On writing #5: hara-kiri, etc. – part 2

I did Afrikaans-Nederlands I & II and Modern Fiction in Translation at university. I had an illustrious assemblage of professors: Etienne van Heerden, Andre P. Brink, Godfrey Meintjies and Tim Huysamen. Tim told me that I read like a housewife, and I suspect it was because I did not really take to Oomblik in die Wind. Or something. Or maybe it was Madame Bovary or Flaubert’s Parrot. Seeing that I have embraced writing as both a serious pastime and a career-in-construction,  I guess I am going to have to go back to that stuff. Whatever. Thing is, at the time, I loved the reading (whether I read like a housewife or not). I read not only the prescribed Kundera, I read everything I could lay my hands on. I read everything I could find by Garcia Marquez, I embraced magic realism.

I discovered Saul Bellow, to this day perhaps my favourite author. I have read More Die of Heartbreak three times, and Hertzog twice. (Although DM Thomas’ White Hotel is still my favourite novel, with a record four reads. I also keep on having to buy it because I keep on giving it away, I love it so much.)

I am not sure what happened next. In my reading history, there is a big black hole. I know I read almost everything by Elmore Leonard and James Elroy. Elmore Leonard you can read over and over again because it is impossible to remember what happens from one story to the next. Every time you read one of his books again, it’s like reading it for the first time. Unless you see the movie. When you have seen the movie, you may as well toss the book, you are NEVER going to go back there. Get Shorty, (didn’t they just make a terrible mess of the sequel? Unbelievably unfunny) Jackie Brown (Rum Punch), Out of Sight… lost. Forever. Nothing quite like a 2^nd or 3^rd reading of an Elmore Leonard to put a girl to sleep, with the exception, perhaps, of anything penned by Hanna Arendt.

I remember books with titles like Why the Tree Loves the Axe, and The Émigré. I found and fell in love with Hanif Kureishi, Charles Bukowski, Kurt Vonnegut. I bought quite a few books by Neil Jordan.  I accepted that he could not write for shit even though he was quite deft with the audiovisual medium. Somewhere in the darkness there were Angela Carter, Dorothy Parker, Robertson Davies and Julian Barnes. (The ABCDs, so to speak.) I read some poetry. Some guy from NY City gave me a book of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke. To this day I am suspicious of men bearing books of poetry (any) and (specifically) an English translation of Hedda Gabler. They are going to break your heart for sure. And guys who actually WRITE poetry… if it’s any good, tell them to stop forthwith, or you will be nursing misery and rage for… eh… easily a year or more. Fortunately BAD poetry works just as well in the other direction. You are so going to dump that guy and never think of him again. But I digress.