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Tom Rymour new novel
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Dear Don and List,
This is the review of Tom Rymour´s book:
From page 18 Sunday Independent 28th February
NON-BLACK MENIALS KNOW THEIR PLACE IN 23RD CENTURY 'RUDISHA'
AFTER THE ECLIPSE
by Tom Rymour (Discobolus) R149
Review: Michiel Heyns
In Gulliver's Travels (1726) Jonathan Swift sent his protagonist to what we
would now call a parallel universe, a country operating according to its own
rules and assumptions in blissful ignorance of any others. Swift's purpose,
of course, was to raise a satirical eyebrow at his own society, no less
blandly assuming that its own way of doing things was the right and natural
one. Later writers, like Samuel Butler in
Erewhon (1872) and Aldous Huxley in Brave New World (1932), have used the
same technique.
After the Eclipse, which won the Sanlam Literary Award, is an
African creation in the same tradition. The country of Rudisha, somewhere in
the 23rd century, offers an inversion of the values of... well, Rhodesia
three centuries earlier, and by extension any social system based on racial
discrimination.
Rudisha is run by a small, privileged, intolerant, racist
minority, which happens to be black. The whites, living in squalor in their
ghettoes and shanty towns, are for the most part menial labourers or
janissaries, a kind of secret police of the regime. They are regarded as
trouble-makers and potential thieves and they "all look the same to the
rulers". Some of the more liberal blacks argue that whites should be
treated humanely. Some others, though, complain that the "bosses" are
getting "soft on whites".
But this is not the only inversion Rymour treats us to. In
Rudisha, eating is regarded as obscene: the lower face is always covered
with a kerchief, and any reference to mouth, lips or teeth is treated as the
ultimate obscenity: a holy man is revered for sewing his oral opening shut.
Food is euphemistically referred to as "the necessary", and people who eat
in secret are reagrded as perverts and punished accordingly.
Sex, on the other hand, is practised often and openly, in the
form of both formal four-course orgies and more casual shag sessions.
Marriage is unknown, the family unit consisting of brother and
sister and such children as are born to the sister from the promiscuous
couplings in which she, as the dominant partner, takes the lead; property
and power pass through the female line.
The point of all these inversions is of course to satirise the
whole concept of normality, and the unquestioning obedience with which most
people accept vthe norms of their society. Our own views on race and sex are
quite as arbitrary as those of the Rudishans, Rymour seems to imply. I am
not sure that racism, sexism and sexual prudery have enough stuffing left in
them to stand up to being knocked about in this fashion, but the coconuts
are shied with rare vigour and accuracy.
Rymour drives his satire by creating an innocent protagonist, a
young white called, among other names, January Beeswax. He naively accepts
the way things are, believing that, for instance, the Bible decrees that
whites should be subservient to blacks.
January is set travelling, and in the course of his travels is
exposed to almost every horror his society is capable of. He also becomes
subject to an immensely complicated plot hinging on the succession to the
throne, and ends up as a gombwe, a ruling spirit of the land.
Rymour shows great skill in constructing his imaginary country
and in assembling a whole little society, complete with the most involved
history, hierarchies and rituals. In his creation of an imaginary society
the novel approaches something of the fertility of imagination of Tolkien's
Lord of the Rings, though it is mercifully shorter. The movements of the
characters and the time-span of the action are meticulously plotted,
producing a Byzantine succession of twists and turns.
At times all this feels like rather too much of a good thing.
The poor January is subjected to an apparently endless series of mishaps and
complications, all driven by a mystery that becomes ever more convoluted.
It is something of an achievement that Rymour manages to
surprise us at the end, and, indeed, forces us to reconsider our reading of
the whole novel, through an epilogue and postscript that introduce a whole
new perspective on the main action. Ideally, one would now reread this
clever and accomplished novel to appreciate the skill with which the whole
box of tricks has been assembled.
