The American greats, and Oprah

When Oprah added William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury to her bookclub list as a summer read, said bookclub gulped and shrivelled in the path of The Establishment's raucous laughter. The plebs fell for it and sales of books by Faulkner increased (I know because I sold a few to unwitting fans of Marianne Keyes and Jodi Picoult). This was after the James Frey A Million Little Pieces, which he sold as memoir but was really almost entirely made up, and the 'almost entirely' is debatable.

This introduction is a red herring, but now you know that I know what I'm talking about. To add to your store of Oprah trivia, her bookclub really did shrivel (maybe not gulp). (Although it did come to life again a few years ago. Because, this is Oprah.) Put those two facts together, bind them with logic, and you realise Oprah rarely actually read the books she touted - they were chosen by assistants and publishers' publicists. (What they were thinking when they included Faulkner is a mystery.)

I recently tried to read The Sound and the Fury, but read no further than three pages (read being a misnomer: I daydreamed through three pages - I cannot remember a thing). I don't abandon books after I have committed to them, ever. Even Atomised, and that was at least as traumatising as something I saw in the supermarket the other day (and which shall forever remain wordless, so don't even ask).

Oprah generalised that 'Faulkner is the greatest American writer, like, ever' (sure, along with Hemingway, Twain, Poe, Steinbeck, McCarthy...). But I would imagine even the most stalwart Faulkner fan would harbour a teensy bit of bitterness at having to work so hard to read for fun. I felt that, at present, the only author deserving of that degree of effort is James Joyce. (We have a tempestuous relationship. He channels through the book on my dresser and I ignore his cursing.) He was using up my time with Joyce, even though I haven't so much as picked up the cursed (har!) book in six months (I was polishing the furniture).

Imagine if Oprah had nominated The Odyssey... Now there is a book to bury a bookclub near to the centre of the earth.

Having said this, I am a Faulkner fan (and a Joyce fan - I swear I will finish that book one day, you Irishman!). As I Lay Dying is on my list of books that will haunt me for life. Ok, no, it is silly to lay claim to choices in your future. It haunts me and I hope it haunts me for life (at least because there are way worse types of ghosts to be haunted by... Actual ghosts, for example). In two sentences, the characters sum up the world for me in a Cormac McCarthy-worthy musing:

"It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That's how the world is going to end."

The book is set in the American south, among a po' family, the matriarch of which has just died. The novel tells of the the family's efforts to arrange her funeral, which chiefly consist of couriering her body on the farm's wagon to another, more affluent part of the family. Really (because this is how literature works), it is about the relationships between the characters, how they live, their relationships with the matriarch and the wisdom that comes from being po'.

That last bit is facetious, but Rousseau's Noble Savage is still alive and well, just now living in shacks constructed from the cardboard of cellphone ads. Faulkner can be forgiven, by historicity, but what is our excuse?

To climb up that tree of great American authors (figuratively, because I tried to climb a tree the other day and found I no longer have the muscles), Faulkner inspires the work of Toni Morrison, the sun of Oprah's universe together with Maya Angelou and her dogs. We studied Morrison every. single. year. of my degree, largely because one of our lecturers was Obsessed with her. Because of this I can name every novel she has ever written, have read them, and know that she is a frightening woman who use to be an editor at Faber & Faber and now terrifies undergrads.

I would sell organs to be terrifying. Or to work at Faber & Faber (I would even volunteer my services as a fridge-cleaner. Someone would see the obsessive way I scrubbed at stains hidden under shelves and would know me for a perfectionist and would let me edit manuscripts so they could take the credit and I would be happy).

Morrison's characters are almost exclusively Southern, African-American, discriminated against, they discriminate against and tattooed with mythology. Slavery, chauvinism, racism, all the meaty -isms. Her novels are uplifting and inspiring, and (I'm going to be serious now) brilliant. Songs of Solomon is my favourite and Paradise my least favourite. Where Faulkner plays devil's advocate, Morrison pursues abuse single-mindedly, creating her own mythologies.

Now, along the way up that greatness tree, we missed two brown-tipped offshoots (like that of the bamboo in my bathroom), titled Zora Neale Hurston and Carson McCullers. I am starting to feel like I am trailing in Oprah's shadow - Oprah ('s assistant) picked books from both authors for her bookclub. In fact, Hurston is (allegedly) her favourite author. Huh, perhaps I and The Establishment have been overly judgemental. Though, still, Faulkner?

Carson McCullers has featured on this blog, more than once, so for equality's sake (it's election day!), let's stick to Hurston. I read Their Eyes were Watching God a couple of months ago, set in... if you have been reading carefully, you, you can guess... yes, the American south, that muddy well of discrimination and abuse (drinking game: take a shot every time this post uses 'discrimination' or 'abuse'. Or 'southern'. Or 'and') and muddied vowels. In this book, the abuse is persistent but limited to the background.

Written in the vernacular (like As I Lay Dying), the novel tells the story (a secondhand account of her telling of the story) of a woman from her childhood to the death of her husband. Based on your cultural dips into Faulkner and Morrison, you expect a certain theme and for a while Hurston gives it to you, until she begins to channel Faulkner, and soon we know that we are all abusing one another, which makes for another less than uplifting tale, but a poignant one.

Zora Neale Hurston, not on Oprah...

At this point, I am wondering why I have read so many of the American greats, when the first great South African title I think of is Cry the Beloved Country (partly because it is long and long equals great, obviously) and authors are Nadine Gordimer and Andre Brink (neither of whom write... enjoyable fiction). (JM Coetzee? This is one of the few instances where man and work deserve to be equated. In short, there is no need to bolster his egoism by acknowledging him.) Oh, and a couple of Fugard's workshopped plays.

(Please don't redirect me to African fiction, because Chinua Achebe is about as close to Nadine Gordimer as spaghetti is to curry.)

While I want to tell you that I am replacing my to-read list with South African greats, to rectify this situation, I would be lying, and why lie in cyberspace? Every culture seems to have an inflection in its writing, some style that is unique. American fiction is vast, given its very nature as a land of immigrants made up of many states. These four authors have been chosen, by me (and Oprah), artificially, by the links I make between them. And perhaps the same could be said for Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Calvino and Eco, Marquez and Bolano.

South African fiction, especially the political works - sometimes it feels like they're all political - is dry. Metaphors are like kites tied to a fence, like wallflowers that can't dance, like colours mixed into a muddy brown. These works remind me of the Karoo, which I think of fondly but would not live there. When I read, I want to be tossed around, not by emotion, but by the acrobatics of the words. I read to read. To consume the experience and feel bloated with it - and the only way a plot can catch up is to jump and freefall.

We don't have an Oprah (I don't have a TV, but no, whatsherface who used to have an afternoon show on SABC 3 does not count), so there is no one to nominate setworks for the nation to read over the December holidays. If we did, what would she pick? Disgrace? Confessions of a Gambler? Agaat? Fiela se Kind? Maybe Coetzee would admit that his fiction is actually straight-up memoir. We definitely need an Oprah.