Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer
Gordimer (left) with David Grossman
Born	20 November 1923 (1923-11-20) (age 86) Springs, Gauteng, Johannesburg, South Africa
Occupation	Playwright, Novelist
Language	English
Nationality	South African
Notable work(s)	The Conservationist, July's People
Notable award(s)	Nobel Prize in Literature 1991

Nadine Gordimer (born 20 November 1923) is a South African writer, political activist and Nobel laureate.

Her writing has long dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress during the days when the organization was banned. She has recently been active in HIV/AIDS causes.

Biography

She was born around Springs, Gauteng, an East Rand mining town outside Johannesburg, the daughter of Isidore and Nan Gordimer. Her parents were both Jewish immigrants, her father a watchmaker from Lithuania near the Latvian border,^[1] and her mother from London. Gordimer's early interest in racial and economic inequality in South Africa was shaped in part by her parents. Her father's experience as a Jewish refugee in czarist Russia helped form Gordimer's political identity, but he was neither an activist nor particularly sympathetic toward the experiences of black people under apartheid.^[2] Conversely, Gordimer saw activism by her mother, whose concern about the poverty and discrimination faced by black people in South Africa led her to found a crèche for black children.^[1] Gordimer also witnessed government repression firsthand, when as a teenager the police raided her family home, confiscating letters and diaries from a servant's room.^[1]

Gordimer was educated at a Catholic convent school, but was largely home-bound as a child because of her mother's "strange reasons of her own" (apparently, fears that Gordimer had a weak heart).^[2] Home-bound and often isolated, she began writing at an early age, and published her first stories in 1937 at the age of fifteen.^[3] Her first published work was a short story for children, "The Quest for Seen Gold," which appeared in the Children's Sunday Express in 1937; "Come Again Tomorrow," another children's story, appeared in Forum around the same time. At the age of 16, she had her first adult fiction published.^[4]

Gordimer studied for a year at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she mixed for the first time with fellow professionals across the color bar. She also became involved in the Sophiatown renaissance.^[4] She did not complete her degree, but moved to Johannesburg in 1948, where she has lived ever since. While taking classes in Johannesburg, Gordimer continued to write, publishing mostly in local South African magazines. She collected many of these early stories in Face to Face, published in 1949.

In 1951, the New Yorker accepted Gordimer's story "A Watcher of the Dead",^[5] beginning a long relationship, and bringing Gordimer's work to a much larger public. Gordimer, who has said she believes the short story is the literary form for our age,^[3] has continued to publish short stories in the New Yorker and other prominent literary journals. Gordimer's first publisher, Lulu Friedman, was the wife of the Parliamentarian Bernard Friedman and it was at their house that Gordimer met other anti-apartheid writers^[6]

Gordimer's first novel, The Lying Days, was published in 1953. In 1954, she married Reinhold Cassirer, a highly respected art dealer who established the South African Sotheby's and later ran his own gallery; their "wonderful marriage"^[2] lasted until his death from emphysema in 2001. It was her second marriage and his third. Their son, Hugo, was born in 1955, and is today a filmmaker in New York, with whom Gordimer has collaborated on at least two documentaries. Gordimer also has a daughter, Oriane (born 1950), by her first marriage.

Political and literary activism

The arrest of her best friend, Bettie du Toit, in 1960 and the Sharpeville massacre spurred Gordimer's entry into the anti-apartheid movement.^[1] Thereafter, she quickly became active in South African politics, and was close friends with Nelson Mandela's defense attorneys (Bram Fischer and George Bizos) during his 1962 trial.^[1] When Mandela was released from prison in 1990, Gordimer was one of the first people he wanted to see.^[1]

During the 1960s and 1970s, she continued to live in Johannesburg, although she occasionally left for short periods of time to teach at several universities in the United States. She had begun to achieve international literary recognition, receiving her first major award in 1961.^[7] Throughout this time, Gordimer continued to demand through both her writing and her activism that South Africa re-examine and replace its long held policy of apartheid.

