h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I am currently, working to tidy up the house a bit, going through my father's files in the cabinet in the study. There are many letters that he kept, mainly pertaining to his work as a writer. He has worked hard, and has had many setbacks. I'm coming across many rejection letters for poems and stories he offered for publication, including a lot of criticism that must have been tough to take. The first poems my father offered for publication date from 1963, when he was 18 or 19. Only one or two of them ever got published and he soon became disgusted with the idea of writing poetry. From the late sixties onward he focused more on prose. Again there were many rejections but eventually he managed to publish two volumes of short stories, 'Vir 'n Lewe' (for a Life – the original title I see now in his drafts was 'Vignettes for a Life') and 'Slagboom' (difficult to translate … 'boom' is as in English the bar lowered over the road to stop cars for security reasons, and 'slag' means 'slaughter', but 'slagboom' itself is often used to describe this kind of boom.) After these, he managed to publish a few more short stories in anthologies. In his last years he returned to writing, and tried to get a new collection of short stories published, but failed. He also started composing poetry again. There must be a lot of his work still on his computer; currently it's not working, I'll see if I can get someone to look at it. The problems with his later work is as far as I'm concerned due to the difficulty in this country after the upheavals and so on with getting *anything* in Afrikaans published. But the people writing the letters back had to come up with *something* to explain why they were rejected. But he kept on. He was working on a novel when he died. He gave me permission to complete it … I'm not sure if I could, or when I'd feel ready to face this task.

But anyways. My father had a hard life but has accomplished much. Yet, he always had a strong streak of insecurity and there's a lot of self-deprecation in his letters that I'm reading now. He corresponded with some prominent figures in the pre-1990's Afrikaans literary world. There's also much self-deprecation of a sort in his stories. Now after things he's told me in his final years I understand just how much is autobiographical in his stories. There's also a lot that *isn't* and these things are to be considered completely fictional. There are things I know about my father that I will not tell anyone else. But my father was a good man, a very good man. But a lot of his insecurity did rub off on me, I don't think he himself knew or understand how much I picked up from him and internalized. But: I now understand that one must in this world work for having solid self-respect and not deprecate oneself or one's efforts, because this is a kind of negativity that can rub off and affect one's own loved ones. But my dad did this simply because he, too, internalized many of the negative things that were all around him (not to mention other people here) over the years. My father understood much of this himself, but I do think there were some things he did not understand well enough. I have the fortune to be able to see things from a different perspective.

As a writer of, mostly, short stories, my dad's aim was to capture slices of real life; he worked for the precise word, the finely crafted sentence, the perfectly constructed paragraph. This is something I cannot really do. I have never had a 'real life' that ordinary people could relate to. My writing revolves around ideas; my greatest aim is simply that people should understand what I'm trying to express. I live in a world very very different from the one my father lived in. And yet, we intimately touched each other's lives. In a way I am a continuation of my father and all his work.

Right. I came across something very interesting today: my father saying a few things about himself. Here he speaks of times before my birth and when I was very young that I don't know much about. He submitted this to a publishing house to go with one of his books so I don't think he'd mind my sharing it (translated, of course).

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A LITTLE BIT ABOUT MYSELF

When I was born on the 7th of May 1944 at about nine in the evening, the little town on the East Rand, Benoni, like many others in its region, was experiencing its 14th day of non-stop rain. The day is not something special, nor is the month, nor the year; also not the fact that it was raining, or that my parents at that stage inhabited an old little shop. I had a typical lower-middle class education, the Bible, porridge, beatings and few other things.

Both my parents did not spend more than 8 years on the school benches, that is to say if one can assume that their pride did not prevent them from telling the truth.

I am the third of five children of whom two brothers are older and two sisters younger than I.

I attended three schools: the first was Northmead A.M. Primary School, then follows Brandwag High School (both in Benoni) and in 1958 I, like my brothers before me, went to the High Volkskool [People's School] Heidelberg, Transvaal. There I wrote my first poems to console myself over the girl that I was in love with being richer than us and that I never had the money or clothes for taking her out.

After matric in 1961 I worked at first as a clerc and later as an apprentice draughtsman at the S.A.S. [South African Railways] in Johannesburg until I made acquaintance with Ernst van Heerden's volume of poetry, 'Die Klop' ['The Knock']. There and then I decided to become a poet. It was the start of a long, uphill road.

At the start of 1965, after my military training, I enrolled at Tukkies [The University of Pretoria] for a B.A. degree, and after a few blows and setbacks, of which the death of my father (1965) hit me the worst, I started my short-lived teaching career at Roosevelt High School, Johannesburg, in 1970. At this stage I was blessed with a B.A.-degree, a T.H.O.D. [a higher education diploma] and a wife (Annette néé Claassen).

At the start of 1972 I went back to Tukkies for my Higher Diploma in Library Science after I achieved my Honours Degree in Afrikaans and Dutch at Wits.

At the end of 1974 my mother died after an operation. At this time I had completed my H.D.B. [honours degree in library science] and my blessings were expanded with a son Willie (1972) and a daughter Maryke (1974). My debut work 'Vir 'n Lewe' also appeared at the end of 1974 through Perskor [a publisher].

After 8 years in the library business I returned to my first love, literature, and accepted a job as a lecturer at the University of the North (September 1980).

About my writing I could, or would, not say much. Some stories are given to you as a gift, like 'Derde Verhaal' [Third Tale] from 'Slagboom'; for and with others you must fight like mad. Some you write down just about right at the first sitting; others you walk around with in your head for years before they take shape and most of them you write and re-write several times and then you're still not sure if they're looking like they should. (Just one last thing: I once tried writing while lying in bed, but it wouldn't do. My mind works better when I sit on it.)

What more do you want to know about me? That I, as at this time you probably could realize, am an ordinary person? loving my wife and children, someone who tries to be a good Christian? and só aware of his shortcomings! (Also that of my stories!)

Us writers do not really differ much from other people, except that we want to tell stories or write poems and cannot even really do that much better than the ordinary people we meet. The only difference is maybe that urge that drives us to see it in print, or maybe it is that claim that we can make on a little bit of fame? I don't know. It won't be the same with two different writers/poets/dramatists. BUT, in that we don't really differ from the politician, the pop star, the radio announcer, or the sportsman. That doesn't make us different or unusual.

* * * * * *

What interesting thoughts. Thanks for sharing that, Willem.

I sense a lot of integrity behind those words.

You and your father write in a very similar way

You have much to be thankful for, with the father and mother you were blessed with. May it give you the strength to really make something of your life with all your many talents.

Thanks for sharing your father's own words with us.

Websailor

Yes, thanks Willem, amazing. What an honour to be part of such sharing. That's really a treasured document, a precious gift indeed. And when someone is gone, such words somehow becomes even more intensely valuable, like a fragile whisper, an echo.

My Dad wrote poems, and now he is gone, they seem like that.

Thanks for sharing this with us Willem. This is the sort of important, but very personal writing, that makes h2g2 such a rich and diverse community.

Hi everyone! I'm happy you appreciated this.