From: hornpete@uctvax.uct.ac.za (Peter Horn)
Newsgroups: alt.prose
Subject: Short Story: Practical Criticism
Date: 27 Aug 92 12:32:21 +0200
Organization: University of Cape Town

Practical Criticism
-------------------


The problem with Elise was her critic. He just could not manage
to write her into fame. His name was Charles, and that maybe was
related to his inablity to write in such a way as to make people
want to buy her books. His hyperboles of praise were soaked with
defeat. There are reviews like that. However good the book: it
is doomed by the praise of reviewers like Charles.

She lived in an old flat near the city with a bed, a two-plate
stove, a desk and a typewriter. The rooms of the flat were
smaller than the rooms in other flats. That does of course
narrow down the choices of a writer when she sits at her desk
and attempts to write a story or a poem, because you need some
room in which to move your elbows when you want to write down
certain words which are not usually used in flats like that. But
on the other hand she had developed a mastery over the words
which were possible within the confines of her flat and she had
even made the mastery over the limitations of her flat a special
mark of her style which made it unlike the style of everyone
else writing in Cape Town at the time.

Charles was not young any longer. He was chubby and rosy-cheeked
with a few gray strains in his hair, which receded from his
forehead, giving him the air of an intellectual, capable of deep
thought. At the same time he gave an impression of prim
rotundity. It was well-known in literary circles that Charles
sometimes slept with the object of his criticism, what was less
well known was that he always wore a white surgeon's mask when
he entered her bedroom in the nude, and intoned a long lament
which always ended in the words: You are confusing me with
somebody else. Despite his claims about his far-reaching pen,
his performance in bed was on the whole just adequate. Which
explains that these get-togethers did not take place more often.
The small size of the flat may have been an additional factor
there. It was not conducive to wild orgies.

It is certain, however, that the erotic descriptions in her
novels, poems and short-stories were unrelated to reality. Not
even the most credulous believed that Charles in any way
resembled the macho heroes of her fictional love life. In her
circles it was also generally accepted that the poet needs to
endure deprivation in order to become creative, and the very
lack of real stimulation may have induced the rich colourations
of her description. But, as I said before, to no avail, as very
few people have shown any willingness to buy her new books which
her indulgent publisher printed once a year as regular as
clockwork. Maybe she should have looked for another lover and
critic. On the other hand there were very few critics around who
owned a silver BMW. If, like Elise, you do not own a car, and
cannot drive one, that is a consideration.

Elise's mother was an obsessional neurotic who was treated in
Valkenberg, and who regularly sent Elise baby dresses to remind
her of her duty as a wife and mother. But Elise was not married
and had no intentions of becoming a mother. Since the age of
fifteen she had been well-versed in all the available implements
for contraception and was not averse to use them on the regular
but rare occasion where they were called for. Elise's mother
also loved cats and sent her postcards with cats in various
poses about once a week with admonitions to always water her
plants and to think of England. Once a month she admonished her
to remember her happy youth in the small house in Rondebosch,
and to provide her husband and her children with as much
happiness, as she, the mother, had given to her, Elise.

Elise collected all the cat postcards in a big shoebox. The most
recent one was pinned on the door to the toilet. Elise never
wrote to her mother, because she saw her childhood differently.
Her main problem at the moment, anyway, was her critic. She was
seriously considering of trading in her elderly model for a more
dashing younger critic with a Volksie. She hesitated, because
she was not sure whether she would be able to survive the
emotional and physical stress which goes with such an affair.
Young people tend to be very demanding. But she knew that her
fame needed to be established now or never.

As she scanned the local newspapers for reviews she came across
the acronym AF under a review written with great enthusiasm. It
was book which Charles had slated in another local newspaper a
week ago. As she read, she heard a voice which inspired her with
confidence. It was clear to her instantly that anybody who read
this review would buy the book. A week later she asked her local
bookseller whether that book did sell after the review. It did.
There were stacks of the novel in question in the bookshop and
the shop assistant confirmed that they were picked up at the
rate of one per hour. Which was unheard of in Cape Town.

