•Brink dated each journal as well as each entry contained therein, and the journal pages are usually numbered. Where journal pages are not numbered, I give the page number in its numerical sequence.
•Journal references style follows this example: Journal marked ‘Julie 1968– Oktober 1968’, entry for 11 August 1968, pp. 79–80.
•In subsequent references, a shortened form is used: ‘Julie 1968–Oktober 1968’, 11 August 1968, pp. 79–80.
•‘Ibid.’ indicates that the information is identical to the preceding endnote, i.e. same journal, same entry, and same page number(s): ‘Julie 1968–Oktober 1968’, 11 August 1968, pp. 79–80.
•In cases where an entry from the same journal has a different date (e.g. 22 August 1968), ‘Ibid.’ implicitly includes a reference to the journal title in the preceding endnote (i.e. ‘Julie 1968–Oktober 1968’), but with the new entry date: Ibid., 22 August 1968, p. 114.
PREFACE
1.WA de Klerk, The Puritans in Africa: A Story of Afrikanerdom (London: R Collings, 1975).
2.According to several reports, Brink was a strong candidate for the Nobel in 1982, when Gabriel García Márquez took the coveted award. In 1991, too, expectations arose that Brink would get the prize, but the judges gave it to Nadine Gordimer instead. After Gunther Grass won the Nobel in 1999, media reports quoting literary sources in Sweden suggested that both Brink and JM Coetzee came very close. See Eva-Marie Herlitzius, A Comparative Analysis of the South African and German Reception of Nadine Gordimer’s, André Brink’s and J.M. Coetzee’s Works (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2005), p. 122; ‘Brink and Coetzee came close’, Saturday Star, 2 October 1999; ‘Novelist André Brink dies at 79’, IOL News, 7 February 2015, available at iol.co.za/news/south-africa/western-cape/novelist-andre-brink-dies-at-79-1814547; and ESAT, ‘André P. Brink’, available at http://esat.sun.ac.za/index.php/Andr%C3%A9_P._Brink
3.The leading example of such action was surely the killing of Ahmed Timol in 1971, but there were many others, too. Timol was a 30-year-old teacher and political activist who – according to a finding by the High Court in Gauteng in 2017 – did not jump to his death from a tenth-floor window at John Vorster Square but was pushed from either the tenth floor or the rooftop. Judge Billy Mothle found that the then Security Branch police officers who interrogated Timol were collectively responsible for his death and should be held accountable, overturning a 1972 ruling that he committed suicide while in detention in 1971. See Greg Nicolson, ‘Timol Inquest: He was murdered but culprits are dead, court rules’, Daily Maverick, 12 October 2017, available at https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-10-12-timol-inquest-he-was-murdered-but-culprits-are-dead-court-rules/
4.Journal marked ‘April 2002–Nov 2002’, entry for 3 June 2002, pp. 9–10.
5.Journal marked ‘Apl–Mei 01’, entry for 9 May 2001, p. 79.
6.See Edna O’Brien, James Joyce (London: Phoenix, 2000), p. 75. O’Brien dismissed the fuss that followed publication of Joyce’s intimate and ‘infamous’ letters to Nora Barnacle, the woman he eloped with and later married, asking pointedly why he never destroyed them, and suggesting that the letters were ‘for Nora … but they were also for Joyce, to convince himself that he was free of every last vestige of Roman Catholic guilt’. Similarly, Brink’s very ‘private’ journalling stands as a testament to his self-liberation from Calvinism; the fact that he made no attempt to destroy the journals suggests that, in all likelihood, he meant them to be read, possibly as the truest story about himself.
7.Journal marked ‘Januarie 1967–Nov 1967’, entry for 21 January 1967, p. 11.
8.Katha Pollitt, ‘The Death Is Not the Life’, The New York Times, 18 August 1991 (review of Anne Sexton: A Biography, including an interview with Middlebrook). Available at nytimes.com/2001/08/18/books/the-death-is-not-the-life.html
9.Diane Wood Middlebrook, ‘Telling Secrets’, in Mary Rhiel and David Suchoff (eds), The Seductions of Biography (New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 127. The ‘hidden material’ Middlebrook refers to are tape recordings of Anne Sexton’s psychotherapy sessions; when these were released to Middlebrook by Sexton’s daughter after the poet’s suicide at age 45, there was a public outcry over confidentiality issues.
10.Martyn Bedford, reviewing Before I Forget (2004), in ‘Confessions of a Pudendologist’, Literary Review, Dec 2004–Jan 2005, p. 64. NELM 2011.13.9.3.
11.Journal marked ‘Gedagtes’ (‘Mrt 56–Des 58’ ), entry for 21 February 1957, pp. 21–22.
12.Journal marked ‘Julie 1965–DES. 1966’, entry for 23 and 24 October 1966, p. 112.
13.Marita van der Vyver, ‘André P Brink: ’n Skrywer wat die Wêreld Bereik het’, 9 February 2015, quoted in Netwerk24, NELM digital holdings, PDF 20150209-Netwerk24-André P. Brink ’n skrywer wat die wêreld bereik het.pdf . See also Chapter 9.
14.Journal marked ‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, entry for 9 March 1970, p. 81.
15.Journal marked ‘Aug 61–April 1963’, entry for 28 November 1962, p. 147.
CHAPTER 1
1.This estimate was reached by calculating the number of pages in each journal, multiplying that by the average number of lines per page, and then by the average number of words per line.
2.André Brink, Before I Forget (London: Vintage, 2005), p. 66. (Originally published in 2004.) Brink’s protagonist in this novel is Chris Minnaar. ‘Minnaar’ means ‘lover’ in Afrikaans.
3.A Fork in the Road: A Memoir (London: Harvill Secker, 2009). All further references are to this edition.
4.Ibid., pp. 31–32.
5.In Brink’s journal, it emerges that one of his prospective girlfriends comes from a ‘Sap’ family – supporters of the South African Party, in opposition to the pro-Afrikaner National Party – and that this was, at the time, problematic for both Brink and his mother. See Journal marked ‘Dagboek Okt. 1954–17 Des. 1954’, entry for 27 October 1954, p. 28.
6.A Fork in the Road, p. 14.
7.See, for example, A Fork in the Road, p. 14, where the story is recounted of police who fail to find a band of cattle raiders and go on to take out their frustration by brutally beating up an innocent black man.
8.Ibid., p. 15.
9.Ibid., pp. 15–16.
10.Ibid., p. 17.
11.Ibid., p. 18.
12.Ibid., p. 20.
13.Of course, the reference here to WB Yeats’s poem, ‘The Second Coming’, was also the product of a much more mature sensibility than that of the boy André.
14.A Fork in the Road, p. 26.
15.Ibid.
16.Ibid., p. 27.
17.Journal marked ‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, entry for 4 February 2001, p. 61. Brink’s use of the phrase ‘toe ek baie klein was’ suggests that he was either a baby or a toddler at the time. The phrase ‘in die steek laat’ connotes both abandonment and betrayal. Attempts to discover the exact date and nature of Brink’s mother’s illness have proved fruitless.
18.Ibid., p. 67.
19.Ibid., p. 61.
20.A Fork in the Road, p. 352–353.
21.André Brink, ‘Stories Around Stories’, pp. 80–81. Unpublished MS Word document, notes for A Fork in the Road, c. 2005–2008. Brink Home Archive.
22.Ibid., p. 81.
23.Ibid., p. 82.
24.Ibid., pp. 82–83.
25.For example, Gerrit Olivier, who made this point in an email to the author (18 February 2018): ‘I think this is a fascinating issue. Brink always theatrically committed himself to the authorial standard of truth, but there are some indications that his own relationship to the truth was less than absolute.’
26.Journal marked ‘April 2002–Nov. 2002 [Kroasië]’, entry for 3 June 2002, p. 2.
27.‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, 4 February 2001, p. 61.
28.Ibid.
29.A Fork in the Road, p. 13.
30.Ibid.
31.‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, 4 February 2001, p. 70.
32.Ibid.
33.A Fork in the Road, p. 14.
34.Ibid., pp. 33–34.
35.Ibid., p. 34.
36.‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, 4 February 2001, p. 67.
37.Ibid., p. 69.
38.A Fork in the Road pp. 34–35.
39.‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, 4 February 2001, p. 71.
40.Ibid.
41.Ibid., p. 72.
42.Ibid., p. 73.
43.Journal marked ‘Rahja – Skaduwee van die Boeddha: Rahja no 3 – 1951; Dagboek – André Philippus Brink’, entry for 20 July 1952, pp. 85–86.
44.Ibid, p. 86.
45.Journal marked ‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, entry for 9 March 1970, pp. 80–81. For further discussion of this process, see Chapter 5.
46.Journal marked ‘Mrt–Nov 69’, entry for 28 June 1969, pp. 46–47.
47.‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, 4 February 2001, p. 61.
48.André P Brink, ‘Oor Seks en religie’ (‘On Sex and Religion’), Standpunte 18 (2) December 1964, p. 38.
49.‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, 4 February 2001, p. 73.
50.See, for example, André Brink, ‘Stories Around Stories’, p. 10, where he says: ‘For many years I almost compulsively continued to fall in love with all the female characters in my novels.’ Unpublished MS Word document, c. 2005–2008, Brink Home Archive.
51.A Fork in the Road, pp. 93–94.
52.Email from Karina Brink to author, 21 September 2016.
53.Journal marked ‘Des 1963 – Junie 1965’, entry for 19 March 1963, p. 36.
54.‘Mrt – Nov 69’, 6 July 1969, pp. 52–53.
55.André Brink, A Chain of Voices (Naperville, Il.: Sourcebooks, 1982 and 2007), p. 43.
56.André Brink, Rumours of Rain (London: Flamingo, 1984), p. 75.
57.A Fork in the Road, p. 35.
58.Petrovna Metelerkamp, Ingrid Jonker: ’n biografie (Cape Town: Penguin, 2018), p. 19. See also Francis Galloway (ed.), Flame in the Snow (Cape Town: Umuzi, 2015), p. 29.
59.A Fork in the Road, p. 36.
60.Ibid., p. 37.
61.Ibid.
62.Ibid.
63.Ibid., p. 31.
64.See ‘Rahja – Skaduwee van die Boeddha: Rahja no 3 – 1951; Dagboek – André Philippus Brink’.
65.A Fork in the Road, p. 31.
66.‘Rahja – Skaduwee van die Boeddha: Rahja no 3 – 1951; Dagboek – André Philippus Brink’, 20 July 1952, pp. 2–3. Of course, the word meid, here translated as ‘black woman’, can also be read pejoratively, and is typical of the racialised discourse in which Brink as a youth was immersed.
67.‘Rahja – Skaduwee van die Boeddha: Rahja no 3 – 1951; Dagboek – André Philippus Brink’, 20 July 1952, pp. 3–4.
68.Ibid., pp. 2–3.
69.Ibid., 22 April 1952, p. 3.
70.Ibid., 24 April 1952, pp. 5–6.
71.Ibid., p. 6.
72.Ibid.
73.Ibid., pp. 6–7.
74.Ibid., 11 June 1952, p. 61. For Martie’s ‘confession’, see Journal marked ‘1 Januarie 1953’, entry for 29 July 1953, p. 109.
75.‘Rahja – Skaduwee van die Boeddha: Rahja no 3 – 1951; Dagboek – André Philippus Brink’, 28 April 1952, p. 13.
76.Journal marked ‘Apl 73–Jun 80’, entry for 6 July 1977, pp. 109–110.
77.Malcolm Hacksley, interview, Grahamstown, 6 April 2017.
78.‘Rahja – Skaduwee van die Boeddha: Rahja no 3 – 1951; Dagboek – André Philippus Brink’, 29 April 1952, pp. 17–18.
79.Ibid., 5 May 1952, pp. 24–25.
80.Ibid., 11 May 1952, pp. 31–32.
81.Ibid., p. 32.
82.Ibid., pp. 32–33.
83.Ibid., 2 May 1952, p. 21.
84.Ibid., 29 July 1952, p. 92.
85.Ibid., 15 September 1952, p. 150.
86.Ibid., 23 September 1952, p. 156.
87.Ibid., 13 October 1952, pp. 163–164.
88.Ibid., p. 164. To this day, the ‘kiekie’ remains interleaved with the journal at the appropriate page.
89.Ibid., pp. 164–165.
90.‘1 Januarie 1953’, 1 May 1953, p. 96.
91.Ibid., 10 January 1953, p. 5.
92.Ibid., 15 January 1953, p. 8.
93.Ibid., 10 January 1953, p. 5. This early book by Elbie, who later became a well-known author, adopting the nom de plume Elsabe Steenberg, seems never to have made it into print.
94.Ibid., 26 February 1953, p. 47.
95.Ibid., 25 February 1953, p. 41.
96.Ibid., 2 March 1953, pp. 55–56.
97.Ibid., p. 56.
98.These ‘general’ elections were, of course, mostly all-white affairs – the only concession to Africans was the existence of three ‘native representatives’ from certain electoral districts in the Cape Province, who were white. Coloured voters eventually lost parliamentary representation too.
99.See JJ van Rooyen, ‘Segereis van Dr. Malan’, in JP Scannel, Keeromstraat 30: Gedenkbundel vir die Vyftigste Verjaardag van Die Burger (Cape Town: Nasionale Boekhandel Beperk, 1965), pp. 221–230.
100.‘1 Januarie 1953’, 22 April 1953, p. 91.
101.Ibid., p. 94.
102.Journal marked ‘Dagboek IV: Feb 1954–Julie 1954’, 26 March 1954, pp. 36–37.
103.Journal marked ‘Julie 1954–’, entry for 30 August 1954, p. 76.
104.Ibid., pp. 76–77.
105.Ibid., p. 77.
106.Antjie Krog’s term. See A Change of Tongue (Johannesburg: Random House, 2003).
107.Maureen Isaacson, ‘“You only live twice”: The written life of Brink’, Daily Maverick, 10 February 2015, dailymaverick.co.za/article/ 2015-02-10-you-only-live-twice-the-written-life-of-brink
108.‘1 Januarie 1953’, 1 January 1953, p. 3.
109.A Fork in the Road, p. 74.
110.Journal marked ‘Gedagtes’ [March 1956–December 1958], entry for 10 October 1956, p. 12. Following an evening with fellow students, he sketches the group – which includes himself – as ‘sincere, warm, fun-loving, cultivated people – among whom is one who reads two Shakespeares a day, purely because he enjoys it’.
111.Ibid., 21 February 1957, p. 23. Sartre’s title is ‘L’existentialisme est un humanisme’.
112.‘Gedagtes’ [March 1956–December 1958], 15 January 1958, p. 56.
113.‘1953’, 1 Januarie 1953, p. 3.
114.An established Afrikaans distance learning college in the 1950s under the name of Transafrika Korrespondensiekollege.
115.‘1953’, 1 Januarie 1953, pp. 3–4.
116.Ibid., 27 January 1953, p. 12.
117.‘Dagboek IV: Feb 1954–Julie 1954’, 20 March 1954, p. 33.
118.Ibid., 21 March 1954, pp. 34–35.
119.Ibid., 20 February 1954, p. 9.
120.Ibid., 22 February 1954, p. 10.
121.Ibid., 5 May 1954, p. 64.
122.Ibid., 5 March 1954, p. 25.
123.Ibid., 10 March 1954, p. 26.
124.Ibid., 31 March 1954, p. 41.
125.Ibid., 7 April 1954, p. 44.
126.Ibid., 15 April 1954, p. 50.
127.Ibid., 20/21 April 1954, pp. 55–60.
128.Ibid., 12 March 1954, p. 27.
129.Ibid., 9 June 1954, pp. 95–96.
130.‘Brink and Christie Roode went on a double date, Brink with Marieta, Roode with his new girlfriend, Elsa. The next day, Brink learns that Marieta was upset because he had not taken her hint to leave her and her student friend to talk alone. Cut to the quick by her reaction, he writes: ‘Naturally, I feel exasperated in relation to her – because I’m used to getting my own way, and this time she showed me I’ll have to fight to win...’ ‘1 Januarie 1953’, 25 & 26 March 1953, pp. 80–83.
131.Ibid., 10 February 1953, p. 21.
132.Ibid., 21 February 1953, pp. 29–30.
133.‘Dagboek IV: Feb 1954–Julie 1954’, 16 Feb 1954, p. 6.
134.Ibid., pp. 9, 10 & 20.
135.Ibid., 3 March 1954, pp. 20–21.
136.Die Brandwag, 4 June 1954.
137.Ibid., p. 22.
138.Ibid., see also p. 25.
139.Ibid., p. 25.
140.‘Dagboek IV: Feb 1954–Julie 1954’, 8 April 1954, p. 46. ‘Listening to the KJV record programme tonight I felt such longing, once more, for a girlfriend to share all the lovely things in life with…and yet I make no effort to find one here, because in my heart I still love Esther.’
141.Ibid., 31 May and 1 June 1954, pp. 81–86.
142.Ibid., 14 July 1954, pp. 172–173.
143.Ibid., 16 July 1954, p. 182.
144.Ibid., p. 183.
145.See ‘Julie 1954–’ , 5 August 1954, pp. 23–25.
146.The play was Busman’s Honeymoon by DJ Sayers.
147.He recorded his disappointment thus: ‘Never in my entire life have I gone into a particular moment in time with so much expectation. That is why the disappointment was so big…. Eventually I jumped up and ran away blindly. I found myself standing in a changeroom. I cried, weeping like a baby. Me!’ (‘Julie 1954–’, 21 August 1954, pp. 55–56.) Years later, in his memoir, the ‘changeroom’ becomes a storeroom containing, among other things, an upright piano. See A Fork in the Road, p. 71.
148.‘Julie 1954–’, 27 July 1954, pp. 1-9.
149.Ibid., p. 6.
150.Ibid., 15 August 1954, p. 35.
151.Ibid., 29 September 1954, pp. 127–128.
152.Ibid., p. 128.
153.‘Okt. 1954–17 Des. 1954’, 11 December 1954, pp. 95–96.
154.Ibid., 29 October 1954, p. 33.
155.Email from ‘Angela’ to author, 23 October 2017. A pseudonym is used to protect the writer’s privacy.
156.He was, of course, a lifelong admirer of Cervantes’s Don Quixote, which he reread regularly.
157.‘Julie 1954–’, entry for 1 October 1954, pp. 135–136.
158.Ibid., p. 136-137.
159.‘Okt. 1954–17 Des. 1954’, 28 February 1955, p. 119.
160.Journal marked ‘Maart 1955–’, entry for 7 March 1955, p. 3.
161.For further information on the Estrarte Letterkundige Vereniging (Estrarte Literary Society), see ‘Maart 1955–’, 11 March 1955, pp. 8–9.
162.Ibid., 31 July 1955, p. 114.
163.Ibid., 17 March 1955, p. 19.
164.See Christie Roode, ‘An Exceptional Freak’, in Karina Magdalena Szczurek and Michiel Heyns (eds), Encounters with André Brink (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 2010), p. 20.
165.See ‘Maart 1955–’, 31 July 1955, pp. 114–115.
166.Interview with Estelle Brink, Grahamstown, 7 April 2017.
167.Letter from André Brink to Chris Barnard, 15 October [1962], Brink Home Archive.
168.My own translation of an email message from Roode, dated 8 July 2016.
169.‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, 4 February 2001, p. 62.
170.Eindelose Weë (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 1960), p, 14.
171.On Brink’s own evidence in A Fork in the Road, p. 39.
172.Ibid.
173.Die Meul Teen die Hang (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 1958), p. 16.
174.The novella also recalls the Pygmalion-Galatea story, evoking Phaphos, daughter of Pygmalion and Galatea, and thereby foreshadows the much-longed-for daughter in Brink’s life. In his correspondence with Ingrid Jonker, both Brink and Jonker use the term ‘papie’ (pupa) to express their hope for conceiving a daughter.
175.‘Rahja – Skaduwee van die Boeddha: Rahja no 3 – 1951; Dagboek – André Philippus Brink’, Tuesday 29 April 1952, pp. 17–18.
176.Journal marked ‘59’ (October 1959 to August 1960), entry for 27 October 1959, p. 1.
CHAPTER 2
1.Journal marked ‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, entry for 22 April 1963, p. 13.
2.Ibid., p. 1.
3.Ibid.
4.Brink may well be referencing Gustave Courbet’s painting L’Origine du Monde (The Origin of the World).
5.Journal marked ‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, entry for 22 April 1963, p. 1-2.
6.This mode is generally used in Afrikaans fiction. Brink uses the term ‘historiese praesens’ in his critical study, Aspekte van die Nuwe Prosa (Pretoria: Academica, 1967), p. 93. As noted in the Preface, ‘Teenwoordige Tyd Onvoltooid’ was Brink’s original title for his 1963 novel Die Ambassadeur. See Journal marked ‘Aug 61–April 1963’, entry for 28 November 1962, p. 147.
7.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 22 April 1963, p. 2.
8.Originally meant to come along with him to Cape Town, Estelle was ‘for various reasons’ [‘om verskillende redes’] unable to make the trip. Letter from Brink to Christie Roode, Wednesday 6 June [1963], Brink Home Archive.
9.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 22 April 1963, p. 2.
10.Journal marked ‘59’ (27 October 1959 to 18 August 1960), entry for 29 February 1960, p. 106. See also A Fork in the Road (London: Harvill Secker, 2009), p. 138.
11.Jenny Stringer, ed., The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Literature in English (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 90.
12.Letter from Brink to Chris Barnard, 15 October 1962, Brink Home Archive.
13.A Fork in the Road, p. 164.
14.Ibid., pp. 142 & 164. Brink gives this address in a letter to Naas Steenkamp, 28 October [c. 1960], Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
15.‘59’ (27 October 1959 to 18 August 1960), 27 March 1960, p. 134. In Brink’s translation of this passage in A Fork in the Road (p. 140), he slightly alters the wording of the journal. My translation here is of the journal’s original wording.
