South African author Zoë Wicomb, who lives and teaches in Scotland, has chosen a son of the Highlands, Thomas Pringle, as the subject for her new book, Still Life.
A book on Thomas Pringle, his adopted Khoesan son, a freed-slave from the West Indies and a character from one of Virginia Woolf’s novels. Where/how did you bump into this Scotsman and his highly entertaining entourage?
Every South African schoolkid of my generation knew of Pringle as the father of South African poetry. Indigenous poetry that preceded him was overlooked, so I wanted to approach Pringle from a different angle. Through Hinza and Mary Prince (whose slave narrative he published) I focus on how he managed the contradictions inherent in colonialism. Alongside the time-travelling character from Orlando, these figures take turns to narrate. Representing different points of view, they solve my problem of how to represent Pringle.
Still Life touches on a number of topical issues. Do you set out to address certain societal questions that interest you?
Yes and no. I explore characters in relation to the socio-political conditions of their times, but also in the new light of the contemporary world. As they are shaped in the process of writing, they reveal social issues that I may not have had in mind. For instance, Hinza’s reading of Pringle’s representation of him in a poem, constitutes his struggle with identity; it also raises the contemporary issue of black children adopted by white parents, and thus about race relations past and present.
You have addressed history, memoires and memories in your fiction before. You’ve looked at how history plays out in the now and the effects it has on the people who are (un)lucky enough to be there. What is it about that place where fact and fiction/past and present meet, that interests you enough to make you pick up your pen?
I’m no good at inventing events and characters, hence my attraction to ready-mades. So history and memory are central to my writing and fictionalising. As we see in South Africa, the story of the past continues to impinge on the present; it is also the story of the writer who has been shaped by it. In the process of writing, you engage with such slippage between past and present, fact and fiction - your historical raw material is transformed into fiction - and the inherent ambiguity allows you to see characters in different ways; it allows for empathy.
Does writing come easily? Do you have a fixed routine or do your write as and when you have time?
I can think of nothing more difficult, and can’t explain why I take on a task so terrifying and demoralising. Routine is the only way to proceed - making myself sit it out daily until 500 reluctant words emerge. Mostly, they are rubbish, but writing is an act of faith: some of it may lead to something sensible and allay for a while the anxiety of not knowing what my story is about. I often give up in despair but, perversely, after weeks or months return to the project. Imagine my surprise and relief when a first draft has actually been beaten out.
Does anybody in Scotland still give weight to Pringle as a poet? And in South Africa?
Pringle has never had a reputation as a poet in Scotland. For a short while he was known as co-founder and editor of Blackwood’s Magazine, rather than for his poetry. On his return from the Cape, he gained recognition in London for his work in the anti-slavery movement, but was hardly a household name like Wilberforce. Nowadays, in South Africa, critics are divided in their assessment of Pringle’s achievements.
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by Zoë Wicomb
"An extraordinary writer" - Toni Morrison
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