Elise decided to track down the acronymous AF. The Cape Times
was reluctant to lift the secrecy. Elise left a note with the
editor for AF with the invitation to meet her for tea on the
waterfront. AF phoned and said she is interested. Her name is
Annemarie Farque. They meet at the waterfront and Elise is
convinced. Annemarie is convinced. They move into a flat in
Gardens, and start AE Creative Enterprises Inc. AE Creative
Enterprises Inc. is a success. Charles is retrenched.

Charles now writes slating reviews of Elise in the Weekly Mail.
He should have done this before, because there is a sudden spurt
of interest not only in the current novel of Elise with the
title Chains of Blood, but in her entire oeuvre. Her first
novel, Inside my uterus, first becomes a South African
bestseller, then wins the Forgotten Great Novels Price of the
Michigan Literary Society. Charles is booed by the literary
establishment as a destructive, arrogant and elitist, but is
able to buy himself a Mercedes, and acquires a new object for
his criticism: Malva van Straaten, whose first novel, Winter of
Disgust, has sunk without a trace. People say that the problem
with Malva van Straaten is her critic. But that is another
story. Except that she never showed the independence of mind to
look for another critic, even when Charles went to jail, and
thus never won the Forgotten Great Novels Price of the Michigan
Literary Society. Nor the Weltfriedenspreis of the Association
of German Booksellers nor the honorary doctorate of the State
University of Oklahama. Bad luck.

Elise in the meantime struggled with the size of the new flat in
Gardens. The rooms of the flat are larger than the rooms in
other flats. That does of course widen the choices of a writer
when she sits at the desk and attempts to write a story or a
poem, because you need some room in which to move your elbows
when you want to write down certain words which are only
possible in flats like that. But on the other hand she had
developed a mastery over the words which were possible within
the confines of her previous flat and she had even made the
mastery over the limitations of her old small flat a special
mark of her style which made it unlike the style of everyone
else writing in Cape Town at the time. She now had to acquire
mastery over her new vocabulary, and convince people that she
had created a new, equally unique style. 

When her next book, a collection of shortstories, Sharing my
rug, appeared, critics noted that she lived in a universe of
pessimism, but pessimism and cynicism were fashionable among
white readers at the time, who watched with horror the impending
possibility that the ANC would nationalise their swimming pools
and CD players. Yet the book did not even mention the fact that
her universe was populated by people other than white-skinned
ones. The short stories were concerned with her obsessive
attempt to insure language against the total indifference of the
universe. Her stories revolved round the debasement of language
as a means of certainty about the real world. The universe
seemed to her like an enormous simulacrum of a reality without
reality. That uncertainty incited her to ever new cascades of
words, overflowing pages and pages of paper. The pages of her
short stories covered the walls and the floors of her study. One
night she tore them all down, and was just about to burn them in
the fire place when Annemarie was able to save the book from
total destruction.

Sharing my rug was an instant success. AF's review was
enthusiastic. Charles gleefully pointed out that whereas she had
been incompetent before she was totally helpless in her new
collection of short stories. A week later she asked her local
bookseller whether her book did sell after Charles' and AF's
reviews. It did. There were stacks of the book in the bookshop,
the book had a special display in the shopwindow, and the shop
assistant confirmed that it was picked up at the rate of two per
hour. Which was unheard of in Cape Town. Of course it helped
that Charles had insinuated that she lived in a Lesbian
relationship with her critic, AF, and that the book gave
tittilating details of that affair. He indicated it in such a
manner that a libel case was unlikely to succeed. 

It is well-known in literary circles that AF sometimes sleeps
with the object of her criticism, what is less well known is
that they do nothing more than hold each other's hands and look
into each other's eyes while exploring each others astral souls.
It is certain, therefore, that the erotic descriptions in her
short-story are unrelated to reality. But people who read
Charles' revieRw are convinced. The book is a bit of a
disappointment, since only the title story deals explicitely
with a Lesbian affair.