16.Journal marked ‘1 Januarie 1953’, entry for 22 April 1953, p. 93.
17.‘59’ (27 October 1959 to 18 August 1960), 28 March 1960, pp. 134–135.
18.A Fork in the Road, p. 107.
19.‘59’ (27 October 1959 to 18 August 1960), 28 March 1960, p. 136.
20.Ibid., p. 139.
21.Ibid., pp. 157–159.
22.Journal marked ‘Gedagtes’ (9 March 1956 to 16 December 1958), entry for 15 January 1958, p. 56. In the Afrikaans version of A Fork in the Road, published as ’n Vurk in die Pad, Brink acknowledges that De Klerk introduced him to ‘European and American literature, from Mark Twain to Goethe, from Faulkner to Mann, from Ibsen to Dostoyevsky, from Kierkegaard to Colin Wilson’. ’n Vurk in die Pad: ’n Memoir (Cape Town, Human & Rousseau, 2009), p. 85. See also A Fork in the Road, p. 74.
23.Letter from Brink to Naas Steenkamp, 9 December [1961], Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
24.Journal marked ‘Sept 60–Feb 61’, entry for 19 November 1960, p. 59.
25.The 1927 law prohibiting sexual relations between white and black people was amended in 1950 to include sex between white and other ethnic groups, including coloured people. Police often spied on couples suspected of having a sexual relationship. Mixed couples caught in bed were arrested, with most being convicted and sent to jail. The law was repealed in 1985.
26.‘59’ (27 October 1959 to 18 August 1960), 29 October 1959, pp. 11–12.
27.Ibid., 26 November 1959, p. 24.
28.Letter from Brink to Chris Barnard, 15 October [1962], Brink Home Archive.
29.Interview, Estelle Brink, 7 April 2017, Grahamstown.
30.According to Brink, Estelle complains, ‘It was you who wanted to get married so quickly back then,’ to which he replies: ‘Don’t I know it. And here I sit.’ Journal marked ‘Aug 1961–April 1963’, entry for 22 July 1962, p. 116. It seems reasonable to deduce, in view of his self-confessed rampant sexual appetite, that a big factor in his wanting to get married in such a hurry was the desire to have societally sanctioned sex. As Brink says elsewhere in his journal, ‘I carried too much Calvinistic awareness of sin before my marriage.’ See ‘Aug 1961–April 1963’, 10 June 1962, p. 91.
31.See A Chain of Voices (London: Faber, 1981); Philida (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 2012).
32.‘59’ (27 October 1959 to 18 August 1960), 27 October 1959, p. 2.
33.‘Sept 60–Feb 61’, 18 September 1960, p. 25.
34.‘59’ (27 October 1959 to 18 August 1960), 6 August 1960, pp. 249–250.
35.Ibid., 25 March 1960, p. 128–129.
36.Ibid., 25 January 1960, p. 69.
37.’n Vurk in die Pad, p. 232.
38.Camus made this statement in an introduction to an American edition of The Stranger (L’Etranger). See Mario Vargas Llosa, tr. & ed. John King, Touchstones: Essays on Literature, Art, and Politics (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011), p. 162. See also Albert Camus, tr. J Laredo, The Stranger (London: Penguin, 1982), p. 119. On one occasion in 2016 when I visited Brink’s home in Cape Town, a copy of The Stranger lay open on his desk: Brink had underlined the quoted sentence, which appears in the afterword.
39.Letter from Brink to Naas Steenkamp, 14 November [1962], Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
40.‘59’ (27 October 1959 to 18 August 1960), 19 January 1960, p. 62.
41.A Fork in the Road, p. 167.
42.‘59’ (27 October 1959 to 18 August 1960), entry for 8 February 1960, p. 90.
43.Percival was 85 years old, Brink wrote in a letter to Breyten Breytenbach, 9 August 1967, Brink Home Archive.
44.One such critic was WEG Louw, arts editor of Die Burger, who described the novel as ‘experimental prose’. Brink found the term dismissive, arguing that any novel thus categorised ‘by its very nature is restricted to the status of an experiment’; he cited the example of Russian formalism, where radical change related to form rather than content. Brink contended that the ‘same critics who regard a work of prose as “experimental”, are probably highly enthused about Picasso, and that’s a double standard’. ‘Aug 1961–April 1963’, 13 November 1962, pp. 139–140. This was after Louw allegedly recommended that, to protect its reputation, Nasionale Boekhandel should decline to publish the novel – despite writing what Brink described as a ‘goeie verslag’ or good report. ‘Aug 1961–April 1963’, entry for 7 October 1961, p. 20.
45.‘Aug 1961–April 1963’, 7 October 1961, p. 20.
46.Koos Human and Leon Rousseau were co-directors of Human & Rousseau publishers, which they founded in 1959.
47.A Fork in the Road, p. 215.
48.‘Aug 1961–April 1963’, 7 October 1961, p. 20. See also A Fork in the Road, pp. 215-216.
49.‘Sept 1960–Feb 1961’, 15 January 1961, p. 115.
50.Letter from Brink to Chris Barnard, 15 October 1962, Brink Home Archive.
51.See Part 2 of Naas Steenkamp, ‘Because it was him, because it was me’, in Karina Magdalena Szczurek and Michiel Heyns (eds), Encounters with André Brink (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 2010), p. 29. Brink and Steenkamp were fellow students at Potchefstroom University, and they became lifelong friends.
52.Letter from Brink to Chris Barnard, 24 September 1962, Brink Home Archive.
53.Ibid., 2 August 1962.
54.‘Sept 1960–Feb 1961’, 27 November 1960, p. 63.
55.The Brink family were members of the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk (NGK), rather than the more conservative ‘Dopper’ branch, known as the Gereformeerde Kerk van Suid Afrika (GK). (Email from Marita Brink to author, 21 May 2018.) The NGK, as well as its two ‘sister’ churches, supported the government’s apartheid policies until 1986.
56.‘Sept 1960–Feb 1961’, 2 February 1961, pp. 169–170.
57.Ibid., 19 November 1960, p. 61. Decades later, in his monograph on Flemish-South African artist Jan Vermeiren, Brink would (mis)quote Henry Miller as saying ‘[t]here is only one journey, and that is inward, towards the Self’. André Brink, Jan Vermeiren: A Flemish Artist in South Africa (n.p.: Lannoo and Tafelberg/ Human & Rousseau, 2000), p. 65. Miller’s actual words are: ‘There is only one great adventure and that is inward toward the self, and for that, time nor space, nor even deeds matter.’ Tropic of Capricorn (New York: Grove Press, 1966), p. 12.
58.‘Sept 1960–Feb 1961’, 19 November 1960, pp. 61–62.
59.Ibid., 27 November 1960, pp. 63–64.
60.‘Aug 1961–April 1963’, 28 June 1962, pp. 101–102.
61.Ibid., 1 July 1962, pp. 104–105.
62.Letter from Brink to Chris Barnard, 26 October 1962, Brink Home Archive.
63.Email from Karina Brink to author, 18 September 2016.
64.‘Aug 1961–April 1963’, 22 July 1962, p. 117.
65.Ibid., pp. 114–115.
66.Ibid., 18 January 1962, p. 60.
67.Ibid., 2 September 1961, p. 3. Brink wryly laments the fact that Parisian culture has given way to the shallowness of ‘a Bob Hope movie on a Saturday evening’. He also ridicules apartheid, declaring that he will be sure to be a ‘good boy’ and not enter any door before checking for a ‘Blankes only, whites alleenlik’ sign.
68.Ibid., 24 September 1961, p. 12.
69.Ibid., 8 October 1961, p. 22.
70.A reference to the three ‘sister churches’: the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk (NGK), the Gereformeerde Kerk van Suid Afrika (GK) or ‘Doppers’, and the Nederduitse Hervormde Kerk’ (NHK).
71.‘Aug 1961–April 1963’, 29 October 1961, p. 35.
72.See letter from Brink to Naas Steenkamp, 10 February 1961, Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
73.Brink’s friend Christie Roode congratulated him on securing the post at Rhodes, which he would take up at the beginning of 1962. Letter from Christie Roode to Brink, 26 March 1961, Brink Home Archive.
74.‘Aug 1961–April 1963’, 1 November 1961, p. 39. ‘Why do I still live in South Africa?’, and entry for 28 April 1962, p. 77, among others. In the latter entry, writing about the new censorship legislation, Brink observes: ‘God, how free is one in a society in which one may not take sides and cannot satirise anything, let alone smash any idols? Lobola will in all likelihood be a victim, sooner or later. And then? I don’t know. Can any artist, in full honesty, live in such a climate? Emigrate?’
75.Ibid., 22 October 1961, pp. 31–32. Brink goes on to admit, however: ‘I don’t even have the moral strength to buy a revolver and blow out my brains.’
76.‘59’, 2 January 1960, pp. 47–49. Naas Steenkamp served as private secretary to South Africa’s High Commissioner in London while Brink was a student at the Sorbonne; the two friends met fairly often, and were on one occasion accompanied by their wives when they attended a theatre performance of Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker in London. See A Fork in the Road, p. 167. Brink describes how, on Christmas night in 1959, he and Steenkamp went to the Pigalle district of Paris at 2 am to experience an ‘exposition’. They make a deal with a woman in a fur coat, who takes them into a hotel room; she turns out to be a ‘gaudy shrew with bad teeth and drooping breasts and a thick gut’; her red-haired companion is ‘flabby and thickish, betraying an obvious history of too much alcohol and too many men’; the ‘show’, according to Brink, is a ‘blatant demonstration of sexual parts and sexual deeds – including misdeeds – that leaves one feeling sick’. For Brink, the ‘most disenchanting’ aspect of the experience is the ‘passionless, businesslike manner of it all – in spite of the play-acting, the shouts of pleasure, the sighs, the gestures….’ He concludes by saying it is ‘a pity that the infinitely large experience of a sexual life must be reduced to beast-like – and monstrous – copulation’. In Steenkamp’s – much lighter – version, the action, ‘une exposition amusante’, takes place not in a hotel room but in an upstairs room of a building. See Part 2 of ‘Because it was him, because it was me’, in Szczurek and Heyns (eds), Encounters with André Brink, pp. 24–30.
77.‘Aug 1961–April 1963’, 10 June 1962, p. 91.
78.Letter from Brink to Naas Steenkamp, 28 June 1962, Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
79.Letter from Brink to Naas Steenkamp, 1 April [1962], Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
80.Interview with Estelle Brink, 7 April 2017, Grahamstown.
81.‘Aug 1961–April 1963’, 22 July 1962, p. 117.
82.Ibid., 28 November 1962, p. 147.
83.Ibid., p. 146.
84.Ibid., p. 147.
85.Ibid., 22 July 1962, p. 113.
86.Ibid., p. 114.
87.According to Estelle Brink, her mother was at the time living at the old Carlton Hotel in Grahamstown. Interview with Estelle Brink, 7 April 2017, Grahamstown.
88.‘Aug 1961–April 1963’, 22 July 1962, pp. 115–116.
89.Ibid. See also p. 60
90.Ibid., p. 117.
91.Ibid., p. 118.
92.Ibid., 28 April 1962, p. 78.
93.Brink used this as an epigraph in both Die Ambassadeur and The Ambassador.
94.‘Aug 1961–April 1963’, 10 June 1962, p. 92.
95.Letter from Brink to Naas Steenkamp, 9 December 1961, Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
96.The building was on the corner of Somerset and African streets. Interview with Estelle Brink, 7 April 2017, Grahamstown.
97.Letter from Brink to Naas Steenkamp, 10 June [1962?], Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
98.Interview with Estelle Brink, 7 April 2017, Grahamstown.
99.‘Aug 1961–April 1963’, 14 November 1962, p. 142. Brink received news that there were waiting lists at Van Schaik bookstore; Koos Human reported that Nasionale Boekhandel had sold 48 copies on the first day; the CNA (Central News Agency) in Johannesburg sent a telegram requesting stock; APB (Afrikaanse Pers-Boekhandel) phoned to enquire about the book.
100.Ibid., 28 November 1962, p. 147.
101.Ibid. The provisional title is discussed in the Preface.
102.See also JC Kannemeyer, Geskiedenis van die Afrikaanse Literatuur Band 2 (Pretoria: Academica, 1983), p. 389. Discussing the character Marie in Lobola, in many senses similar to Nicolette, Kannemeyer writes: ‘As far as the conception of the Marie-figure is concerned … Brink relies on Simone de Beauvoir’s Brigitte Bardot and the Lolita Syndrome (London, 1960), a study that is also of cardinal importance for the woman characters in his later novels: the girl ‘without memory, without a past’, associated with ‘the fever of living, the passion for the absolute, the sense of the imminence of death’ (p. 18).
103.Brink had written to Chris Barnard about the similarities between Bardot and Marie (and, implicitly, the Nicolette figure in Die Ambassadeur): ‘The experience of sex, for example, on the other side of any morality, simply as a positive means of being; without mysticism, without “carnality”, either; with an almost “sober” passion; and her preoccupation with death – precisely because she herself is life.’ Letter from Brink to Chris Barnard, 13 December 1962, Brink Home Archive. A few weeks earlier, he had described Bardot thus: ‘Brigitte – the carnal expression of the perpetual Lolita – is for me the incarnation of a myth of our time. A complete existence on the other side of sin; a libidinal force, but without any dark netherworld – it is what it is, and that’s the end of it … No longer the femme de trente ans of the 19th century, but the Mélisande figure, the slender nymph, the perfect, serene child-woman, who in her clarity absorbs all turbidity, because she cannot (or may not [i.e. is not permitted to]) think in terms of morality.’ Letter from Brink to Chris Barnard, 26 October 1962, Brink Home Archive.
104.Indeed, he expanded the character in the manuscript of Die Ambassadeur after meeting Jonker, blending the living Ingrid with the fictional Nicolette. A Fork in the Road, p. 93.
105.Francis Galloway, ed., tr. Leon de Kock and Karin Schimke, Flame in the Snow: The Love Letters of André Brink & Ingrid Jonker (Cape Town: Umuzi, 2015), p. 21.
106.See ‘Oor Seks en Religie’, Standpunte, 18 (2) December 1964, p. 36.
107.A Fork in the Road, p. 93.
108.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 22 April 1963, p. 2.
109.Journal marked ‘Des 1963–Junie 1965’, entry for 19 March 1964, p. 36.
110.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 22 April 1963, pp. 2–3.
111.Ibid., p. 3.
112.Ibid.
113.Ibid. On Lena being a BMus graduate, see Petrovna Metelerkamp, Ingrid Jonker: ’n Biografie (Cape Town: Penguin, 2018), p. 214.
114.‘Aug 1961–April 1963’, cover page.
115.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 22 April 1963, p. 4.
116.Ibid., pp. 4–5.
117.See A Fork in the Road, pp. 155–160. Brink also acknowledges the influences, in the writing of The Ambassador, of Georges Simenon’s Yvette in En Cas de Malheur, Simone de Beauvoir (on Brigitte Bardot), ‘the effusions of Henry Miller’, and ‘some of the lyrical inventions in Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet’ (A Fork in the Road, p. 160).
118.The notion of restlessness was implicit in yet another title Brink proposed for the novel eventually published as Die Ambassadeur, namely ‘Die ongedurige kind’ (the restless child).
119.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 22 April 1963, p. 5.
120.Ibid., pp. 5–6.
121.Ibid., p. 6.
122.Ingrid was concerned at the time that she might be pregnant, according to Brink, allegedly claiming she was unsure whether the father was Jack Cope or Nico Hagen. See Metelerkamp, Ingrid Jonker, p. 226.
123.Brink viewed Hagen’s new wife as ‘a nervous young woman’. See A Fork in the Road, p. 101.
124.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 22 April 1963, p. 7.
125.Metelerkamp cites the oral evidence of Tiepie, Lena Oelofse’s sister, for this observation. According to Metelerkamp, Tiepie was also at the flat when Jonker chased Hagen and his new wife out. See Metelerkamp, Ingrid Jonker, p. 229. There are certain discrepancies between my own account and that of Metelerkamp regarding the chronology of events in the early stages of Brink and Jonker’s love affair. One such discrepancy relates to the date that the lovers go to Swiss Farm Excelsior in Franschhoek, which Metelerkamp gives as Saturday 20 April 1963 – just two days after their first meeting. In Brink’s journal, this visit occurs over a month later, at the end of May (see Chapter 3). Brink is unlikely to have got the dates wrong as he was always alert – at times almost obsessively so – to chronological detail in reporting on such events that concerned himself.
126.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 22 April 1963, p. 7.
127.Ibid.
128.Ibid.
129.Ibid., pp. 7–8.
130.Ibid., p. 8.
131.Ibid., p. 9.
132.Ibid.
133.Ibid.
134.Ibid., pp. 9–10.
135.Ibid., p. 10.
136.Ibid.
137.Ibid., pp. 10–11.
138.Ibid., p. 11.
139.Ibid.
140.Ibid., pp. 11–12.
141.Ibid., p. 12.
142.Ibid.
143.Ibid., p. 13.
144.See Metelerkamp, Ingrid Jonker, p. 229.
145.April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 22 April 1963, p. 14.
146.Based on Brink’s MA thesis, the book was published as Orde en Chaos: ’n Studie oor Germanicus en die Tragedies van Shakespeare (Cape Town: Nasionale Boekhandel, 1962).
147.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 22 April 1963, pp. 14–15.
148.Ibid., p. 15.
149.Ibid., p. 16.
150.Ibid., pp. 16–17.
151.Ibid., p. 17.
152.Ibid., pp. 17–18.
153.Ibid., p. 18.
154.Ibid., pp. 18–19.
155.Brink’s one-time adulation of De Klerk was fatally weakened in 1961, when the ‘Great Man’ (Brink’s derisive appellation) visited him and Estelle in Paris; he came ‘not to drink at the fountains of wisdom and beauty but to pursue a paramour’. Brink’s dismay was compounded when De Klerk dismissed Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot as ‘stront’, i.e. crap. See A Fork in the Road p. 75.
156.Letter from Brink to Naas Steenkamp, 25 September 1963, Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
CHAPTER 3
1.Brink describes De Klerk in caustic terms as someone ‘whose most obvious characteristic appeared to be a desire to please, and a readiness, even an eagerness, to stoop quite low to achieve it.’ See A Fork in the Road: A Memoir (London: Harvill Secker, 2009), p. 128.
2.The Afrikaner Broederbond (league of brothers) was a secret organisation established in 1918 to develop Afrikaner nationalism and consolidate economic and political power via control of the South African government, along with major cultural and economic institutions. In 1993, on the eve of black majority rule in South Africa, and after more than 40 years of Broederbond influence, the secret group was converted into a public organisation called the Afrikanerbond. The Ruiterwag was the youth wing of the Afrikaner Broederbond.
3.The year 1963 was a watershed in South Africa’s history, with the Liliesleaf arrests in Rivonia, on the outskirts of Johannesburg, and the start of the Rivonia trial where Nelson Mandela and seven others, including Govan Mbeki and Walter Sisulu, were sentenced to life imprisonment for sabotage, fomenting revolution and furthering the aims of communism.
4.Letter from Brink to Christie Roode, 15 October 1963, Brink Home Archive.
5.Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin, tr. Reidar Thomte with B Albert Anderson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1844/1980), p. 152. See also Sarah Bakewell, The Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being & Apricot Cocktails (London: Chatto and Windus, 2016), p. 19. Kierkegaard’s fuller explanation is worth quoting: ‘Anxiety may be compared with dizziness. He whose eye happens to look down into the yawning abyss becomes dizzy. But what is the reason for this? It is just as much in his own eye as in the abyss, for suppose he had not looked down. Hence anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the synthesis and freedom looks down into its own possibility, laying hold of finiteness to support itself. Freedom succumbs in this dizziness.’
6.Letter from Brink to Christie Roode, 15 October 1963, Brink Home Archive.
7.Letter from Brink to Chris Barnard, 17 May 1963, Brink Home Archive.
8.Interview with Malcolm Hacksley, 6 April 2017, Grahamstown.
9.Ibid.
10.Journal marked ‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, entry for 22 April 1963, p. 20.
11.The letter is dated 15 March 1967, Brink Home Archive.
12.About his marriage to Salomi in 1965, Brink says they both felt they ‘had to get married’ because they ‘had both conditioned themselves into the position that they could “expiate” their “sins” only by going ahead [with marriage]’. Ibid.
13.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 22 April 1963, p. 20.
14.Ibid.
15.Brink had been invited to give a series of lectures on the modern novel to a Stellenbosch literary society, the Afrikaanse Studiekring (which he misnamed the ‘Afrikaanse Studiekomitee’). Letter from Brink to Naas Steenkamp, 7 May 1963, Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
16.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 22 April 1963, p. 21.
17.Ibid. Lucius Apuleius (born c. 124 AD); Brink transposes ‘non’ and ‘potiri’.
18.Ibid.
19.Ibid., p. 22. Petrovna Metelerkamp tells a story reported to her by Ingrid’s friend Bonnie Davidtsz in which, a few months into their affair, Brink and Jonker decide to commit suicide together. According to this account, Brink connects a garden hose to the exhaust pipe of his VW Beetle at a spot in Camps Bay in Cape Town, and switches on the ignition. He and Ingrid allegedly hold hands while they await their death. Then, suddenly, Brink switches the car off, opens the door, and proclaims: ‘Ingrid, do you realise what a loss for Afrikaans literature it would be if both you and I were to die here and now!’ There is no mention of such an incident anywhere in Brink’s journals. The only reference to suicide by exhaust fumes is one in which Jonker asks Brink what he thinks the best suicide method might be, and he replies that gassing oneself in a car would probably be the least painful. It is doubtful that the event as reported by Davidtsz actually happened, as Brink would surely have written about it in his journal, given his propensity to report every last detail of any significance about his time with Ingrid. In telling the attempted-suicide story to Metelerkamp, Davidtsz would have been recalling a verbal account from at least three decades before, since Metelerkamp began her research on Jonker only in 1994. It is possible that Ingrid, in her conversation with Davidtsz, dramatised the suicide conversation she had with Brink, exaggerating it to the point of untruth. See Petrovna Metelerkamp, Ingrid Jonker: ’n Biografie (Cape Town: Penguin Random House, 2018), pp. 251-252.
