Alex Smith

ONE
The Extreme Importance of Orangina (et sa pulpe!)

His eyes sparkled, brilliant with emptiness: light, quick, and visible as Calvalcanti who sprang so deftly over a grave and into history.
“We will have macaroni cheese and Orangina,” said the man Janko Fox only ever knew as Mr Macaroni. We will. There was no question in it – like money, power and hustlers, it rung with factyness. We will have macaroni cheese and Orangina. We will. As if they were a string of photos spitting from a photo booth, Mr Macaroni’s words repeated thirty-six times in Janko’s head, and finally and thus absolved of the task of having to peruse a menu and make a decision, Janko was content to do as the other man wished, but all the long time they sat there at the Newport Deli opposite the Moullie Point Lighthouse – at least it was still standing – those words kept spitting out in his thoughts as if from the photo booth.

The men did not speak, although Janko had many questions; they chewed on macaroni cheese washed down with Orangina and such a very length of time went by without words, Janko’s memory of the questions he aimed to pose this fellow of leaky conscience evaporated, while seagulls’ squawked and a nearby table of eaters squawked too, loudly, louder than the gulls, all about fabulous nothings, weightless as feathers detached from their birds. Thus mused (it was only a moment of musing though and did not break the fabulist economy) Janko and he irked himself for being unoriginal, but then consoled himself that no man was actually ever original, though some were arrogant and deluded enough to imagine they were, and beside if an original man was lurking anywhere he’d be a lardy fool, a mountebank, a contrariwise, no-good, squanderer of energy if he went about doing everything again in a new fashion. Janko harboured no patience for fashion, fiction, novelty or novels – he found such constructs windy, vain and futile. Far and wide as Janko could see, there was only truth (the feign of fiction by his estimation was nought, but rouge upon a made-up cheek) and every bit of it was on the surface of things: the universe, a place of all outward action and no inner secrets, could be read like Braille, but only a true idiot savant would believe it; the proudfoot semi-clevers and cloudy-heads would be bogged eternally in a crazy-glue of motivations, reactions, and would cling zealotish to the notion of lies and fiction like Catholics to Mary, Jews to Moses and Muslims to Mohammed.

“I love the orange peel parasol in the Orangina logo,” Mr Macaroni said with startling deep affection in his tone.
It might have been hard for a more moral and philosophical man than Janko to believe Mr Macaroni capable of love, but no, Janko was impressed a person, let alone Mr Macaroni could be so fond of anything. “I don’t much believe in love,” Janko said. “Liking … I can like very well.”
“Like is too insipid for Orangina. It’s an Algerian drink, you know that?”
“I did not.”
The silence between them was comfortable as an old couple married for so many years they no longer need make any attempt to impress, and so were at their most exquisitely banal in each others’ presence. Mr Macaroni sighed as if he sensed some splendiferous artificialness afoot and in response to that sigh, Janko sighed too and said: “Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Ah.”
“Some people are born guilty, the Catholics for example, but I was born a plagiarist. Andy Warhol is the man who can do ‘Liking’ and not love. I’m just a man who read that and thought it matched quite well with me and so …” He shrugged. “So Orangina is Algerian.”
“As am I.” Mr Macaroni was not Italian, no, he was a Frenchman of Algerian decent, born in the outer banlieus of Paris; the badlands of the city of love.

“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“I agree,” Janko said.
Mr Macaroni clicked his fingers to summon a waiter. “Another round of macaroni and Orangina,” he said to the waiter and to Janko he said: “You made a lot up.”
“For the sake of a good story,” Janko said.
“The cover says it is a true story.”
“If you’re able to look properly and think clearly, the outside of a thing never lies … then again the most honest thing I can tell you is I lie often, always, and with abandon.”
“Bah! That is common enough. I’ve never met a man who does not lie in a multitude of ways on a daily basis, but I’ve seldom met one with wit enough to know or admit it.” He held up his bottle of Orangina, equipped with a bending straw, and clinked it against Janko’s bottle. “Saluté! We could consider becoming friends.”
“As you like. I make a poor friend though.”
“Good. So do I.”
“I’m a pathological sulker.”
“And I am self-absorbed, occasionally mean of spirit, needy and ambitious.”
“And I am a candid materialist whose greatest stock of faith is placed in contradiction and the motto: matter is all that matters.”
Mr Macaroni chuckled and after that he was silent all through eating the third serving of macaroni. He would have two more servings before saying:

