Literary battering ram who laughs it all off

JOAN HAMBIDGE doesn't want to have a mere sitdown at any Afrikaans literary table, she wants to overturn it, disrupt it, she wants to incite. It's a good thing, too, because there are quite a few ossified and insular cliques who take each other way too serious.

Today, however, she sits in Saigon Vietnamese Restaurant like a grande dame behind a table with a view of Jan van Riebeeck High School, Kloof Street and Table Mountain. Here she peers like a meerkat at the world out there and the smorgasbord of people passing by.

Her hair is lushly gorgeous, spikey, she wears dark glasses, and her characteristic Lacoste shirt. It's red: Red for fast and dangerous, fiery passion, love, dominance, and a fuck-it-all attitude.

She has a few pairs of glasses with her and hey, presto, she takes one off and puts on the new pair. Her eyes stare straight at you or move from left to right.

At one point, she has her glasses on, her face is expressionless, and the sun shines through the lenses onto her eyes. They are windshield wipers, left, right, left, right. I think, jeez, now I've said something wrong, she's going to pick up a spoon and hit me over the head.

Then she bursts out laughing at something she's thought of. Her voice is melodious, in another life she could have been a singer. When she laughs, she laughs. Her open-throated jubilation is like that of Adele's Laughing Song (Mein Herr Marquis) from Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus.

***

“I like your hair so short, just don't wear a wig," she says. I tell her about a famous actor who was very particular about his wig, always neatly groomed.

At an elderly age, he was taken to an ACVV (Afrikaans Christian Women's Association) retirement home. There they removed his wig. When a friend visited this once famous actor, bedridden with all his aches and ills, he found his head to be bald, with only a small tuft of hair left on one side like four thin ears of wheat.

Gone were the standing ovations and the beautiful wig. Yes, the downhill part of life's journey can give you the chills.

***

Joan is a regular at Saigon and she makes you feel as if the large space you are sitting in is her own dining room. She is comfortable in this place and all the staff who pass us know her well.

It feels like the fictional character Thomas Fowler, a journalist in the The Quiet American by Graham Greene, might walk in at any moment. The book is set in the old Saigon and in the film, with Michael Caine as the main character, there are remarkable scenes with the city's beautiful buildings, busy streets, markets and the Vietnamese feel.

Today Saigon, of course, is called Ho Chi Minh City – it's not apparent if the real name is just too much of a mouthful for a place to eat, or if the owners are nostalgic or trying to make a political point.

***

Joan speaks Afrikaans with waiter Chris Assimoa, who tells me he understands a little because his daughter who is in primary school takes Afrikaans as a subject. He learns from her, and he is even starting to understand Joan at times.

Joan is a gastronome and regularly visits various restaurants in the Cape. Among her favourite places are Saigon, naturally, then Bukhara (Indian), Haiku (East Asian), Carne (Italian) and the Hussar Grill (steaks).

She shares meals with a broad range of people, not just literary types. On the literary website LitNet she says: “I have a very generous taste in people, some of my greatest friends have nothing to do with literature. I have old friends who have been with me for years. People are good mirrors of who you are. You can tell by your friends if you are on the right path."

I have often seen her at the Hussar Grill in Mouille Point where she sits at a large round table. The table is full of books and they call it “The Library". If I happen to eat there too, she calls me over to meet her guests. That's how I've met all her convivial neighbours as well as prof. Jan Lotz and his wife Juanita, parents of the murdered student Inge Lotz.

When I mention the formerly accused in the murder, Fred van der Vyver, she scolds me. I should not lend my ears to gossip. I already told Joan that I'd heard the department of Afrikaans and Dutch studies at the University of Cape Town might be closing.

“Twak (rubbish)," she replied. I mention that Edwin Cameron was apparently no longer chancellor of Stellenbosch University. She widens her eyes: “Absolute nonsense," she says. That comes from listening to the bush telegraph eminating from the wrong woods, I think.

Before any further talk, Joan orders us food, and she knows the menu. We start with caramelised fish served in clay pots. The fish is firm and the rice is soft and tasty.

After that, she orders sweet and sour pork. The waiter, Chris, wants to bring more rice, but she says: “We have enough rice, my beautiful." He smiles at the pet name.

We talk about the writer and psychiatrist Casper Schmidt and how his heart remained in South Africa, even though he lived in New York.

“He'd come back every year, so why leave?"

“Yes," I say: “I have friends who get homesick for South Africa all their lives long."

“There are other writers too, they go, then they come here again, it's a type of disconnection, you can't just live in two countries." She will be unable to move, she loves Afrikaans and the country too much.

The radio personality Margot Luyt's name pops up. Joan mentions how much she learned from Margot about how to recite a poem. Sometimes she had to repeat a poem again and again in front of Margot.

She tells me how crazy she was about the announcer Nic Swanepoel, who sometimes called her ­his “bride". When she debuted with the poetry collection Hartskrif in 1985, he interviewed her. She realised that the book had reached him late, that he had not yet had a chance to read it.