20.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 22 April 1963, p. 22.
21.Ibid., pp. 22–23.
22.Ibid., 24 April 1963, p. 23.
23.Ibid., 28 May 1963, p. 40. ‘En [Jack] het haar al geklap; en rondgegooi’ (Jack has smacked her and pushed her around), Brink conveys in reported speech about what Ingrid has told him.
24.The note is dated ‘19 Nov’, while the date of the original entry is 22 April– making a gap of almost six months to the day. Ibid., p. 23.
25.Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin (London: Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, 1937).
26.Journal marked ‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, entry for 9 March 1970, p. 82.
27.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 8 May 1963, p. 31.
28.Ibid., 27 April 1963, p. 25.
29.Ibid., 29 April 1963, p. 26.
30.Ibid.
31.See Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in Modern Societies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992).
32.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 8 May 1963, p. 30. Of course, many Afrikaners at this time are likely to have engaged in ‘plastic sexuality’, but Brink had a singular need to record his exploits and, to some extent, monumentalise or ‘fictionalise’ them in writing.
33.Ibid., 11 May 1963, p. 33.
34.Ibid., 28 May 1963, p. 34.
35.Ibid., pp. 34–35.
36.Ibid., p. 35.
37.Ibid., p. 37.
38.Ibid., pp. 37–38.
39.Galloway (ed.), Flame in the Snow, p. 38.
40.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 28 May 1963, p. 38.
41.Ibid., pp. 38–39.
42.Jan FE Celliers (1865–1940) was a revered Afrikaans poet and author who fought in the Anglo-Boer War and was later made an extraordinary professor at Stellenbosch University, the cradle of Afrikaner nationalism.
43.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 28 May, pp. 39–40.
44.Ibid., p. 40.
45.Ibid., pp. 40–41.
46.Galloway (ed.), Flame in the Snow, pp. 152–153.
47.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 28 May, pp. 41–42.
48.Brink and Jonker developed a private code, and one of the terms was ‘secrets’, a reference to his ejaculate after penetrating her. See, for example, Galloway (ed.), Flame in the Snow, pp. 17, 66 & 127.
49.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 28 May, p. 43.
50.Ibid., pp. 43–44.
51.Ibid., 31 May 1963, p. 44.
52.Ibid., pp. 44–45.
53.Ibid., p. 45.
54.Ibid.
55.Ibid., p. 46.
56.Ibid., pp. 46–47.
57.Ibid., p. 47.
58.Ibid.
59.Ibid., 1 June 1963, p. 53. This is a reference to Macbeth’s inability to utter the commonplace blessing after murdering King Duncan: ‘But wherefore could not I pronounce “Amen”? / I had most need of blessing, and “Amen” / Stuck in my throat.’ (Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2.)
60.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 1 June 1963, p. 49.
61.Galloway (ed.), Flame in the Snow, p. 76. This is probably Frieda la Grange, a close friend of Brink’s at the time.
62.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 1 June 1963, pp. 49-50.
63.Ibid., p. 50.
64.Ibid., 3 June 1963, p. 56.
65.Ibid.
66.Ibid., pp. 56–57. See also Galloway (ed.), Flame in the Snow, p. 91.
67.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 3 June 1963, p. 57.
68.Ibid., 6 June 1963, p. 61.
69.Ibid., p. 59.
70.Ibid., p. 60.
71.Ibid., p. 61.
72.Ibid., 7 June 1963, p. 62.
73.Ibid., p. 63.
74.Ibid., 18 June 1963, p. 66.
75.Ibid., p. 68.
76.Ibid., p. 67.
77.Ibid., p. 69.
78.Ibid., p. 69.
79.Ibid., p. 70.
80.Ibid., p. 71.
81.Ibid., pp. 72–73.
82.Ibid., p. 74 & pp. 80–81.
83.Ibid., pp. 82–85.
84.Letter from Brink to Christie Roode, 6 June [1963], Brink Home Archive.
85.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 18 June 1963, p. 64.
86.Letter from Brink to Christie Roode, Wednesday 6 June [1963], Brink Home Archive. Bloy is a French essayist and novelist whose quotation is used as an epigraph in Graham Greene’s novel, The End of the Affair.
87.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 18 June 1963, p. 64.
88.Ibid., 31 May 1963, p. 49. See DH Lawrence, ‘Tortoise Shout’, which has the line ‘Why were we crucified into sex?’ Available at poetryfoundation.org/poems/47366/tortoise-shout.
89.Ibid., 19 June 1963, p. 88.
90.As collected in Galloway (ed.), Flame in the Snow.
91.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 21 June 1963, p. 92.
92.See Journal marked ‘Nov 1985–Sept 1987’, entry for 14 January 1987, p. 247.
93.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 21 June 1963, p. 92.
94.Ibid., 29 June 1963, p. 96.
95.Letter from Brink to Christie Roode, 15 March 1967.
96.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 26 June 1963, p. 95.
97.Ibid., 29 June 1963, p. 96.
98.Galloway (ed.), Flame in the Snow, p. 126.
99.April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 30 June 1963, p. 98.
100.Ibid., 21 June 1963, p. 91.
101.Ibid., 30 June 1963, p. 99.
102.Ibid., 1 July 1963, p. 100.
103.Galloway (ed.), Flame in the Snow, p. 111.
104.For Bartho Smit, see ‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 5 July 1963, p. 102; for Van Wyk Louw, see pp. 106–107.
105.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 5 July 1963, p. 104.
106.Oswald Schwarz, The Psychology of Sex (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1949).
107.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 10 July 1963, p. 111.
108.Ibid., pp. 112–113. Estelle never remarried after her divorce from Brink, and she was still living at 20C African Street in Grahamstown in 2017, when she was interviewed for this book.
109.Ibid., p. 114.
110.Ibid.
111.Ibid., p. 115.
112.Ibid., 10 July 1963, pp. 114–115.
113.Ibid., p. 116.
114.Ibid., 22 July 1963, p. 119.
115.Ibid., p. 120.
116.Ibid., pp. 120–121.
117.Ibid.
118.Ibid., pp. 124–125.
119.Ibid., pp. 126–127.
120.Ibid., p. 128. It appears from Ingrid’s own diaries that she also kept a tally of the times they had sex. According to Petrovna Metelerkamp, Jonker made red crosses in her diaries to signify sexual encounters while in Amsterdam with Brink in 1964. While there, she wrote ‘100’, also in red, thereby marking this milestone. See Metelerkamp, Ingrid Jonker, p. 293. Jonker’s diaries are not generally available, as they are kept in a tiny village called Vila Pouca da Beira in northern Portugal, in the house of the now-deceased Gerrit Komrij; with the help of an intermediary, the Dutch author and translator Arie Pos (who has access to the Komrij house), Metelerkamp managed through much effort, and some luck, to get copies of certain pages from the diaries. Email from Metelerkamp to author, 29 May 2018.
121.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 20 August 1963, p. 144. See also entry for 26 July 1963, pp. 131–132.
122.Ibid., 30 August 1963, p. 152–154.
123.See Galloway (ed.), Flame in the Snow, p. 170. See also ‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 23 August 1963, p. 148.
124.Gestalt psychology tries to understand how it is that human beings are capable of meaningful perceptions in a seemingly chaotic world.
125.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 26 July 1963, p. 131.
126.Ibid., 30 July 1963, p. 135.
127.Ibid., 3 October 1963, p. 162.
128.Ibid., 22 September 1963, p. 160.
129.For a more detailed account, see Galloway (ed.), Flame in the Snow, pp. 177–178.
130.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 3 Oktober 1963, p. 162.
131.Brink refers to the interview in a letter to Naas Steenkamp, 25 September 1963, Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
132.Galloway (ed.), Flame in the Snow, pp. 253.
133.Ibid., pp. 253 & 257.
134.‘April 1963–1 Des 1963’, 7 October 1963, p. 168.
135.Ibid., 19 November 1963, p. 172 et seq.
136.Ibid., 19 November 1963, pp. 172–173.
137.Ibid., pp. 171–184.
138.Ibid., p. 173.
139.Ibid., pp. 173–174.
140.Letter from Brink to Breyten Breytenbach, 28 March 1964, Brink Home Archive.
141.See Geskiedenis van die Afrikaanse Literatuur Band 2 (Pretoria: Academica, 1983), p. 398. When, in later years, Kannemeyer approached Brink to write his biography, Brink politely but firmly declined (oral communication from Karina Brink to author, September 2016, Cape Town). Though Kannemeyer was critical of other works by Brink also, the two men remained on a relatively good footing.
142.Letter from Breyten Breytenbach to Brink, dated ‘Goeie Vrydag’ or ‘Good Friday’ (later dated ‘1965’ by Brink), Brink Home Archive.
143.Journal marked ‘December 1963 to June 1965’, entry for 20 January 1964, p. 12.
144.Ibid., p. 13.
145.Ibid., p. 12. He orders a garnet ring for her in Cape Town before they leave for Gordon’s Bay, calling it ‘our “engagement” ring’; significantly, the word ‘engagement’ is in quotation marks, expressing irony, ambivalence or uncertainty.
146.Ibid., p. 13.
147.Ibid., p. 12.
148.Ibid., pp. 14–15; see also 25 April 1964, p. 54.
149.Brink kept Estelle in the dark about his plan to meet up with Ingrid in Europe.
150.Olé: Reisboek oor Spanje (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 1965).
151.‘December 1963 to June 1965’, 20 January 1964, p. 17.
152.Ibid., p. 16.
153.Ibid., p. 19.
154.Ibid., p. 11.
155.Ibid., p. 19.
156.Ibid., 19 March 1964, p. 34.
157.Ibid., p. 35.
158.Letter from Brink to Breyten Breytenbach, 28 March 1964, Brink Home Archive.
159.Francis Galloway explains the situation as follows: ‘After Ingrid Jonker’s death, her sister, Anna (Jonker) Bairos, had first access to Ingrid Jonker’s possessions; Bairos herself later explained that she tore some of Brink’s letters up because they were ‘pornographic’ and ‘without value for research’ (see, for example, her conversation with HL van der Merwe in 1977). Jack Cope was appointed curator of Jonker’s estate and he acquired copyright (on behalf of Ingrid’s daughter, Simone) over Ingrid’s documents. In due course, he ordered and supplemented them. Twelve years after Jonker’s death, Cope placed the documents (including manuscript variations of poems, diaries, clippings, and letters) in the care of the National English Literary Museum (NELM) in Grahamstown. In the NELM inventory of the Ingrid Jonker documents, 19 letters from Brink, written between 23 March and 3 June 1964 (while Ingrid Jonker was overseas), are listed. Sixteen of these are not in the collection of Brink letters [within the Jonker papers]. The inventory indicates that these 19 letters are ‘torn into fragments’ or that they consist of ‘fragments taped together, fragile’, and that they are under embargo. In 1989, Jack Cope gave permission for the Jonker collection at NELM to be given to Anna because she wanted to write a biography on her sister. Anna died in 1997, and three years later her son sold the documents to the Dutch poet and anthologist Gerrit Komrij for the sum of R50 000. Komrij died in 2012. The Ingrid Jonker documents are still in his house in Portugal and they were not accessible for this project [Flame in the Snow].’ Email from Francis Galloway to author, 3 November 2016. This information is confirmed in Louise Viljoen, Ingrid Jonker: A Jacana Pocket Biography (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2012), pp. 139–141.
160.A Fork in the Road, p. 107.
161.Ibid.
162.Ibid., pp. 107–108.
163.Ibid., p. 108.
164.Metelerkamp, Ingrid Jonker, p. 296.
165.A Fork in the Road, p. 108.
166.The reference is to Matthew 16:26. The original letter is held in the Komrij house in Portugal. Metelerkamp came to see the letter after extraordinary efforts, including the mediation of Arie Pos. See Metelerkamp, Ingrid Jonker, p. 298.
167.Journal with trademark, ‘Le Luxembourg’ (2 July 1964 to 31 July 1964), entry for 5 July 1964, p. 2.
168.Ibid., pp. 2–3.
169.Ibid., p. 3.
170.Viljoen, Ingrid Jonker, p. 102.
171.A Fork in the Road, pp. 108–109.
172.Viljoen, Ingrid Jonker, pp. 102–103.
173.Letter from Breyten Breytenbach to Brink, 24 August 1964, Brink Home Archive.
174.‘Le Luxembourg’, 20 July 1964, p. 4.
175.Ibid., pp. 4–5. This is a slight misquotation of John Donne’s famous lines: ‘Therefore, send not to know / For whom the bell tolls, / It tolls for thee.’
176.Metelerkamp, Ingrid Jonker, p. 321.
177.Brink, A Fork in the Road, p. 110.
178.Letter from Jan Rabie to Brink, 26 May 1965, Brink Home Archive.
179.See Viljoen, Ingrid Jonker, pp. 120–121. Metelerkamp’s version of this incident corresponds with Viljoen’s report about a rumoured incident at a hotel where Jonker and Van Nazareth had gone for a drink after attending the opening of an art exhibition in Cape Town. See Metelerkamp, Ingrid Jonker, p. 344.
180.Email from Salomi Louw to author, 20 October 2016: ‘In my final year of Drama Studies [1964] I had to produce a play and decided on Die koffer which had shortly before been published in a collection of one act plays. I wrote to the publishers inviting the playwright to the presentation at the Little Theatre in Pretoria; they forwarded the letter to him [Brink]. This resulted in continuous correspondence. In Oct 1964 André flew to Johannesburg to consult with publishers (I think Perskor and Bartho Smit) and came across to Pretoria one evening to meet me and attend the PACT performance.’ This is the original text, in English, of Louw’s email.
181.This is Brink’s final letter, as recorded in Galloway (ed.), Flame in the Snow, pp. 462–463.
182.‘Des 1963–Junie 1965’, 29 April 1965, p. 99.
183.Ibid., pp. 99–100.
184.Ibid., p. 100.
185.Ibid., 19 March 1964, p. 35.
186.Ibid., 29 April 1965, p. 100.
187.Ibid., p. 101.
188.Brink, A Fork in the Road, p. 111.
189.Journal marked ‘JULIE 1965–DES 1966’, entry for 19 July 1965, p. 4.
190.Gerrit Olivier, a specialist in Afrikaans and Dutch literature, suggests that what ‘Van den Heever wanted to convey is a loss of glamour and splendour, a process of fading. The nautilus has lost its colour, it no longer glimmers with purple.’ Email from Gerrit Olivier to author, 29 September 2017. This is the original text, in English, of Olivier’s email.
191.‘JULIE 1965–DES 1966’, 19 July 1965, p. 4.
192.Telegram from Breyten Breytenbach to Brink, 20 July 1965, Brink Home Archive.
193.Letter from Breyten Breytenbach to Brink, dated ‘July 1965’ by Brink, Brink Home Archive.
194.Letter from Brink to Jan Rabie, 4 August 1965, Brink Home Archive.
195.Letter from Brink to Breyten Breytenbach, 13 October 1965, Brink Home Archive.
196.Letter from Brink to Jan Rabie, 4 August 1965, Brink Home Archive. The reference is to the doomed love affair in the film Love is a Many-Splendored Thing, starring William Holden and Jennifer Jones.
CHAPTER 4
1.Letter from Brink to Naas Steenkamp, 12 December 1968, Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
2.Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin, tr. Reidar Thomte with B Albert Anderson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1844/1980), p. 152. See also Chapter 3.
3.See Programme, Die Lewe wat Ek Jou Gegee het, 1965. The play was produced by PACT (Performing Arts Council of the Transvaal)/TRUK (Transvaalse Raad vir die Uitvoerende Kunste). At that time, the Breytenbach Theatre was known as the National Theatre. In 1967, when PACT/TRUK took it over, it was renamed the Breytenbach Theatre. See Encyclopaedia of South African Theatre, available at esat.sun.ac.za/index.php?title=Die_Lewe_wat_ek_jou_Gegee_het; see also esat.sun.ac.za/index.php?title=Breytenbach_Theatre.
4.Confirmed in email from Salomi Louw to author, 20 October 2016.
5.Journal marked ‘Des 1963–Junie 1965’, entry for 31 October 1964, p. 68.
6.Letter from Brink to Breyten Breytenbach, 3 May 1965, Brink Home Archive.
7.Journal marked ‘Des 1963–Junie 1965’, entry for 31 October 1964, p. 68.
8.Ibid., p. 73.
9.Ibid., p. 69.
10.Ibid., p. 71.
11.Ibid., p. 74.
12.Ibid., p. 73.
13.Letter from Salomi Louw to Brink, 29 August [1966], Brink Home Archive.
14.‘Des 1963–Junie 1965’, 31 October 1964, p. 74.
15.Ibid., p. 75.
16.Brink alleges similar ‘completely fictional situations which she believes to be true’. See letter from Brink to psychiatrist, 11 February 1966. Brink Home Archive.
17.‘Des 1963–Junie 1965’, 31 October 1964, p. 75. The stage manager’s real name is withheld to protect his privacy.
18.Ibid., 18 April 1965, additional loose sheets, page 6.
19.Ibid., 20 April 1965, p. 10.
20.Ibid., 25 April 1965, additional loose sheets, page 15. Brink does not mention the title of the play, but he does record talking with Frans Marx and Johan Botha after the performance. Theatre records indicate that Salomi, Marx and Botha acted in a PACT/TRUK performance of Die Onwillige Weduwee: ’n Kunsmatige Klug in Drie Bedrywe, by Henriette Grové, at this time. Available at esat.sun.ac.za/index.php?title=Die_Onwillige_Weduwee.
21.‘Des 1963–Junie 1965’, 25 April 1965, additional loose sheets, page 18.
22.Ibid., 1 May 1965, p. 102.
23.Ibid., pp. 102–103.
24.Ibid., 31 December 1964, p. 82. The two one-act plays are Die Trommel and Die Tas. ‘Elders’ is a reference to Elders Mooiweer en Warm (elsewhere fine and warm), a play originally written as a novella. The ‘Orgie mess’ refers to ‘political intervention’ that ‘forced Bartho Smit [of APB publishers] to cancel the project’ after proofs had already been made. A Fork in the Road: A Memoir (London: Harvill Secker, 2009), p. 110; for the detail about the proofs, see ’n Vurk in die Pad: ’n Memoir (Kaapstad: Human & Rousseau, 2009), p. 124. The clash with ‘Grové, Schutte, Scholtz’ refers to AP Grové, Roswitha Schutte, and Merwe Scholtz.
25.‘Des 1963–Junie 1965’, 9 May 1965, p. 117.
26.Ibid., 12 May 1965, p. 119.
27.Ibid.
28.See Journal marked ‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, entry for 4 February 2001, p. 61, where he acknowledges that he ‘transferred’ his need for his mother’s approval ‘to my wives’ – as discussed in Chapter 1.
29.‘Des 1963–Junie 1965’, 12 May 1965, p. 119.
30.Ibid., p. 120.
31.Ibid., 18 May 1965, p. 124.
32.Ibid., 30 May 1965, p. 145.
33.Ibid., p. 136.
34.Ibid., 9 May 1965, pp. 113–114.
35.Ibid., 22 May 1965, p. 139.
36.Journal marked ‘Julie 1965–DES. 1966’, entry for 20 December 1965, p. 23.
37.In later years, his two daughters, Wendy and Margaret, would receive public acclaim. Dr Wendy Orr played a prominent role in exposing the treatment of detainees in the wake of Steve Biko’s death at the hands of the police, while Prof Margaret Orr played a significant role in South African academia. See http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/inquest-bikos-death-and-his-funeral
38.Brink reports: ‘Married for three months [today]’. ‘Julie 1965–DES. 1966’, 27 February 1966, p. 78.
39.Email from Helmut Morsbach to author, 11 October 2016. Morsbach and Gisela, his wife at the time, also lived at Silver Oaks; Salomi often visited Gisela to relieve her frustration and boredom with Grahamstown, where she felt out on a limb.
40.Salomi was reportedly unhappy about rehearsing for the play – ‘every moment was hell for her’. Letter from Brink to psychiatrist, 11 February 1966, Brink Home Archive. Brink succeeded in having Salomi’s contract rescinded, though he does not explain how.
41.‘Julie 1965–DES. 1966’, entry for 6 January 1966, p. 35. In a later entry (‘Frankryk 1966’, 29 June 1966, p. 59) Brink mentions that this incident took place ‘before Christmas’ – thus Christmas 1965.
42.Julie 1965–DES. 1966’, entry for 6 January 1966, p. 36.
43.Ibid., Jan 66, p. 26.
44.Ibid., p. 27. It is Brink who uses this word: ‘A nymph? Entirely probable.’
45.Ibid. Anna’s surname is withheld to protect her privacy.
46.Ibid., pp. 26–27.
47.Ibid., p. 27.
48.Ibid., pp. 27–28.
49.Ibid., p. 34.
50.Ibid., pp. 29–30.
51.Ibid., p. 30.
52.Ibid., p. 31.
53.Salomi later accuses Brink of unfaithfulness while they were ‘still on honeymoon’. Letter from Salomi Louw to Brink, 5 July 1966, Brink Home Archive. The Anna event occurred barely a month after their nuptials.