During this time, the South African government banned several of her works, two for lengthy periods of time. The Late Bourgeois World was Gordimer's first personal experience with censorship; it was banned in 1976 for a decade by the South African government.^[8][9] A World of Strangers was banned for twelve years.^[9] Other works were censored for lesser amounts of time. Burger's Daughter, published in June, 1979, was banned one month later; the Publications Committee's Appeal Board reversed the censorship of Burger's Daughter six months later, determining that the book was too one-sided to be subversive.^[10] Gordimer responded to this decision in Essential Gesture (1988), pointing out that the board banned two books by black authors at the same time it unbanned her own work.^[11] July's People was also banned under apartheid, and faced censorship under the post-apartheid government as well:^[12] In 2001, a provincial education department temporarily removed July's People from the school reading list, along with works by other anti-apartheid writers,^[13] describing July's People as "deeply racist, superior and patronizing"^[14]—a characterization that Gordimer took as a grave insult, and that many literary and political figures protested.^[13]

In South Africa, she joined the African National Congress when it was still listed as an illegal organization by the South African government.^[15][1] While never blindly loyal to any organization, Gordimer saw the ANC as the best hope for reversing South Africa's treatment of black citizens. Rather than simply criticizing the organization for its perceived flaws, she advocated joining it to address them.^[1] She hid ANC leaders in her own home to aid their escape from arrest by the government, and she has said that the proudest day of her life was when she testified at the 1986 Delmas Treason Trial on behalf of 22 South African anti-apartheid activists.^[15][1] (See Simon Nkoli, Mosiuoa Lekota, etc.) Throughout these years she also regularly took part in anti-apartheid demonstrations in South Africa, and traveled internationally speaking out against South African apartheid and discrimination and political repression.^[1]

Her works began achieving literary recognition early in her career, with her first international recognition in 1961, followed by numerous literary awards throughout the ensuing decades. Literary recognition for her accomplishments culminated with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991, which noted that Gordimer "through her magnificent epic writing has—in the words of Alfred Nobel—been of very great benefit to humanity".^[16]

Gordimer's activism has not been limited to the struggle against apartheid. She has resisted censorship and state control of information, and fostered the literary arts. She refused to let her work be aired by the South African Broadcasting Corporation because it was controlled by the apartheid government.^[17] Gordimer also served on the steering committee of South Africa's Anti-Censorship Action Group. A founding member of the Congress of South African Writers, Gordimer has also been active in South African letters and international literary organizations. She has been Vice President of International PEN.

In the post-apartheid 1990s and 21st century, Gordimer has been active in the HIV/AIDS movement, which is a significant public health crisis in South Africa. In 2004, she organized about 20 major writers to contribute short fiction for Telling Tales, a fundraising book for South Africa's Treatment Action Campaign, which lobbies for government funding for HIV/AIDS prevention and care.^[18] On this matter, she has been critical of the current South African government, noting in 2004 that she "approves" of everything President Mbeki has done except his stance on AIDS.^[18][19][20]

While on lecture tours, she has spoken on matters of foreign policy and discrimination beyond South Africa. For instance, in 2005, when Fidel Castro fell ill, Gordimer joined six other Nobel prizewinners in a public letter to the United States warning it not to seek to destabilize Cuba's communist government. In 2001 she urged her friend Susan Sontag not to accept an award from the Israeli government, though she angered some (including her biographer) by refusing to equate Zionism with apartheid.^{[citation needed]} Gordimer's resistance to discrimination extended to her even refusing to accept "shortlisting" in 1998 for the Orange Prize, because the award recognizes only women writers.

Gordimer self-identifies as an atheist,^[21] but has not been active in atheist organizations.

Work and themes

Gordimer has achieved lasting international recognition for her works, most of which deal with political issues, as well as the "moral and psychological tensions of her racially divided home country."^[22] Virtually all of Gordimer's works deal with themes of love and politics, particularly concerning race in South Africa. Always questioning power relations and truth, Gordimer tells stories of ordinary people, revealing moral ambiguities and choices. Her characterization is nuanced, revealed more through the choices her characters make than through their claimed identities and beliefs. She also weaves in subtle details within the character's names.

