Woman of Note, Interview With Nadine Gordimer: "I don't think happiness is possible without freedom"
Can you tell us about the day you heard you had won the Nobel Prize for 1991?
Nadine Gordimer: It happened to be that my husband and I were visiting our son in New York, and I got up early and tiptoed through the house to the kitchen, because of the time change and so on, to phone somebody that I wanted to speak to urgently in England. But when I got there, to my amazement the phone rang. And I picked it up and it was to tell me that I — because what happens, as you know, when you get on the list, it goes on for years. And the last two or three years before that, at least two years before that, journalists would phone me and say, "You know, you're on the top list. You're one of two people up there," and "How do you feel about getting a Nobel Prize?" And I would say, "If I ever get it, I will tell you. Goodbye," and put down the phone, which is the only way to deal with it. Of course one of the nice things about getting a Nobel Prize, first of all it gives you a voice with certain causes that you may be not keen on, but that you are attached to and enthusiastic about. People will listen to you now. And also, of course, you have to learn to say, "Thanks, but no thanks," because people don't quite remember what you got the prize for. They think you've got it for physics or peace or something and so you get invited to come and speak somewhere, it's not in your field at all. But okay, that doesn't really matter. But one of the perks, I would say, is that after that, you have the privilege every year of — this time of year now, just about to do it again next month — of sending very secretly your nominations, who you think should get it next time. I think that's a very good idea. They ask those of us who have it. Now, as I got it in '91, that's a long time ago, isn't it? And I have done this faithfully every year. I've only had two successes when I coincided with obviously others. The one was a Japanese writer, Kenzaburo Oe — wonderful writer — and Günter Grass. I could never understand why they hadn't gotten it before but they hadn't. So I was absolutely delighted. But other times, for the rest of the time, I have not had success, but I keep on.
That morning in New York, was it a reporter who was on the other end of the phone?
Nadine Gordimer: I can't remember who it was who had called from England. Yes, it must have been a reporter. Yes, from England.
Did you wake your family up?
Nadine Gordimer: I went back to my bedroom and shook my husband and said, "You wake up." He said, "What is it?" I said, "I've got the Nobel Prize." Of course we then had a celebratory breakfast. But when I came back here, that was wonderful, because my friends in the ANC — of course I was a member of the ANC for a long time then already — and my writer friends, especially my writer friends, came to the airport and someone blew the ceremonial horn. You know, the one that has now become a sort of trumpet for sports things, but blew that, and then they gave me a wonderful party afterwards. And the speech at the party was made by no less a person than Walter Sisulu. So that was absolutely marvelous.
Do you think that was the best time of your life professionally? Winning the Nobel Prize?
Nadine Gordimer: I suppose so. Of course, I was fortunate you see. People always said, the Nobel Prize is death to you as a writer because you feel afterwards, "Oh, I must write a book good enough." But fortunately for me, I was in the middle of writing My Son's Story. So I just went back to my book and forgot about that. It didn't inhibit me. The Nobel Prize isn't going to make your writing any better or any worse. If you let literature prizes stifle you because you're afraid that the next book won't be so good, so what.
It was 1991 when you won the Nobel Prize. It was also a historic time in South African history. Can you tell us what was it like to vote for the first time in a democratic South Africa?
Nadine Gordimer: In '94, oh yes. It was down here in the church. That was unforgettable, because there are all the apartments, and the workers there, who were called "flat boys" at the time, and all wore little pants with the red stripe and so on, white shorts, that was the outfit. They still wore that then. And there they were among everybody else. The residents of Park Down, of Hill Brown, the whole area around which we lived, and it was simply wonderful. I couldn't believe it.
But you had already been a voter.
Nadine Gordimer: Yes, but I hadn't voted the last time around because there was nobody for me to vote for. I was in the Party, I was in the ANC, and I didn't feel that I wanted to put anybody into Parliament who was offered. I'm not talking about as individuals, I'm talking about the parties that they represented.
Have your political views impeded your personal goals in life in any way?
Nadine Gordimer: Oh no, not at all. On the contrary. I think they've released me from the little white enclave background that I came from, and I've had wonderful friends and some are wonderful friends still. And of course I could never have lived with anybody, been married to anybody, who had different political views.
During apartheid, the South African government tried to prevent its critics from traveling by revoking their passports. Did that ever happen to you?
