Drum beats and chimes

Press, 1 October 1983, Page 18

Drum beats and chimes

The Late Bourgeois World. By Nadline Gordimer. Penguin, 1983. 95 pp. $5.95 (paperback). The Conservationist. By Nadine Gordimer. Penguin, 1983. 267 pp. $9.95 (paperback). (Reviewed by Joan Curry)

Nadine Gordimer probably could not write a bad book. She exhibits those qualities that set some writers apart no matter what their subject, their chosen form, or their style. They do not simply observe, however brilliantly they may do so. They go beyond the telling of a tale. They infuse their work with a kind of resonance which the reader is constantly aware of, sometimes as obvious as a drum beat, more often as subtle as wind chimes. Occasionally there is a dissonance as deliberate and masterly as the rest. These two paperback reprints, both set in South Africa, illustrate the style and power of Nadine Gordimer although the stories are quite different. “The Late Bourgeois World” is a straightforward story with a background of complex issues which become clearer and more personal and finally confront the leading figure of the book, Liz Van Den Sandt. Her exhusband had tried to be a rebel and failed. Most of the important gestures that he made during his life were failures. When he committed suicide Liz could only explain to their son that Max “went after the right things, even if perhaps it was in the wrong way. The things he tried didn’t come off but at least he didn’t just eat and sleep and pat himself on the back. He wasn’t content to leave bad things the way they are.” The book picks up the events after Max’s death. Liz, living alone, with a job, friends and a casual and respectable lover, has withdrawn from the heat of South Africa’s struggle. But an old friend makes contact and asks a favour on behalf of his cause which he takes for granted is still also her cause. The favour is a simple one which would be easy to fulfil, but which would bring Liz face-to-face with the political realities of her own attitudes and principles. With the memory of Max’s futile gestures in her mind, she must decide whether to go after the right things or to leave bad things the way they are.

“The Conservationist” is not so straightforward. Mehring is the South African equivalent of the Queen Street farmer. He has 400 acres which he bought as a tax loss and which he visits at week-ends when he can get away from his business and social interests. The farm is casually run in his absence by the black Jacobus and a shifting team of miscellaneous labour. As a conservationist, he seems to be a failure, like Max in the previous book. Mehring had a wife and child once. He had a mistress who left him. His land is subject to all the forces of nature; in turn fire, drought and flood overwhelm it. As if to focus the problems of conservation, Mehring is constantly having to scold the children of the estate for taking the pretty eggs from guinea fowl nests. The children, ignorant of the reasons for his displeasure and not being able to understand his language, simply want to play with the eggs, trade them, show them off.

Mehring the businessman, the pigiron millionaire, has very little time to spend on his farm. The ignorant, the indifferent and nature itself combine to make the preservation of natural resources an almost impossible task which can be undertaken only in the spaces between more important matters.