54.See letter from Brink to Salomi Louw, 14 September 1966, Brink Home Archive, in which he refers to these photographs. See also journal marked ‘Frankryk 1966’, entry for 29 June 1966, p. 59.
55.‘Julie 1965–DES. 1966’, Jan 65, p. 34.
56.Letter from Salomi Louw to Brink, 5 July 1966, Brink Home Archive.
57.‘Julie 1965–DES. 1966’, 6 January 1966, p. 37.
58.Ibid., p. 40.
59.Ibid., 15 January, p. 46.
60.Ibid., pp. 46–48.
61.Ibid., pp. 48.
62.Ibid., 22 January 1966, p. 53.
63.Letter from Salomi Louw to Brink, 5 July 1966, Brink Home Archive.
64.‘Julie 1965–DES. 1966’, 22 January 1966, p. 54. The play was published by John Malherbe, Cape Town, 1965.
65.‘Julie 1965–DES. 1966’, 10 February 1966, p. 58.
66.Ibid., p. 59.
67.Ibid., 12 February 1966, p. 63.
68.Ibid., p. 64.
69.Ibid., 9 February 1966, p. 57.
70.Ibid., 10 February 1966, p. 61.
71.Letter from Brink to psychiatrist, 11 February 1966.
72.Letter from Brink to Mark Williams, 17 February 1966, Brink Home Archive.
73.‘Julie 1965–DES. 1966’, 10 February 1966, p. 63.
74.Ibid., pp. 64–65.
75.Journal marked ‘April 1968–Julie 1968’, entry for 10 May 1968.
76.Letter from Salomi Louw to Brink, 5 July 1966, Brink Home Archive.
77.‘Julie 1965–DES. 1966’, 16 February 1966, p. 71.
78.Ibid., 24 February 1966, p. 75.
79.Ibid., p. 77.
80.Ibid., 3 March 1966, p. 80.
81.Ibid., 17 March 1966, p. 84
82.Ibid., p. 85.
83.Ibid., 20 March 1966, p. 90.
84.Ibid., 28 April 1966, p. 94.
85.Ibid.
86.Ibid., p. 95.
87.Ibid., pp. 95–96.
88.Ibid., p. 96.
89.Email from Salomi Louw to author, 5 October 2017. The CV she attached lists several academic articles on South African drama studies, among other literary topics.
90.Email from Salomi Louw to author, 1 October 2018.
91.Email from Salomi Louw to Brink, 29 March 2012, Brink Home Archive.
92.Email from Brink to Salomi Louw, 29 March 2012, Brink Home Archive.
93.‘Frankryk 1966’, 29 June 1966, p. 59.
94.Miskien Nooit: ’n Somerspel (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 1967).
95.‘Frankryk 1966’, 18 June 1966, p. 4.
96.Ibid., 21 June 1966, p. 14.
97.Ibid., pp. 16–17.
98.Ibid., 1 July 1966, p. 60.
99.Ibid.
100.Letter from Breyten Breytenbach to Brink, dated ‘5 Junie’ (1966), year added by Brink, Brink Home Archive.
101.‘Frankryk 1966’, 5 July 1966, p. 76.
102.Ibid., 7 July 1966, p. 81.
103.Ibid., p. 83.
104.Ibid., p. 85.
105.See Rolf-Peter Horstmann and Judith Norman (eds), tr. Judith Norman, Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 60.
106.Journal marked ‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, entry for 6 March 1970, p. 76. As things turned out, Brink had a sexual relationship with this woman (see Chapter 5).
107.This phenomenon, often loosely interpreted, was first identified by Sigmund Freud. See, for example, ‘The Most Prevalent Form of Degradation in Erotic Life’, in Philip Rieff (ed.), Freud: Sexuality and the Psychology of Love (New York: Touchstone, 1997), pp. 48–69; See also Uwe Hartmann, ‘Sigmund Freud and His Impact on Our Understanding of Male Sexual Dysfunction’, The Journal of Sexual Medicine 6 (8) 2009: pp. 2332–2339.
108.‘Oor seks en religie’, Standpunte 18 (2), December 1964, p. 38.
109.‘Frankryk 1966’, 8 July 1966, p. 87.
110.Ibid., p. 88. Humbert Humbert is, of course, the protagonist in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, a novel in which a much older man seduces a 14-year-old girl, or the other way around, depending on how one interprets the novel.
111.In his memoir, Brink narrates how he re-encountered Gunilla as a ‘beautiful middle-aged woman’ at a literary festival in Gothenburg. After he signed a book for her, she uttered the words ‘maybe never’ just as she began to turn away, to give the next person in the queue a chance. Only then did Brink see her for who she was, but she continued walking away, and he had to carry on signing books. That was the last he ever saw of her. See A Fork in the Road, p. 259.
112.JC Kannemeyer, Geskiedenis van die Afrikaanse Literatuur 2 (Pretoria: Akademika, 1983), p. 398.
113.Journal marked ‘Joernaal 9 Julie 1966–’, entry for 21 July 1966, p. 60.
114.See Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love, and Eroticism in Modern Societies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), p. 2.
115.‘Joernaal 9 Julie 1966–’, 5 September 1966, pp. 170–171.
116.André P. Brink, Miskien Nooit (Human & Rousseau, 1982/1967), pp. 167-169.
117.‘Joernaal 9 Julie 1966–’, 9 September 1966, p. 179.
118.Ibid., pp. 179–180.
119.See early feminist critique such as Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 1963) and Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1949). Heir to this was Erica Jong’s female protagonist, Isadora Wing, and her quest for the ‘true, ultimate zipless A-1 fuck’, which presupposed ‘that you never get to know the man very well’. See Fear of Flying (New York: New American Library, 2003), p. 18.
120.Edna O’Brien, Byron in Love: A Short Daring Life (New York: WW Norton, 2009), p. 27.
121.Ibid., p. 142.
122.Etienne Britz, for example, stated: ‘A book like Miskien Nooit brought ordinary readers and young students under the influence of the sixties as no other Sestiger writer’s work was able to do. At least not on the same scale.’ See ‘Die dood van André P. Brink’, LitNet, 11 February 2015, available at litnet.co.za/die-dood-van-andre-p-brink/
123.‘Joernaal 9 Julie 1966–’, 31 July 1966, p. 96.
124.‘April 1968–July 1968’, 1 July 1968, p. 218.
125.‘Joernaal 9 Julie 1966–’, 25 August 1966, p. 165; also 18 September 1966, pp. 185–186. In the latter, he writes that Salomi is ‘demanding more and more money, all the more furious in her letters’.
126.Letter from Brink to Salomi Louw, 14 September 1966, Brink Home Archive.
127.‘Joernaal 9 Julie 1966–’, 18 September 1966, p. 186.
128.‘Julie 1965–DES. 1966’, 28 September 1966, p. 100.
129.Ibid., p. 101.
130.Ibid., p. 102.
131.Ibid., pp. 102–103.
132.Ibid., 23 October 1966, p. 110.
133.Email from Helmut Morsbach to author, 10 October 2017.
134.Journal marked ‘Des 1967–April 1968’, entry for 24 January 1968, p. 93. Here he acknowledges Pat Carver’s upsetting though ‘lucid diagnosis’ of his behaviour in her letter to him.
135.‘Julie 1965–DES. 1966’, 12 November 1966, p. 143.
136.‘Stories Around Stories’, unpublished MS Word document, notes for A Fork in the Road, c. 2005–2008, Brink Home Archive.
137.‘Julie 1965–DES. 1966’, 12 November 1966, p. 144.
138.Journal marked ‘Januarie 1967–Nov 1967’, entry for 21 January (‘Ponta do Ouro’), p. 12.
139.Letter from Salomi Louw to Brink, 8 February 1967, Brink Home Archive.
140.A Fork in the Road, p. 309.
141.Ibid., p. 276. Here, Brink writes about ‘H’ (Hermione): ‘I made the mistake … of being too greedy: not content with the admittedly brief, but exhilarating past we had shared and with the present we were exploring in Paris, I also wanted to secure the future, driven by an overwhelming sense of insecurity and, perhaps, by fear of loneliness.’ This approach would never work, he adds, ‘not with H’s uncompromising honesty about relationships’.
142.‘Januarie 1967–Nov 1967’, 18 February 1967, pp. 37–38.
143.Ibid., p. 39. Brink wrote a lengthy rebuttal of Christie’s theories about him being a psychological ‘case’, arguing that Roode’s outdated ‘norm’ is in fact the product of his Potchefstroom upbringing. Letter from Brink to Roode, 15 March 1967, Brink Home Archive.
144.‘Januarie 1967–Nov 1967’, 9 May 1967, p. 79, and entry for 10 May 1967, p. 81.
145.Ibid., 10 May 1967, p. 82.
146.Ibid., June 1967, p. 87.
147.Portret van die Vrou as ’n Meisie (Cape Town: Buren, 1973).
148.Letter from Brink to Anthony Akerman, 4 October 1973, Brink Home Archive.
149.Letter from Brink to Naas Steenkamp, 25 August 1967, Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
150.He would carry out his promise when he arrived in Paris at the end of that year for his sabbatical. Letter from Brink to Breyten Breytenbach, 9 October 1967, Brink Home Archive.
151.According to Naas Steenkamp, Brink took the photographs for the book on his parents’ farm near Bathurst. Email from Naas Steenkamp to author, 4 September 2017.
152.‘Januarie 1967–Nov 1967’, 19 June 1967, p. 108.
153.Ibid., 10 June 1967, p. 97.
154.See A Fork in the Road, p. 312.
155.Brink names the main model he used for the book as Dora [Carver]. One of Dora’s friends, Helen, came along one day and agreed to pose for him when, on impulse, Brink invited her to take part in the project. (‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, pp. 66–67.) Years later, in his memoir, Brink reports that Helen’s father, a minister of religion in an English-speaking church, took umbrage when he saw proofs of photographs that Brink had given to Helen. The minister confronted Dora’s father and threatened prosecution. ‘Fortunately, my main model’s [i.e. Dora’s] parents were more than able to talk him out of it, and it was only much later that I heard about the father’s reaction.’ (A Fork in the Road, p. 313.) Helmut Morsbach has confirmed that Dora was Pat Carver’s daughter. (Email to author, 12 October 2017.) According to Morsbach, Pat lamented ‘André’s callous disregard for teenage Dora’s reputation’. Dora’s classmates in Grahamstown apparently got hold of a copy of Portret van die Vrou as ’n Meisie and teased Dora mercilessly about it. (Email from Helmut Morsbach to author, 12 October 2017.) Brink confirms this in his 2001 journal, saying that Dora Carver’s parents saved the situation by talking the minister out of his intention to lay charges against Brink; ‘it was followed by a commotion when boys at the school began taunting Dora about the pictures, and everything culminated in a completely unintended fiasco.’ (‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, p. 67.)
156.Unsent letter from Brink to Hermione Harris, included as a loose item in the journal marked ‘January 1967–Nov 1967’, p. 2.
157.‘Januarie 1967–Nov 1967’, p. 2.
158.‘Januarie 1967–Nov 1967’, 10 June 1967, p. 99.
159.Unsent letter from Brink to Hermione Harris, in ‘January 1967–Nov 1967’, p. 4.
160.‘Januarie 1967–Nov 1967’, 4 June 1967, pp. 92–93.
161.Ibid., p. 92.
162.Ibid., 4 June 1967, p. 91.
163.Ibid., 18 June 1967, p. 104.
164.Ibid., 11 June 1967, p. 103.
165.Letter from Brink to Naas Steenkamp, 25 August 1967, Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
166.See letter from Brink to Breyten Breytenbach, 9 October 1967, Brink Home Archive. The travel book appeared as Midi: Op Reis deur Suid-Frankryk (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 1969); the scholarly work on modernist prose appeared as Aspekte van die Nuwe Prosa (Pretoria: Academica, 1967).
167.‘Des 1967–April 1968’, 24 December 1967, p. 2.
168.Ibid., p. 4.
169.Ibid., pp. 4–5.
170.Ibid., 17 January 1968, pp. 71–73.
171.Ibid., p. 73.
172.Ibid.
173.Ibid., p. 74.
174.Ibid., pp. 74-75.
175.Ibid., pp. 75–76.
176.Letter from Brink to Naas Steenkamp, 3 April 1968, Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
177.Apart from Hermione, whom Brink refers to as ‘H’ in his memoir, the many other women in his sexual orbit during this period remain out of the picture for the purposes of the memoir. The same is true of Brink’s 1966 visit to Paris, about which he mentions just one amusing sexual episode involving a Dutch artist/activist named Connie, and a date with ‘Eliane’ (Elyane Giovagnoli), an actress performing in an Ionesco play. While enjoying a drink with the actress – having arranged for a red rose to be delivered to her at the theatre each evening for the following month – he notices a newspaper announcement of the assassination of Hendrik Verwoerd. Immediately excusing himself, he gives up an evening ‘redolent with possibility’ and runs off to tell Breyten Breytenbach the news. See A Fork in the Road, pp. 259–260.
178.‘April 1968–Julie 1968’, 28 May 1968, p. 155.
179.Ibid., 25 April 1968, p. 1.
180.Ibid., p. 3.
181.Taken from John Updike’s 1968 novel, Couples (London: Deutsch, 1967). See Journal marked ‘Okt 68–Mrt 69’, entry for 11 November 1968, p. 62.
182.‘April 1968–Julie 1968’, 27 April 1968, p. 46.
183.Ibid., pp. 46–47.
184.‘Julie 1965–DES. 1966’, 28 September 1966, p. 102.
185.‘April 1968–Julie 1968’, 12 May 1968, pp. 92–95.
186.Ibid., pp. 102–103.
187.Ibid., pp. 108–109.
188.Screeds of this are quoted in A Fork in the Road. See pp. 280–303.
189.‘April 1968–Julie 1968’, 12 May, pp. 110–111.
190.Ibid., 13 May 1968, pp. 117–118.
191.Ibid., pp. 119–120.
192.Ibid., p. 116.
193.Ibid., p. 120.
194.In his memoir, Brink reveals that he had corresponded with Breyten prior to 1964, when he first met him during his ill-fated trip to Europe with Ingrid. See A Fork in the Road, p. 107.
195.Because of his opposition to apartheid, Breytenbach left South Africa in 1960 for Paris, where he married Yolande Ngo Thi Hoang Lien, a Vietnamese national, in 1962. See sahistory.org.za/people/breyten-breytenbach
196.‘April 1968–Julie 1968’, 25 April 1968, p. 38.
197.Ibid., 22 May 1968, p. 114.
198.Ibid., pp. 114–115.
199.Ibid., 9 June 1968, p. 179. He would, however, draw on these works in Rumours of Rain and elsewhere. See ‘Stories Around Stories’, unpublished MS Word document, notes for A Fork in the Road, c. 2005–2008, Brink Home Archive.
200.‘April 1968–Julie 1968’, 21 June 1968, p. 200.
201.Ibid., p. 201.
202.Ibid., pp. 202–203.
203.Ibid., p. 203.
204.Journal marked ‘Julie 1968–Oktober 1968’, entry for 11 August 1968, pp. 79–80.
205.Ibid., p. 81.
206.Ibid., pp. 82–83.
207.Ibid., pp. 83–84.
208.Letter from Brink to Abraham de Vries, 28 August 1968, Brink Home Archive.
209.Journal marked ‘Oktober 1968 – Maart 1969’, entry for 30 October 1968, pp. 17–18.
210.Ibid., 10 November 1968, p. 56.
211.Ibid., pp. 57–58.
212.Ibid., p. 58.
213.Ibid., 17 November 1968, pp. 74–75. Brink mentions that the two visitors are Jan Prins, a rugby journalist, and Theo Marais, a South African businessman based in London. See letter from Brink to Naas Steenkamp, 18 November 1968, Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession. See also letter, Brink to Naas Steenkamp, 18 November 1968, where Brink tells Steenkamp the same. Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
214.Robert Karel Jozef Emiel (Rob) Antonissen, born in Antwerp in 1919, was a highly regarded literary historian and a colleague with whom Brink felt a special affinity. He died in 1972.
215.‘Oktober 1968–Maart 1969’, 17 November 1968, p. 75.
216.Letter from Brink to Naas Steenkamp, 27 November 1968, Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
217.‘Oktober 1968–Maart 1969’, 18 November 1968, pp. 81–82. Politically ‘undesirable’ people (such as Brink) who wished to travel overseas were often issued with an ‘exit permit’ by the apartheid government. They were thereby prevented from returning to their homeland, and effectively rendered stateless persons.
218.Ibid., p. 83.
219.Ibid., pp. 86–87.
220.Ibid., p. 89.
221.Ibid., 21 November 1968, p. 91.
222.Ibid., 27 November 1968, pp. 113–114.
223.Letter from Brink to Anthony Akerman, 6 August 1973, Brink Home Archive. Five years earlier, Brink had given the figure as six cats. See letter from Brink to Naas Steenkamp, 27 November 1968, Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
224.‘Oktober 1968–Maart 1969’, 4 November 1968, pp. 46–47. See also Brink’s letter to Naas Steenkamp, 27 November 1968, Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
225.Letter from Brink to Anthony Akerman, 6 August 1973, Brink Home Archive.
226.‘Oktober 1968–Maart 1969’, 4 November 1968, p. 47. Antje Ypelaar died in 1987, aged 45.
227.Letter from Brink to Pat and David Carver, 4 November 1968.
228.‘Oktober 1968–Maart 1969’, 27 November 1968, p. 110 & 114.
229.Letter from Brink to Pat and David Carver, 4 November 1968.
230.‘Oktober 1968–Maart 1969’, 27 November 1968, p. 115.
231.Ibid., p. 114.
232.Ibid., 1 December 1968, p. 123.
233.Ibid., 4 December 1968, p. 135.
234.Letter from Brink to Naas Steenkamp, 12 December 1968, Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
235.‘April 1968–Julie 1968’, 21 June 1968, p. 200.
CHAPTER 5
1.The Black Consciousness movement emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s in the wake of the ruling National Party’s suppression the African National Congress (ANC) and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), jailing and banning their leaders. Focused largely on black youth, the movement is synonymous with its founder, Steve Bantu Biko, who was killed while in police custody in 1977. Biko was influenced by thinkers such as WEB Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Frantz Fanon and Léopold Senghor. See sahistory.org.za/article/ideology-black-consciousness-movement
2.Breytenbach became known as the ‘albino terrorist’ after publication of his prison memoir, The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist (London: Faber, 1985). After entering South Africa incognito and being captured, in 1975 he pleaded guilty to being a member of Okhela, an organisation that aimed to overthrow the South African government. He was convicted of high treason and sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment. An international outcry led to his release in 1982, and he returned to Paris, becoming a French citizen.
3. Journal marked ‘Apl. 1973–Jun 1980’, entry for 3 January 1976, p. 67. From the 1970s onwards, as Brink settled down to serious novel-writing, his journalling became far sparser than in the 1960s, hence the large span covered by this journal.
4.Journal marked ‘Oktober 1968–Maart 69’, entry for 31 December 1968, pp. 189–190.
5.Abraham de Vries was appointed as Brink’s temporary replacement until the end of 1969. See letter from Brink to Naas Steenkamp, dated 12 December 1968, Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
6.Journal marked ‘Mrt–Nov 69’, entry for 22 April 1969, p. 30.
7.Ibid., 6 July 1969, p. 53.
8.With sly amusement, Brink aligns himself with the archetypal fox of folklore, a wily trickster. ‘Oktober 1968–Maart 69’, 23 January 1969, p. 200.
9.‘Mrt–Nov 69’, 22 April 1969, p. 30.
10.See ‘Oktober 1968–Maart 69’, 4 February, p. 209 et seq. Also, writing to Breyten, Brink mentions that Salomi is getting divorced again after ‘just two months [of marriage]’. Letter from Brink to Breyten Breytenbach, 3 February 1969, Brink Home Archive.
11.Ibid., 5 February 1969, p. 219.
12.‘Mrt–Nov 69’, 13 April 1969, pp. 27–28.
13.Ibid., 28 June 1969, p. 48.
14.‘Oktober 1968–Maart 69’, 26 February 1969, p. 228. Soon afterwards, Brink reports that her engagement (presumably to the farmer) has been called off. Ibid., 16 March 1969, p. 241.
15. Ibid., 16 March 1969, p. 239.
16.‘Mrt–Nov 69’, 21 July 1969, p. 57.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid., 28 June 1969, p. 46.
19.Pseudonym used for reasons of privacy.
20.‘Mrt – Nov 69’, 25 September 1969, p. 61.
21.A Fork in the Road: A Memoir (London: Harvill Secker, 2009), pp. 79–80.
22.Email from ‘Lise’ to author, 29 September 2017.
23.Journal marked ‘Mrt–Nov 69’, 5 November 1969, p. 181.
24.PACT’s production of Drie susters, directed by Robert Mohr, ran at the Alexander Theatre in Johannesburg from 26 February to 7 March 1970, starring Annette Engelbrecht, Katinka Heyns, Schalk Jacobsz, Don Lamprecht, Wilna Snyman, Wilma Stockenström, Francois Swart, Carel Trichardt and Louis van Niekerk. See esat.sun.ac.za/index.php?title=Drie_Susters
25.Journal marked ‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, entry for 15 February 1970, p. 8.
26.Claudia Duxbury was a 22-year-old Dior model and Glamour cover girl who had been named as a 1960s supermodel alongside Twiggy and other fashion celebrities.
27.Journal marked ‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, entry for 15 February 1970, pp. 12–13.
28.Letter from Brink to Naas Steenkamp, 1 May 1970.
29.‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, 24 February 1970, p. 45.
30.Ibid., pp. 44–45.
31.Ibid., p. 45.
32.Ibid., pp. 45–46.