Nadine Gordimer: No. Fortunately for me, you see, the things I did wrong were as Gordimer. And my passport of course says Cassirer, my husband's name. So that helped a great deal.
What do you think someone can learn about you by reading your writing? Or are you detached from your writing, so that it would be very difficult for someone to know about the writer?
Nadine Gordimer: I can't see the point. I'm not interesting. Whatever interest there is in me is in my work, and it's not about me, except insofar as my breadth of experience obviously has enabled me to carry on with it for so long.
You think you're not interesting? People would love to read your autobiography.
Nadine Gordimer: I'd never write an autobiography. Why should I? My private life belongs to me and the people with whom I've lived it.
Many readers see strains of feminism in your works such as The Pickup. Is it feminism or is it just the case of a strong female protagonist?
Nadine Gordimer: Well what's the difference? Isn't that what feminism is? How should I put it?
I am often getting into trouble with feminists because I don't belong to feminist organizations. And I'm indeed a feminist, as I am a humanist. I believe that everybody should have the same rights, whether you're black, whether you're white, whether you're any mixture, whether you're male or female. And obviously women have been and are still very much, how should I put it, deprived of their full rights, many of them. So naturally I'm on that side. Women should be paid the same as men. They should have the same opportunities, all these things. They should have the same authority in their family in all kinds of decisions. Insofar as that's concerned, indeed, I'm a woman, therefore I am a feminist. When it comes to the arts, I have a different view. For instance, the idea that there are associations of women writers. To put it quite bluntly, you do not write with your genitals, you write with what's up here. So why must there be this distinction? You don't have associations of men writers. God knows it's coming, I'm sure of it. We certainly have associations that have homosexual writers, lesbian writers. Then it'll be writers with blue eyes or writers with black eyes, you know. When is it going to stop? We all are writers, and we are influenced perhaps by our sex, which is so interesting, and especially since for millennia, for recorded time, they've had different roles. When you think that now we've got women, even from the last big war, women in war. We have women pilots now. We have women presidents in Germany and so on. But this is on the ability, which has been denied for too long, and which I think was inferior to that of men, because look how women were kept at home and not allowed to follow their education or talents and so on, their educational possibilities. So we've had to come through all that and I'm all for it, just as I am for blacks or for anything involving race, color, sex. Hard enough to be human without dividing it up that way.
How is your process different, writing a short story as opposed to writing a novel?
Nadine Gordimer: Sometimes a story occurs to me. And a story is like an egg. It's complete. There's a shell, the white and the yolk. Well now, a short story comes to me complete, the beginning, the end, and how I'm going to get there. A novel is different. A novel I always know the beginning and I think I know the end. And then it goes in stages, it develops. I do not have it complete at the beginning. Theme I have, yes. Characters, not all of them, others may come along as I'm writing. So it's a completely different thing.
What was the impetus for the stories in Beethoven Was One Sixteenth Black?
Nadine Gordimer: Well, how could I say? Because that consists of stories written over three years so there were many impetuses.
Did you write them all in sequence, or in between writing a novel?
Nadine Gordimer: I think in between times, I wrote a novel, yes. When I'm writing a novel, occasionally an idea comes for a short story. I jot down two words or something, three or four words, and come back to it maybe when the novel is finished, but I don't usually interrupt the novel to write a story. But both forms, they are very different and both appeal to me as something that I want to do.
Did you write today? Can you tell us what you're working on now?
Nadine Gordimer: I did write today. But mostly I was having to do some research as background to check on certain dates that I think I muddled up in what I wrote yesterday and the day before. Because if a piece of writing has a sense of time and sequence in the lives of the people, you want to be sure you've got it straight.
Was it a short story?
Nadine Gordimer: I never tell what I'm writing. I never discuss it, no.
We had to ask. A few years ago, you put together the anthology Telling Tales, as a response to the HIV-AIDS crisis in South Africa. How do you see that situation today?
Nadine Gordimer: Well, to get to the beginning, I don't live in an ivory tower. I am very concerned about AIDS, and although I know Thabo Mbeki and I respected him for many things he did, I've never understood and I still don't understand his attitude of AIDS, his disbelief of how it exists and where it came from. So now, what do you do? I'm not a politician. What can I do about AIDS? Talk about it as we are doing now? You know, tut tut. But then I thought, look what the musicians do, especially the jazz musicians. Look at these great gigs that we're having everywhere. First of all, they made money for people who were supporting people who have AIDS, or for prevention. And secondly, they were rousing people's attention to this. But I thought, where do we register?