“Assume nothing. I’m a cloudy-head generalist and a lazy researcher, I know all the bits of truth were out there for me to see, but since I lacked the faculties to make the connections, I winged it with a few true lies.”
Pushing his plate North of his belly, and West of his new friend, Mr Macaroni said: “Now we will go and visit The Shopping Mall Museum and perhaps make some more connections.”
“I’d sooner go surfing or read Moby Dick.” Janko’s lips turned down sourly at the thought of the V&A Shopping Mall Doomsday Museum. “I visited that place too often when researching for the book. At first it held a kind of dreadful fascination – I mean the outrage of it did, but ultimately I got jaded with all those documentaries and gaudy brass plaques with flower tubes in memorial to the person who died here at the Burts Bees lip balm counter and there trying on the latest Crocs or eating sushi at the Fish Market or fitting jeans at Levis or … everything is dusty in there … after trailing around reading all the personal testimonies of Doomsday over and over, it bores me, no, worse, it reviles me immensely, it’s carnivorous tourism at its most foul and today’s Sunday – there’ll be queues to get in and queues for the canteen and children will be scrawtching and the usual mourners wailing. All the families of the dead go on Sundays – it’s a heavy place, such a drag on one’s spirit, such a sinkhole, like a film without any shred of humour. Somebody should stand up and read a parable from Moby Dick: But Oh! Shipmates! On the starboard hand of every woe there is a sure delight.”

On to G in the A-Z World Literature Kiss-off, and with Germany, comes a goodbye: this means a three-week break from kiss collecting: I’m going North, on a road tip to desert and such places, but will be back for the Franschhoek Literary Festival , and the BookSA panel discussion… (more…)

After three E’s, the first of the F’s, France, for this Easter Monday’s installment of the ongoing A-Z, Kissing in World Literature. I would have done three again, but Finland and Fiji are not so easily resolved and it’s a long weekend.

This is not yet the kiss, and not written by anyone French, but by a Pulitzer Prize winning American named Doug Wright about a particularly infamous French writer:

From Quills [By Dough Wright, here via Drew's Script-o-Rama, minus the two character names, but it's clear enough]

Marquis ?
– Well– Did I frighten you ? – [ Gasps ]
Frighten me ? That’s a good one. I’m twice as quick as you are.
I suppose you want to know about that silly book of yours.
What about my book ?
[ Whispers ] It sold like the devil.
Then they started burning it.
That’s the peril of composing such incendiary prose.
If only these coins purchased your other talents too.
[ Whispers ] There’s something else I want from you.
You’ve already stolen my heart…
as well as another prominent organ south ofthe equator.
Your publisher says I’m not to leave without another manuscript.
I’ve just the story.
Inspired by these very surroundings.
The unhappy tale of a virginal laundry lass,
a darling of the lower wards where they entomb the criminally insane.
– Is it awfully violent ? – Most assuredly.
– Is it terribly erotic ? – Fiendishly so.
– [ Laughs ] – But it comes with a price.
A kiss for each page.

(more…)

“No one will offer me a job poor enough for my acceptance!” said TE Lawrence who refused all manner of good, responsible posts, and wanting a more miserable kind of job applied to be a lighthouse keeper. I think, well, at least in dreams, that I’d like to be a lighthouse keeper too; as long as my lighthouse was well-stocked with tea (ah, and books, and also it must not be cold inside). When the bookshop was busy on Sunday, I happened upon a book of lighthouses of the world, and there was only one copy and I reserved it for myself … when the bookshop was quiet before closing last night, I browsed through the pages of lighthouses, and discovered the Green Point lighthouse offers guided tours. So there is one thing I hope to do this weekend, if the lighthouse is open for tours over Easter, and if not I will have to wait. The book only features a handful of South African lighthouses, but searching around here reveals at least fifty lighthouses in the country. In other parts of the world, while all the old lighthouses are too lovely, some modern lighthouses are quite startling, like the Faro de Punta Hidalgo in Tenerife. I would like to visit that too and others; perhaps one day I’ll do a world tour of lighthouses.
There was a thing written in the preface of that lighthouse book: ‘Here is where the society of man begins’, and this the author suggests is the message sent out in lighthouse white flashes. In the case of the Faro de Punta Hidalgo, that would be three white flashes every 16 s. 50 m, and in the case of the Green Point lighthouse, a white flash every 10 s. 16 m. In a similar way, and others too, fiction seems something of a lighthouse to me. So I’ve begun collecting novel lighthouses: (more…)

Kissing in World Literature, two more E’s in the A-Z.

