In 1932, Samuel Beckett paid a visit to the Paris apartment of Walter Lowenfels, an American poet and member of the Communist Party. Sunk in a corner of the living room, looking like “a forest ranger in a Western,” Beckett listened forbearingly as Lowenfels lurched into passionate speech about the need for anonymity in the arts and the terrible material conditions of society. Increasingly frustrated by the silence of his guest, Lowenfels suddenly exclaimed: “You sit there saying nothing while the world is going to pieces. What do you want? What do you want to do?” To which Beckett offered the languid response: “Walter, all I want to do is sit on my ass and fart and think of Dante.”
Beckett’s remark is flippant and was clearly intended to be. (Flippancy in the face of humorless self-importance being always funny). But it is seriously flippant, by which I mean that it contains an implied challenge to the question posed, as if to say: What of it? What exactly is wrong with wanting to read Dante even as the world is falling to pieces?
When food writing is not done in exclusion, it lives outside the genres of glistening recipes written with over-compensating zeal. It is a solemn, celebratory narrative, a web of scene and place. If the food media can let go of their penchant for either disdain or exoticism, we may be able to create an industry that gets at the heart of what matters about cuisine and culture.
To arrive at language is to amalgamate our various exposures. From the sounds of home, to the hum of our surroundings, the cacophony of our pasts, what we read, who we meet, how we live. Our position in relation to dominant power structures (and the inherent eurocentrism, misogyny and racism of etymology) will likely influence our stance on grammar, what we subscribe to and what we rage against, steering our ear toward style, the vibrations of rhythm, syntactical flourish, structural choice. This is the magic that makes us.
Whenever I see someone in an old movie say “Swell!” or the like, I always wonder what other kinds of things they said when we weren’t listening. There’s no reason to think they weren’t as linguistically fun as we are now.
The heist or caper stories I love best, though, have a germ of justice at their hearts. Usually, the heist team is going up against a nearly invulnerable enemy, a person who can’t be touched. They’ve committed crimes themselves, or at least injustices, and faced zero consequences. If the heist succeeds, the gang will take away something they value. It isn’t societal justice, but it’s sure as hell satisfying.
What Disorientation shows us is that there is power in the page-turner, that literary merit and a unique, propelling story are not mutually exclusive. Of course, those of us who love reading know this already, but books like this show us that it never hurts to be reminded.
Even in this place where "we'd turned against the earth that now turned against us," where the struggle for survival has caused the country to turn its back on what made it a civilization, there is some beauty and mercy left.
Bulawayo doesn’t hold back in speaking truth to power. She writes urgently and courageously, holding up a mirror both to contemporary Zimbabwe and the world at large. Her fearless and innovative chronicling of politically repressive times calls to mind other great storytellers such as Herta Müller, Elif Shafak and Zimbabwean compatriot Yvonne Vera. Glory, with a flicker of hope at its end, is allegory, satire and fairytale rolled into one mighty punch.
The naughty pleasure of this novel is bound up in our fascination with fakes, especially when executed in the cavalier mode of Robin Hood. Perhaps Buenos Aires is more forgiving, but I doubt it.