Of course, Annemarie cannot live by writing reviews about her
object of criticism alone. She has to make a living, and the
flat in Gardens is more expensive than the flat she had lived in
before. She writes about the ozone hole and the plight of the
penguins, and about the skin cancer of sea elephants. She breaks
into the Sunday Times and finally gets a column on green affairs
in the Sunday Times Magazine. She now signs with her full name.
Annemarie now drives a BMW. Elise still cannot drive. She is
convinced that learning to drive would interfere with her
creative abilities. Besides, she has failed the driving test
eight times already. Which fact convinced her of her creative
abilities.

Elise's mother who had somehow heard about Elise's success sends
Elise baby dresses to remind her of her duty as a wife and
mother. But Elise has no intentions of becoming a mother. She is
still exploring her astral soul with Annemarie. Elise's mother
also sends her postcards with cats in various poses about once a
week with admonitions to remember her happy youth in the small
house in Rondebosch, and to provide her mother with as much
happiness, as she, the mother, had given to her, Elise. She
obviously needs money. Elise never writes to her mother, because
she sees her childhood differently, but she sends an occasional
ten rand note. She remembers how her father had beaten her up
every Saturday when he came home from the pub. Sometimes he also
beat up her mother. She does not believe that she had a happy
childhood. Secretely she grants her mother the right to have
different memories, even if these memories do not coincide with
the reality as she sees this reality. But she decidedly does not
want to enjoy a happy family life. 

While Annemarie is investigating the ozone hole and the skin
cancer of sea elephants in the antarctic, Elise enters into an
affair with Vincent, a young black student who had attended one
of her readings and book signing sessions. She had always been
against apartheid, and now felt it her moral duty to give a
signal as a writer and as a human being. Apartheid had been
declared officially dead by that time and Nelson Mandela had
been released from prison, but she believed there was still much
to be done to eradicate it in practice. She was heroically
prepared to contribute to that process. She also noticed that
Vincent was very good looking. The affair lasted for one week.
It was very turbulent, and provided Elise with the material for
her most daring novel, You have no colour. In essence it
recounts her disappointment with the fact that Vincent in no way
approached her dream of the native son: he was unable to
enlighten her about the initiation rites in which she was
interested as a writer and he had an underg and boring as
any other student of his age. He also was a very reborn
Christian, and very uncertain about his sexual preferences, if
any. Most of the time he read William Blake on whose work he
intended to write his M.A. While they lived together she could
get him to overcome his moral inhibitions only once. For the
rest of the week he slept in Annemarie's room with the key
turned in the lock.

The novel was hailed by AF as the greatest masterpiece of South
African fiction, worthy of the Nobel Price, and by Charles as
the most insincere piece of inept writing he had ever come
across. The book received the Weltfriedenspreis of the
Association of German Booksellers for its contribution to
overcoming race prejudice in the land of apartheid. The State
University of Oklahama awarded her an honorary doctorate in
recognition both of her literary talent and her daring
exploration of a theme of universal significance.

When she returned from the United States, Charles came for a
visit to the flat in the Gardens.  He congratulated her on her
prize and on the honorary doctorate. Elise was furious. How dare
you, she said. Malva van Straaten had in the meantime written
her second novel, The Black Hole,  and had set off on a holiday
in Europe financed by her father, who was a rich wine farmer
from the Paarl region. Charles had his monthly desire, and
indicated this desire to Elise. Elise was reluctant. Charles
persisted. The two of them landed in bed after a bit of a
struggle. Annemarie, when she found them there, declared the
intercourse to have been a rape. Elise testifies in court that
it was a rape. Annemarie testifies in court that it was a rape.
Charles is sentenced to six years imprisonment. 

