Customer Reviews

Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black: And Other Stories

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I've read several of Gordimer's works (Jump, July's People, The Conservationist, The Pickup) and have always enjoyed her edgy political commentary and her minimalist style. However, I didn't care for this collection of short stories at all--found them slow, uninteresting, and uninspired. The out-of-place grotesque little item on a tapeworm was just plain bizarre.

Nadine Gordimer is masterful in using flawed people to tell the story of post-apartheid South Africa. Unfortunately, though, this collection of short stories is uneven, with about half missing the Gordimer standard. Best -- the opening story, "Bethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black", and the closing trilogy, "Alternative Endings". The tape worm story (Tape Worm) was weak, nauseating, and didn't merit inclusion in the collection. Dreaming of the Dead was also weakly constructed.

If you read July's People and hope for a series of small punches that you get, as in Gordimer's novels, you'll be disappointed. At the same time, most of these stories offer pleasant reflection about the human dimension of life in South Africa.

Gordimer's new book of short stories is exquisitely written in a magnificently refined stylized format. Her message is sometimes slightly ephemeral, as she writes in snatches of feeling and emotion. Yet, her truly highly developed writing methodology is tantalizingly complex. The stories are varied and interesting in their subject matter. From the life of a tapeworm, to the very autobiographical story about her mental meanderings on an airplane with a problem, she covers a huge variety of life's experiences. She, better than most, understands how life's vicissitudes impose their will upon us, as we work to succeed at our chosen profession and seek success each in our own way.

What is surely interesting is that her message throughout the collection seems to be one of "Allesverloren" from the Afrikaans/German which translates as "All is lost" or as Gordimer herself translates it in the story, "Everything is lost." She seems to be saying that we live our lives and then they come to an end, and in that end, all is really just lost. Life ends and that is that.

While her message seems at times a bit existentially depressing, and interestingly she writes one story about a cockroach that somehow made its way inside the tube of her word processor and appropriately names the story "Gregor" after Kafka's famous piece, "Metamorphosis" her stories are not totally bereft of some hope for the process by which we live them. Yet, she also seems to tell us, that when they come to an end, they end, and thus, in that end, "all is lost." Undoubtedly, this message is a product of her deep dissatisfaction with the state of the nation of South Africa, which was a thriving capitalist society, albeit a government sanctioned apartheid world of discrimination, to the present day denouement that has come to grip the country after the change of control from the White minority, to the Black majority. This condition is expressed very much in her title story, "Beethoven Was One Sixteenth Black." In that story, she conveys that in the old days, all South Africans would try to emphasize the percentage of their blood that was "White," in the present day, all people are now emphasizing the percentage of their blood that is "Black." Her commentary being, `It is the same lie, just the color has changed."

The book is highly recommended for sophisticated adult readers who appreciate fine literary style and vocabulary, combined with deep emotional and psychological messages. As a collection of short stories, it is truly one of the best I have read in a very long time. She certainly put a lot of herself and her efforts into creating this fine piece of literature. It is very certainly worth the read.

We read this book for our book club and all of us were underwhelmed. The stories were interesting enough to keep reading, though, and while none of us had read anything by Gordimer before, loyal fans may find the stories more compelling.

I continue to be amazed that this writer finds so many different ways to write about her society. The usual themes are all here, and yet, for the most part, their treatment is ever fresh. Perhaps not my favorite Gordimer, but I'm grateful that she continues to write.

This thirteen short story anthology focuses on the theme of how people identify themselves; more from a need to belong today than from heritage and family history especially if the backdrop is horrific like the Holocaust; as the past vanishes like an "etchosketch". Each of the fascinating entries will leave the audience pondering what it means to be a third generation living in a "foreign" land that is home in every connotation; even if it is the same land your ancestors occupied. What occurred to one's ancestors in the mother country a few generations ago only matters if the present makes it matter as roots are irrelevant unless today's descendents make it otherwise. All the contributions are well written and adhere to the basic concept. The most mesmerizing is "Alternate Ending" in which Nadine Gordimer tells the same tale from the "First Sense", "Second Sense" and "Third Sense"; perspective is everything. The title track is also terrific as a Londoner goes to Kimberly, South Africa pondering who he is related to as race is irrelevant. This is a thought provoking winner as never forget atrocities may be significant, but the present conditions rule.

Harriet Klausner