Nic sat and flipped through the book at lightning speed, you could see he was taking it all in quickly. He then stopped at the poem about Marilyn Monroe.

“You know what? He read that poem totally perfect in one sitting," she says. “And then he started the interview and asked all the right questions. He hadn't even read the volume beforehand!”

We jump to Dirk Opperman. She was part of his famous Literary Laboratory and was his personal assistant in 1978 and 1979.

“He was second to none, next to N.P. van Wyk Louw probably one of our greatest poets. A man you can't give an account of. Before his coma he had been quite stiff, but after he'd come out of it, he was a completely different person.

“One day a postcard from Peter Blum arrived. It read: ‘Old Dirkie, one of these days the darkies will come and get you'."

***

We talk about reviews. “The quality of book reviews in our country has fallen because intellectuals no longer participate. Everyone is bitching from the sidelines, but no one is doing the work," she says.

Her cellphone pings. It concerns an article she's written for Netwerk24 about the Wilgenhof saga. She bursts out laughing as she reads one of the comments: “Joan for Huisvader (house father)!"

Joan taught creative writing for many years and is proud of students who later became poets, such as Fourie Botha. “When you write, don't look over your shoulder," she says.

“I've also learnt a lot from my students. I wasn't there to tell them what they wanted to hear, but rather what they needed to hear. I worked with fragile psyches and helped many to solve issues with fathers and mothers. Life is about abandonment.

“Those classes drained so much energy from me, I gave it my all. You know intuitively when you need to detach yourself from a student. The bird must fly, out of the nest," she says.

“Remember, writing is ruthless, it's relentless; if you commence with it to make money or win prizes, you're making a mistake."

***

Joan has published eight novels and 28 (soon 29) volumes of poetry. There is a compendium, Die buigsaamheid van verdriet (The flexibility of grief), and translations of some of her poems in The Coroner's Wife. Next year Asindeton is to appear. (This refers to a figure of speech where conjunctions are omitted, for the sake of brevity or the rhyme scheme.)

Her previous novel, Stasies (Stations), is now being followed up with 'n Hart sonder hawe (A heart with no port). It is a book about friendship and the death of a beloved friend, and how friendships change.

In her long writing career, she has worked with many publishers. How has the publishing industry changed over the years? “The intimate relationship between author and publisher - a mentor - and often a friendship relationship has changed into a distanced and often simply a business transaction between author and publisher. Mercifully, I still experienced good editors throughout this changing landscape: Charles Fryer, Deborah Steinmair and Joan-Mari Barendse."

***

Joan Hambidge is one of four children, and was born on 11 September 11 1956 in Aliwal North. She went to school in Witbank, Pretoria and Standerton.

Both parents are described in her poetry collections. Dad (about her father) and Konfessies, kaarte en konterfeitsels (Confessions, maps and counterfactuals, about her mother). “[The leitmotiv of] my parents run through my poetry since my debut Hartskrif," she says.

“We moved a lot when I was a child. We were nomadic. A wonderful life lesson: Nothing is permanent, everything can change."

Joan's studies in a nutshell, otherwise we would be sitting here until tomorrow morning: After matriculating at Standerton High School in 1974, she left for Stellenbosch University where she obtained a BA Honours. She then completed an MA degree with honours at the University of Pretoria.

In 1985 she graduated with a PhD at Rhodes University, later she did a study on gender constructions in Afrikaans and obtained a second doctorate at the University of Cape Town.

In 1980 she was appointed at the University of the North in Pietersburg (now Polokwane) as a senior lecturer and acting head of the department of general Literature and in 1990 she was promoted to professor.

“The University of the North was a wonderful learning school for me because we experienced the political unrest of the 1980s there. It helped me tremendously with the #Rhodesmustfall and #Feesmustfall movement,” she says.

In July 1992 she accepted a position as a lecturer (later senior lecturer, professor and vice-dean) in Afrikaans and Dutch at the University of Cape Town (UCT).

“UCT was an important learning school," she says. “In the 30 years I was there as a lecturer in the school for languages ​​and also as a mentor in creative writing, I learnt a lot.

“I taught theory and especially Afrikaans poetry, but also served on committees and got to know the ‘underbelly' of the university.

“Just like theory feeds my poetry, I believe that a lecturer learns a lot from serving on committees and making contact with people from other fields.” Now retired, she is currently a fellow and researcher at UCT.

***

Retirement doesn't mean there's suddenly time for sitting still and French knitting. Although, when I met Joan in Saigon, she was sitting with a book to improve her French grammar, always learning.

Just like travel, because it is also a learning process, her hunger for new information is insatiable. Her travels have taken her all over the world, visiting almost all the continents and countries such as Japan, Cuba, Canada, India, Türkiye, Thailand, Egypt, Brazil, France and Tanzania.

The best trips were to South America in the footsteps of famous authors. In Chile, Pablo Neruda; in Colombia, Gabriel García Márquez; in Argentina, Jorge Luis Borges.

