Vladislavić: Unsung prophet of Gauteng

HAVE you read Ivan Vladislavić? So many excellent books from all over the world are being published that South African English writers are often neglected, like prophets not honoured in their own country. For Afrikaans readers, there is also the fact that so many great books are being published in the language. Vladislavić is such a prophet in our midst and after reading his latest, I am now going to read all his books – whereas before he was merely a name on my Afrikaans-targeted radar.

How does one classify The Near North? It's not quite a novel, it's possibly nonfiction because it's pretty autobiographical, it's a documentary, maybe creative nonfiction. In Afrikaans, Kleinboer does the same thing, with huge differences: He documents his day, his neighbourhood, names small things that he observes or collects and what they remind him of. Kleinboer is absorbed in the shadowy side of life, the underbelly of society. Vladislavić casts a well-read, erudite, refined eye on the decay and the beauty, without judgment. The book is similar to Eben Venter's Decima in the intermingling of fact and fiction, the broad frame of reference.

Vladislavić is the king of enumeration: making lists. This storytelling technique I first discovered in The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon, another lyrical book full of observations and musings. Vladislavić lists seeds on his shelf and flowers in his garden and it reads like a poem. He lists the things he picks up on his hikes and it becomes an art collection. He has the collector's eye. The book differs from travelogues because in the latter the narrator explores new horizons so that he perceives things afresh, like a child, as if for the first time. Vlad, as the narrator calls himself, explores familiar landmarks, walks a certain route over and over, so much so that one would think he had lost the ability to observe. But no, he breaks through the monotony and sees new, previously unseen things again and again in the familiar landscape.

He tells of Cees Nooteboom who says in Letters to Poseidon that trivial things, things that are easily overlooked, are fraught with meaning. When Nooteboom spends the night in a strange hotel, he puts a familiar object on the bedside table, a shell or stone, thus turning it into home. Things we pick up and carry with us are placeholders, mementos of moments experienced.

Vladislavić is a stylist who weaves lovely prose – by hand, with a pencil; I have asked him about it. Every word is weighed and fitted. I'll quote a passage:

At the junction near the War Memorial we hesitated. The lights would come on in an hour or two, tomorrow morning at the latest. For now, we did not want to go home. Instead of turning off towards Riviera Gardens, we carried on round the Zoo and drifted through the tree-lined avenues of Saxenwold with their beautiful woody names. Beechwold, Englewold, Ashwold. The English names fall softly on this leafy suburb, but Hermann Eckstein, the Stuttgart magnate who established a eucalyptus plantation here in the early years of the city to supply wooden pit-props to the mines, called it Sachsenwald. The name was anglicised – saxonised? – during the First World War to obscure its German origin.

Saxonwold is never busy at night, but now the place was completely still. Although the darkness pressed down on the trees, the empty streets felt safer than usual. The road, as Gaston Bachelard suggests, invites us to come out of ourselves, to leave the spaces in which we are safely and happily housed.

When one documents things, simply names the objects around you, your selection still reveals much about you. Between the lines of the list lurk worlds that remain unsaid, associations, memories, images. Vlad calls himself the king of the metaphor and says that he can endlessly extend a metaphor. Everything reminds him of something else, of something he has read. There are fascinating facts about history, art, literature. The book is a journey; the reader accompanies Vlad on foot and looks through his eyes, using his nimble brain to process and recognise connections.

He writes about Covid-19 and the lockdown, something writers generally avoid: It was so alienating and tiring and now feels so unreal. When people were allowed to be outside for two hours after being confined to their homes for a long time, the streets were suddenly teeming with walkers, joggers, cyclists. A few weeks later, they were empty again. The only pedestrians Vlad and his wife, Minky, encounter are black people walking to and from work.

For example, the reader learns that there is a group of people who walk everywhere rather than drive. Most of them have been mugged, but they see it as inevitable. They do not walk at night.

Walking, the author reckons, activates your head and imagination. You walk in search of stories: “I start a conversation with the world around, pacing it out, not expecting it to go anywhere. There are few deep stories exchanged here, hardly any myths, it is mainly small talk and anecdotes.”

The myriad sundry details of a vanished way of life. It’s the only way to chase the catastrophe into the contours of the ordinary and try to tell a story.

The Restless Supermarket – which I'm also going to read now, I know someone who thinks it's the best book ever written – is about Hillbrow. As the title suggests, Vladislavić latest is about the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, where people and their park-like gardens are hidden behind sky-high electrified fences and the streets are silent.

Vladislavić has a phenomenal memory. He doesn't walk with a notebook – I asked him – he memorises every pedestrian he encounters by associating them with the exact place where he saw them, and then goes home to write it all down. The end product is a lovely, dreamy book. I highly recommend it.

May his pencil remain sharp for a long time to come, this master of observation, of the word and metaphor, here in our midst, on our own soil.

The Near North by Ivan Vladislavić was published by Pan MacMillan SA and costs R370 at Exclusive Books.

What are we listening to?

Eric Clapton sings “Walking Blues":

♦ VWB ♦

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