33.See ’n Vurk in die Pad (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 2009), p. 98. This detail does not, however, appear in the English translation of the memoir, A Fork in the Road.
34.‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, 24 February 1970, p. 46.
35.Ibid., 5 March 1970, p. 74.
36.Ibid., 6 March 1970, pp. 75–76.
37.Ibid., p. 76.
38.Ibid.
39.Ibid., pp. 76–77.
40.Letter from Pat Carver to Brink, Brink Home Archive, 18 April 1969.
41.‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, 9 March 1970, p. 77. The extract is taken from Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice (New York: Delta, 1999), p. 174.
42.‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, 9 March 1970, pp. 79–80.
43.Ibid., p. 81.
44.Ibid., pp. 81–82.
45.This inclination to adventure is in line with Yogi Berra’s saying, ‘When you come to a fork in the road, take it’ – which Brink uses as an epigraph to A Fork in the Road.
46.‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, 14 March 1970, p. 83.
47.Ibid., 16 March 1970, p. 84.
48.Ibid., p. 85.
49.Ibid., pp. 85–86.
50.Ibid., 17 March 1970, p. 86.
51.Brink was at the time living in a small settler’s cottage in George Street, Grahamstown, and he drove a grey VW Beetle. Interview with Alta Brink, 18 January 2018, Gordon’s Bay.
52.The term, used in relation to filmic photography, was coined five years later by Laura Mulvey, who drew attention to the way, in cinema, ‘a determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure’. See ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (eds), Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) p. 837. Mulvey adopts Freud’s term, ‘scopophilia’, to describe the workings of a ‘fetishistic scopophilia’ in male-centred conventions of film. Ibid., p. 840.
53.‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, 16 March 1970, pp. 87–88.
54.John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, which first appeared as a BBC television series in 1972, demonstrated how women are ‘perspectivised’ in traditional Western art. See John Berger, Ways of Seeing (New York: British Broadasting Corporation and Penguin Books, 1972).
55.‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, 16 March 1970, p. 88.
56.Ibid., 23 March 1970, p. 88.
57.Ibid., p. 89–90.
58.Ibid., p. 90.
59.Ibid.
60.Ibid., pp. 92–93.
61.Ibid., p. 93.
62.Ibid. These details are also mentioned in a letter from Brink to Anthony Akerman, 2 January 1974, Brink Home Archive.
63.‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, 23 March 1970, p. 93–94.
64.Ibid., pp. 94–95.
65.Ibid., p. 95. In fact, Brink and Charmaine would remain good friends for many years more than that.
66.Ibid., pp. 95–96.
67.Ibid., p. 96.
68.Ibid., p. 97.
69.Ibid., p. 97–98.
70.Ibid., pp. 99–100.
71.Many years later, Brink was quoted as saying almost precisely this: ‘Ian Fleming said you only live twice. [You live] [o]nce, in the living; then again in the writing. I think that is what a writer’s life is about, insofar as one dare resolve anything in a line.’ Maureen Isaacson, ‘“You Only Live Twice”: The Written Life of Brink’, Daily Maverick, 10 February 2015, available at dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-02-10-you-only-live-twice-the-written-life-of-brink/#.WzYAXxIzZQI
72.He began his affair with Ingrid Jonker because ‘it was a challenge to my growing feeling of personal inadequacy’. See Journal marked ‘Des 1963–Junie 1965’, entry for 23 March 1964, p. 37. Moreover, he keeps copies of letters and other ‘proofs’ such as pubic hair, photos, and poems perhaps as ‘an attempt to prove, to myself; and to overcome a doubt in myself; to know.’ Ibid., p. 36. He also refers to the ‘fearful, injured love’ he sometimes experiences, and the ‘viciousness’ with which he at times reacts. See journal marked ‘Januarie 1967–Nov 1967’, entry for 21 January 1967, p. 11.
73.Brink sent many tape-recorded messages to Ingrid Jonker. See Galloway (ed.), Flame in the Snow, pp. 73, 77 et seq.
74.Brink’s own translation was published as The Ambassador (Johannesburg, Central News Agency, 1964). Though it first appeared in the UK as File on a Diplomat (London: Longmans, 1967), a later reprint appeared under the original title, The Ambassador (London: Faber, 1985). The novel has since been translated into several languages, such as German (Nicolette und der Botschafer), French (L’ambassadeur), Polish (Ambasador), and Dutch (Die Ambassadeur).
75.‘Oktober 68–Maart 69’, 23 March 1969, pp. 195–196. To some extent, Brink’s words would prove to be true: outstanding writing by Brink himself and the likes of Anna M Louw, Wilma Stockenström, Etienne van Heerden, AHM Scholtz, Elsa Joubert, Breyten Breytenbach, Antjie Krog, Koos Prinsloo, Mark Behr, Marlene van Niekerk, Karel Schoeman, EKM Dido, Eben Venter, Willem Anker, SJ Naudé and Ingrid Winterbach, among others, would eclipse South African writing in English, though critics would be slow to acknowledge this.
76.Letter from Brink to Braam de Vries, 11 March 1970, Brink Home Archive.
77.‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, 26 April 1970, p. 104.
78.Ibid.
79.Interview with Alta Brink, 17 January 2018, Gordon’s Bay.
80.Gerrit Geertsema, ‘Always a Safe Bet’, Encounters with André Brink (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 2010), p. 67.
81.‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, 26 April 1970, pp. 103–104.
82., p. 105.
83.Ibid., 29 April 1970, p. 108.
84.Ibid., 4 May 1970, p. 109.
85.Ibid., 4 May 1970, pp. 109–110.
86.Ibid., 11 May 1970, p. 113.
87.Ibid., pp. 113–114.
88.Letter from Breyten Breytenbach to Brink, dated ‘July’ (Brink added the year, 1970), Brink Home Archive.
89.‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, 11 May 1970, p. 115.
90.Ibid., p. 118.
91.Ibid.
92.Ibid., pp. 118–119.
93.Ibid., 15 May 1970, p. 120.
94.Letter from Uys Krige to Brink, 3 August 1970, Brink Home Archive.
95.‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, 23 May 1970, p. 121–122.
96.Ibid., 21 August 1970, p. 124.
97.Alta Brink recalls that she and her husband bought the dilapidated Cock House in about September 1970. Interview with Alta Brink, 17 January 2018, Gordon’s Bay. The many-roomed, two-storey house was built in 1826 and named after 1820 settler William Cock, who was an influential local figure. See Grahamstown Reflected (Grahamstown: Albany Museum, 1995), p. 21. Nowadays it is a guesthouse with a fine restaurant, and it is known as The Cock House.
98.Interview with Alta Brink, 17 January 2018, Gordon’s Bay.
99.‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, 21 August, pp. 125–126.
100.Brink had often expressed his longing for a daughter, especially in his letters to Ingrid Jonker. See Galloway (ed.), Flame in the Snow.
101.Interview with Tim Huisamen, 3 April 2017, Grahamstown.
102.Ibid.
103.Ibid.
104.See Guy Butler papers, NELM 1976. 257. 37 1300/164.
105.Emails from Gustav Brink to author dated 8 April 2017 and 19 January 2018 are the source of information here, unless otherwise indicated.
106.Alta recalls this differently. According to her, Gustav lived at the Cock House for about two years before friction in the home, including conflict involving Gustav, Danie and Sonja, led to the decision that it would be better for everyone if Gustav became a boarder at Hoërskool PJ Olivier in the town. Interview with Alta Brink, 17 January, 2018, Gordon’s Bay. Gustav, however, refutes this categorically: ‘I never lived with them in the house. I was in boarding school in Grahamstown (in the WEG Louw House at PJ Olivier school) from the last quarter of 1977 to the last quarter of 1979 (i.e. the last quarter of standard 3 [grade 5] to the end of standard 5 [grade 7]).’ Email from Gustav Brink to author, 19 January 2018.
107.According to Gustav, Salomi was then living in Cape Town, where Gustav attended Jan van Riebeeck primary school until September 1977, i.e. prior to his two years at PJ Olivier school in Grahamstown; he went on to attend Hoërskool Jan van Riebeeck in Cape Town from January 1980. Gustav reports that he went back to his mother in Cape Town during school holidays, with his father driving him to and from the airport in Port Elizabeth.
108.Letter from Brink to Anthony Akerman, 24 March 1975; interview with Alta Brink, 17 January 2018, Gordon’s Bay.
109.Interview with Alta Brink, 17 January 2018, Gordon’s Bay.
110.Brink had bought the set on his 30th birthday, and gave it to Gustav on his 30th, with the instruction that he should do the same when his own son turned 30. Email from Gustav Brink to author, 8 April 2017.
111.Email from Gustav Brink to author, 8 April 2017. See also divorce settlement, Cape Supreme Court, Case No 10044/87, Brink Home Archive.
112.Email from Gustav Brink to author, 8 April 2017.
113.Grahamstown is home to some of South Africa’s wealthiest schools, and one of its top universities. But it is in a sea of poverty, situated as it is in South Africa’s poorest province, the Eastern Cape. In August 2017, the Daily Despatch reported that the Eastern Cape ‘remains the poorest province in South Africa, according to the newly published Poverty Trends report by Statistician-General Pali Lehohla’, available at dispatchlive.co.za/news/2017-08-23-e-cape-remains-sas-poorest-province/
114.Email from Gustav Brink to author, 8 April 2017.
115.Interview with Tim Huisamen, 3 April 2017, Grahamstown.
116.She stresses, however, that she shared Brink’s liberal political views. Interview with Alta Brink, 17 January 2018, Gordon’s Bay.
117.Brink’s parents had bought the house in the early 1970s. Ibid.
118.‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, 18 October 1970, pp. 129–130.
119.Ibid., p. 130.
120.Ibid., p. 132.
121.Ibid., 21 November 1970, p. 136.
122.Ibid., 12 February 1971, p. 139.
123.Ibid., 21 November 1970, pp. 136–137.
124.Letter from Brink to Naas Steenkamp, 1 June [1971], Steenkamp papers, in Steenkamp’s possession.
125.Ibid.
126.‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, 25 May 1971, p. 143.
127.Ibid., 1 September 1971, p. 151. ‘Oom Kootjie’ refers to his humorous work, Die Geskiedenis van Oom Kootjie Emmer van Witworteldraai (Cape Town: Buren, 1973).
128.According to Brink, ‘Alta has remained sickly since the baby … at the end of the month she will be spending two weeks with her parents, where she will also visit a specialist’. Letter from Brink to Braam de Vries, 22 October 1971, Brink Home Archive.
129.‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, 6 December 1971, p. 158.
130.Ibid., 8 December 1971, p. 158.
131.Nobel Laureate Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, an outspoken critic of the repressive Soviet regime, had his writings banned and was forced into exile.
132.See Greg Penfold and Leon de Kock, ‘To a Dubious Critical Salvation: Etienne Leroux and the Canons of South African English Criticism’, Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 52 (1) 2015: 73–93.
133.Scholars who have been critical of Brink’s work include JC Kannemeyer, Gerrit Olivier, Elize Botha, Andrew van der Vlies, and Meg Samuelson.
134.See Maureen Isaacson’s posthumous observation: ‘[Brink] defined his work as “popular literary fiction”; combining elements of literary and pulp fiction. A fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the elements of magical realism rubbed off onto Imaginings of Sand; and later onto Praying Mantis … Brink essentially did his own thing.’ ‘“You only live twice”: The written life of Brink’, Daily Maverick, 10 February 2015, available at dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-02-10-you-only-live-twice-the-written-life-of-brink/#.WzSpOxIzZQI
135.See A Fork in the Road, p. 220, and ’n Vurk in die Pad, p. 245.
136.In The Literature Police: Apartheid Censorship and its Cultural Consequences (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 98) Peter D McDonald states that Opperman’s report, which appears not to have survived, was delivered in 1971. For this, McDonald relies on WD Beukes (ed.), Boekewêreld: Die Nasionale Pers in die Uitgewersbedryf tot 1990 (Cape Town: Nasionale Boekhandel, 1992), p. 229. It would appear that Beukes’s volume may be incorrect in this regard, as the manuscript of Kennis – according to Brink in his journal – was completed only on or about 6 December 1971. It would ordinarily be almost impossible to send a hefty manuscript to a publisher and to receive a report within a single month, especially in December in the Cape. However, Opperman was by no means ‘ordinary’, so the claim that his report was delivered very quickly may also be correct.
137.‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, 12 May 1972, p. 166.
138.Ibid., pp. 166–167.
139.Letter from Brink to Anthony Akerman, 6 September 1973, Brink Home Archive.
140.Letter from Brink to Anthony Akerman, 23 September 1973. Brink Home Archive.
141.A Fork in the Road, p. 224.
142.Letter from Brink to Anthony Akerman, 20 August 1974, Akerman personal papers, Johannesburg. Brink informed his friend that ‘the Transvaal Afrikaans writers’ had launched a fund to help pay legal costs. Letter from Brink to Anthony Akerman, 25 January 1974. This initiative was allegedly led by John Miles and Ampie Coetzee. Email from Gerrit Olivier to author, 7 April 2018.
143.A Fork in the Road, p. 225.
144.Letter from Brink to Anthony Akerman, 29 October 1974.
145.The transfer of Erf 2576, Gordon’s Bay, to Sophia Albertina Brink, went through in 1976. Deeds office, Cape Town, Ref: T16055/1976.
146.Interview with Alta Brink, 17 January 2018, Gordon’s Bay.
147.Letter from Brink to Karin and Gerhard de Jager, 10 October 1985, De Jager personal papers, Cape Town.
148.Email from Karin de Jager to author, 6 December 2017.
149.Letter from Brink to Breyten Breytenbach, 8 September 1983, Brink Home Archive.
150.Interview with Alta Brink, 17 January 2018, Gordon’s Bay. To protect her privacy, the pseudonym ‘Marianne’ is used in this book for the woman who would eventually become Brink’s fourth wife (see Chapter 6).
151.Francis Galloway (comp.), SA Literature/Literatuur 1982 (Johannesburg: Ad. Donker, 1985), p. 268.
152.McDonald, The Literature Police, p. 54.
153.See Jim Polley (ed.), Verslag van die simposium oor die Sestigers, gehou deur die Departement Buitemuurse Studies van die Universiteit van Kaapstad, 12–16 Februarie 1973 (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 1973).
154.Galloway, SA Literature/Literatuur 1982, p. 268.
155.Ibid.
156.Ibid., pp. 272–273.
157.Ibid., p. 269.
158.Ibid.
159.Talitha Catharina Pienaar wrote many similar novels, about which JC Kannemeyer, in Gesksiedenis van die Afrikanse Literatuur 1 (Pretoria: Akademika, 1984, p. 336) is withering in his critical appraisal.
160.Galloway, SA Literature/Literatuur 1982, p. 269.
161.Letter from Brink to Anthony Akerman, 25 January 1974.
162.Ibid.
163.Preface, Kobus van Rooyen, A South African Censor’s Tale (Pretoria: Protea Book House, 2011), p. 9.
164.McDonald, The Literature Police, pp. 270–271.
165.Letter from Brink to Anthony Akerman, 20 August 1974, Akerman personal papers, Johannesburg.
166.Buren Uitgewers (Edms) Bpk en ’n Ander v Raad van Beheer oor Publikasies [1975] 1 All SA 446 (C), p. 465. Judgment delivered 1 October 1974.
167.Ibid., p. 486.
168.Ibid., p. 473.
169.McDonald, The Literature Police, p. 97.
170.‘Apl. 1973–Jun 1980’, 13 August 1974, p. 20.
171.Letter from Brink to Anthony Akerman, 25 January 1974.
172.The matter was eventually settled out of court. In his memoir, Brink explains that his contract with WH Allen included an option clause: WH Allen would have first right of refusal on his next novel, even if he left them for another publisher. When WH Allen neglected to submit A Dry White Season for the Man Booker Prize at the end of 1979, Brink decided to change publishers. The managing director assured him that, should he do so, the clause would not be enforced. After Faber published A Chain of Voices, however, a new managing director took over and instituted legal action against Brink. See A Fork in the Road, pp. 316–317.
173.A Fork in the Road, p. 223.
174.Letter from Alan Paton to Brink, NELM 2001.34.3.19.
175.Jensma wrote that Kennis van die Aand was ‘the greatest novel yet to appear in Afrikaans – even better than anything in English from South Africa’, Wopko Jensma to Brink, 21 December 1973, NELM 2001.34.3.19. Hiemstra described it as ‘a tremendous book, by far the best that has ever been written in Afrikaans’, Letter from VG Hiemstra to Brink, 15 October 1973, NELM 20001.34.3.19.
176.‘Apl. 1973-Jun 1980’, 15 August 1974, p. 21.
177.Ibid., 27 September 1974, pp. 31–32.
178.Letter from Brink to Anthony Akerman, 29 October 1974.
179.Interview with Alta Brink, 17 January 2018, Gordon’s Bay.
180.Ibid. In a similar description of the attack, Brink places it in the context of Security Branch harassment. ‘Stories Around Stories’, p. 26.
181.‘Apl. 1973-Jun 1980’, 1 January 1975, pp. 36–37.
182.In Nicholas Wroe, ‘Out of the Laager’, The Guardian, 14 August 2004.
183.Journal marked ‘Apl. 1973-Jun 1980’, entry for 13 January 1975, p. 38. The list does not include his translation, Looking on Darkness.
184.Richard Eder, ‘An Interview with André Brink’, New York Times Books, 23 March 1980, available at nytimes.com/books/99/03/21/specials/brink-interview.html
185.Raymond A Sokolov, New York Times Books, 27 February 1977.
186.‘Apl. 1973-Jun 1980’, 11 February 1975, p. 41.
187.Interview with Alta Brink, 17 January 2018, Gordon’s Bay. Alta made tape recordings of these ‘beautiful stories’, and had the material put onto a video; when she later took this to be put onto a CD, it was discovered that the material had been lost – presumably when one of her children accidentally recorded material over their father’s voice.
188.‘Apl. 1973-Jun 1980’, 11 February 1975, p. 41. When Alta heard the part, read out to her, where André says ‘Alta [was] too tired to make food’, she snorted: ‘Ag that’s bullshit! I had a servant – I had two servants! In the afternoons, we had a meal at our usual time, and we would eat sandwiches in the evenings or something light.’ Interview with Alta Brink, 17 January 2018, Gordon’s Bay.
189.‘Apl. 1973–Jun 1980’, 11 February 1975, p. 41.
190.Ibid., p. 42.
191.Ibid., entry for 20 March 1975, p. 42.
192.Letter from Brink to Anthony Akerman, 22 June 1975.
193.Brink’s book on Breytenbach’s poetry was published as Die Poësie van Breyten Breytenbach (Pretoria: Academica, 1971).
194.Letter from Brink to Anthony Akerman, 23 October 1975, Akerman personal papers, Johannesburg.
195.Ibid.
196.‘Apl. 1973-Jun 1980’, 12 November 1975, p. 62.
197.Letter from Brink to Anthony Akerman, 17 June 1974, Akerman personal papers, Johannesburg.
198.The appeal, in which Brink was set to appear on behalf of Breytenbach, occurred just four days before Breytenbach’s appearance in a magistrate’s court on charges of contravening South Africa’s security laws. For that reason, the appeal was postponed indefinitely. See Francis Galloway, Breyten Breytenbach as Openbare Figuur (Pretoria: HAUM-Literêr, 1990), p. 168.
199.‘Apl. 1973-Jun 1980’, 12 November 1975, p. 63. Name of ‘Lise’s’ husband withheld for considerations of privacy.
200.‘Apl. 1973-Jun 1980’, 12 November 1975, p. 63.
201.Email from ‘Lise’ to author, 29 September 2017.
202.‘Apl. 1973-Jun 1980’, 16 November 1975, p. 64.
203.Ibid., pp. 65–66.
204.Ibid., 3 January 1976, pp. 67–68.
205.Ibid.
206.Ibid., pp. 68–69.
207.André Brink, ‘Stories Around Stories’, pp. 34–35. Unpublished MS Word document, notes for A Fork in the Road, c. 2005–2008. Provided by Karina Brink, Brink Home Archive.
208.‘Apl. 1973-Jun 1980’, 3 January 1976, p. 68.
209. Letter from Brink to ‘Angela’, Brink Home Archive, 10 April 1984.
210.Among these were Koos Rupert and his wife Rona, who suddenly became cold towards him, eventually terminating their friendship in the wake of his supposedly seditious writing. A Fork in the Road, pp. 216–217.
211.Letter from Brink to Anthony Akerman, 20 August 1973, Brink Home Archive.
212.Letter from Brink to Anthony Akerman, 25 May 1974, Akerman personal papers, Johannesburg.
213.Letter from Brink to Anthony Akerman, 17 June 1974, Akerman personal papers, Johannesburg.
214.Anton Brink made this comment apropos of his art installation ‘The Blue Door’, consisting of the door to a house that his father helped him to buy, together with ironic references to his father’s life, such as a condom and a Playboy magazine dated September 1962, which is when Anton was born. See Ashraf Jamal, ‘Pappa (The Blue Door)’, LitNet, 23 March 2016, available at litnet.co.za/pappa-the-blue-door/
215.Email from Anthony Akerman to author, 12 March 2016.
216.‘Apl. 1973-Jun 1980’, 3 January 1976, p. 70.
217.Ibid., p. 67.
218.Ibid., p. 70. According to Brink, his liaison with Lise took place not during Breytenbach’s sabotage trial, but during the time he attended the appeal hearing against the banning of Breytenbach’s volume of poems, Skryt, which took place on 6 November 1975. This was about two weeks before Breyten’s trial and sentencing on 21 and 26 November.
219.‘Apl. 1973-Jun 1980’, 3 January 1976, p. 71.
220.Ibid., p. 72.