For instance, the wonderful international organization to which I belong, PEN. Many people don't know this, but they have been wonderful for two generations now, over writers who are in prison and taking care of their families and keeping in touch with them and agitating to get them out and sometimes successful. But not a word about AIDS. It's considered, first of all, this has got nothing to do with them. Has nobody who was a writer ever got AIDS? So I said, "There's no good carrying on about this. Do something. " I went, well okay. We can't have gigs. We haven't got that enormous access to people.
What about a collection of writings? Which would not be about AIDS, but which will be attractive writings, which will make a lovely Christmas or birthday present, and the money would go to -- I chose ours, the Treatment Action Campaign. So I wrote to writers, 20 writers — no, 19 because I'm the 20th — and some of whom are my close friends, and others I knew wrote really good stories. You know, not all novelists write good stories as well, but the ones that I chose indeed do, or did. A couple of them or less have died now. And told them, "Please, a story. Don't sit down and write something about people getting AIDS. Just choose one of your best stories please, and send it to me and I'm going to find a publisher for a book. And these stories will be collected there, and the proceeds — the royalties — will go indeed to organizations that are dealing with people who are HIV positive and all have AIDS. I got a wonderful response. No refusal from anybody, which was really great. And then I thought, now the stories are going to come. All the stories are absolutely outstanding. I happen to have a couple of favorites among them, but they're all very good. And then I spoke to my own publishers and I sent the material to them. They agreed to publish, taking only production costs and no share of any royalties. It's now in 15 languages worldwide. So in a small way, it doesn't do what a big gig does, but it has reached people and it has brought in quite a bit of money.
Why did you decide to do it at that time?
Nadine Gordimer: Because the musicians were doing something. The writers were not even opening their mouths, not even PEN. So what's the matter with us?
Telling Tales was published in 2004. How do you see the AIDS crisis now in South Africa? Where do you think that we'll be in five or ten years?
Nadine Gordimer: Well, I was just hearing today, again, on the news, we seem to be the worst affected in the world. So it's a terrible crisis, and I don't know, we seem not to be dealing with it. So it's very, very troubling.
You've said that it was an important symbol that Barack Obama is of both white and black parentage. Did you say that it was "even better"?
Nadine Gordimer: Yes, I did. Because I thought, "How wonderful. In him, in his own body and in his formation of his thoughts and personality, he brings black and white together." They say this is the first black President, but he's not black, he's both. Even better, the symbol and the way it ought to be.
Where do white South Africans fit in the new post-apartheid South Africa? What do you see is the ideal role for a cohesive existence?
Nadine Gordimer: If they're allowed to, by the natural feelings of resentment of blacks that whites hogged everything for centuries, that there should indeed in time be no distinction at all. I'm not saying this necessarily has to come about, because we've got a mixed population, biologically, though I'm all for that as well. But we've got to stop looking at us as separate and not as South Africans.
As I always say to European friends and friends in America or anywhere, we have had only 15 years, after centuries. Since 1652, when van Riebeeck landed at the Cape, there has been racial prejudice and racial separation. How can it be fixed in 15 years? I'm not excusing the things that we are not doing, but I'm simply saying to these people, vis-a-vis racism and class difference, "Have you achieved, in several hundred years at least, a real democracy?" I don't think so. You still got very poor people. You still got prejudice in terms of race and religion and heaven knows what."
I mean, religion is a tremendous division between people. I always used to quote Scandinavian countries. But now it seems that the Swedes are very concerned because they've got so many refugees who are not white. So the whole business of difference comes up, and it's mixed with economic opportunities and it's a very complex thing. But unless we can have a comet, then I don't know what will happen to whites. But if there should exist no more as white, then there will come a time when blacks will feel, "What have we done?" We either are all South Africans -- and in a way I think we should drop the "South." We are Africans if you're born and brought up in Africa. And if you indeed respond to the new South Africa — but when you get incidents like the Free State students, you just wonder. You know what I'm talking about?
Tell us, please.