To readers and writers who want to know more about the defining framework or skeleton of a novel or a good poem, she says: “It varies. There are different genres. A detective story searches for a solution with the reader as detective.

“Perhaps all novels, as the Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño believes, are detective stories? A novel of recollection works with the past. A historical novel with history.

“If a life is only written down or written up, it is not yet a novel or a story. It must be ordered. Therefore, story versus plot," she says.

On André P. Brink I venture that for years he had dominated the arts pages in Rapport and put off many young writers from ever picking up a pen again. Surely a reviewer shouldn't use bully tactics?

“Razor-sharp reviews are not bullying," Joan responds. If you write just to be pampered or spoiled, start a B&B, a Stodels or a bike shop.”

In an earlier piece in Rapport, she talks about criticism: “I concede there is no such thing as an objective critic. There are those who recognise and understand reading tastes, preferences or traditions. A vindictive review always goes to the account of the reviewer and will be caught up with time.

“Still, a review remains someone's opinion. Nothing more, nothing less. But those with whom criticism does not agree should instead take off and run: ‘If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen'."

Recently there was a stir on the Afrikaans literary scene about the unmasking of Crito on LitNet. Crito is the pseudonym of a retired publisher who reviewed reviews and dished out ad hominem slaps about what people wrote on Facebook.

During this uproar, the poet and engineering academic Mellet Moll died of a heart attack on 28 October at home in Somerset West. He was one of the main actors in revealing who Crito was and he was under tremendous pressure due to attacks from many quarters by bitterly hostile critics because he wanted the truth to prevail.

Joan says: “I have no problem with criticism. It's like a blood transfusion. However, if it is written by a former publisher (with inside knowledge), blurb writer, selector, author himself, former arts editor, and so on, the lines get crossed."

***

Joan can also have opinions about fashion. Die Burger quotes her about Crocs: “This style phenomenon – they now are even  counterfeited – makes me sick. Wear it while cleaning the pool, washing the car or working in a restaurant. As a fashion statement, it's lame. It reminds me of a plastic orange on a car's aerial. You try to be ‘in', but it looks grotesque. Gosh, rather wear a pair of flippers and diving goggles to work. Everyone thinks you're snorkelling with style."

What else is she up to at the moment? “My creative work is fed by my research on theory. I am currently reading Roland Barthes on clothes and this poem (below) is my response to Système de la Mode (The fashion system)."

On the poetry website Versindaba she writes, among other things: “In my study, there is an encyclopedia of clothing because any novel must of course reflect the correct codes of clothes. Clothes reveal a zeitgeist and this is why the Agatha Christie series with Miss Marple is so wonderful: Also, just to look at the clothes and the fashions of the time.

“Second-hand clothing stores (often worn only once by the seller) also point to a specific issue: fashions that pass and return again. Clothes reveal more than we realise. After all, Marilyn Monroe was asked what she was wearing during a nude photo session. ‘It's not true that I had nothing on. I had the radio on,' was her playful response."

Netwerk24 asked her what a review about her life would sound like? “It is a picaresque novel. There are journeys and challenges, and the nonconformist, contrarian, main character is a voice for gay women, gets involved in polemics and is often involved in the taalstryd (language struggle).

“Windmills maybe. In the midst of all the polemics and struggles, she constantly writes poems about silence. She hates dishonest people. A loyal, driven personality who has no time for doublespeak. ‘Get to the point,' is her motto. Weigh your words. This is why my blog is called Woorde wat weeg (Words that weigh)."

After we've finished, I see the afternoon sun fall softly on her face. Joan is thoughtful and wordless, quiet. She turns her face to the sun; I see her defencelessness and wow, it catches me off guard.

You've been tricking us all this time, dolly!

My wardrobe

Clothes reveal betray
my life's course
since I'd come out of the closet:
a carrying rack in the study
with diverse Lacoste shirts,
all the colours of the rainbow;
pants and shoes and sandals right up to
underwear filling up a Polana laundry bag
stockings and underwear and all the other little things …

Three leather jackets, a winter coat and brown wedding coat
(Indian) got as a gift from my beloved
whom I would hook up with if only I could keep my word …

It's however the three dressing gowns (white and two blue)
that reveal the depth structure of my taste in clothing:
one bought by herself, two others left behind by her,
who could make of a gown something more than just 

a garment keen as she is to expose metonymically hér deep structure ...

Mascara on a pillowcase and red lipstick on a glass.
All wiped out. But the grammar of my wardrobe (for all to see)

tells another story …
The blue-one-with-the-spot
I can't lordknows
get rubbed out …

For more on and by Joan

• Her message on behalf of UCT academic staff who retired in 2021.
• On Susan Sontag.
• An interview in New Contrast.
• Joan on Roland Barthes's Système de la Mode.
• Try her blog.
• Her writer's profile on LitNet.

♦ VWB ♦

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