221.Ibid., p. 73.
222.Ibid., pp. 73–74.
223.Ibid., p. 74.
224.Ibid., p. 75.
225.Email from ‘Lise’ to author, 30 September 2017.
226.‘Apl. 1973-Jun 1980’, 3 January 1976, p. 76.
227.Ibid., p. 77.
228.Ibid., p. 78.
229.Ibid., p. 79.
230.Ibid., 6 February 1976, pp. 82-83.
231.Letter from Braam de Vries to Brink, ‘Durban. 12th.’ (presumably 12 March 1976), Brink Home Archive.
232.See interview with Brink in François Gallix, Pre and Post-publication Itineraries of the Contemporary Novel in English (Paris: Publibook, 2007), p. 273.
233.‘Apl. 1973-Jun 1980’, 6 February 1976, p. 84.
234.Ibid., p. 85.
235.Ibid., 22 February 1976, p. 87.
236.Ibid., pp. 87–88.
237.Ibid., 29 March 1976, pp. 89–90.
238.Ibid., p. 90.
239.Ibid.
240.Brink, ‘Stories Around Stories’, p. 20.
241.The case was dropped as a key witness was found to be unreliable; Breytenbach was given a R50 fine for smuggling letters out of prison. See Francis Galloway, Breyten Breytenbach as Openbare Figuur (Pretoria: HAUM-Literêr, 1990), pp. 194–195 et seq. Brink makes reference to five security policemen in his journal. See ‘Apl. 1973-Jun 1980’, 24 April 1977, p. 100. In a later account, however, he refers to seven policemen. See ‘Stories Around Stories’, pp. 18-19.
242.Brink, ‘Stories Around Stories’, p. 19.
243.Ibid., pp. 19–20.
244.‘Apl. 1973-Jun 1980’, 24 April 1977, p. 100.
245.Ibid., p. 101.
246.Interview with Alta Brink, 17 January 2018, Gordon’s Bay.
247.‘Apl. 1973-Jun 1980’, 24 April 1977, p. 101.
248.Ibid., p. 102.
249.‘Stories Around Stories’, p. 20.
250.‘Apl. 1973-Jun 1980’, 6 July 1977, p. 107.
251.In Nicholas Wroe, ‘Out of the Laager’, The Guardian, 14 August 2004, available at theguardian.com/books/2004/aug/14/fiction.politics
252.‘Apl. 1973-Jun 1980’, 19 October 1977, p. 118.
253.Ibid., p. 119.
254.Ibid.
255.Ibid., p. 120.
256.The panel was chaired by André de Villiers, head of the Institute for the Study of English in Africa. For interview, see English in Africa 6 (2) 1979, pp. 1–23.
CHAPTER 6
1.During the 1980s, two consecutive states of emergency were declared by President PW Botha. The first was declared on 25 July 1985, covering 36 magisterial districts, permitting organisations to be banned and public meetings to be prohibited. Media coverage was also subject to restriction. The second state of emergency was imposed in June 1986, this time covering the entire country. The emergency was eventually lifted by President FW de Klerk in 1990. On the South African literary front, the 1980s were heralded by the publication of JM Coetzee’s allegory Waiting for the Barbarians (London: Secker & Warburg, 1980).
2.Letter from Brink to ‘Angela’, Brink Home Archive, 9 October [1985]. The identity of the recipient is protected for reasons of privacy.
3.Interview with Ian Glenn, 24 March 2017, Cape Town. See also Ian Glenn, ‘Nadine Gordimer, JM Coetzee and the Politics of Interpretation’, The South Atlantic Quarterly 93 (1) 1994, p. 12.
4.The title is taken from the opening lines of Mongane Wally Serote’s poem, ‘For Don M – Banned’: ‘it is a dry white season / dark leaves don’t last, their brief lives die out’. Don M refers to writer Don Mattera.
5.According to Maureen Isaacson, former books editor of the Sunday Independent in Johannesburg, who had a cordial relationship with Brink, the novelist himself ‘defined his work as “popular literary fiction”; combining elements of literary and pulp fiction.’ Maureen Isaacson, ‘“You only live twice”: The written life of Brink’, Daily Maverick, 10 February 2015, available at dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-02-10-you-only-live-twice-the-written-life-of-brink/#.WzSpOxIzZQI
6.Interview with Tim Huisamen, 6 April 2017, Grahamstown. Rike Vaughan was the daughter of Brink’s former colleague and friend, Rob Antonissen.
7.Interview with Tim Huisamen, 6 April 2017, Grahamstown. Vaughan was the translator of Breyten Breytenbach’s A Season in Paradise (London: Cape, 1980).
8.Journal marked ‘Nov 1981–Nov 1985’, entry for 22 September 1983, p. 66. Brink begins his journal coverage for 1983 with an entry that he marks down as ‘22/1/82’ (my emphasis). This appears to be an unintended error of dating, since he has, at this point, just finished covering 1982, albeit rather scantily. The dating error has the potential to lead researchers up the garden path, as the novelist mentions the relevant year only once per annum, namely in his initial entry for that year, after which he merely notes down the relevant day and month in numerals, for example ‘11/2’. Other contextual clues also make it clear that he meant ‘22/1/83’ (my emphasis).
9.‘Nov 1981–Nov 1985’, 22 September 1983, pp. 66–67.
10.Ibid., p. 67.
11.Ibid.
12.Ibid.
13.The dispute, in which WH Allen insisted on enforcing an option clause on Brink’s next novel, was settled out of court. See A Fork in the Road, pp. 315-320.
14.See Dorrit Cohn, ‘Freud’s Case Hisories and the Question of Fictionality’, in Mieke Bal (ed.), Narrative Theory: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies, Vol II (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 305.
15.Interview with Alta Brink, 17 January 2018, Gordon’s Bay.
16.‘Nov 1981–Nov 1985’, 22 September 1983, p. 67.
17.Letter from Brink to ‘Angela’, 27 September 1982, Brink Home Archive.
18.Letter from ‘Angela’ to Brink, 22 October 1982, Brink Home Archive.
19.Brink reassures ‘Angela’ that he has dealt with ‘the practical issues regarding Europe on the tape’. He also gives her tips about what kind of clothes to pack. Letter from Brink to ‘Angela’, 8 November 1982, Brink Home Archive.
20.Letter from Brink to ‘Angela’, 24 November 1982, Brink Home Archive.
21.Email from ‘Angela’ to author, 24 October 2017.
22.Letter from Brink to ‘Angela’, 20 January 1983, Brink Home Archive.
23.‘Nov 1981–Nov 1985’, 22 September 1983, pp. 67–68.
24. Letter from Salomi Louw to Brink, 29 January 1983, Brink Home Archive. Salomi was at the time lecturing in the school of languages at what is today the University of Limpopo, formerly the University of the North.
25.Letter from Brink to Salomi Louw, Brink Home Archive, 8 February 1983.
26.Email from ‘Angela’ to author, 23 October 2017.
27.Letter from ‘Angela’ to Brink, Brink Home Archive, 29 September 1983.
28.Letter from Brink to ‘Angela’a, 14 October 1983, Brink Home Archive.
29.Letter from ‘Angela’ to Brink, 9 July 1987.
30.Letter from Brink to ‘Angela’, 14 October 1983.
31.Letter from Brink to ‘Quintus’, 13 September 1983.
32.Letter from ‘Quintus’ to Brink, 15 September 1983.
33.Letter from Brink to ‘Quintus’, 22 September 1983.
34.Later on, they continued to correspond; Van der Kemp was associated with the London Missionary Society in the Cape from the late 1800s to the early 1900s.
35.‘Nov 1981–Nov 1985’, 22 September 1983, p. 69.
36.Interview with Alta Brink, 17 January 2018, Gordon’s Bay.
37.Letter from Brink to ‘Angela’, 23 March [1984], Brink Home Archive.
38.Letter from Brink to ‘Angela’, 30 August 1983, Brink Home Archive.
39.John Milne, Time Out, 13 December 1984.
40.Mary Hope, The Spectator, 6 October 1984.
41.Howard Davies, The Literary Review, September 1984.
42.HCT Müller, Beeld, 16 April 1984.
43.David Schalkwyk, Frontline Books, June/July 1984, pp. 18–19.
44.Henriette Roos, Die Burger, 29 March 1984.
45.Letter from Brink to ‘Angela’, 18 June 1984.
46.Eklips: Die Derde Bundel van die Ongedanste Dans (Emmarentia: Taurus, 1983).
47.‘Nov 1981–Nov 1985’, 24 September 1984, pp. 101–102.
48.Ibid., p. 102.
49.First published in 1984, Breytenbach’s memoir was translated by Adriaan van Dis and Gerrit de Blaauw as De Ware Bekentenissen van Een Witte Terroris (Amsterdam: Van Gennep, 1984).
50.Breyten Breytenbach, The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1994), p. 330.
51.Letter from Brink to Breyten Breytenbach, 7 April 1984, Brink Home Archive.
52.Interview with Naas Steenkamp, 17 March 2017, Stellenbosch.
53.Galloway, Breyten Breytenbach as Openbare Figuur (Pretoria: HAUM-Literêr, 1990), pp. 296–297.
54.Ibid., p. 296.
55.Ibid., p. 297.
56.‘Nov 1981–Nov 1985’, 24 September 1984, pp. 102–103.
57.Ibid., p. 103.
58.Ibid., pp. 103–104.
59.Ibid., p. 104. The Groot Verseboek is a collection of the most important Afrikaans poets and their work; Brink was in line to take over from DJ Opperman as editor. For the record, when Brink became co-editor (in the 2000 edition) and sole editor (2008 edition) of the Groot Verseboek, Breytenbach’s poems did in fact appear there.
60.‘Nov 1981–Nov 1985’, 24 September 1984, p. 105.
61.Ibid., p. 106.
62.Breytenbach himself was unavailable for commentary during the making of this biography. When he was approached via a reliable and trusted intermediary early in the research process, the intermediary told the author he should get in touch with Breytenbach’s publisher. Among authors this is generally code for ‘no comment’/ ‘I don’t want to talk about this matter’.
63.‘Nov 1981–Nov 1985’, 24 September 1984, p. 106.
64.This pseudonym is used to protect the privacy of the woman who would become Brink’s fourth wife. Anonymity is a core requirement of her profession, which is not the case with any of Brink’s other wives.
65.Journal marked ‘Nov 1985–Sept 1987’, entry for 28 November 1985, p. 1.
66.Brink reports that ‘Marianne’ told him, around 28 March 1986, that she was a mere 23 years old. ‘Marianne’ herself declines to disclose any personal details, especially with regard to Brink, and so one must assume that she was either 22 or 23 in April 1985, when the relationship began. See ‘Nov 1985–Sept 1987’, 28 March 1986, p. 133.
67.Ibid., 30 December 1985, p. 43, where Brink talks about his writing of the novel States of Emergency as ‘coming to grips with a year of madness; with 9 months of heaven-and-hell’ in the course of his affair with ‘Marianne’. See also journal marked ‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, entry for 2 April 2001, p. 90, where he pins down the date of their ‘first night’ of intimacy together as 1 April 1985 by referring, on 1 April 2001, to the 16th anniversary of this event.
68.‘Nov 1985–Sept 1987’, 16 May 1986, p. 145.
69.Confirmed in interviews with Malcolm Hacksley, 6 April 2017, Grahamstown, and Tim Huisamen, 6 April 2017, Grahamstown.
70.‘Nov 1985–Sept 1987’, 28 November 1985, pp. 8-9.
71.Ibid., pp. 10–11.
72.Ibid.
73.Ibid., p. 12.
74.Ibid., p. 13.
75.Ibid.
76.Ibid.
77.Interview with Karin and Gerhard de Jager, 5 May 2017, Cape Town.
78.André Brink, States of Emergency (New York: Summit Books, 1988), p. 6.
79.‘Nov 985–Sept 1987’, 28 November 1985, p. 14.
80.Ibid., 29 November 1985, p. 15.
81.Ibid., p. 16.
82.‘Vrae Oor Noodtoestande’ (questions about states of emergency), Brink Home Archive, a four-page document by ‘Marianne’ in which she raises questions about the completed novel, many of them about the relation of fiction to factuality and the manner in which she (in the guise of Melissa) is portrayed.
83.‘Nov 1985–Sept 1987’, 29 November 1985, p. 16.
84.Ibid., p. 17.
85.Ibid., pp. 17–18.
86.Ibid., 5 December 1985, p. 28.
87.Ibid., 6 December 1985, p. 29.
88.Ibid., 9 December 1985, p. 30.
89.Ibid., 25 December 1985, p. 38.
90.Ibid., p. 42.
91.Ibid., p. 41.
92.Ibid., p. 43.
93.Contrary to claims that the proscription on distribution in South Africa was part of Brink’s divorce settlement with Alta, no such clause appears in their divorce settlement, and Brink himself said that he had decided to ‘ban the distribution in South Africa’ for reasons that were ‘largely personal’, namely the fact that the relationship in the novel ‘largely mirrored’ his own with ‘Marianne’. Interview with Arlene Getz, The Sunday Age, 10 September 1989.
94.Wilhelm Liebenberg, an expert in literary theory, makes this comment: ‘One realises that Brink had a rather liberal approach to the “reality” of post-structuralist theory and tended, as far as I can remember, to apply its terminology to whatever he was talking about in a somewhat metaphorical fashion, just as he would read struggle themes metaphorically into his love stories. I can well believe that he could have seen himself as executing some Derridean double gesture of signifying while not signifying, which would mean talking about a reality that isn’t really a non-fictional reality.’ Email from Wilhelm Liebenberg to author, 24 October 2018.
95.Gerrit Olivier, ‘In a State over his Emergency’, Weekly Mail, 19–25 August 1988, p. 19.
96.‘Nov 1985–Sept 1987’, 9 December 1985, p. 30–31. Brink credits Tim Huisamen with coming up with the title during a discussion about the content of the novel.
97.‘Nov 1985–Sept 1987’, 11 February 1986, p. 79.
98.Ibid., 4 January 1986, p. 45.
99.Ibid.
100.Ibid., 7 January 1986, p. 46.
101.Wilhelm Liebenberg, As die Nood Hoog Is (Groenkloof: Hond, 1993). In this novel the story is told of a professor’s relationship with a young female student during the state of emergency in the Eastern Cape. It is a satire that plays with erotic narrative style and employs parody in the course of poking fun at the so-called ‘relevant’ novel. It also satirises the representation of woman as a young girl, something that is typical of Brink’s oeuvre.
102.Email from Wilhem Liebenberg to author, 15 July 2018.
103.‘Marianne’ reportedly arrived in Grahamstown ‘as Liebenberg’s attachment’. Interview with Karin de Jager, 5 May 2017, Cape Town. The correspondence between ‘Marianne’ and Brink predated her arrival in Grahamstown. Interview with Tim Huisamen, 6 April 2017, Grahamstown.
104.Interview with Karin de Jager, 5 May 2017, Cape Town.
105.Interview with Tim Huisamen, 3 April 2017, Grahamstown. Meintjes himself declined to be interviewed for this book.
106.‘Nov 1985–Sept 1987’, 20 January 1986, p. 51.
107.Ibid., pp. 51–52.
108.Ibid., 25 January 1986, p. 60.
109.Email from Karin de Jager to author, 11 November 2017. Diane McLean herself agrees it was probably her, although she doesn’t remember the specific dinner in question. Email from Diane McLean to author, 20 December 2017.
110.‘Nov 1985–Sept 1987’, 26 January 1986, pp. 63–64.
111.Ibid., p. 65.
112.Ibid., pp. 65–66.
113.Ibid., pp. 66–68.
114.Email from Wilhem Liebenberg to author, 15 July 2018.
115.‘Nov 1985–Sept 1987’, 26 January 1986, p. 68.
116.Interview with Tim Huisamen, 6 April 2017, Grahamstown.
117.‘Nov 1985–Sept 1987’, 8 February 1986, p. 74.
118.Ibid., 18 February 1986, p. 88.
119.Ibid., p. 97.
120.Ibid., 26 February 1986, p. 106.
121.Ibid., 13 March 1986, p. 117.
122.Ibid., 23 March 1986, p. 127.
123.Ibid., pp. 129–130.
124.Ibid., 24 March 1986, p. 131
125.Ibid., 28 March 1986, p. 133.
126.Ibid., 2 April 1986, p. 134.
127.Ibid., 3 April 1986, p. 137.
128.This book appeared as Vertelkunde: ’n Inleiding tot die Lees van Verhalende Tekste (Pretoria: Academica, 1987), or, in English, narratology: an introduction to the reading of storied texts.
129.New York Times, 8 July 1986. PDF of New York Times report, available at http://digitalcollections.library.cmu.edu/awweb/awarchive?type=file&item=691101
130.Ibid.
131.Instead of Nuremberg-style trials, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up from the mid- to late 1990s. Many felt that justice was not served, however, as many perpetrators were allowed to get away with apartheid crimes.
132.‘Nov 1985–Sept 1987’, 25 July 1986, pp. 196–197.
133.Ibid., p. 197.
134.Ibid., pp. 197–198.
135.Interview with Tim Huisamen, Grahamstown, 3 April 2017.
136.‘Nov 1985–Sept 1987’, 25 July 1986, p. 199.
137.Ibid., 10 November 1986, p. 234.
138.Ibid., p. 237.
139.Ibid., p. 238.
140.Ibid., 16 November 1986, p. 239.
141.Ibid., pp. 239–240. The fact that there is no apparent evidence of ‘Amanda’ or ‘Alison’ in the journals may suggest deeper layers of secrecy that Brink chose not to reveal.
142.‘Nov 1985–Sept 1987’, 14 January 1987, p. 247.
143.Ibid.
144.Ibid., p. 248.
145.Ibid., p. 249.
146.Ibid., 21 February 1987, p. 258.
147.Ibid., p. 259.
148.Ibid., p. 260.
149.Ibid., p. 261.
150.Ibid., pp. 261–262.
151.Ibid.
152.Ibid., p. 264.
153.Ibid., p. 265.
154.Ibid., p. 264.
155.Ibid., 10 November 1986, p. 238.
156.Ibid., 28 June 1987, pp. 273–274.
157.Review of States of Emergency, The Washington Post, 13 July 1989. Thomas Mallon criticised ‘[t]he various narrative envelopes and hesitations … and the occasional meditations on critical theory can be more than a little irritating … Dialogue is not his forte, and ideological fervour leads the author into a certain amount of melodrama and sentimentality. There is also a fair bit of romantic boilerplate throughout.’ Newsday, 23 May 1989. Marese Murphy describes Brink as a ‘writer of demonstrable power and eloquence who at least in this novel dissipates his energies in a hopeless over-egging of the pudding.’ The Irish Times, 4 June 1989.
158.Die Eerste Lewe van Adamastor (Cape Town: Saayman & Weber, 1988); Cape of Storms: The First Life of Adamastor (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993); Mapmakers: Writing in a State of Siege (London: Faber, 1983); Literatuur in die Strydperk (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 1985); A Land Apart: A Contemporary South African Reader (New York: Penguin,1986).
159.Journal marked ‘Sept 1987–1993’, entry for 5 September 1987, p. 3.
160.Ibid., 10 September 1987, p. 37.
161.Ibid., 16 September 1987, p. 77.
162.Ibid., 10 February 1988, pp. 86–88.
163.See National Geographic, October 1988, pp. 556–585.
164.‘Sept 1987–1993’, 12 August 1988, p. 106.
165.Ibid.
166.Interview with Karina Brink, Cape Town, 26 April 2017. Brink shared memories of his earlier marriages extensively with Karina, especially the one that preceded theirs chronologically, i.e. the union with ‘Marianne’.
167.‘Sept 1987–1993’, 12 August 1988, p. 107.
168.Ibid., p. 108. In 2006 Vlok would wash the feet of ANC activist Rev. Frank Chikane in a symbolic act of contrition for police attempts to poison Chikane during Vlok’s tenure as Minister of Law and Order. Ben Sheppard, ‘Apartheid minister seeks redemption in township work’, Mail & Guardian, 5 October 2015, available at https://mg.co.za/article/2015-10-05-ds
169.Interview with Rosemary Smith and Malvern van Wyk Smith, Grahamstown, 7 April 2017.
170.‘Sept 1987–1993’, 12 August 1988, p. 108.
171.Ibid., pp. 112–113.
172.Ibid., 4 December 1988, p. 124.
173.Ibid., pp. 124–125.
174.Ibid., p. 125.
175.Ibid., p. 127.
176.Ibid., p. 128.
177.Ibid., pp. 128–129.
178.Ibid., pp. 129–130.
179.Financial Mail, 20 May 1988, p. 63.
180.Boraine had resigned from parliament along with Van Zyl Slabbert in February 1986; the duo then set up the Institute for Democratic Alternatives in South Africa (Idasa) and organised the Dakar meeting. See Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, The Last White Parliament (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1985).
181.Ampie Coetzee, ‘Reading the Silences: Afrikaans Literature and the Transformation of the South African Society’, Ampie Coetzee and James Polley (eds), Crossing Borders: Writers Meet the ANC (Bramley: Taurus, 1990), p. 44.
182.Ibid. See ‘Discussion: Writer and Liberation’, p. 98.
CHAPTER 7
1.Interview with Karina Brink, 26 April 2017, Cape Town. Unless otherwise indicated, further references to statements by Karina Brink in this chapter are drawn from this interview.
2.Interview with Ian Glenn, 24 March 2017, Cape Town. Unless otherwise indicated, further references to statements by Glenn in this chapter are drawn from this interview.
3.She moved out of the house she shared with Liebenberg ‘at least six months’ before her affair with Brink began. Emails from Liebenberg to author, 15 July 2018 and 28 October 2018. All further references to Liebenberg in this chapter are from these emails.