Overview of critical works

Her first published novel, The Lying Days (1953), takes place in Gordimer's home town of Springs, Transvaal, an East Rand mining town near Johannesburg. Arguably a semi-autobiographical work, The Lying Days is a Bildungsroman, charting the growing political awareness of a young white woman, Helen, toward small-town life and South African racial division.^[23]

In her 1963 work, Occasion for Loving, Gordimer puts apartheid and love squarely together. Her protagonist, Ann Davis, is married to Boaz Davis, an ethnomusicologist, but in love with Gideon Shibalo, an artist with several failed relationships. Ann Davis is white, however, and Gideon Shibalo is black, and South Africa's government criminalised such relationships.

Gordimer collected the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for A Guest of Honour in 1971 and, in common with a number of winners of this award, she was to go on to win the Booker Prize. The Booker was awarded to Gordimer for her 1974 novel, The Conservationist,^[24] and was a co-winner with Stanley Middleton's novel Holiday. The Conservationist explores Zulu culture and the world of a wealthy white industrialist through the eyes of Mehring, the antihero. Per Wästberg described The Conservationist as Gordimer's "densest and most poetical novel".^[1] Thematically covering the same ground as Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm (1883) and J. M. Coetzee's In the Heart of the Country (1977), the "conservationist" seeks to conserve nature to preserve the apartheid system, keeping change at bay. When an unidentified corpse is found on his farm, Mehring does the "right thing" by providing it a proper burial; but the dead person haunts the work, a reminder of the bodies on which Mehring's vision would be built.

Gordimer's 1979 novel Burger's Daughter is the story of a woman analyzing her relationship with her father, a martyr to the anti-apartheid movement. The child of two Communist and anti-apartheid revolutionaries, Rosa Burger finds herself drawn into political activism as well. Written in the aftermath of the Soweto uprising, the novel was shortly thereafter banned by the South African government. Gordimer described the novel as a "coded homage" to Bram Fischer, the lawyer who defended Nelson Mandela and other anti-apartheid activists.^[25]

In July's People (1981), Gordimer imagines a bloody South African revolution, in which white people are hunted and murdered after black people begin a revolution against the apartheid government. The work follows Maureen and Bamford Smales, an educated white couple, hiding for their lives with July, their long-time former servant. The novel plays off the various groups of "July's people": his family and his village, as well as the Smales. The story examines how people cope with the terrible choices forced on them by violence, race hatred, and the state.

The House Gun (1998) was Gordimer's second post-apartheid novel. It follows the story of a couple, Claudia and Harald Lingard, dealing with their son Duncan's murder of one of his housemates. The novel treats the rising crime rate in South Africa and the guns that virtually all households have, as well as the legacy of South African apartheid and the couple's concerns about their son's lawyer, who is black. The novel was optioned for film rights to Granada Productions.^[26][27][28]

Gordimer's award-winning 2002 novel, The Pickup, considers the issues of displacement, alienation, and immigration; class and economic power; religious faith; and the ability for people to see, and love, across these divides. It tells the story of a couple: Julie Summers, a white woman from a financially secure family, and Abdu, an illegal Arab immigrant in South Africa. After Abdu's visa is refused, the couple returns to his homeland, where she is the alien. Her experiences and growth as an alien in another culture form the heart of the work.^{[29][30][31][32]}

Gordimer's recent novel, Get a Life, written in 2005 after the death of her longtime spouse, Reinhold Cassirer, is the story of a man undergoing treatment for a life-threatening disease. While clearly drawn from recent personal life experiences, the novel also continues Gordimer's exploration of political themes. The protagonist is an ecologist, battling installation of a planned nuclear plant. But he is at the same time undergoing radiation therapy for his cancer, causing him personal grief and, ironically, rendering him a nuclear health hazard in his own home. Here, Gordimer again pursues the questions of how to integrate everyday life and political activism.^[15]