If you would like to buy this book, please send an e-mail to:
orders@discobolus.co.za
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2005 6:00 PM
Subject: Fwd: Re: Illium
> Dear Listmembers:
>
> As long as we're discussing genre-transcending sf, may I recommend the
works
> of Gene Wolfe? He's a writer of stunning complexity and has even been
boldly
> hailed by the Washington Post as "the Nabokov of speculative fiction."* My
> own personal favorites include THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS, PEACE, and the
> author's four volume BOOK OF THE NEW SUN, as well as his first short story
> collection, tautologically-entitled THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR DEATH AND OTHER
> STORIES, AND OTHER STORIES. (Further examples of Wolfe's playfulness can
be
> found in the pages of the latter, the collection containing not only the
> titular gem, but also its fugue sequels, "The Death of Dr. Island" and
"The
> Doctor of Death Island" [but not, alas, "The Death of the Island Doctor,"
> which he wrote for another volume]).
>
> One of Wolfe's grand themes? Memory and how it shapes us.
> Severian-the-torturer, who narrates NEWS SUN, has a memory like Borges'
> Funes and claims to forget nothing, while Latro, a brain-damaged soldier
in
> ancient Greece, must inscribe the events of his life daily because he has
no
> long term memory due to his injury--although as compensation he can see
and
> converse with the deities of Olympus. (LATRO IN THE MIST contains both
> Soldier volumes.)
>
> Wolfe, in the manner of Alfred Hitchcock's cameos, also likes to insert
> himself into his works; and finding these various lupine avatars is as
much
> fun as decoding his elaborate onomastics and frequently jangled narrative
> chronologies.
>
> Please check out this writer if you're at all interested in "high-end"
> science fiction and see if you agree with critic John Clute's observation
> that "Though neither the most popular nor the most influential author in
the
> sf field, Gene Wolfe is today quite possibly the most important."
>
>
*http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A
62473-2002Apr4
>
> rjb
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
>
>
----- End forwarded message -----
This is the review of Tom Rymour´s book:
From page 18 Sunday Independent 28th February
NON-BLACK MENIALS KNOW THEIR PLACE IN 23RD CENTURY 'RUDISHA'
AFTER THE ECLIPSE
by Tom Rymour (Discobolus) R149
Review: Michiel Heyns
In Gulliver's Travels (1726) Jonathan Swift sent his protagonist to what we
would now call a parallel universe, a country operating according to its own
rules and assumptions in blissful ignorance of any others. Swift's purpose,
of course, was to raise a satirical eyebrow at his own society, no less
blandly assuming that its own way of doing things was the right and natural
one. Later writers, like Samuel Butler in
Erewhon (1872) and Aldous Huxley in Brave New World (1932), have used the
same technique.
After the Eclipse, which won the Sanlam Literary Award, is an
African creation in the same tradition. The country of Rudisha, somewhere in
the 23rd century, offers an inversion of the values of... well, Rhodesia
three centuries earlier, and by extension any social system based on racial
discrimination.
Rudisha is run by a small, privileged, intolerant, racist
minority, which happens to be black. The whites, living in squalor in their
ghettoes and shanty towns, are for the most part menial labourers or
janissaries, a kind of secret police of the regime. They are regarded as
trouble-makers and potential thieves and they "all look the same to the
rulers". Some of the more liberal blacks argue that whites should be
treated humanely. Some others, though, complain that the "bosses" are
getting "soft on whites".
But this is not the only inversion Rymour treats us to. In
Rudisha, eating is regarded as obscene: the lower face is always covered
with a kerchief, and any reference to mouth, lips or teeth is treated as the
ultimate obscenity: a holy man is revered for sewing his oral opening shut.
Food is euphemistically referred to as "the necessary", and people who eat
in secret are reagrded as perverts and punished accordingly.
Sex, on the other hand, is practised often and openly, in the
form of both formal four-course orgies and more casual shag sessions.
