The Essential Gesture: Writing, Politics and Places

by Nadine Gordimer, Stephen Clingman (Editor)

Written over a span of 30 years, from the 1950s until 1985, the 23 eloquent and powerful essays collected here provide an intimate picture of South Africa.

"No one who has read this book will fail to understand the need for those with political loyalties to keep their heads while giving their hearts".--Boston Sunday Globe.

Part I: Beginnings --
A bolter and the invincible summer --

Part II: A writer in South Africa --
Where do whites fit in? --
Chief Luthuli --
Great problems in the street --
Censored, banned, gagged --
Why did Bram Fischer choose jail? --
One man living through it --
Speaking out: the necessity for protest --
A writer's freedom --
Selecting my stories --
Letter from Johannesburg, 1976 --
Relevance and commitment --

Part III: A writer in Africa --
Egypt revisited --
The Congo River --
Madagascar --
Pula! --
Merci Dieu, it changes --
A vision of two blood-red suns --

Part IV: Living in the interregnum --
The unkillable word --
Censors and unconfessed history --
Living in the interregnum --
The essential gesture --
Letter from Johannesburg, 1985

Genres: Nonfiction, South Africa, Africa, Essays

384 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Nadine Gordimer was a South African writer, political activist, and recipient of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was recognized as a woman "who through her magnificent epic writing has – in the words of Alfred Nobel – been of very great benefit to humanity".

Gordimer's writing dealt with moral and racial issues, particularly apartheid in South Africa. Under that regime, works such as Burger's Daughter and July's People were banned. She was active in the anti-apartheid movement, joining the African National Congress during the days when the organization was banned. She was also active in HIV/AIDS causes.

Reviews

[Stephen Hayes]

Nadine Gordimer was a South African author, of a generation before me. I had read one of her novels, of which I could remember little, and a couple of her short stories. I had heard of her, and even met her once, but wasn't particularly drawn to her books. I picked up this one, a collection of essays, and a couple of others in the library in haste, and thought I'd read a cou[;e of the essays and bring it back a week or two later.

When I started to read it, however, I found that it was the story of my life. Well not quite, but it dealt with times I lived through and remembered. And Nadine Gordimer's memories were much the same as mine. The 23 essays were collected and annotated by Stephen Clingman. His introductions and explanatory notes also tell it like it was. The introductions give enough of the historical background to each piece to enable the reader to place it in context, and the explanatory notes give information about people and events mentioned in the text of each piece.

The essays are arranged roughly in chronological order, with the first group dealing with events and people up to the schoolchildren's revolt of 1976, There follow some articles about travels elsewhere in Africa and Madagascar, and finally more pieces on South Africa between 1976 and 1985, which Gordimer felt was like living in an interregnum.

The penultimate article, the eponymous "essential gesture" deals with the responsibility of a writer to society, something which South African writers find hard to escape. Several of the articles are diatribes against censorship, which Gordimar fiercely opposed, and one point she makes in that connection is worth repeating:

Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and the heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors? And there is some evidence that is ceases to. What writer of any literary worth defends fascism, totalitarianism, racism, in an age when these are still pandemic? Ezra Pound is dead. In Poland, where are the poets who sing the epic of the men who broke Solidarity? In South Africa, where are the writers who produce brillient defences of apartheid?

I can't recall a single work of fiction, whether of any literary merit or none, that extoled the virtues and glories of apartheid, though there were plenty that attacked and criticised it.

[Alden]

Skimmed for my interview with Gordimer. A collection edited by Stephen Clingman, which presents a wide range of her views on writing, politics and Africa. I prefer her fiction, by far. But a kind of steely passion radiates from many of these essays, revealing the qualities that shape her and drive her vision. Most interesting to me is her assertion of a writer's need to be free to pursue a personal vision even while committed to political activism.

[Rachel]

Not her very best work; dated even in its time; still, a very good book.