RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

148 | denis beckett
That we were in an american magazine was because no South
african one would waste space on crackpots. Bloodcurdle was
the order of the day; guilt and comeuppance.
1989’s Sunday Times non-fiction award went to White Tribe
Dreaming. The cNa fiction prize was White Boy running, and
Dry White Season was the film to see. That’s the formula: how
our yesterdays were dramatically screwed up. You wouldn’t
queue for a movie about how our tomorrows might be boringly
stable. That is “denial”. People take offence, with vehemence
even worse, the pool in which these arguments rage is tiny.
Personal factors are raw, especially the factor that no-one you
know should steal a march on you. at an Investec lunch in
fox Street when the Louws’ book was galloping off shelves,
the guest speaker was a respected personage, J, whose deep,
wide, thorough, profound, address went down well. Then he
was asked what he thought of the book. His face contorted, he
snarled, he went apeshit. The poor investment bankers thought
he was having an attack. Maybe he was: Leon and frances
were criminal buffoons who would be better off in bricklaying,
anyone who paid them any attention needed a straitjacket,
their book should be burned on sight …
I perceived that the Louws’ sin was not to have proposed
a direction that J did not approve but to have hopped, in the
public mind, onto the guru platform that belonged to him.
That was sobering. So much for the frenetic search for solutions
currently under way in South africa. J and I had arrived at the
same time and he had been polite about Permanent Peace –
“sound thinking”, “valid contribution” and equivalent noncommittals.
as he ranted on I realised he had no idea what it
said but was fine with it because it hadn’t caught on. One can
contemplate bricklaying.