4.Liebenberg clarifies the situation as follows: ‘Nic Visser and I were both members of a white UDF affiliate in Grahanstown – GCD (Grahamstown Committee of Democrats). I later became the chairperson of the Grahamstown branch of the End Conscription Campaign. This was after my relationship with [‘Marianne’] had long been a thing of the past and after her relationship with Brink had begun. Two and a half years after my arrival in Grahamstown, and more than two years after ending my relationship with [‘Marianne’], the security police started arresting the chairpersons of the ECC. They arrested the Cape Town chairperson as well as the Pietermaritzburg chairperson but the rest – in Johannesburg, Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth – went into hiding and managed to evade arrest for a good few months until the threat disappeared. It would therefore not make sense to say that Brink shopped me to the security police to have [‘Marianne’] to himself. He had already had her for himself for quite some time.’
5.In his email to the author on 28 October 2018, Liebenberg comments: ‘At the time when the SADF went into the townships in Grahamstown, all white men under the age of 55 were required to register with the defence force so that they could be called up for military service. This was called “Dad’s army”. There was a certain date by which everyone had to register at the Defence Force just outside Grahamstown. André registered at the last moment. After the final date the head of defence in Grahamstown phoned me and two other academics, the professor of economics and a lecturer in the English department, giving us a last chance to register or be taken to court. All three of us told the man that we refused to register and none of us was taken to court.’
6.Interviews with Tim Huisamen, 4 April 2017 and 6 April 2017, Grahamstown. All further references to statements by Huisamen in this chapter are drawn from these interviews.
7.Geoffrey Haresnape, ‘“Barkis is Willin”: André Brink, 1935–2015’, available at sapen.bookslive.co.za/blog/2015/02/13/barkis-is-willin-andre-brink-1935-2015/
8.area of expertise is withheld to protect her privacy. She completed her MA thesis in Afrikaans literature at Rhodes University in 1988.
9.Interview with Naas Steenkamp, 27 March 2017, Stellenbosch. Unless otherwise indicated, all further references to statements by Steenkamp in this chapter are drawn from this interview.
10.The two friends had a fallout after the publication of Rumours of Rain: Steenkamp felt that the novel’s unlikeable protagonist, Martin Mynhardt, was unfairly based on him – which Brink ‘implicitly’ acknowledged was true when confronted about the matter. Email from Naas Steenkamp to author, 10 November 2017. Though the friends eventually reconciled, with regard to the Martin Mynhardt matter, Steenkamp wryly remarked: ‘my dear friend André was capable of smart concealment.’ Email to author, 25 October 2017.
11.Brink credits ‘Marianne’ with ‘opening [his] eyes’ to genealogies ‘that were still very male-oriented’. Shaun de Waal, ‘Interview with André Brink’, 26 March 1996 (transcript of interview), Analyticals Collection, NELM, ANA1997. Remarking on Imaginings of Sand, Brink revealed the following: ‘[M]y wife and I had tremendous fights about that book’ in relation to his ‘presentation of women’. Libby Brooks, ‘My Inner Woman’, available at theguardian.com/books/2002/sep/06/fiction.gender. Also, ‘Marianne’ observes ‘signs of sexism’ in Die Kreef Raak Gewoond Daaraan. Note from ‘Marianne’ to Brink, NELM 2001.34.1.1.
12.Email from Hettie Scholtz to author, 30 April 2017.
13.Personal message on Facebook from John Eppel to author, 20 July 2017.
14.Email from Wilhelm Liebenberg to author, 4 November 2018.
15.Interview with Erika Viljoen and Kobus du Preez, 2 May 2017, Cape Town. Unless otherwise indicated, all further references to statements by Erika and Kobus in this chapter are drawn from this interview.
16.Deeds Office search on Erf No 31790, Cape Town, under title deed number T36558/2000.
17.Interview with Karin and Gerhard de Jager, 5 May 2017, Cape Town. All further references in this chapter to statements by Karin and Gerhard de Jager are drawn from these interviews.
18.Interview with Karina Brink, 13 June 2017, Cape Town.
19.Email from Gustav Brink to author, 8 April 2017. Further references relating to this issue in this chapter are drawn from this email communication.
20.As mentioned in Chapter 4, Gustav Brink has three daughters; their names are Carolien, Marelise and Jandré. Brink’s other grandchildren include Sonja’s two sons, André and Michael Kershaw, as well as Anton’s son, Ilyo Brink Copteros, and his daughter, Luna Brink Copteros. Danie is unmarried. Telephonic interview with Tim Huisamen, 17 July 2018; SMS from Anton Brink, 18 July 2018.
21.This is clear from an undated letter Anton, who was in his early 40s at the time, wrote to his father. Brink Home Archive, Cape Town.
22.Interview with Olga Rati, 28 May 2017, Johannesburg. Unless otherwise indicated, all further references to statements by Olga in this chapter are drawn from this interview.
23.Brink reports that ‘Marianne’ blames his ‘male chauvinism’ for the loss of her independence in Grahamstown, and the fact that she can only live ‘via’ him. ‘Sept 1987–1993’, pp. 124–125. Similarly, Brink reports that ‘Marianne’ accuses him of showing ‘remnants of chauvinism’. ‘Nov 1985 – Sept 1987’, 23 March 1986, p. 127. ‘Marianne’ herself refers to ‘signs of sexism’ in the novel. See Note from ‘Marianne’ to Brink on An Act of Terror, undated, NELM 2001.34.1.1.
24.Journal marked ‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, entry for 4 February 2001, p. 63.
25.In February 2001, Brink penned twenty pages of handwritten notes on ‘plus-minus a year’s worth of therapy’ with a certain Cape Town psychotherapist. Always highly sceptical of the process, Brink often sat there in complete silence. Interview with Karina Brink, 26 April 2017, Cape Town. Brink himself confirms this in a journal entry: ‘But there were always hiatuses. In some sessions, I sat for 50 minutes and remained quiet, saying nothing….’ Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, 4 February 2001, p. 63.
26.Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (Orlando: Harvest, 2005), p. 119.
27.De Klerk would eventually share the Nobel Peace Prize with his former antagonist, Nelson Mandela.
28.A Fork in the Road, p. 348.
29.Ibid., p. 355.
30.Ibid., pp. 364–366.
31.Ibid., pp. 371–382.
32.See John Higgins, ‘What You Never Knew You Knew: An Interview with André Brink’, Pretexts: Literary and Cultural Studies 8 (1) 1999, pp. 8–9.
33.A Fork in the Road, p. 409.
34.Ibid., pp. 410–411. See also Introduction, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, available at justice.gov.za/trc/legal/justice.htm
35.Journal marked ‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, pp. 29–32.
36.Ibid., p. 32. Given Brink’s photographic memory and his ability to recall conversations down to the last word, this is in all likelihood a verbatim rendition of what Mandela said.
37.See ‘Preparing Ourselves for Freedom’, in Ingrid de Kok and Karen Press (eds), Spring is Rebellious (Cape Town: Buchu Books, 1990), p. 21.
38.‘To Re-Imagine Our History’, Weekly Mail & Guardian Review of Books, 24–30 September 1993, pp. 1–2.
39.Full titles: ‘Reinventing a Continent (Revisiting History in the Literature of the New South Africa: A Personal Testimony)’, World Literature Today 70.1 (1996), pp. 17–23; ‘Stories of History: Reimagining the Past in Post-Apartheid Narrative’, in Sarah Nuttall and Carli Coetzee (eds), Negotiating the Past: The Making of Memory in South Africa (Cape Town: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 29-42; ‘Interrogating Silence: New Possibilities Faced by South African Literature’, in Derek Attridge and Rosemary Jolly (eds), Writing South Africa: Literature, Apartheid, and Democracy, 1970–1995 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 14–28.
40.I have elsewhere observed that Zakes Mda’s novel expresses the ludic position taken by the literary-critical community in the very early stages of South Africa’s transition. See Losing the Plot (Witwatersrand University Press, 2016), p. 193.
41.For a broad discussion of such criticism, especially in relation to ‘giving voice’ to silenced subjects (women and slaves), see Louise Viljoen, ‘Kan die Slaaf Praat? Die Stem van die Slaaf in enkele Brink-romans’, in Willie Burger and Karina Magdalena Szczurek (eds), Contrary: Critical Responses to the Novels of André Brink (Pretoria: Protea, 2013), pp. 412–443; also Christell Stander, ‘Fallogosentriese Konstruksie van Vroulikheid in die Pre-postmodernistiese Brink-oeuvre’, in Burger and Szczurek (eds), Contrary, pp. 126–145.
42.Matthys Lourens Crous, Presentations of Masculinity in a Selection of Male-Authored Post-Apartheid Novels, MA thesis, Stellenbosch University, 2005, p. 50.
43.Ibid., p. 53.
44.See Anita Lindenberg, ‘André Brink’, Perspektief en Profiel: Deel 1 (Pretoria, Van Schaik, 1998), p. 305. Translation of Lindenberg by Crous.
45.Amanda Botha, ‘André P. Brink: Oor die Vroue in sy Lewe’, LitNet, author’s translation, available at litnet.co.za/andr-p-brink-oor-die-vroue-in-sy-lewe/
46.The Sydney Morning Herald, 15 December 2004, available at smh.com.au/entertainment/books/wolfe-wins-bad-sex-award-20041215-gdkbe9.html
47.The Guardian, 14 December 2004, available at theguardian.com/books/2004/dec/14/awardsandprizes.badsexaward
48.Note from ‘Marianne’ to Brink regarding An Act of Terror, undated, NELM 2001.34.1.1.
49.Ibid.
50.Ibid.
51.De Waal, ‘Interview with André Brink’.
52.Ibid. A shortened version of this interview appeared as ‘A Time for New Imaginings’, Mail & Guardian Review of Books, 17–23 May 1996.
53.Ibid.
54.Ibid.
55.The term was coined by Linda Hutcheon to describe novels that are reflective and idiosyncratic but also lay claim to historical revisionism. See ‘Beginning to Theorize the Postmodern’, Textual Practice 1 (1987), pp.10–31; also A Poetics of Postmodernism (New York: Routledge, 1988).
56.Louise Viljoen, ‘Resensie: André P Brink – Inteendeel (1993)’, SABC November 1993, available at academia.edu/6970642/Resensie_Andre_P_Brink_-_Inteendeel_1993_
57.Godfrey Meintjes, ‘André Brink’s Prose Oeuvre: An Overview’, in Burger and Szczurek (eds), Contrary, pp. 37–95.
58.Kirkus Reviews, undated, available at kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/andre-brink/imaginings-of-sand/
59.See André Brink, Imaginings of Sand (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1996), p. 7.
60.Ibid., p. 9.
61.Ibid., p. 8.
62.Ibid., p. 4.
63.Ibid., p. 33.
64.See, for example, Thomas R Bates, ‘Gramsci and the Theory of Hegemony’, Journal of the History of Ideas 36 (2) 1975: 351–366.
65.Brink, ‘Reinventing a Continent’, in World Literature Today, p. 22.
66.Meg Samuelson, Remembering the Nation, Dismembering Women? Stories of the South African Transition (Pietermartitzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2007), p. 26.
67.Brink, Imaginings of Sand, p. 219.
68.Janet Burroway, ‘Burning Down the House’, New York Times, 1 December 1996, available at nytimes.com/1996/12/01/books/burning-down-the-house.html. See also Sue Kossew, ‘Reinventing History; Reimagining the Novel: The Politics of Reading André Brink’s Imaginings of Sand’, Journal of Literary Studies 13 (1/2), June 1997: 113–126.
69.Libby Brooks, ‘My Inner Woman’, available at theguardian.com/books/2002/sep/06/fiction.gender
70.Maureen Isaacson, ‘“You Only Live Twice’: The Written Life of Brink’, Daily Maverick, 10 February 2015, available at dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-02-10-you-only-live-twice-the-written-life-of-brink/#.W0hUr9gzZQI
71.Higgins, ‘What You Never Knew You Knew’, p. 14.
72.Robert Plummer, History in Black and White: The Treatment of History in the Political Novels of André Brink, unpublished DPhil dissertation, Oxford University, 1997, p. 257.
73.Preface, Imaginings of Sand, n.p.
74.Devil’s Valley (San Diego: Harcourt, 2001), p. 30.
75.Ibid., p. 148.
76.Ibid., p. 63.
77.Ibid., p. 76.
78.Heilna du Plooy, ‘Duiwelskloof Elegant, Toeganklik’, Die Volksblad, 12 April 1999, p. 8.
79.Helize van Vuuren, ‘Afrikanerkultuur word Oopgedelf’, Die Burger, 24 February 1999, p. 14.
80.Letter from Hermione Harris to Brink, 20–22 October 1999, Brink Home Archive.
81.Letter from Brink to Hermione Harris, 7 August 2001, Brink Home Archive.
82.Interview with Karina Brink, 13 June 2017, Cape Town.
83.Ibid.
84.Ibid.
85.See The Rights of Desire (London: Secker & Warburg, 2000), p. 305.
CHAPTER 8
1.Journal marked ‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, entry for 2 April 2001, p. 81.
2.André Brink, The Other Side of Silence (London: Secker & Warburg, 2002); André Brink, The Rights of Desire (London: Secker & Warburg, 2000).
3.By the time Brink met ‘Yvonne’, he had already started working on The Other Side of Silence (London: Secker & Warburg, 2002), which anticipates, in fictional form, his backlash against ‘Xavier’ as a supposed abuser of women.
4.Journal marked ‘Apl/Mei 01’, entry for 4 May 2001, p. 16.
5.‘Apl /Mei 01’, 24 May 2001, p. 28.
6.‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, 2 April 2001, p. 82.
7.Ibid., p. 83. For epigraph, see An Instant in the Wind (London: WH Allen, 1976).
8.‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, 2 April 2001, p. 84.
9.Ibid.
10.Ibid., pp. 84–85.
11.The following description of this wine is apposite: ‘While the red wines of Châteauneuf du Pape are produced in a wide and diverse array of styles, they share the common characteristics of fresh red and black cherries, strawberry, kirsch, black pepper, black raspberry, spice, earth and garrigue, which is the fresh herbs [sic] typical of the region. The textures can be lush, lusty and luscious when young, and take on silky characteristics with age.’ See ‘The Wine Cellar Insider’, available at thewinecellarinsider.com/rhone-wines-cote-rotie-hermitage-chateauneuf-du-pape/chateauneuf-du-pape-wine-producer-profiles/
12.‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, 2 April 2001, pp. 84-85.
13.Ibid., pp. 85–86.
14.Ibid.
15.Ibid., p. 87.
16.Ibid.
17.Ibid., p. 88.
18.Ibid.
19.Ibid., pp. 88–89.
20.Ibid., p. 89.
21.Journal marked ‘Des 1963-Junie 1965’, entry for 18 May, p. 124.
22.‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, 2 April 2001, p. 89.
23.Ibid., pp. 89–90.
24.Ibid., p. 90.
25.States of Emergency (London: Summit Books, 1988), p. 32.
26.‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, 4 February 2001, p. 62.
27.‘Charmaine’ is the 19-year-old student he had an affair with more than thirty years earlier, in 1970. ‘Charmaine’ is a pseudonym to protect this woman’s privacy. See Chapter 5, where she first appears.
28.‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, 4 February 2001, p. 62.
29.In his notes on the psychoanalysis he underwent in 2001, Brink writes that, as a child, his mother had driven him relentlessly to achieve at school and in other activities, leading to ‘rancour’, and that he transferred his overwhelming need for female sanction to his wives, especially ‘Marianne’. ‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, 4 February 2001, p. 61. See also Chapter 1.
30.‘Des 1963-Junie 1965’, 8 May 1965, p. 111.
31.‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, 2 April 2001, pp. 90–91.
32.Ibid., p. 91.
33.‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ by John Keats (1820), focuses on figures on an urn, frozen in time, one of which is a ‘Bold Lover’ in eternal pursuit of his beloved. The closing couplet is ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’ – and that this ‘is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know’.
34.‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, 11 April 2001, p. 91.
35.Ibid., pp. 91–92.
36.Ibid., p. 92.
37.Ibid.
38.Ibid., pp. 92–93.
39.Ibid., p. 93.
40.Ibid., pp. 93–94.
41.Ibid., p. 94.
42.Ibid.
43.Ibid., pp. 94–95.
44.Ibid., p. 95.
45.Ibid., pp. 95–96.
46.Ibid., 13 April 2001, p. 97.
47.Ibid., pp. 97–98.
48.Ibid., p. 98.
49.Ibid., p. 99.
50.See ‘Parys 74 Eur 97 Chili 98 / 01’, 4 February 2001, p. 61, where Brink writes about his ‘abandonment’ by his ill mother as a child, his ‘absent’ father, and traces his need for female approval (‘Marianne’s’, in particular) to a desire to please his mother, who was a hard taskmaster.
51.‘Apl /Mei 01’, 1 May 2001, p. 14.
52.Journal marked ‘Des 1967–April 1968’, entry for 24 January 1968, p. 93.
53.‘Apl /Mei 01’, 21 April 2001, p. 1.
54.Ibid., pp. 1–2.
55.Ibid., p. 2.
56.Ibid.
57.Ibid., p. 3.
58.Ibid.
59.Ibid., pp. 3–4.
60.Ibid., p. 4.
61.Ibid., p. 4.
62.Ibid., pp. 4–5.
63.Ibid., pp. 5–6.
64.Ibid., p. 6.
65.Ibid.
66.Ibid., pp. 6–7.
67.Ibid., p. 5.
68.Ibid., pp. 1–2.
69.Ibid., p. 8.
70.Ibid., 27 April 2001, p. 10.
71.Ibid., 1 May 2001, p. 13.
72.Ibid., 29 April 2001, p. 10.
73.Ibid., 1 May 2001, p. 13.
74.Ibid., p. 14.
75.Ibid., 3 May 2001, p. 15.
76.Ibid., 4 May 2001, pp. 15 & 21.
77.Ibid., pp. 15–16.
78.Ibid., p. 16.
79.Interview with ‘Yvonne’, Cape Town, 28 April 2017.
80.‘Apl /Mei 01’, 4 May 2001, p. 17.
81.Ibid., 7 May, p. 18.
82.Ibid., p. 19.
83.Ibid., 17 May 2001, p. 20.
84.Ibid., pp. 20–21.
85.Ibid., p. 21.
86.Ibid., pp. 21–22.
87.Ibid., p. 22.
88.Ibid., p. 21.
89.Ibid., p. 22.
90.Interestingly, the first citation of the phrase is: ‘Upon a pillory – that al the world may see, / A just desert for such impiety.’ From ‘Warning Faire Women’ (1599). See phrases.org.uk/meanings/just-deserts.html
91.‘Apl /Mei 01’, 9 May 2002, p. 78.
92.Ibid., 17 May 2002, p. 23.
93.Ibid., p. 25.
94.Ibid., p. 26.
95.Ibid., p. 27. Cyrano de Bergerac is the protagonist in Edmond Rostand’s eponymous play.
96.Ibid., 24 May 2001, p. 28.
97.Ibid., 24 August, pp. 32–34.
98.Ibid., p. 33.
99.Ibid., p. 34.
100.Ibid.
101.Ibid., p. 35.
102.Ibid., 12 January 2002, p. 58.
103.Ibid., 9 May 2002, p. 76.
104.Ibid., p. 77.
105.Ibid., p. 78.
106.Ibid., pp. 78–79.
107.Ibid., pp. 79–80.
108.Journal marked ‘Apl–Nov 02’, entry for 3 June 2002, p. 10.
109.‘Apl /Mei 01’, 24 August 2001, p. 37; 25 August 2001, p. 39; 13 January 2002, p. 63.
110.Ibid., 13 January 2002, p. 63.
111.Ibid., 12 January 2002, p. 59.
112.Ibid., 26 January 2002, p. 70.
113.Ibid., pp. 69–70.
114.Ibid., 9 May 2002, p. 81.
115.Ibid.
116.‘Apl – Nov 02’, 13 October 2002, p. 55.
117.Ibid., 21 October 2002, pp. 58–59.
118.Ibid., p. 58.
119.Ibid., p. 57.
120.Ibid., 4 November 2002, p. 70. See also journal marked ‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, entry for 9 March 1970, p. 81: ‘And that’s my favourite situation: suitor, troubador, romantic.’
121.‘Apl–Nov 02’, 4 November 2002, p. 71.
122.Ibid., 24 November 2002 , pp. 82–83.
123.See, for example, Apl–Nov 02, 3 June 2002, p. 8.
124.Ibid., pp. 8–9.
125.‘Apl /Mei 01’, 12 January 2002, pp. 56–57.
126.‘Apl – Nov 02’, 3 June 2002, p. 4.
127.‘Apl /Mei 01’, 9 May 2002, pp. 81–82.
128.‘Apl–Nov 02’, 3 June 2002, p. 11.
129.Email correspondence between (anonymous) journalist and author, 19–20 July 2017.
CHAPTER 9
1.Roth is quoted as saying: ‘I think everything in life is a matter of luck. I don’t believe in psychoanalysis, or in a subconscious that guides our choices. All we have is the good luck or the bad luck to meet certain people who will be either good or bad for us.’ See Nelly Kaprielian, ‘In Which Philip Roth Announces His Retirement (in English)’, Paris Review, 13 November 2012, available at theparisreview.org/blog/2012/11/13/in-which-philip-roth-announces-his-retirement-in-english/
2.Karina M Szczurek, ‘My Painfully Sweet Inheritance’, Sunday Independent, 23 May 2010.
3.See Karina M Szczurek, The Fifth Mrs Brink: A Memoir (Johannesburg & Cape Town: Jonathan Ball, 2017), p. 31.
4.Journal marked ‘April 2002–Nov. 2002 [Kroasië]’, entry for 3 June 2002, p. 1.