Ethiopia – Ityop’iya

From The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
by Dinaw Mengestu (winner of the Guardian First Book Award)

Joseph is short and stout like a tree stump. He has a large round face that looks like a moon pie. Kenneth used to tell him he looked Ghanaian.
“You have a typical Ghanaian face, Joe. Round eyes. Round face. Round nose. You’re Ghanaian through and through. Admit it, and let us move on.”
Joseph would stand up then and theatrically slam his fist onto the table, or into his palm, or against the wall. “I am from Zaire,” he would yell out. “And you are a ass.” Or, more recently, and in a much more subdued tone: “I am from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Next week, it may be something different. I admit that. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll be from the Liberated Land of Laurent Kabila. But today, as far as I know, I am from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”
Joseph kisses me once on each cheek after he takes his coat off.
“That’s my favorite thing about you Ethiopians,” he says. “You kiss each other on the cheeks all the time. It takes you hours to say hello and good-bye because you’re constantly kissing each other. Kiss. Kiss. Kiss.”
Kenneth pours Joseph a scotch and the three of us raise our cups for a toast.

From Blue Daughter of the Red Sea
By Meti Birabiro

Esu’s body took the space beside mine on the sofabed. (more…)

Among her customers at the Peep Show was a true artist, an expressionist, a scarred man, formerly considered one of most beautiful artists in the 600 Ghetto. Before the attack, he was invited to every party; and everyone wanted to be painted by him. He worked harder than any other artist, but also began to think he was invincible; people didn’t like that, and gossips said he did not deserve his success, that it was only because he was beautiful. Perhaps if he had not been working so hard, he would not have been so careless, and if he had felt less like master of the ghetto, he would not have left open all the doors to his home (everybody knows 600 is one of the most dangerous places to live); if he’d felt less like a god, he would have taken more care with security and not have made that mistake. (more…)

TEMPERANCE. Is it possible to die from sorrow? I once asked my Great Uncle and he assured me that it was. “Unamuno died from that,” he said. “If you are planning to die from sorrow, Miguel, you should go out immediately and buy a casket and dig a grave because I am too old to do it and too miserly to pay for the funeral of a foolish boy.”
Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo, father of ten children, author of twelve novels and master of fourteen languages was the rector of the University of Salamanca in 1936. This twentieth-century Don Quixote, speaking at a public meeting to a Nationalist audience chanting Long live death! cautioned that victory was not enough. In the presence of the fascist director of Nationalist propaganda, Unamuno, spoke out saying: (more…)

Prince among days! Not only is it Library Week, but tomorrow is World Storytelling Day, which has its origins in Sweden’s Alla berattares dag, All storytellers day. So in honour of libraries and the storytellers whose books fill them, here is an anthology of novel libraries, beginning with some library memories from poet and lecturer of Literature at Makarere University, Susan Kiguli who has a PhD in English from The University of Leeds and an particular interest in Oral Poetry, Popular Song and Performance Theory. (more…)

HIGH PRIESTESS
I first kissed Algeria in Ospital de Orbigo in a move I feel displayed a certain revolutionary élan. It was not an act of force, I am no fascist, but as I sit here in New York, there in Madrid, and there again eternally in the darkness of the stone-walled dormitory of six beds and a chilly cement floor, it worries me that what I believed was liberation, may, in fact, have been invasive enough to start a war of silence between us. The man in the bunk across from me snores in fits and starts like the chugging engine of a fishing boat. He lies below a window the size of a page from a novel. (more…)

If you are seeking beauty and light, prepare also for the dark—page 3, The Master’s Ruse

Above the barcode and ISBN 9781874915164 of Patricia Schonstein’s The Master’s Ruse is the unhelpful class word ‘Fiction’.

Now, bear with me, even if my descriptions appear at first disconnected, while I set in place various components critical to the structure of this tale…—page 4, The Master’s Ruse

Karina, among whose many talents is a serious one for writing fine literary criticism, has told me sternly and often that a good, professional reviewer should never assume, unless instructed by the author, that the author and the narrator or any character in a fiction are one or even similar; they are to be judged distinct and with objectivity. The second law in Reviewing101 with Karina is: a good reviewer should not use the space of a review to show off her opinions or skill; the review is about the book in question, not the word skills, prejudices, social habits, dietary preferences or philosophies of the reviewer. Unfortunately, I am about to fail Karina’s exam in Reviewing101.

This, together with the warring strength of the regime that still governs us, have had a tremendous impact on my psyche and writing.’—page 4 The Master’s Ruse

Last year, at a PEN meeting and luncheon, I sat one chair down from Patricia Schonstein. Everybody who has written a book in this country, whether it is published or unpublished, poetry or prose, in particular everyone who remains living here (does not, I mean, move overseas and become affiliated with a university there, but stays here at the far end of Africa, where there is less access) knows well what kind of struggles are involved in getting ‘out there’, even as far as on the shelves in the local bookshops; so to be published four times in many languages internationally is a major feat, one to be deeply respected. During the meal, I asked Patricia when her next novel was due out, and what she told me was both unnerving and inspiring. (more…)