15+ questions for Zirk van den Berg

Describe yourself in a hashtag.

#aloss

What do you listen to in your car?

It's not my usual taste, but because I'm challenging my brain to try to learn some Korean, I'm currently listening to the K-pop star IU's less frivolous stuff and to Kim Chang-wan, Korea's first rock star who in his old age has settled down. If you want to get an idea, check out this urbane video where the two of them record one of his old hits.

Your favourite school subject(s)?

Art and history.

Did you write good essays at school?

Sometimes. In standard seven there was one called “The chair that Hester gave" for which Miss Truter gave me 19 out of 20. The thing did the rounds among the staff.

What did you swot? At what stage did you know you wanted to write?

I wrote my first stories in standard four and Mr. Bokkie Schreuder read out some of them to the class. I studied art history and Afrikaans at Ikeys, then got a scholarship from Naspers and therefore became a journalist without ever really deciding on a career.

What would you ask for if you knew the answer were yes?

Moments of rapture. As in regularly.

What does your ideal day look like? 

My family and I wake up on the family farm in the Khomas Hochland in Namibia and go for a long drive over the Gamsberg and Spreetshoogte passes, and then through the Namib to Swakopmund, where I eat apple pie in a German coffee shop and pretend I am an enigmatic, cool guy.

What do you own that you would never throw away?

Nothing.

What is the best concert you have ever attended?

David Byrne's in the Aotea Centre, Auckland, 2009. On that tour he mostly did songs where Brian Eno made a contribution. It was a sit-down concert and I was in the third row from the front. The man is a unique genius (which is the only kind of genius) and the sound was fantastic. This video doesn't quite capture it decently.

If you could only choose one song to listen to forever, what would it be?

“World Leader Pretend” from REM. “I sit at my table and wage war on myself ...”

This is a version with a lengthy intro from the excellent Tourfilm.

What do you miss most about South Africa? 

Friends, congeniality and boerbeskuit.

What do you appreciate about New Zealand that you don't find in South Africa, apart from safety?

That evil is so far from your base that you can preach good-natured moral positions. And Pic's peanut butter... There has to be something else.

13. French Open or Wimbledon, and why?

Wimbledon. If I want to watch clay tennis, I'd rather watch it in Rome among the statues. I've been to the Australian Open and I'm dying to go again.

14. Best men's tennis player of all time, and why?

Best? Djokovic. You can't argue with the record. But the biggest? Then things other than just results come into play, and Federer is king. He has become bigger than his sport, while Djokovic struggles to find fans outside of Serbia.

15. If you could invite three people to dinner, living or deceased, who would it be? And where will you take them?

The French writer Romain Gary, who lived in South Africa for a while, to a place of his choice in the Cape, together with a young Sophia Loren and the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. I suspect Romain will propose to Sophia, and then Andrei and I will be left marooned. At least he will be able to tell me about higher art. That's if we can find a language that we both understand.

16. If you could be a fictional character, who would it be?

Philip Marlowe was my first thought, but I don't enjoy booze and don't want to get drunk every now and then. The fictional character I would like to be is probably just the idealised guy I am sometimes in my daydreams.

17. What series are you watching at the moment?

I'm rummaging through a bunch of mediocre Korean stuff and suspect I've seen all the good ones – nothing comes close to My Mister for me. I'm currently watching Dear Hyeri. It sometimes goes back and forth, but the series is ambitiously put together and goes in unforeseen directions. The best series I watched this year was The Red Sleeve. It's loosely based on the true history of a Korean king's concubine in the late 1700's. The latter two series are both on Viki, not Netflix.

18. What book do you wish you had written?

The Harry Potter series, of course. Then I would have rolled in the pound notes. There are many books I admire, but I never wish I had written them. It's enough of a challenge just to get my own stuff written.

19. Your favourite authors? No more than five.

Romain Gary. Vladimir Nabokov. Philip K. Dick. It's the same list as 20 years ago. I read shockingly little these days, because I prefer to make up my own stories. (This excuse doesn't even convince me.)

20. If there is one book you could recommend to everyone, what would it be?

A lot of the shit in the world is caused by people paying too much attention to just one book. If you're looking for something to read (and you've already bought mine), you could do worse than reading Romain Gary's King Solomon or Momo/Madame Rosa/The Life Before Us. The last sausage is all the same book, available under many titles. Or his The Roots of Heaven, which according to Colin Wilson is one of the classic works of the 20th century. Gary's oeuvre is erratic, but his worldview and the way he turns his sentences halfway through give me great pleasure.

21. Can you remember where you first fell in love with Everything But The Girl's “The Night I Heard Caruso Sing”?

No, although I suspect my then music guru Kerneels Breytenbach played a role. But, hell, what a song! Somewhere in the 1980's, on the night that my colleague Freddie Hendriks's little girl was born, he came to visit me and we listened to this song. He drank a bottle of Tullamore D.E.W. and cried snot and tears: “It's okay that I'm a hotnot, but that my son has to be one ..." This is not a video. Open your heart and ears.

22. Do you think Vloog Theron was a genius? What is your funniest memory of him?

Not genius, but intelligent and completely larger than life, like a hooligan in a Tarantino movie. When [writer] Anoeschka von Meck and I lived together, we once complained to her father about our noisy neighbours. “Shall I send someone to see to them?" he offers. We had to hold him off.

23. How did the launch of Ekstra dun vir meer gevoel (Extra thin for more feeling) change your life?

It was my first book and of course I was very impressed. I went with Anoeschka, but also invited my old friend Elsabé Pretorius, whom I had run into again shortly before. I married her later that same year. She'll soon come waltzing in through the door.

24. Does tequila ever come alone?

As the guilty defendants used to say when I was a court reporter, “I would also like to claim: I have no knowledge of the incident." But I know where the question comes from. I used to work at Saatchi & Saatchi in the 1990's, where, like more or less everywhere, I felt distraught. We were going to have a Christmas party next to a swimming pool somewhere in Hout Bay. Any pardy is enough to fill me with dread; one by a swimming pool is the height of the heebie jeebies. On the way in the bus, a bottle of tequila was passed around and I decided that maybe it would help with my composure ... When we stopped, I stumbled off the bus, walked through the pool with my clothes on, threw up on the other side in the agapanthus, and passed out. By the time I had come to, mercifully the party was over. This is the one and only drunken story of my life.

25. List your favourite sayings by André le Roux.

“Nou ja, toe" and “it's just as you say there" comprise a significant part of his total utterances. The man works wonderfully with wood. When he makes a drawer, he moves in and out like a ghost in the mist. But you have to work gently with wood, he tells me, quoting one of his father's expressions in support: “Do you know what you can use violence for? With violence you can break your finger off in its socket."

26. What is the biggest life lesson you learned from [writer] Ryk Hattingh?

His passion for life. He could blunder into anything like a child, boots and all and bright blue eyes. At one stage this was New Zealand plants. He waxed lyrical about Muehlenbeckia's multiple offshoots.

27. What was the best advertising slogan you had written for Saatchi & Saatchi?

We did an Aids ([Vigs] campaign and my proposal was “vigsigtig!", but it was never used. At Berry Bush BBDO, I wrote a headline for Husky dog ​​food that won a Pendoring [award]: Blafana Blafana.

28. What do you find sexy?

Women with their feet on the earth who think heavenward.

29. What are you looking forward to?

That one day I can write fulltime. But by then the horses will have horns and the rhinos will be gone.

♦ VWB ♦

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