Biography by Roberts

Ronald Suresh Roberts published a biography of Gordimer, No Cold Kitchen, in 2006. Gordimer had granted Roberts interviews and access to her personal papers, with an understanding that she would authorize the biography in return for a right to review the manuscript before publication. However, Gordimer and Roberts failed to reach an agreement over his account of the illness and death of Gordimer's husband Reinhold Cassirer and an affair Gordimer had in the 50s, as well as criticism of her views on the Israel-Palestine conflict. Roberts published independently, not as "authorized", and Gordimer disavowed the book, accusing Roberts of breach of trust.^[33]

In addition to those disagreements, Roberts critiques Gordimer's post-apartheid advocacy on behalf of black South Africans, in particular her opposition to the government's handling of the AIDS crisis, as a paternalistic and hypocritical white liberalism. The biography also revealed that Gordimer's 1954 New Yorker essay, A South African Childhood, was not wholly biographical and contained some fabricated events.^[33]

Bibliography

Honours and awards

• W. H. Smith Commonwealth Literary Award (England) (1961)
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize (England) (1972)
• Booker Prize for The Conservationist (1974)
• CNA Prize (Central News Agency Literary Award), South Africa (1974, 1975, 1980, 1991)
• Grand Aigle d'Or (France) (1975)
• Orange Prize shortlisting; she rejected
• Scottish Arts Council Neil M. Gunn Fellowship (1981)
• Modern Language Association Award (United States) (1982)
• Bennett Award (United States) (1987)
• Premio Malaparte (Italy) (1985)
• Nelly Sachs Prize (Germany) (1986)
• Anisfield-Wolf Book Award (1988, A Sport of Nature)
• Nobel Prize for Literature (1991)
• Commonwealth Writers' Prize for the Best Book from Africa (2002; for The Pickup)
• Booker Prize longlist (2001; for The Pickup)
• Legion of Honour (France) (2007)^[34]
• Hon. Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Hon. Member, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters
• Fellow, Royal Society of Literature (Britain)
• Patron, Congress of South African Writers
• Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France)
• At least 15 honorary degrees (the first being Doctor Honoris Causa at Leuven University in Belgium)

See also

• List of female Nobel laureates

Further reading

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Nadine Gordimer

Brief biographies

• Nadine Gordimer at Contemporary Writers
• LitWeb.net: Nadine Gordimer Biography (2003)
• Guardian Books "Author Page", with profile and links to further articles

Critical studies

• Stephen Clingman, The Novels of Nadine Gordimer: History from the Inside (1986)
• John Cooke, The Novels of Nadine Gordimer
• Andrew Vogel Ettin, Betrayals of the Body Politic: The Literary Commitments of Nadine Gordimer (1993)
• Dominic Head, Nadine Gordimer (1994)
• Christopher Heywood, Nadine Gordimer (1983)
• Rowland Smith, editor, Critical Essays on Nadine Gordimer (1990)
• Barbara Temple-Thurston, Nadine Gordimer Revisited (1999) ISBN 0805746080
• Kathrin Wagner, Rereading Nadine Gordimer (1994)
• Louise Yelin, From the Margins of Empire: Christina Stead, Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer (1998)
• Nadine Gordimer's Politics. Article by Jillian Becker in Commentary, February 1992^[35]

Short reviews

• Index of New York Times articles on Gordimer

Speeches and interviews

• Nadine Gordimer, Nancy Topping Bazin, and Marilyn Dallman Seymour, Conversations with Nadine Gordimer (1990)
• Nadine Gordimer, Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech (1991)

Biographies

• Ronald Suresh Roberts, No Cold Kitchen: A Biography of Nadine Gordimer (2005)
• No Cold Kitchen: A Biography of Nadine Gordimer by Ronald Suresh Roberts (STE) ^[36]

Research archives

• Collection Index for Nadine Gordimer Short Stories and Novel Manuscript collection, 1958-1965 (Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin, Texas)
• Guide to the Gordimer manuscripts, 1934-1991 (Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana)
• Nadine Gordimer Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin

References