The Free State students went in, in '07, they held what was called an initiation ceremony, as I think often happens among students, yes. But this consisted of inviting the cleaners — five cleaners in their hostel, black of course, four women and a man -- to come and party with them. Now you can imagine how this must have seemed such a nice gesture from the students. But what they did was, first of all, they made them drunk, then they made them dance for their amusement. And then they fed them food, and in the stew, one of the students had peed. He pissed into it, and they were forced to eat it. I mean, they didn't know that it had happened, but when they tasted it, it tasted awful and they spat it out and they were told, "Come on." Now, this was at the University of the Free State, traditionally an old Afrikaner stronghold.
These were four young white men. Now they made an unfortunate mistake. They were so proud of what they were doing, they made a video of it and somebody got hold of the video. Now this happened in '07, but the tape was only produced some months later, and you can imagine the shock when we saw, in the papers, excerpts from it, and saw this young man standing there doing this, and then these poor people. Now, the University principal, when it was exposed like this, said, "Well, they'll come before a disciplinary committee." Well that dragged on and on, and we didn't know what happened. It seems that one of the students either voluntarily left or was expelled, and I thought, "How unfair!" If they all watched, they were all equally brutal. The others just continued, and what the disciplinary thing was going to be we didn't know at all. Human rights, they have just come into it very recently this year, and have said that, indeed, they should come to the court of law, which is true, because it was a criminal act under our constitution. So that's sort of hanging in the air. It hasn't come, and these things get put off as they do, like our corruption trials, but it was a tremendous shock. There are many ways to look at it.
When you see the pictures of these young men, the white men, they look perfectly ordinary, rather nice face, nothing brutal looking about them. So what kind of upbringing did they have? What kind of terrible racist ethos was placed into them by their parents? And I mean they're young. They've grown up since our country's supposed to have changed. So that was a bit of a shock to us all. Right? We hope it's an isolated incident, and certainly of such vulgarity and cruelty. Now another point has come up, only two weeks ago or last week. Who at all has talked to the four people, the four cleaners? What's happened to them? They must be compensated. Well, they have spoken and said, "Very well, but how can you compensate for what happened to us?" But of course, under our constitution, the lack of dignity counts. So all these things are now still to be dealt with. But it's so good that these things come up now, and then there be a lot of argument about them, but that's part of dealing with them.
Do you think the threat of violence is part of the fabric of South African culture?
Nadine Gordimer: Oh, that is a big question. I'm trying to think where it isn't. I really can't think of any country -- not in our time and perhaps in any time — when violence hasn't been part. It's part of the human state. I mean, the animals, they're not violent. They kill. Predators kill because they've got to eat. But we kill. Only human beings kill in power positions, whether it's a personal power position among lovers, if it's ambition or if indeed it is politically motivated. So we are, I'm afraid, unique in that. But I think it is... How shall I put it? It's endemic, and it's very, very deep. It's congenital. Alas, alas, alas.
Do you think freedom is a condition of happiness?
Nadine Gordimer: No. If you think of it as a condition of happiness, that's saying, "I believe in paradise." Happiness is something that comes from many different aspects of life, but I don't think happiness is possible without freedom. I would say that.
What do you know about achievement now that you didn't know as a young person?
Nadine Gordimer: Life is one experience after another and it's a mystery. As a writer, I would say that as writers we're exploring the mystery, the mystery of existence. Not in the same sense as philosophers do, but whether you're a painter or a writer, when I think of my friends who are painters, in their way, they're doing it. In my way, I am. And of course, in the very practical sense, in the public sense, that is what people are doing in politics, when they achieve things in politics. And we've had some wonderful achievers, starting with Mandela, Albie Sachs, the extraordinary personality that has accepted all the things that have happened to him and never become bitter. So that I would call achievement, tremendous achievement. It's different in every field.
Has it taught you something specific, looking back, that you couldn't have imagined as a young person?
Nadine Gordimer: That's been happening all my life, and it's still happening. Not just in my writing but in my relations with other people.
One last question. Do you think you're writing a history of South Africa's conscience?
Nadine Gordimer: No, no, no, South Africa's conscience, of course not. That, I say, is a political task.
What do you want your legacy to be? What would you want your verbal footprint to be?
Nadine Gordimer: If I have one, it's between the pages of books I've written.
Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today.
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