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Oil Memoir offers a textured narrative of a life less ordinary lived to the full
April 27, 2009 Edition 1
Rob Gaylard
A Fork In The Road - A Memoir
Andre Brink
(Harvill Secker)
THE COVER photo of Brink's autobiography shows a young, innocent-looking Brink, aged 13, bursting with pride at his first kill.
He holds a springbok between his legs; his hands grasp the fork of its horns. This is the author's initiation into the casual violence of the hunt, part of what was expected of him as a boy, part of the price to be paid for acceptance by family, by friends, by volk.
The opening chapters evoke the world of Brink's childhood, the various dorps in which his father served as magistrate, and the sharpness and clarity of the writing make these among the most memorable parts of the narrative.
A leitmotif running through the memoir is the gratuitous "'surplus of violence" that seems foundational to our society. The young André grows up being proud of his father, the magistrate who dispenses justice,"second only to God" - but this is the same man who, one unforgettable Saturday morning, ignores the plea of a desperate, badly beaten black man who arrives at his house, and sends him back to the police - the very people who had beaten him in the first place.
It's the author's first, shocking intimation of "the long, long history of excess". For the young boy, it is perhaps the end of innocence.
The early chapters trace the conflicts that were eventually to lead Brink into open rebellion against the norms of his people.
At the time, and just as importantly, we see the incipient writer discovering the potential of words to shape and express experience. After his first exposure to English, language is no longer something to be taken for granted.
This fascination with language also links with another of the book's recurring themes: his attempt to discover the meaning of the word "vry" that leads to the young boy's first sexual experience.
For Brink, then, writing begins as a linguistic adventure and an attempt to explore, however uncertainly, some of the tensions underlying his "seemingly placid, untroubled, terribly conventional world".
Brink is, of course, one of South Africa's most acclaimed writers. The twin motifs of the memoir are his development as a writer, and his emergence as an important oppositional voice in South Africa.
Interwoven with this is the record of his relationships with a number of women, the most important of whom are Ingrid Jonker, a woman identified only as "H", and his present wife, Karina. Brink deals with intimate and often painful material with restraint and with honesty.
There is little attempt at self-justification or self-aggrandisement: the writing is candid, often humorous, at times self-deprecating.
The political events that shook his life, and the more intimate record of his encounters with a number of women, some of which have a life-changing force, as well as the impact of particular writers, artists and places (Camus, Picasso, Mozart, Paris, Salzburg, Auschwitz, and, not least, Cape Town), all create a richly textured narrative of a life lived to the full, a life less ordinary.
There are, inevitably, absences and gaps such as mention of his other wives and the puzzling lack of any mention of Soweto 1976, an event which transformed the political landscape of this country.
Apart from being a compelling read, A Fork in the Road will be of great value to anyone with an interest in the political and literary history of South Africa in the second half of the 20th century.
Brink concludes with an unflinching assessment of the failures of the Mbeki-led ANC government.
Ironically, after all he has lived through, he finds himself again in the position of the rebel, speaking out against whatever threatens justice, freedom and truth. This gives a very contemporary resonance to his memoir. - Rob Gaylard
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