5.Ibid, p. 3. The clairvoyant is reported to have said the following about the effect of Johan’s birth on André: ‘You were then 14: just the time that, as a boy, you had to start adjusting yourself to the role of a man – & suddenly a little boetie [younger brother] comes along, with everyone transferring their attention to him.’
6.Ibid.
7.Ibid., pp. 1–2.
8.Ibid., p. 2.
9.Ibid.
10.Ibid., pp. 2–3. Huisamen confirms that Brink ‘never talked about my sexual orientation’ but adds that ‘Marianne’s’ alleged statement about his ‘gayness’ comprising 70 per cent of his being is perhaps a touch exaggerated. ‘It’s just an aspect of my life, like the fact that I am an excellent lecturer and a good friend,’ he unequivocally remarks. Telephone conversation, 15 November 2018.
11.‘April 2002–Nov. 2002 [Kroasië]’, 3 June 2002, pp. 2–3.
12.Interview, Karina M Szczurek, 13 June 2017, Cape Town.
13.Karina M Szczurek, The Fifth Mrs Brink; Karina Magdalena Szczurek (comp.), Michiel Heyns (ed.), ‘A Possibility’, in Encounters with André Brink, (Cape Town: Human & Rousseau, 2010), pp. 204–212.
14.Szczurek, ‘A Possibility’, in Encounters with André Brink, p. 204.
15.Ibid.
16.The Fifth Mrs Brink (Johannesburg & Cape Town: Jonathan Ball, 2017), p. 180.
17.Szczurek, ‘A Possibility’, in Encounters p. 205.
18.Ibid.
19.Karina M Szczurek (ed.), You Make Me Possible: The Love Letters of Karina M Szczurek & André Brink (Pretoria: Protea Book House, 2018).
20.Hanlie Retief, ‘Geen Droë Wit Seisoen op 70 nie!’, Rapport, ‘Perspektief’, 19 June 2005, p. 3.
21.Szczurek, ‘A Possibility’, p. 205.
22.Karina M Szczurek, Invisible Others (Pretoria: Protea, 2014); her play, A Change of Mind appears in Against All Odds and Other Short Plays for Grades 7–9 (Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman, 2012); she is a contributor to Arja Salafranca (ed.), The Edge of Things: South African Short Fiction (Johannesburg: Dye Hard Press, 2011). Salomi Louw, Brink’s second wife, published several works in the years following their divorce, including a volume of poetry, Onthuis (unhomed, Perskor, Johannesburg, 1975), and several one-act plays.
23.Szczurek, The Fifth Mrs Brink, pp. 5–7.
24.Ibid., p. 7.
25.Ibid.
26.Szczurek, ‘A Possibility’, in Encounters, p. 207.
27.Szczurek, The Fifth Mrs Brink, p.14.
28.Ibid., p. 17.
29.Szczurek, ‘A Possibility’, in Encounters, p. 208.
30.Ibid., p. 209.
31.Interview with Karina M Szczurek, 13 June 2017, Cape Town.
32.‘I may leave SA–Brink’, Cape Times, 21 August 1993, p. 3.
33.Ibid.
34.Die Burger, ‘Nuwe bestel buit mag uit – André Brink’, 21 Sept 1998, p. 5.
35.‘Imagination, After Apartheid’, The Washington Post, ‘Outlook’, 7 December 2003, pp. B1 and B3.
36.This point was made powerfully by Njabulo Ndebele in his 1991 essay, ‘The Rediscovery of the Ordinary: Some New Writings from South Africa’, in South African Literature and Culture: Rediscovery of the Ordinary (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), pp. 41–59. A similarly influential argument in this regard was made by Albie Sachs in ‘Preparing Ourselves for Freedom: Culture and the ANC Constitutional Guidelines’, in TDR 35 (1) 1991: pp. 187–193.
37.Roger Boylan, ‘Review: The Rights of Desire’, Boston Review, 1 June 2001, available at bostonreview.net/fiction/roger-boylan-review-rights-desire
38.An example of state violence is the Marikana massacre of 16 August 2012, when the South African Police Service shot and killed 34 mineworkers and seriously injured 78, arresting another 250 miners. The massacre followed a week-long protest in which the miners demanded a wage increaase at the Lonmin platinum mine, of which South Africa’s current president, Cyril Ramaphosa, was then a non-executive director.
39.Hilda Fourie, ‘SA “at the mercy of barbarians”’, 15 May 2008, News24, available at news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/SA-at-the-mercy-of-barbarians-20080515
40.André Brink, ‘The ANC is letting SA down in this tsunami of violence’, Cape Argus, 26 July 2006.
41.A Fork in the Road, p. 426.
42.Ibid, pp. 426–427.
43.Jonny Steinberg, ‘Crime’, in Nick Shepherd and Steven Robins (eds), New South African Keywords (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2008), p. 28.
44.See Wendy Jasson Da Costa, ‘Crime whingers can leave, says Nqakula’, available at iol.co.za/news/south-africa/crime-whingers-can-leave-says-nqakula-280138
45.A Fork in the Road, p. 427.
46.‘Brink vereer ná hy nuwe elite looi’, Die Burger, 28 September 2006, p. 4.
47.‘Brink receives prestigious award’, IOL News, 27 September 2006, available at iol.co.za/news/south-africa/brink-receives-prestigious-award-295347
48.A Fork in the Road, p. 427
49.I discuss the workings of a ‘wound culture’ in Losing the Plot: Crime, Fiction and Reality in Postapartheid Writing (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2016), pp. 136–142.
50.A Fork in the Road, pp. 427–428.
51.André Brink, ‘A Long Way From Mandela’s Kitchen’, New York Times, 11 September 2010, available at nytimes.com/2010/09/12/opinion/12brink.html?mtrref=undefined&gwh=A95C2B3C23BEC08C785A7D86AE36AFEB&gwt=pay&assetType=opinion
52.André Brink, ‘Ground Zero: The South African Literary Landscape After Apartheid’, Jan Rabie/Marjorie Wallace Memorial Lecture, University of the Western Cape, September 2010, NELM 2984, pp. 3–4.
53.Reviewing the Afrikaans version of Other Lives, Louise Viljoen said readers who expected Brink to deploy his ability to combine scope with depth would be disappointed with these novellas, despite their showing the author’s usual fluidity and density. See Viljoen, ‘Ander lewens: ’n spel met die onwaarskynlike of nierealistiese’, available at litnet.co.za/ander-lewens-n-spel-met-die-onwaarskynlike-of-nierealistiese. Joan Hambidge’s review in Die Burger was less severe, but she damned the novellas with faint praise, commenting on the tiredness of certain anecdotes in Other Lives and suggesting that Brink’s ‘unwarranted sexual descriptions’ seemed to be meant to ‘shock or irritate’ reviewers. See Hambidge, ‘André P. Brink – Ander lewens (2008)’, available at joanhambidge.blogspot.com/search?q=ander+lewens). The Blue Door’s separate publication in 2006 marked Brink’s move from Human & Rousseau to Umuzu after several decades with the institution established by Koos Human and Leon Rousseau.
54.Sara Janse’s age is variously given as 13, 15 and 17. See Elizabeth Elbourne, Blood Ground: Colonialism, Missions, and the Contest for Christianty in the Cape Colony and Britain, 1799-1853 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), pp. 217-218. See also Karel Schoeman, ‘The Wife of Dr Van der Kemp: The Life of Sara Janse (1792-1861)’, Quarterly Bulletin of the South African Library 49 (4) 1995, pp. 189-197; and ‘Kemp, John Theodosius Van Der’, available at mundus.ac.uk/cats/4/243.htm
55.Andries Visagie, ‘Bidsprinkaan een van André P Brink se Beste Romans in Jare’, Litnet, 13 July 2005, available at oulitnet.co.za/seminaar/bidsprinkaan.asp
56.Volksblad, ‘Brink skryf UJ-prys los met roman’, 8 April 2006, NELM 2011.13.9.17. The University of Johannesburg Prize for South African Writing in English is awarded annually.
57.Donald Morrison, ‘On a Mission’, FT Magazine, 27 August 2005, p. 32. NELM 2011.13.9.17.
58.Ferdia MacAnna, ‘Magic Realism of a Liar and Fornicator who found God’, Sunday Independent, 4 September 2005, available at independent.ie/entertainment/books/magic-realism-of-a-liar-and-fornicator-who-found-god-26212230.html
59.Francois Smith, ‘Tweede Kyk is Nodig’, Die Burger, 6 November 2004, p. 12.
60.Melissa Murray, ‘To all the Girls he Knew Before’, Sunday Tribune, 26 September 2004. NELM 2011.13.9.3.
61.Martyn Bedford, ‘Confessions of a Pudendologist’, the Literary Review, Dec 2004–Jan 2005, p. 64. NELM 2011.13.9.3.
62.Michael Arditti, ‘A Lifetime’s Obsession with Women’, Sunday Express, 12 September 2004, P. 70. NELM 2011.13.9.3.
63.Ángel Gurria-Quintana, ‘“You utter me utterly”’, FT Magazine, 25 September 2004, p. 32. NELM 2011.13.9.3.
64.Christopher Hope, ‘The End of Affairs’, The Guardian, 9 October 2004. NELM 2011.13.9.3.
65.Diane Awerbuck, ‘Memories of Girls Past’, Sunday Times, ‘Lifestyle’, 7 November 2004. NELM 2011.13.9.3.
66.Ibid.
67.Marius Crous, ‘Brink Loop Terug op Eie Spoor’, Die Burger, 17 January 2005. NELM 2011.13.9.3.
68.Hein Willemse, ‘Voor ek vergeet’. Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 42 (1) 2005, pp. 201–202.
69.Andrew van der Vlies, ‘Personal Politics’, Times Literary Supplement, 10 September 2004, p. 21. NELM 2011.13.9.3.
70.Journal marked ‘Apl /Mei 01’, entry for 17 May 2001, p. 26.
71.Ibid., p. 25.
72.Ibid., p. 26.
73.Ibid. Given the mystery around ‘J’s real identity, it is not clear which book he is referring to, but it is unlikely that Brink would make such a comment, in such a grave moment, unless it were true.
74.Journal marked ‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, entry for 9 March 1970, p. 81.]
75.Before I Forget (London: Vintage, 2004), p. 53.
76.The passage reads as follows: ‘She does not resist. All she does is avert herself: avert her lips, avert her eyes. She lets him lay her out on the bed and undress her: she even helps him, raising her arms and then her hips. Little shivers of cold run through her; as soon as she is bare, she slips under the quilted counterpane like a mole burrowing, and turns her back on him.’ JM Coetzee, Disgrace (London: Secker & Warburg, 1999), p. 25.
77.André Brink, Before I Forget, p. 53.
78.Ibid., pp. 66 & 87.
79.André Brink, ‘Stories Around Stories’, p. 10. Unpublished MS Word document, notes for A Fork in the Road, c. 2005–2008. Brink Home Archive.
80. ‘Nov 69–Sept 72’, 9 March 1970, p. 81.
81.Interview with Tim Huisamen, 3 April 2017, Grahamstown.
82.Brink, Before I Forget, p. 166.
83.Ibid.
84.The wheel eventually came full circle, with Brink generously agreeing to write the Preface for Van Rooyen’s memoir, A South African Censor’s Tale. Brink comments: ‘Today even those of us who once felt ashamed at the very idea of “working within the system” cannot but admire what Van Rooyen has achieved – at high personal price, and in the face of pig-headed resistance from the ancien regime, disgraceful attempts to thwart progress, and the weight of sheer stupidity – in order to bring South Africa in line with established principles and practices in the rest of the enlightened world.’ Preface, Kobus van Rooyen, A South African Censor’s Tale (Pretoria: Protea, 2011), p.12.
85.Margreet de Lange, The Muzzled Muse: Literature and Censorship in South Africa (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1997), pp. 48–49.
86.See HP van Coller, ‘’n Kritiese Blik op Enkele van die Literêre pryse van Die Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns’, Tydskrif vir Geesteswetenskappe 50 (4): 484–501.
87.Ibid., pp. 497–498.
88.Coenie Slabber, ‘’n Profeet wat nie Hoef te Bloos’, Insig, May 1995, p. 12.
89.Journal marked ‘Nov 1981–Nov 1985’, entry for 24 September 1984, pp. 102–103.
90.Slabber, ‘’n Profeet wat nie Hoef te Bloos’, Insig, p. 13.
91.Ibid.
92.Ibid.
93.Gerrit Olivier, ‘1986: Die Afrikaanse Literatuur’, Stet 4 (3): 8.
94.For Brink’s ripostes in De Kat (April and May 1989), and in Vrye Weekblad (31 March 1989), see Gerrit Olivier, ‘Die Verantwoordelike Debat’, Stet 5 (4) (May 1989): 2–3 & 16–17.
95.Ibid., p. 3.
96.Ibid.
97.Email, Gerrit Olivier to author, 18 February 2018.
98.‘André P Brink @ 70’, Tydskrif vir Letterkunde 42 (1) 2005, was reviewed by Brink’s second wife, Salomi Louw, in Literator 27 (1) April 2006: 240–246.
99.Bongani Madondo, ‘Going Strong’, Sunday Times, Lifestyle, 19 June 2005, p. 19.
100.See Sonja Loots, ‘7de Laan Hoor 1ste’, Rapport, Perspektief, 17 April 2005, p. 4.
101.Fanie Olivier, ‘André Brink word 70’, Die Burger, 28 May 2005, p. 10.
102.Hanlie Retief, ‘Geen Droë Wit Seisoen op 70 nie!’ Rapport, Perspektief, 19 June 2005, p. 3.
103.Szczurek, The Fifth Mrs Brink, p. 22.
104.Maureen Isaacson, ‘On the Brink: Celebrating Eros and the Big O’, Sunday Independent, 31 October 2004, p. 18.
105.Gerrit Brand, ‘Van “Vergeet” Geen Sprake, van “Begeestering” Wel’, Die Burger 20 June 2005. NELM 2011.13.9.17.’
106.See Marlene Malan, ‘Herrie oor Groot Beurs vir André P Brink’, Rapport, 6 December 2009. NELM 2011.13.11.32.
107.Ibid.
108.Ibid.
109.Ibid.
110.See Kerneels Breytenbach, ‘Die testament moet praat’, Die Burger, 16 June 2010. NELM 2001.13.3.1.
111.As quoted in Books LIVE, 8 December 2009, from Rapport, 6 December 2009,available at bookslive.co.za/blog/2009/12/08/omstredenheid-oor-andre-brink-se-beurs/
112.‘Joan Hambidge oor André Brink en die Jan Rabie en Marjorie Wallace-beurs’, Die Burger, December 2009, quoted by Books LIVE at http://bookslive.co.za/blog/2009/12/10/joan-hambidge-oor-andre-brink-en-die-jan-rabie-en-marjorie-wallace-beurs/
113.‘Memorandum: André Philippus Brink, drawn up on 1 March 2014’, Brink Home Archive. The document runs to 13 pages and contains extensive details of the writer’s earnings and how his financial circumstances had deteriorated over the years. The document was drafted in support of an application to have the terms of Brink’s divorce agreement with Alta revised. All further references to this memorandum are drawn from this document.
114.Szczurek, The Fifth Mrs Brink, p. 79.
115.Ibid., p. 80.
116.Jan-Jan Joubert, ‘Brink wou Pen Neerlê oor Venyn, Volksblad, 5 April 2013, p. 3.
117.Szczurek, The Fifth Mrs Brink, p. 82.
118.‘Philida, by André Brink’, The Spectator, August 2012, available at spectator.co.uk/2012/08/philida-by-andr233-brink/
119.Solms Delta, a wine farm whose major shareholders are University of Cape Town neuropsychology professor Mark Solms and philanthropist Richard Astor, went into business rescue in 2017. In August 2018, liquidation proceedings began in the Western Cape High Court, 22 months after the wine farm’s public launch as part of government’s 50:50 farmworkers’ empowerment programme. According to reports, despite more than R65-million being pumped into this project in less than two years, the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform was walking away, as was the National Empowerment Fund (NEF). See Glenneis Kriel, ‘50/50 Policy Farm, Solms-Delta, Under Business Rescue’, Farmer’s Weekly, September 5, 2017, available at farmersweekly.co.za/agri-news/south-africa/5050-policy-farm-solms-delta-business-rescue/. See also Marianne Merten, ‘The Solms-Delta way, or, How Not to do Land Reform’, Daily Maverick, 14 August 2018, available at dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-08-14-the-solms-delta-way-or-how-not-to-do-land-reform/
120.Charles Leonard, ‘How Brink Slaved over Slavery’, Mail & Guardian, 7 September 2012, available at mg.co.za/article/2012-09-07-00-how-brink-slaved-over-slavery
121.Ibid.
122.Joubert, ‘Brink wou Pen Neerlê oor Venyn’, Volksblad, 5 April 2013, p. 3.
123.André Brink, Philida (New York: Vintage Books, 2012), p. 124.
124.See Jan-Jan Joubert, ‘Brink Twyfel oor Skryf ná Venyn’, Beeld, 5 April 2013.
125.Leonard, ‘How Brink Slaved over Slavery’, Ibid.
126.Ibid.
127.Patrick Flanery, ‘Philida by André Brink: Review’, The Telegraph, 7 February 2015, available at telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/9464788/Philida-by-Andre-Brink-review.html
128.Alex Clark, ‘Philida by André Brink – review’, The Guardian, 16 August 2012, available at theguardian.com/books/2012/aug/16/philida-andre-brink-booker-review
129.Ceridwen Dovey, ‘Cape Fear’, New York Times, 15 February 2013, available at nytimes.com/2013/02/17/books/review/philida-by-andre-brink.html?mtrref=www.google.co.za&gwh=B26EF0E228A5113AF4EB18C18DB8C22C&gwt=pay
130.Andrew van der Vlies, ‘Philida: A Novel, by Andre Brink’, The Independent, 5 October 2012, available at independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/philida-a-novel-by-andre-brink-8197962.html
131.Izak de Vries, ‘LitNet Akademies resensie-essay: Philida ’n Waarskuwing aan die Elite’, Litnet, 27 November 2012, available at litnet.co.za/ilitnet-akademiesi-resensie-essay-iphilidai-n-waarskuwing-aan-die-elite/
132.Jakes Gerwel, ‘Intieme Wreedheid – of Wrede Intimiteit’, Volksblad, 1 September 2012, p. 7.
133.Ena Jansen, ‘“Philida” Lofwaardig en Noodsaaklik’, Beeld, 2 September 2012, available at m.news24.com/beeld/Boeke/OnlangsVerskyn/Philida-lofwaardig-en-noodsaaklik-20120902
134.Szczurek, The Fifth Mrs Brink, p. 24.
135.Ibid., p. 62.
136.Ibid., p. 166.
137.Ibid., p. 62.
138.Ibid.
139.Ibid., p. 63.
140.Ibid., pp. 172–173.
141.Ibid., p. 82.
142.Quoted in Marelize Barnard, ‘Woorde is nog daar, ek móét skryf’ (the words are still there, I must write), Die Burger, 9 February 2015. Available at pressreader.com/south-africa/die-burger/20150209/281728382942260
143.Szczurek, The Fifth Mrs Brink, p. 24, p. 63.
144.Braam de Vries, ‘André en die tikmasjien’ (André and the typewriter), Netwerk24, 15 Februarie 2015, available at netwerk24.com/Stemme/Andre-en-die-tikmasjien-20150215
145.Quoted in The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 February 2015, available at smh.com.au/entertainment/books/south-african-antiapartheid-writer-andre-brink-dies-20150209-139gh7.html
146.Szczurek, The Fifth Mrs Brink, p. 213.
147.Ibid.
148.Ibid., p. 214.
149.Ibid.
150.Ibid., p. 216.
151.Email from Karina Szczurek, 14 August 2017.
152.See eNCA website: enca.com, 7 February 2015, available at enca.com/south-africa/brink-died-blood-clot-report . Tweets quoted appear on this website.
153.Alan Cowell, ‘André Brink, South African Literary Lion, Dies at 79’, The New York Times, 7 February 2015.
154.Dennis Walder, ‘André Brink Obituary’, The Guardian, 8 February 2015, available at theguardian.com/profile/dennis-walder
155.Albie Sachs, ‘He Shone Brightly as a Sestiger’, The Journalist, 17 February 2015, available at thejournalist.org.za/spotlight/he-shone-brightly-as-a-sestiger
156.Quoted in ‘André P. Brink: ’n Skrywer wat die Wêreld Bereik het’, 9 February 2015, Netwerk24.
157.Die dag toe André intens sélf mnr. Visser geword het’ (the day André himself intensely became Mr Visser), Netwerk24, 15 Februarie 2015.
158.Kerneels Breytenbach, ‘Brink het net verhuis’ (Brink has moved house), 15 February 2015, Netwerk24.
159.Quoted in “André P Brink: ‘n Skrywer wat die wêreld bereik het …” (André Brink, a writer who spoke to the whole world …) , 9 February 2015.
160.The Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns, a multidisciplinary organisation to promote Afrikaans, became increasingly protective of an elite form of the language during the apartheid years, keeping outside influences at bay.
161.Quoted in ‘André P. Brink: ’n Skrywer wat die Wêreld Bereik het…’, Netwerk24, 9 February 2015.
162.See ‘Brink a South African patriot, says Tutu’, DispatchLive, 10 February 2015, available at dispatchlive.co.za/news/ 2015-02-10-brink-a-south-african-patriot-says-tutu/
163.See ‘A Giant of Literature: Mongane Wally Serote pays tribute to André Brink’, available at bookslive.co.za/blog/2015/02/09/a-giant-of-literature-mongane-wally-serote-pays-tribute-to-andre-brink/