Richard Rive

Shaun Viljoen

Description

Indexed in Clarivate Analytics Book Citation Index (Web of Science Core Collection)

Sujets

• Literary Figures
• Lettres et linguistique
• Biography
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: WITS University Press
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781868148240
• Langue: English

Extrait

Richard Rive
Rive Richard
a partial biography
Shaun Viljoen
Published in South Africa by:
Wits University Press
1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg
2001
www.witspress.co.za
Copyright Shaun Viljoen 2013
Mapping from The dream in the next body by Gabeba Baderoon, Cape Town, Kwela. 2005. Reproduced by permission of Kwela Books.
Bertolt Brecht, An die Nachgeborenen (To Those Born Later)
Bertolt-Brecht-Erben / Suhrkamp Verlag.
First published 2013
ISBN (print) 978-1-86814-743-4
ISBN (EPUB - IPG) 978-1-86814-824-0
ISBN (EPUB - ROW) 978-1-86814-825-7
ISBN (PDF) 978-1-86814-744-1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.
Edited by Alison Lockhart
Proofread by Lisa Compton
Cover artwork George Hallett
Cover design by Michelle Staples
Book design and layout by Michelle Staples
Wits University Press and the author have made every reasonable effort to contact and acknowledge copyright owners. Please notify the publishers should copyright not have been properly identified and acknowledged. Corrections will be incorporated in subsequent editions of the book.
Printed and bound by Interpak Books
For Ian Viljoen (1929-1991) and Anna Viljoen (1934-)
Hatred, even of meanness
Contorts the features.
Anger, even against injustice
Makes the voice hoarse. Oh, we
Who wanted to prepare the ground for friendliness
Could not ourselves be friendly.
But you, when the time comes at last
And man is helper to man
Think of us
With forbearance.
- Bertolt Brecht, To Those Born Later
but our discarded parts,
with their uncertain shifts from
inside to outside,
show that definiteness
is only the edge
of desire
- Gabeba Baderoon, Mapping
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Photographs
Preface
Part I: 1930-1960
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Part II: 1960-1970
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Part III: 1970-1980
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part IV: 1980-1990
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Epilogue
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
Michelle Adler, my PhD supervisor, and Tim Couzens, my supervisor in the initial stages of the doctorate, as well as David Attwell, my National Research Foundation-appointed mentor for 2004-2005, helped me do the groundwork for this book. Craig MacKenzie and Stefan Helgesson s examiners reports were most helpful in rethinking, extending and reformulating ideas, as were the comments of peer reviewers of the final book manuscript, Michael Titlestad and David Johnson.
A number of colleagues at Stellenbosch University generously commented on parts of the book: thanks to Louise Green, Grace Musila, Lynda Spencer, Tina Steiner and Nwabisa Bangeni. Other colleagues, ex-colleagues and friends took time to give me their detailed views on drafts of the book - Sarah Nuttall and Nita Hanmer, my most critical and helpful readers, in particular - as well as Flora Veit-Wild, Milton van Wyk and Dan Yon. Basil Appollis offered continual interest and generous contributions from the start to the conclusion of this project.
Dan Yon, David Medalie and Sandra Swart, dear friends and colleagues, allowed me to share the ups and downs of academic projects and private life and helped to keep this project in perspective. The willing participation and generosity of many of Rive s friends, especially the late Ivan Abrahams and Albert Adams, and also Ursula and Gilbert Reines, made the more personal aspects of this portrait possible. Maeve Heneke and Stephen Yeo shared memories, criticism and a most generous and supportive second home in London. Richard Hauke, in Virginia, very generously gave his wife Kathleen s almost two decades of research on Rive to the National English Literary Museum (Nelm) and to me, after she passed away in 2004 before completing her own biography on Rive.
Tristan Brikkels, my even-tempered, optimistic partner who bore the brunt of the tantrums and despair, and the rest of my family - Anna Viljoen and Jasper Walters, and Sharon, Dwane, Nicolas and Meghan Harris - were the comedians and cooks who were always interested in my work and helped to keep me going to the very end. Good food indeed played a part in sustaining the writing; thanks to Harald Bresselschmidt and the staff of Aubergine for providing a writing retreat with the best soul food in the world. Constant support and good food came from my Caledon family Elsabe and Dennis Alexander, and Vetesia and Paul Abrahams.
I also wish to thank the following people for their help:
- the numerous interviewees who almost always gave time and shared memories in the most generous ways. They are accredited by name or anonymously in the work. In particular, thanks to George Hallett, who has been very generous in sharing both his photographs and memories;
