Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer, born (1923) and raised in South Africa, is a novelist and short story writer whose major themes were alienation, racism and exile during South Africa's apartheid era. Her stories concern the devastating effects of apartheid on the lives of South Africans—not only the natives but also the whites. Her prose is unsentimental and restrained yet powerful in the sense that it pushes the writer to see beyond her detachment and sterility in order to have a deeper understanding of her message. At least that's what I thought… Until I read Not for publication. I, a voracious reader of Nadine Gordimer, was disappointed by one of her works for the first time. The story is centered on a young native boy, saved from the streets by a kind white woman who believes in him and his abilities. For this reason she decides to give him the best education possible so that in the future he can become an important political figure (prime minister) and give a voice to his peeps. But even though she has good intentions and blababla, her plan doesn't work because the poor kid decides to escape since he cannot bear the pressure. I am aware that this is a rather simplistic plot summary but it is an accurate representation of how I feel about the story. One of my reproach to NG concerning Not for publication is that she reached and even surpassed the limit in which objectivity is interesting and prone to reflexion. I, personally, could not guess if the author was sympathetic to the motives the whites (aka Graham-Griggs and Aubry) or not, nor if she judged the native boy (aka Praise) as ungrateful and immature or just strongly attached to his prior living environment. I do know that NG usually never gives out her opinion about the characters directly, however she always finds a way to make the reader unconsciously sympathize or not with them through many techniques (such as to make us discover the story through the eyes of one character even if it is a 3rd person narrator e.g Is There somewhere else we can meet?). This story lacked that finesse. Secondly, I did not feel that the story exuded a concern about racism or apartheid, at least not strongly enough. To me, Not for publication was a random, common story that did not fit into what I consider to be NG unique style.