a father, and also that role's limitations.
Both father and daughter are equally stubborn about the moral stands
they chose to take. In spite of the fact that David believes "his
temperament is not going to change," he learns some lessons about
giving and accepting love--something he's avoided his entire life.
"Disgrace" is beautifully written. My impression
of the novel prior to reading it was that the story centered on a professor
who is fired after having a relationship with a student. But that is
just the starting point of this eloquent, rich novel. "Disgrace"
is about understanding your past before you can really make sense of
who you are. The novel is at once disturbing and riveting, and I recommend
it highly--displacedhuman
Even without the K after the Michael, it would be
difficult to read this book without thinking about Kafka. Michael K
is a simple gardner from a class and a situation where to be simple
is not to be protected, but to be unnecessary and even guilty. Guilty
of what? Guilty of being expendable, of being bewildered, of being unable
to cope or understand the different categories of change around him.
Coetzee has created a character who has been judged and found wanting
long before he understands that this is even a possibility.
What is interesting about Michael and what is also
one of the organising aspects of the book is that Michael does not stay
in passive opposition to his situation but gradually moves to a kind
of active opposition-- at least as active as such a limited character
with limited power is capable of carrying out. A lot of the criticism
of this book talks about post-colonial literature and racial relations
and all of those things are certainly backdrop to the story, but it
is mostly about power imbalance and the effect of power imbalance on
the people least equipped to do anything except express confusion. Michael
K is a disenfranchised everyman, someone who is only as useful as society
is kind.
Like Disgrace, this works lyrically on many levels
at once, January 28, 2001
After finishing Coetzee's Booker-prize winning Disgrace,
I found the Age of Iron. This is a moving internal first-person narrative
of a cancer victim's final days, filled with graceful and disturbing
reflections on a life lived and a death to come. Into the narrative
come bursting the untidy eruptions of South Africa in the 1980's--township
riots, the anger of blacks finally boiling to the surface, dead children
martyred by the state, and homeless alcoholics--driving the tale far
beyond a simple exegesis on life and death.
Once again, I discovered a disquieting novel written
from within the cramped point of view of a protagonist who knows better
but cannot seem to gain the courage or momentum to change how she or
he relates to the world. And, once again, I was bowled over by the quiet
and simple prose that hurtled the narrative to the end.
Coetzee's protagonists are deeply flawed--the attraction
of the novel is to see if they find a state of grace or even understanding
by the end. They can see the corruption in the world around them, can
dispassionately view their own weaknesses as well. But they lack the
clarity, or perhaps the courage, to act on what they see and know. Will
they learn to act? That is the mystery that drives us to read with them.
The narrator, an old, dying woman, a former college
professor, becomes one of the few white civilians to experience the
Township riots. She sees black teenagers she has known since childhood
shot and killed--even one who is murdered in her own home. Yet she does
nothing except write a long letter to her daughter (it is sometimes
so longwinded that you wish she would move on already!). She contemplates
self-immolation as a protest, but this goes nowhere.
And, yet, she will not take the road of her daughter,
who fled the horror of South Africa for a middle class life in the United
States. It is as if her mere outraged presence is enough to subtly influence
the white regime to be humane. In this, she is like so many other white
South Africans of the 1980's (and probably like so many white Americans
of the 1950's and Israeli's of the 1990's). She finds, brutally, horrifically,
that her outrage has no influence. Even when she confronts the police/military
in her own home, after they have murdered a teen in her backyard, they
do not feign innocence to her--they understand her outrage but could
care less.
Like Disgrace, this is a lyrical novel that works
on so many levels at once. It would be much less interesting if solely
written about a dying woman; so much more polemic if written solely
about the injustice of South Africa.
