The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

the centre of important events. Van der Post is exposed by Jones as a “charming
drunkard”, who “deserted his first wife and offspring”, and who went through life as “a
serial seducer of ever younger women”. 21
While reactions to Jones’ biography of Van der Post were expressed mainly in the public
domain of newspapers and magazines, some reference was also made, in passing, to
academic assessments of the value of Van der Post’s writing. While some reviewers lost
sympathy for Jones’ “tactics”, which made “maximum sensation of a basically gutter‐
press procedure”, others found it “meticulously researched and carefully written”. 22 Far
more significant though, was the reaction by Van der Post’s daughter, Lucia, who had
commissioned Jones in the first place. Lucia van der Post revealed that Jones had been
engaged as her father’s biographer in order to pre‐empt the “grubby, speculative pens of
sensation‐mongers”, some of who had been “circling like vultures”. 23
In response to Jones’ charges of deceit and lies, Lucia van der Post referred to the
“mythical dimension” and “poetic force” of everything her father had come across. Her
father saw life in “poetic” terms and spoke a “poetic truth”, not merely a literal one. Van
der Post’s life, for his daughter “couldn’t be understood by the mind”. Instead, it
“required imagination”. Her father had made mistakes, “but the mistakes weren’t the
whole of his life”. To “divine what moves and motivates” people required “more than a
long reiteration of facts”, and “more than puritanical censoriousness”. Instead,
biographers needed a “generous spirit”, a “willingness to enter the heart and mind of
another” and readiness “to give the subject the benefit of any doubt”. For Lucia van der
Post, JDF Jones had “failed to grasp” her father’s “magic”. 24
21 Stephen Gray, ‘A dithering fibber’; Tom Lodge, ‘Van der Post – adventurer, hero, Jungian – and
a nasty piece of work’.
22 Stephen Gray, ‘A dithering fibber’; Tom Lodge, ‘Van der Post – adventurer, hero, Jungian – and
a nasty piece of work’.
23 Lucia van der Post, ‘My father, the storyteller’.
24 Lucia van der Post, ‘My father, the storyteller’.
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