pessimism: (noun) the tendency to be sad and
anxious and to believe that the worst will happen.
Back in December, as I read African Pens: New
Writing from Southern Africa (2007) my artist brother,
Peter asked an interesting question: if the title was ‘African pens’
why was the cover artwork dominated by pencils? The anthology engaged
my thoughts for another reason: pessimism was the backdrop against
which most of the stories were written. In his comment, J. M. Coetzee
said:
“entrants confront the unhappier aspects
of present day society…”(ix)
They certainly did. The issues addressed in the
majority of the thirty-one short stories were contemporary and not
in the least comforting.
The Mugabe regime and Zimbabwe’s sad state of affairs
was attacked by Petina Gappah in The Sound of the Last Post
and Rotten Row, by Elizabeth Bishop in Supermarket
and by Matt Mbanga in We were meant to live for so much more.
Poverty was addressed by Vrenika Pather in Ninema and The
Old Man and the Oyster (which reminded me of Ernest Hemingway’s
The Old Man and the Sea). HIV/ AIDS and social injustice
were the main themes of For Honour by Stanley Ojezani Kenani
and Broken Wings by Christopher Mlalazi respectively. Further
still, rape and crime is engaged by Safe Home by Nadia Davids
and How to become a god in three easy steps by Linda McCullough..
Morne Malan manages to successfully cover the controversial topic
of homosexuality in “Jason’s Kiss”. The list goes on.
As social critics, the authors simply narrated
and illustrated the problems in their societies, but did not necessarily
offer any solutions. They managed to capture the futility of life
in their writings. To put it more crudely, they constantly seemed
to be saying that life was a bitch and there was only so much you
could do to pimp it. A good example was “The Rebound” by Steven
Marston. The protagonist’s life was monotonous, thus the title (it
was anything but a love story). He was repeatedly doing the same
thing each day. Everything that he was about to do, he has done
before, He knew what was going to happen before it actually happened,
leaving no room for excitement and only existence:
“And when it’s over I head on home and take
my boots off…I sleep then, and then I do it all over again a few
more times and then at last somehow it becomes Friday night”
(p.139)
Marston achieved a personalized effect by starting
the narrative in the first person; yet, halfway through the story,
he switches voice and the reader is suddenly being addressed directly,
as though the story were an account of his or her life:
“ The weather’s awesome outside so when you
choose a girl you can take her to the deck once she’s seen your
moves…And there you talk addresses and cars and neighbourhoods
and lifts for friends and taxis. The logistics of love…”
(p.140)
This makes both situations and characters real
and down-to-earth, such that the reader is looking at himself in
the mirror, experiencing the same emotions.
Sometimes this resignation about the future
is projected by the loss of something in the past. There is a constant
yearning for what was: lost loves, hopes and dreams. In a phrase,
pessimism is coupled to nostalgia. At times the characters wallow
in self-pity and one is tempted to judge them harshly, dismissing
them as pathetic characters. Henk in “Going Nowhere” by Kyne Nislev
Bernstorff is a perfect example. Having lost both his legs in a
bomb explosion nineteen years earlier, he was “[getting] nowhere”
because he hadn’t come to terms with his disability. He is a weak
personality. I like to draw a contrast between him and the female
character in the fact-based motion picture Why I wore Lipstick
to my Mastectomy. Whilst battling breast cancer she manages
to stay strong. But Henk does not and this (understandably) irritates
his friend, Pete . After all, D. H. Lawrence did say, concerning
self-pity: “I have never seen a wild thing sorry for itself.
Carolyn Weir’s Collage concludes with the
narrator Bill thinking:
“I feel that maybe, after all life doesn’t
have to be the way I planned. Perhaps even the pain can still,
somehow, be precious”(p.267).
Other stories in which the characters live in the
past are: Nostalgia (C.A. Davids), The Summerhouse
(Renee Bornochis), Sarah Begins (Karen Jennings), Men
and Mermaids (Deborah Klein) and Trojan Horse (Karlien
van der Schyff).
Some of the titles even are even suggestive of
pessimism: Michelle Sack’s Chronicles of a Naked Heart and
Sean Mitchell’s Tears, to mention just two.
There is an indication of possible happiness and
hope for the future in a handful of stories. Lynn in the award-winning
story Poison by Henrietta Rose-Innes Lynn sits in a rusted
car optimistic that help will come along eventually. Also, in How
to become a god in three easy steps, the protagonist learns
three things from the gods and inadvertently becomes a god himself.
Typical of realism, these stories are melancholic
but they are a good read nonetheless, my personal favourites being
Ninema and The Rebound. The year is long and I’m eager
to see another publication similar to this, but more representative
of Southern Africa. 
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