Malva van Straaten returns from Europe and is inconsolable.
Because Charles went to bed with Elise. But mainly because
Charles is in prison. She is prepared to forgive him. But not
Elise. She starts a campaign of revenge in the Vrye Weekblad and
Die Burger. The campagne has little effect, since Elise's
readers do not read the Vrye Weekblad and Die Burger. Elise
completes her next novel: Male Madness. Everybody knows, of
course, who the rapist Walter is, whose sexist interior
monologue forms the main body of the novel. Dirty talking,
pathological selfesteem covering a total nonentity brabbles for
five hundred pages through a meaningless universe filled with
the most detailed description of the anatomy of human beings,
both male and female. Walter is  closet fascist. Walter is in
love with violence and aggression but can't get it up. Walter is
a male fascist bastard.  

The reader understands: This world is something which better
would not exist. Eating, devouring, farting, shitting, pissing,
crazy desires, kinky sexuality, juices proliferating, and bodies
gasping for breath, suffocating in saliva, sperm and urine.
Obscene. Salamander, snakes, spiders, bats, fishes, eels.
Walter's language like a black cloud which enveloped everything
in ultimate meaninglessness. There was no escape. One enormous
Sadean obscenity. He is confronted in the end by a young black
revolutionary with an AK47 in his hands. The defender of women's
right to their body in his shining blackness. The ideal native
son at last, even if fictional. Vincent rewritten. The novel
ends with the word "Bang!" 

Despite its topic and despite the fact that some women's groups
read the novel in therapy sessions, the novel is not a success.
Despite the fact that AF's review is enthusiastic and declares
the novel a masterpiece of feminist literature, the sales
figures are alarmingly low. Elise, by now accustomed to success,
has a nervous breakdown. She lies in her bed and sees images:
riderless horses, their maddened flanks and the saddle empty. It
takes nine months before the earth becomes steady enough for her
to leave her bed and attempt the first stumbling steps. She
remembered less. The psychologist was certain that her breakdown
was a late effect of her rape.

Charles is not allowed to read the novel. The prison librarian
finds is unsuitable for prison inmates. Bloody fucking
pornography, if you ask me, he said. So Charles could not write
a sneering review. The sneering review would have been censored
by the prison censor anyway. Had Charles not been sentenced to
six years in jail or had Malva van Straaten written for the
Argus or the Sunday Times instead of Die Vrye Weekblad and Die
Burger Elise might have won the Booker Prize. At least. Bad
luck. Putting your critic behind prison bars is not a good
tactic.

Elise's mother who had somehow heard about Elise's nervous
breakdown sent Elise baby dresses to remind her of her duty as a
wife and mother. Elise's mother also sends her postcards with
cats in various poses about once a week with admonitions to
remember her happy youth in the small house in Rondebosch. 

Sweet memories.

That was not the end of Elise's career as a writer. She
continues to write. Her next novel was a very avantgarde
experimental piece of prose about her nervous breakdown. Her
sales figures never rose to the heights of Sharing my rug or You
have no colour again. But she hopes that she will one day be
discovered by the academic critics. That may happen.

Peter Horn
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Horn 
German Department, UCT 
43 Trevor Road, Lansdowne 7764, Cape, Republic of  South Africa . 
Phone Home ZA-(021)696-1983		e-Mail: HORNPETE@UCTVAX.UCT.AC.ZA 
      Work ZA-(021)650-2936		Fax ZA-(021) 650-3726 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Horn, Walking through our sleep (Poems), Ravan Press 1974
Peter Horn, Poems 1964-1989, Ravan Press 1991
Peter Horn, An Axe in the Ice (Poems), COSAW Publishing House 
forthcoming September/October 1992
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ravan Press, P.O.Box 31134, Braamfontein 2017, Republic of South Africa
COSAW Publishing House, P.O.Box 421007, Fordsburg 2033, Republic of 
South Africa.
USA: Ohio University Press Fax (614) 593-4536
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