Marriage is unknown, the family unit consisting of brother and
sister and such children as are born to the sister from the promiscuous
couplings in which she, as the dominant partner, takes the lead; property
and power pass through the female line.
The point of all these inversions is of course to satirise the
whole concept of normality, and the unquestioning obedience with which most
people accept vthe norms of their society. Our own views on race and sex are
quite as arbitrary as those of the Rudishans, Rymour seems to imply. I am
not sure that racism, sexism and sexual prudery have enough stuffing left in
them to stand up to being knocked about in this fashion, but the coconuts
are shied with rare vigour and accuracy.
Rymour drives his satire by creating an innocent protagonist, a
young white called, among other names, January Beeswax. He naively accepts
the way things are, believing that, for instance, the Bible decrees that
whites should be subservient to blacks.
January is set travelling, and in the course of his travels is
exposed to almost every horror his society is capable of. He also becomes
subject to an immensely complicated plot hinging on the succession to the
throne, and ends up as a gombwe, a ruling spirit of the land.
Rymour shows great skill in constructing his imaginary country
and in assembling a whole little society, complete with the most involved
history, hierarchies and rituals. In his creation of an imaginary society
the novel approaches something of the fertility of imagination of Tolkien's
Lord of the Rings, though it is mercifully shorter. The movements of the
characters and the time-span of the action are meticulously plotted,
producing a Byzantine succession of twists and turns.
At times all this feels like rather too much of a good thing.
The poor January is subjected to an apparently endless series of mishaps and
complications, all driven by a mystery that becomes ever more convoluted.
It is something of an achievement that Rymour manages to
surprise us at the end, and, indeed, forces us to reconsider our reading of
the whole novel, through an epilogue and postscript that introduce a whole
new perspective on the main action. Ideally, one would now reread this
clever and accomplished novel to appreciate the skill with which the whole
box of tricks has been assembled.
If you would like to buy this book, please send an e-mail to:
orders@discobolus.co.za
----- Original Message -----
From: "Donald B. Johnson" <chtodel@gss.ucsb.edu>
To: <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2005 6:00 PM
Subject: Fwd: Re: Illium
> Dear Listmembers:
>
> As long as we're discussing genre-transcending sf, may I recommend the
works
> of Gene Wolfe? He's a writer of stunning complexity and has even been
boldly
> hailed by the Washington Post as "the Nabokov of speculative fiction."* My
> own personal favorites include THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS, PEACE, and the
> author's four volume BOOK OF THE NEW SUN, as well as his first short story
> collection, tautologically-entitled THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR DEATH AND OTHER
> STORIES, AND OTHER STORIES. (Further examples of Wolfe's playfulness can
be
> found in the pages of the latter, the collection containing not only the
> titular gem, but also its fugue sequels, "The Death of Dr. Island" and
"The
> Doctor of Death Island" [but not, alas, "The Death of the Island Doctor,"
> which he wrote for another volume]).
>
> One of Wolfe's grand themes? Memory and how it shapes us.
> Severian-the-torturer, who narrates NEWS SUN, has a memory like Borges'
> Funes and claims to forget nothing, while Latro, a brain-damaged soldier
in
> ancient Greece, must inscribe the events of his life daily because he has
no
> long term memory due to his injury--although as compensation he can see
and
> converse with the deities of Olympus. (LATRO IN THE MIST contains both
> Soldier volumes.)
>
> Wolfe, in the manner of Alfred Hitchcock's cameos, also likes to insert
> himself into his works; and finding these various lupine avatars is as
much
> fun as decoding his elaborate onomastics and frequently jangled narrative
> chronologies.
>
> Please check out this writer if you're at all interested in "high-end"
> science fiction and see if you agree with critic John Clute's observation
> that "Though neither the most popular nor the most influential author in
the
> sf field, Gene Wolfe is today quite possibly the most important."
>
>
*http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A
62473-2002Apr4
>
> rjb
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
>
>
----- End forwarded message -----