Stokkie-Stick! Rustum Kozain on The Hero of Currie Road

September 1st, 2008 by Ben - Editor

If the taxonomy of reviewing on BOOK SA extended to woody carrots, or to sticks with orange bark, then we might descry a specimen of one chimera or the other in Rustum Kozain’s review of The Hero of Currie Road, the compendium of Alan Paton’s short works.

We are against GM in reviewing, however, and on closer scrutiny, what we find here is a stick - in both Afrikaans and English.

Kozain, who is due to appear at the Bristol Poetry Festival in two weeks’ time (with Gabeba Baderoon and Isobel Dixon), has only so much sympathy for Paton’s all-Liberal-all-the-time worldview, which, he finds, dates the writing in too many instances:

’n Interessante boek vir gewone lesers sowel as literêre en historiese navorsers, maar dit belig ook die problematiek rondom Alan Paton se sogenaamde toekomsvisie.
Hierin word verskeie kort skryfstukke van Paton byeengebring – kortverhale, biografiese sketse en enkele variante stukke uit Debbie Go Home (1961) en Knocking on the Door (1975). Beknopte eindnotas gee publikasiedatums, ’n bonus dus vir verdere navorsing.
Die versameling begin met “Interview with Himself”. Hierin dring Paton aan op die outonomie van die literêre kuns, asook die vereiste dat verhaalkuns tog die werklikheid rondom die skrywer moet weer-spieël. In die Suid-Afrika van Paton se tyd – maar ook, natuurlik, ná sy tyd en selfs vandag – beteken dit daardie vloekwoord: politiek.

Complete review in Rapport

The Hero of Currie Road collects a variety of short pieces by Alan Paton: short stories, biographical pieces and the odd miscellania, all from Debbie Go Home/ Tales from a Troubled Land (1961) and Knocking on the Door (1975). In short, all Paton’s short pieces are now available in one volume. The end pages include brief notes about either a story’s print publication date or when it was read first by Paton, and so the volume is a convenient source for literary historians.
Not having been a fan of Cry, the Beloved Country when I was a university student, and therefore not having read any Paton beyond that, I nevertheless approached the volume with a degree of openness. Youth, after all, can be blind in its passions.
The volume opens with an “Interview with Himself”, in which Paton asserts both the autonomy of the art of storytelling, as well as the necessity of the art reflecting the real world. In other words, the art of storytelling will not be art if it does not also reflect the real world, or issues in the real world. In the South Africa of his time – and beyond, right up to the present – that means an art of storytelling fully aware of the world in which it is told.