Feedback by Ivan Vladislavic
Second report
Joburg special — Shaun Gatter
Discovering the Parasites — Brandon Hamber
Taxi talk — Liz Kuhns
The Discreet Charm of Nairobbers — Rasik Shah
Who shoved Humpty Dumpty? — Buntu Siwisa
The substantial changes in this version work for me. Getting rid of Jeremiah’s girl and the man who was shot for speaking to her, has opened up the text in that first encounter with Elias. More importantly, it’s allowed the writer to clarify and develop the relationship between Elias and Thabang. Small but effective touches (like the missing thumb) give Elias a presence. And the threat of violence in Jeremiah is better than the enactment we had before.
I particularly like the way the first flashback has been split in two. The information in the flashbacks (Thabang’s memories of playing in the back yard with Geoffrey and then the memory of the new bicycle) now unfolds at a better pace and seems less obviously constructed. Placing the second flashback (‘Geoffrey had a shiny new bicycle ...’) after the paragraph where Thabang fantasises about the gun was astute, subtly linking the bicycle and the gun. These two objects were always at the centre of the story’s imagery, but their placement here reveals them as poles around which the worlds of childhood and adulthood, innocence and experience revolve. It makes sense to emphasise the gun in the title, and leave the bicycle as a more evocative memory image. It also feels right to mention Joburg in the title — this is very much a Joburg story, full of familiar streets and landmarks.
Talking of landmarks, a small question about John Vorster Square: I wondered whether this shouldn’t be identified as a police station for readers who might not know. Then I also wondered whether using the old apartheid-era name doesn’t put too early a date on what feels like a contemporary story (although it’s conceivable that Thabang would still think in those terms).
Something else I noticed on this reading: the gradations of feeling or being ‘like an animal’, capturing Thabang’s sense of fear, of being hunted and brutalised. Jeremiah is also ‘like a dog’ (even to Thabang). Finally, though, Thabang’s struggle to retain his own humanity throughout the piece, and the choice he makes at the end (for which he pays dearly) are challenges to his mother’s moral judgement on ‘dirty animals’.
The text has been sharpened in many places. I like the more active, insistent life of the gun. And also the small changes introduced into the final subsection. The opening paragraph of that section (from ‘Then he saw sickly black ...’) brings the threads of the story, past and present, together perfectly.
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This is a charming story, which I enjoyed even more on rereading. The writer has slimmed the piece down a bit and the narrative is that much clearer. Small changes, to the conversation between the narrator and Juan, for instance, have given the piece a bit more pace and made it more readable, I think. And the changes have been made without ruining the quirky rhythms and repetitions of the first version — perfectly in keeping with the island’s slow existence in its own legendary time.
I made two substantial suggestions in my first report: to give us more of Renato’s first shark-hunt and to trim the ending. As far as the first suggestion goes, I much prefer this fuller version of the shark-hunt. Apart from filling in what felt like a gap in the story, the new material — where Renato’s boat is dragged the length of the continent — has a marvellous mock-epic logic of its own. This effectively parodies the Hemingway precursor and chases some of its long shadows — whereas the second shark-hunt performs the same operation on Melville. I like the way Renato takes the narrator along with him on the first part of the journey (‘Together, the famous shark-killer and I ...’). Here and elsewhere the prose plays with the notion of being ‘carried away’ in a story. The whole story-telling sequence is vividly written. On my first reading, the absent story distracted me from the details of what’s going on here. This time round I was struck by the interweaving of Renato’s personal story (‘his family’) and that of a larger history (‘his people’); there’s a delightful game with time (which starts with the longevity of the islanders) and here it flickers through the language itself — for instance, in the way that Renato’s story has ‘epochs’ rather than ‘episodes’.
As for the ending, my suggestion that the last few paragraphs be lopped off was surely too drastic and the writer was wise to resist. This more concise version of the ending feels absolutely necessary. Ending sooner, with our narrator gazing at the sky and speculating on the existence of God, would leave the piece ‘up in the air’ as it were. Bringing it back to Renato’s hands — which made more of an impression on me this time round — restores the whole question of belief and faith to the salty domain in which it belongs in the rest of the story.
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The new opening of this piece is so much better. The decision to remove the Arizona anecdote entirely, rather than simply shortening it, was a good one. Now that it’s gone, one can see that it was getting in the way and not serving much purpose. The exchange between the taxi driver and the narrator, which is the basic dynamic of the whole story, now engages us almost immediately. It’s always difficult to cut ruthlessly, and here it’s paid off.
One small problem has crept in: now that the comment about the driver’s adeptness in rush-hour traffic has been cut, they don’t seem to be moving for the first page or so. Just a single sentence that describes them pulling off or moving into the stream of traffic or whatever would establish the fact that they’ve left the airport and are driving into the city. Maybe after the comment ‘I said with as much finality as possible’?
