Overview
Whether talking about her own writing, interpreting the works of others, or giving us a window on the world that "we in South Africa are attempting to reconstruct," Nadine Gordimer has much to tell us about the art of fiction and the art of life.
In this deeply resonant book Gordimer examines the tension for a writer between life's experiences and narrative creations. She asks first, where do characters come from—to what extent are they drawn from real life? We are touching on this question whenever we insist on the facts behind the fiction, Gordimer suggests, and here she tries to unravel the mysterious process that breathes "real" life into fiction. Exploring the writings of revolutionaries in South Africa, she shows how their struggle is contrastingly expressed in factual accounts and in lyrical poetry. Gordimer next turns to three writers linked by their search for a life that transcends their own time and place: in distinctive and telling ways, Naguib Mahfouz, Chinua Achebe, and Amos Oz defy accepted norms of loyalty to the mores and politics of their countries. Their search in Egypt, Nigeria, and Israel for a meaningful definition of home testifies to what it must be: the destination of the human spirit beyond national boundaries. Ending on a personal note, Gordimer reveals her own experience of "writing her way out of" the confines of a dying colonialism.
In this deeply resonant book, Nobel Prize laureate Nadine Gordimer examines the tension for a writer between life's experiences and narrative creations, investigating where characters come from--to what extent are they drawn from real life?--and using the writings of South African revolutionaries to show how their struggle is contrastingly expressed in factual fiction and in lyrical poetry.
Synopsis
Whether talking about her own writing, interpreting the works of others, or giving us a window on the world that "we in South Africa are attempting to reconstruct," Nadine Gordimer has much to tell us about the art of fiction and the art of life.
In this deeply resonant book Gordimer examines the tension for a writer between life's experiences and narrative creations. She asks first, where do characters come from—to what extent are they drawn from real life? We are touching on this question whenever we insist on the facts behind the fiction, Gordimer suggests, and here she tries to unravel the mysterious process that breathes "real" life into fiction. Exploring the writings of revolutionaries in South Africa, she shows how their struggle is contrastingly expressed in factual accounts and in lyrical poetry. Gordimer next turns to three writers linked by their search for a life that transcends their own time and place: in distinctive and telling ways, Naguib Mahfouz, Chinua Achebe, and Amos Oz defy accepted norms of loyalty to the mores and politics of their countries. Their search in Egypt, Nigeria, and Israel for a meaningful definition of home testifies to what it must be: the destination of the human spirit beyond national boundaries. Ending on a personal note, Gordimer reveals her own experience of "writing her way out of" the confines of a dying colonialism.
Publishers Weekly
Drawing on lectures delivered at Harvard, Nobel laureate Gordimer, musing on the links between life and literature, offers some fascinating personal reflections as well as thoughts on fellow writers in South Africa and other countries. Her characters, she asserts, are both imagined and taken from life; she discloses, however, that the protagonist of one of her novels (unnamed, but clearly Burger's Daughter) found the book uncannily accurate. The recently published memoirs of several South African revolutionaries not only describe the path to political consciousness, she notes, but also stimulate the conditions for societal reflection. She offers sympathetic, close readings of the works of writers Naguib Mahfouz, Chinua Achebe and Amos Oz-``the Arab, the African, the Jew.'' She concludes her brief book by reflecting on her own road to politics and literature-``I think I have been fortunate in that I was born into the decadence of the colonial period''-and on South Africa's extraordinary recent transition to a country that is now whole. (Oct.)
Editorials
Bloomsbury Review
A list of the best writing on writing would have to include [this] beautiful book...[It is] true criticism, which means it is a work of art. [Writing and Being] overflows with music that could melt the stars.— James Hepworth
Jewish Chronicle
[A] beautifully written short collection.— Gerald De Groot
Nation
A satisfying and redemptive book. The opening and closing [essays] frame her discussions of South African writers of the 'Age of Revolution' and of three novelists--Naguib Mahfouz, Amos Oz, and Chinua Achebe--who constitute a company of writers who arrive at 'the Forgotten Promised Land where their peoples could appease an embittered history.'— Maureen Howard
Oxford Quarterly Review
Nadine Gordimer offers a compelling and insightful narrative of the emergence of her postcolonial identity and her new sense of national belonging. As such, she offers more food for thought on her favourite subject: the healing mysteries of writing and being in South Africa.— Daryl Lee
Scotsman
Gordimer has much to tell us about the art of fiction and the art of life...She is unfailingly interesting on the mysterious process that both turns 'real' life into fiction and then breathes new life into it as language on the page...These lectures, like her novels and stories, are not about 'protest'. What they are is work that is itself so gloriously free that it shows up unfreedom by its sheer joy. Gordimer is a writer of courage, as well as one of natural gifts, and she deserves the compliment of clear, attentive, unpatronising reading by all who care to read books for themselves.— Robert Nye
The Observer
Gordimer's key concern in these six essays is the relationship between experience and fiction, how truth can be achieved despite the confines of place and politics. The major part of the book is given over to examinations of three writers whom Gordimer considers to have transcended the boundaries of their experience precisely by concentrating on issues of race, country and religion: Naguib Mahfouz, Chinua Achebe and Amos Oz. Intelligent and impassioned though these studies are, it is Gordimer's two essays on the nature of her own fictional enterprise which really excite, and her description of an intellectual journey from childhood in a small gold-mining town to becoming one of the most eloquent voices in the fight against apartheid.Times Literary Supplement
Her own experiences as a South African writer in protest against her country's situation...are among the best [pages] she has ever written. In fact what she says about herself as a young writer...affirms the greatness and importance of her own work as artist and citizen...This book is a wonderful document of the human spirit at its most attractive and serious.— Edward Said