Like the unseen daughter who may get the letter (if
the very real Angel of Death in the novel delivers it), we can only
read in mute anger and horror at the neutered conscience of white South
Africa, frozen in its middle class lifestyle, afraid to look at the
past or to contemplate the future, hoping it is all a bad dream and
will all go away in the light of day. And, of course, it did not, could
not. And, also of course, the Angel of Death will always win out, in
the end, as mute and implacable as the machine of the state.
Sometimes it's nice to read a small book, a quick
150-300 page diversion from the real world. At other times, however,
it's nice to read a book with some real "meat" to it. Few
big name writers were more adept at producing these meaty books than
James Michener, and in the Covenant, he presents one of his biggest,
a 1200+ page epic about South Africa.
As usual, Michener is not as interested in adventure
or characters as he is with relating the history of a particular region.
This is his formula: to cover a region from prehistoric times to the
present, watching it slowly get settled and eventually civilized, though
this civilization is often with a great price. This is not to say that
he doesn't write a compelling story: he does, but he does not use heroes
or villains to populate his world.
This is a good book, but a reader new to Michener
should learn to try and not get too attached to specific characters,
as Michener treats them rather unsentimentally, and they often die in
undramatic fashion. Also, although there are some unpleasant people,
Michener does not make them truly evil; he usually can show that these
characters believe they have justifiable reasons for their actions.
Writing as objectively as possible in a novel, he judges no one but
rather allows the reader to make the judgements.
Many will be put off by the size of this book, but
this is actually a reasonably fast read. In the end, the reader will
feel both entertained and educated, and that is perhaps the best that
can be asked of from a novel.
Travel account, picaresque or novel of manners?,
June 10, 2001
Revolving around the expeditions of Mungo Park, T.
Coraghessan Boyle's novel Water Music is not easy to categorize; it
is a travel account, picaresque and novel of manners rolled into one.
In 1795 the Scotsman Mungo Park (1771-1806) went
to Africa to explore the Niger, a river no European had ever seen. Upon
arriving in present-day Gambia, he went 200 miles up the Gambia River
to the trading station at Pisania and then traveled east into unexplored
territory. In 1796 he reached the Niger River at the town of Segu and
traveled 80 miles downstream before his supplies were exhausted and
he had to turn back. He returned to Africa in 1805, intending to explore
the Niger from Segu to its mouth. His expedition was attacked at Bussa,
and Park was drowned. Dedicating the book to the (fictive) Raconteurs'
Club, master storyteller T.C. Boyle has concocted an ingenious narrative.
At first he spins numerous strands, weaving them into an intricate exotic
literary tapestry, as the tale progresses. In fact, the 104 chapters
can be read as short stories in their own right. Their titles are sometimes
alluding to literary masterpieces by such figures as Ivan Turgeniev,
Joseph Conrad and Langston Hughes.
Boyle's story starts in the year 1795. Mungo Park
is held hostage by Ali Ibn Fatoudi, the Emir of Ludamar, one of the
inland Muslim principalities in what is now the Sahel. A protégé
Joseph Banks, erstwhile companion of Captain Cook on his circumnavigation
of the globe and now President of the Royal Society and Director of
the African Association for Promoting Exploration, Park, a former surgeon
on an East India merchantman, has been selected to lead the first expedition
in search of the river Niger.
Mungo's guide and interpreter is the intriguing Johnson
a.k.a. Katunga Oyo. The early biography of this Madingo is reminiscent
of the adventures of a character from Maryse Conde. Kidnapped and sold
into slavery Katunga Oyo is shipped to a plantation in England's new
world colony of South Carolina. After a visit to his overseas possessions
the landowner takes him to London. Here Johnson, as he is now called,
learns to read and write, and develops a passion for literature, becoming
a "true-blue African homme des lettres". After killing a man
in a duel, Johnson ends up back in Africa. Here he "melted into
the black bank of the jungle". Johnson's idiom is full of - often
humorous - anachronisms. He is calling the local cuisine "soul
food" and his old plantation songs "the blues". He is
capable of self-mockery: "Don't look at me, brother. I'm an animist."