The dialogue itself is really good, but I still have a bit of a problem with the amount of description of gesture and tone. There’s a better balance than there was in the first draft, but it could still be improved. Look at the paragraph that starts ‘These girls, they don’t cook supper ...’ It’s that repetitive movement between a line of speech and a descriptive comment that still bothers me here. Elsewhere there’s simply too much detail in the description. Look at the paragraph that starts: ‘He glanced over his shoulder, took a deep breath ...’ One or two telling observations would be better. The writer shows a fine eye for detail, so it’s a case of being more selective. (Probably the confined space in which the story is set has made variation more difficult, because the two characters are restricted to a fairly limited set of gestures.)
The friends the narrator goes through in her thoughts now have more life and individuality. And there’s more of a sense that this is her unspoken answer to the taxi driver. She seems to be laughing a little at the friends too, which is interesting.
A quibble about the gold tooth. It’s amusing in itself, but wouldn’t she have noticed it earlier — she describes the taxi driver’s mouth several times. Perhaps she needs to catch a glimmer of the tooth during the conversation?
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The piece has changed enormously. Like Kuhns, Shah has taken the difficult option of cutting material rather than trying to reduce or adapt it, and again I think it’s paid off. The Sikh hijacking of the first version had potential, and it must have been tempting to keep it, but in the end it was overloading the story. (Perhaps it’s worth pursuing as a separate text?)
The restructuring has given the whole story a better shape. The division into sections has helped to get rid of the intrusive summaries that were holding the parts of the story together. Section breaks are especially useful in a short text with an ambitious time frame. You can jump over a week (as Shah does here) in a line space.
The surprising new section 1 is an excellent addition to the story, and gives it interest and depth in various ways. Firstly, it gives Dharam and Pratima a family relationship and a family background — in the first version we only discovered this later — and we care more about what happens to them from the start. Secondly, it provides some historical context for the Indian presence in Kenya, and so allows us to read the hijacking section in a different way. Without being obvious and over-explanatory, section 1 now establishes the three places that divide the attentions and allegiances of Dharam and the other characters — England, India, Kenya — and opens up some of the questions of cultural identity and difference which the story deals with. Thirdly, it establishes a mother-son relationship (Dharam and his mother) which sets up the second, very different mother-son relationship between Pratima and Chris. The whole story now feels more resolved, clearer about its concerns.
The title? The ‘discreet charm’ phrase summons a set of associations that don’t seem especially appropriate. And it sits uncomfortably with the wordplay in ‘Nairobbers’. Something simpler based on the ‘Nairobber’ idea?
The last paragraph of section two: the introduction of the hijacking here is perhaps too explicit. Just tell us that they were hijacked. Or perhaps it’s enough to tell us that the women went out on their own? Telling us that they were hijacked, taken to the forest etc gives too much away.
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Some of my conceptual problems with this have been cleared up. I still sense that the various humans and the eggs are not quite in the same symbolic worlds, but perhaps that is not such a problem in the context of this particular story. It’s helped that Mr Bosman and Mr Pillay have been given more of a history, and the introduction of Lord Farmer Brown also makes Sir Humpty feel like less of an anomaly. In other words, the gap between them as ‘characters’ (of a sort) and symbols has been narrowed. The ‘point five’ material fits in neatly and amusingly.
The handling of the direct speech is better, and the piece is more readable as a result, but in a few places the speakers are still identified too late — the beginning of the last paragraph (‘Away with Humpty Dumpty ...’) is an example. In a few places, the speaker is also identified twice — look at the paragraph that starts ‘He took off his glasses ...’ or the one that starts ‘I saw you, Your Honour ...’ where the advocate is identified a couple of times. This is really a technical thing and a question of convention — take a look at some examples in other fiction.
A couple of small things:
- Near the beginning: ‘The closest that the powers-that-be came to satisfying them ...’ Who does ‘them’ refer to?
- In the paragraph that starts ‘Your Honour, hereinbefore us ...’ It’s odd that the broken Humpty is the ‘plaintiff’. Perhaps rather the ‘victim’? I like the way the advocate’s anti-egg sentiments keep bursting out in this sequence.
- Old McDonald — this format is better.
- In the paragraph that starts ‘Mr Msindo’s life was blissful ...’ Perhaps keep the arrival of the eggs for the next paragraph? i.e. first sketch the pure and blissful life of Mr Msindo and then bring in the disruptive ‘man with the oval face’.
- I noticed on this reading how the king’s men prod around ‘as if they had been there for a century’ which goes some way towards answering my criticism about the time scale.
- One of the key moments, the change in Bumpty on his ivory chair (in the paragraph that starts ‘Suddenly, Bumpty Dumpty’s body shook ...’) is fudged a bit by awkward phrasing. Rephrase?
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