- Roshan Cader at Wits University Press for her frank questions and comments, Alison Lockhart, the editor who understood what I was trying to do, and Alfred LeMaitre for a most useful initial edit of the book;
- colleagues at Stellenbosch University for their encouragement and support, in particular Meg Samuelson, who gave me her unstinting support on a number of fronts, and also Annie Gagiano, Jeanne Ellis, Mathilda Slabbert, Dawid de Villiers, Daniel Roux, Rita Barnard, Alastair Henderson and Dirk Klopper;
- ex-Hewat College of Education colleagues and friends who were generous with memories and always interested, in particular Marina and Carl Lotter, Jerome and Lilian Van Wyk, Gertrude Fester, Julia Isaacs and Tarnia van Zitters;
- Deborah Britzman at the University of York, Toronto, Canada, and Fernando Rosa Ribeiro at the University of Malaya;
- ex-students and friends Mark Espin and Deela Khan for reading early drafts;
- Berni Searle, Noel Daniels, Dawn Daniels, Rafiq Omar, Sharon Prins, Jerome Thomas, Zubeida Desai, Natasha Distiller, Pamela Nichols and Helen Struthers, who, through fair means or foul, tried to inspire and keep me going;
- Hosea and Ada Jaffe, and Mark Visagie and Daska Grandtnerova in Britain;
- family members who were interested in my work and supported me in various ways: Pierre Kay and Andy Kay and their families in Cape Town; Jean, Kenny, Marc and Ross Wentzel; Carol Abrahamse and Chris Abrahamse, all in Toronto; and the late Milly and Teddy Roberts, and their daughters Erica, Joanne and Barbara and their families in Brazil;
- student assistants Janine Loedolff, Rico Burnett, Ryan Weaver, Jonathan Mar , Fran ois Olivier, Vasti Calitz and Jim Jenkins, and administrative assistants Susan Matdat and Hilary Oostendorp;
- the Fundamentals Training Centre for technical support and help, especially the assistance of Hylton Bergh.
I am grateful to the most helpful staff at the following research institutions where I did much of the archival research: the District Six Museum and Sound Archive, particularly archivist Margaux Bergman; the Police Museum in Pretoria; Nelm, particularly Ann Torlesse; the Magdalen College Archive, particularly Robin Darwall-Smith; Christine Ferdinand at the Magdalen College library; the University of Cape Town administration records and archives; South Peninsula High School principal Brian Isaacs; the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, in particular Timothy Young; the Schomburg Institute in Harlem, New York; the JS Gericke Library at the University of Stellenbosch; University of Cape Town Jagger Library and Archive; the St Helena Ar chive; and the South African National Library, Cape Town.
Financial assistance for this project was received from the National Research Foundation, the research offices of the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Stellenbosch, the dean of the Arts faculty and the department of English at the University of Stellenbosch, and the Tothill Foundation. The ex-dean and ex-deputy dean of the faculty of Arts and Social Science at the university of Stellenbosch, Hennie Kotz and Marianna Visser, provided financial and moral support over a long decade.
Photographs
p. 6 Caledon Street, District Six
p. 22 Richard Rive (back row, fifth from the right) with some of his Standard 10 classmates at Trafalgar High in 1947
p. 99 An impish, delighted, camp Richard Rive, performing with Marjorie Wallace what seems to be a mock award ceremony, with George Hallett playing the audience
p. 101 Richard Rive, graduation photograph, December 1962
p. 114 James Matthews and Richard Rive at Rive s Selous Court flat in Claremont, Cape Town, late 1960s
p. 161 Richard Rive next to the Cecil Skotnes woodcut on the front door of his Windsor Park home.
p. 175 Richard Rive presenting a paper at the conference on culture and resistance at the University of Botswana in July 1982
p. 193 Richard Rive in 1988, backstage at the Hewat College of Education production of his penultimate novel, Buckingham Palace , District Six
p. 215 Richard Rive s legacy: Basil Appollis (seated) and Shaun Viljoen at Artscape preparing for the dress rehearsal of Buckingham Palace , District Six in 2001
Preface
In a commemorative article on Richard Rive in the Mail Guardian Review on 7 February 1991, a year and a half after he was brutally murdered, Nadine Gordimer begins: When someone of marked individuality dies and those who knew him give their impressions of him, a composite personality appears that did not exist simultaneously in life. This biography attempts to depict Rive as a composite personality but from partial and selective vantage points. My account of Rive s life assembles a multitude of voices and perspectives to compose a man who lived many lives simultaneously and who was a larger-than-life presence, an exceptional teller of stories who engendered not merely memories of encounters with him, but m