Sometimes he sounds like a 18th century Muddy Waters. Oscillating between
his African heritage and newly acquired European culture, he manages
to graft the latter upon his African roots. Johnson becomes a shaman
of sorts: At the behest of his former master, who happens to be a member
of Sir Joseph's Association, Johnson agrees to join Mungo Park's 1795
expedition. His price: the complete works of William Shakespeare.
Ned Rise, a pauper from the London underworld, son
of an alcoholic hag, `not Twist, not Copperfield, not Fagin himself
had a childhood to compare to Ned Rise's'. Through a twist of fate,
this impresario of live sex shows avant la lettre, corpse digger and
convicted murderer ends up at Fort Goree, just off the Coast of Senegal.
Here, at this `gateway to the Niger and bastion of rot' he is drafted
into the Royal African Corps and selected to accompany Park on his fateful
second expedition into the African interior. Because of his sublime
survival instinct he is very able to tune in with his environment Consequently,
Ned Rise appears to be better suited to establish a rapport with the
natives than Africa-veteran Park.
Water Music is more than a travel account. Although
it is clear that Boyle has researched his subject meticulously, he is
not interested in a mere historically correct chronicle of events as
has explained in his introduction.
But Boyle does address the issue of the objective
of travel-writing seriously. In this respect, it is interesting to see
how Mungo Park's own view on his mission evolves in the course of his
first journey; the cool observer of the flora and fauna in Sumatra is
giving way to the romantic. Held at the court of Ibn Fatoudi Park resolves
to make his findings known to the world.ý
After an audience with Mansong, ruler of Bambarra,
there is a amazing twist. Reading a page from Park's notebook, Johnson
notices that the explorer's recording of the meeting is not only inaccurate,
but embellishing it beyond recognition. Johnson reproaches Park for
this.
It seems as if the tables have turned; the African
- `the object of study' - demanding accuracy, wanting it `guts and all'.
But who is speaking here, and what is his motivation? Is it the intellectual
Johnson defending the great cause of science? Or is it the up-rooted
Mandingo Katunga Oyo, who wants Africa depicted in all its bizarre horror,
motivated by self-hate? Why, on the other hand, does the scholar-explorer
Mungo Park want to embellish and cover up? Does he intend to create
an image of the `noble savage'? (After all, this is the age of Jean-Jeacques
Rousseau). It leaves the reader with questions: how are travel accounts
to be read and interpreted? Can a travel-writer's intentions be discerned?
And can his account be trusted?
The author addresses here an important issue because
it goes to the core of travel-writing. Is it possible at all to represent
the reality of other cultures? It also raises questions concerning the
intertwining of fact and fiction; the imaging of cultures. Water Music
is multi-layered; although not an explicit critique of imperialism and
although the author does not allow himself to be restrained by ideological
shackles, there are implied, ironic observations.
Neither does Boyle ignore the culture clash that
is occurring within Africa itself between the Muslims, often North-Africans
of Arab descent, and the indigenous population of western and equatorial
Africa, which is largely animist. The latter are but despicable infidels
to the `Moors', who, usually having the political upper hand, prosecute
them relentlessly, retaining or selling them as slaves. It is, incidentally,
this conflict which forms a central theme in Condé's earlier
mentioned novel Segou. It would be interesting to discover whether Condé
has read, and was influenced by, Water Music.
But Boyle's main preoccupation is with Mungo Park,
the man. In an interview he has explained that, when ýýdoing
research for his thesis on 19th century English literature, he came
upon Mungo Park in a book by Pre-Rafaelite poet John Ruskin (1819-1900).
Further investigation learned that Ruskin's terrific hero appeared to
be rather common. What fascinated Boyle was how this seemingly ordinary
man came to chase a dream. To abandoned his family and embark on a crazy
adventure only to die miserably in the jungle. During the second expedition,
He lets Ned Rise also muse upon Mungo Park's insane, relentless push
into the interior.
