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CIRCUMCISED LIBERALISM
Umtaan’s Heroes Jon Elkon (Andre Deutsch £10.95) In his first novel. Jon Elkon presents the unbelievable but convincing history ofTom Bloch. product ofwhite South African suburbia.gone ‘liberal‘. Having taken some thirty pages to be born. Bloch proffers farcical. embroidered descriptions of his circumcision (from the baby’s point ofview) and of the cringingly adolescent nightmare. the Barmitzvah. Then he moves on to the teenage years which ‘began with Sharpville‘: whilst his bourgeois relatives were loading the limo for a white folks‘ holiday. sixty-nine black people were murdered. One witness to the atrocity. the ardent freedom-fighting young Absolom. is also the son ofthe family servant. It is Tom (with bosom pal Pieter) who later finds himselfin a position to free the inevitably imprisoned Absolom. It is an act doomed to
READING THIS ARTICLE COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE
1
and painters, sulphur dioxide gas exposure in photographers and potters,solvent and pesticide poisoning in museum conservators . . . . . . Look at the art students. Look at them silkscreening all day - and all day inhaling a chemical mixture of solvent vapours. Those vapours go straight to your central nervous system. Ever feel dizzy in the studio? So you go home and sleep it off. But suppose you go home and have a couple of martinis - now that’s a welcome invitation to alter your central nervous system. But on top of all that solvent you’ve
inhaled all day, and all those cigarettes, the cumulative effect is very dangerous. It’s an addictive effect - more damaging to your gray matter than you realise.
But supposing you were working with a different solvent, say carbon tetrachloride and you spill solvent on the floor, wipe it up and live to drinkthat martini. Boom! that’ s a synergistic effect - like alcohol and barbiturates. You might just croak. II
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failure — like all the stands made against Apartheid in the book.
What prevents all this from being traumatically heavy-going is Elkon‘s shifting perspective. An unquestioned beliefin reincarnation (both ofhumans and the Earth) underpins the novel and is ultimately (very ultimately) reassuring.
Umfaan. the classic wizened African witchdoctor. provides a further dimension in the form of bizarre. but uncannin feasible. ‘science fiction' tales of ‘How the Blacks won the (Wild) West‘. By dislodging reality, Elkon underlines the pointlessness of it all and supplies in this racy. chatty reworking ofa familiar topic. a refreshing lack of intensity. (Jacqueline Edgar)
BLUE GRANDPARENTS
Herb ’n’ Lorna Eric Kraft (Hodder & Stoughton £1 1.95) ‘Events beyond his control‘ have made it vital for Peter Leroy. chronicler. to reconstruct the lives of his maternal grandparents — namely his unsettling discovery that. unobtrusively. they may have given birth to the ‘animated erotic jewelry industry.‘
I . . . . . . There IS lead porsonmg in potters; solvent over-exposure in printmakers,
of ALBA.
An article on HEALTH HAZARDS TO ARTISTS BY Monona President of ACTS (Arts, Crafts Safety), New York, will appear in the next issue
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Just as most people cannot imagine their parents copulating (even to spawn themselves). so too are the sexual activities of one‘s grandparents usually as remote as the Siberian lifestyle is to an East
Sussex solicitor’s clerk. Yet it seems
that Lorna. descended from the furnishings side (garters. cuff-links). and Herb. from a line of loony salesmen (ice. cork. rat pies) possess an almost fire-raising bedroom spark.
Kraft‘s sly but unsentimental account ofparochial New England‘s off-kilter history. by means of a central and devoted relationship. is humorously spiced with gossip from contemporaries. extracts from literary journals. etiquette and travel manuals.
As a mildly satirical sweep at the entrenchment ()fprudish ideals. the book has the subtlety ofcontext and chronology to sustain its low pitch. As a love story (the subtitle). it‘s a clannish parable ofinnocence. a warm salute to the joint creators of miniature mobile couples. miraculously carved by her. mechanically sound by him. (Chris Lloyd)
RETROSPECTIVE PIGLETS
Bronx Primitive Kate Simon (Harrap £14.95) Kate Simon is not well known over here. but in her native America she is an established and much respected writer ofwitty. literate travel guides. ‘Bronx Primitive’ is the first British publication of her vigorous and
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Bob m
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, 52-; . 35:..‘vts-.-.‘i=*:~ :53. entertaining memoirs. which begin
with her arrival in New York at four years old and end with her undergraduate years at Hunter College. In between lies a vast. moving pageant ofJewish life in the 1920s. full ofcolour. energy and eccentricity.
With almost cinematic clarity. Simon re-animates people and places from her past. from Lafontaine. Harlem and Greenwich Village. Her descriptions are vivid and her prose ebullient. her turns of phrase often unexpected and occasionally grotesque (‘smooth pink piglets like skinned babies grinning from the windows of butcher shops‘). She has a child's perspective. but writes with the retrospective irony of adulthood. combining immediacy with a wry. detached self-analysis.
‘Bronx Primitive‘ will prove an enduring work because in addition to its remarkable vignettes of immigrant life. it deals with the universal transition from childhood. through adolescence. into uneasy maturity. (Ursula Brown)
EVENTS Glasgow
I Agnes Owens, James Kelman and the Gloria Theatre Company are participating in a benefit for Gay Switchboard at the Third Eye Centre. 350 Sauchiehall Street on Sunday 26 March at 2.30pm. Tickets are £1.
I Serpent's Tail present extracts
ALBA
SPECIAL ISSUE ON ART SCIENCE TECHNOLGY
Featuring
l’aolozxi
Health Hazards to Artists John A Walker On Film Andy Coldswortny
Sjoerd Buisman
Synthetic Modernism
Cindy Sherman
Creative Computers
Peter Fuller Returns To
Art and Psychoanalysis Photocopy Art
Leonardo
Sculpture And Engineering Andrew Wiener Photographs Ken Kiff And Much More . .
Paula Rego
Next Issue: l‘he Vienna Scandal
READING THIS ARTICLE COULD SAVE YOUR LIFE Subsidised By The Scottish Arts Council
The List 24 March—6 April 1989 67