Title: BookBedonnerd: The road to elsewhere
Author: Darryl Earl David
ISBN: 9780796109279
BookBedonnerd is a work of celebration: it celebrates the love of books, the love of literature and the love of language in general. More especially, this book celebrates the life’s work of an extraordinary man, Darryl Earl David. David is a maverick of a man who has pursued his dreams relentlessly against sometimes almost insurmountable odds. For starters, he went against the flow by becoming the only Indian in the country to lecture in his most beloved subject, Afrikaans, at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, at a time when the newly appointed vice chancellor had declared Afrikaans a cancer that should be excised from the fabric of the curriculum with a scalpel.
And then David told his parents in 2003 that he was going to become famous by doing something even more outlandish. David had read about the book town of Hay-on-Wye on the border of Wales, and had decided to start his own version of this phenomenon in South Africa. His parents were incredulous. Quite rightly so, as no one had ever dreamed of such a thing before in this country. But Darryl David is a man of passion. With his imagination ignited by his vision, David forged ahead with a tenuous plan, not assisted by the turmoil the Afrikaans Department was going through.
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David’s book documents the successes and failures – many of them – of his quest to make a mark on the world of literature.
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David’s love of travelling took him into the heart of the Karoo, an area he loved because of its connection with some of South Africa’s most lauded writers and playwrights, and he decided that this would be the best place to start his first book town. Unfortunately, the racism of the past hadn’t simply dissolved when the 1994 democratic elections took place. It had just gone into hiding. And Darryl David found himself the victim of racism when all the offers he made on houses in small Karoo towns via email were “sold” the minute a well-known estate agent laid eyes on him. Undeterred, Darryl continued until he discovered a town whose property was being sold through another estate agent. This time, he was luckier. He put in an offer on a house which he fell in love with while driving through Richmond. As fate would have it, he met a kindred soul in the same town, who said the proverbial words, “That’s a whale of an idea,” to David’s proposal to turn Richmond into a book town, and the rest is history. Peter Baker, known as the mad Canadian vet to all who knew him, shared David’s dream. Every hero on a quest needs a mentor, someone to believe in their dream and to share the vision. Peter Baker was the one to help David’s dream come true.
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Unfortunately, racism from all sides has beset David’s journey.
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David’s book documents the successes and failures – many of them – of his quest to make a mark on the world of literature. There is no doubt he has done so, with the successful Book Town Richmond, the Schreiner Festival in Cradock, the Midlands Literary Festival in Howick, the JM Coetzee Festival in Richmond, the Breyten Breytenbach Book Festival in Montagu, a celebration of Athol Fugard for his 80th birthday in 2013, the Etienne van Heerden Veldsoirées, the Adam Small Festival, the only Children’s Book Festival in South Africa in Pietermaritzburg, and so much more. He even managed to have the first ever Soweto Book Festival, which saw him boycotted by younger black writers when they decried the fact that an Indian man was organising a festival in what they regarded as “their neck of the woods”. Unfortunately, racism from all sides has beset David’s journey.
David’s passion for his dream of celebrating books and writers in this country remained undiminished. It was Ashwin Desai who put the idea into David’s head of making Durban a Unesco City of Literature, after David’s dream of making Pietermaritzburg one was stillborn due to the governing party at that time. With the help of Frances Chisholm and Desai, he negotiated the many obstacles which blocked their route. With the honour finally granted to Durban, jealousy and racism raised their ugly heads again, and Darryl David was told that “the city would not tolerate an Indian being head of a Unesco City of Literature in KwaZulu-Natal”. As David says, this is ironic because Durban has a larger Indian population than any other town in South Africa. David was once again robbed of the credit due to him.
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Despite the enormous odds which face all heroes on their journeys, he has continued to believe in his dream of making books and literature part of the South African fabric. Reading this book is a joy. It’s like travelling along with David through the Karoo towns, meeting Patrick Mynhardt, Athol Fugard, Gcina Mhlophe, Thuli Madonsela, Luthando Lucas, Mongane Wally Serote and many more on the journey.
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Darryl David is someone who should be celebrated nationally, in my opinion. Despite the enormous odds which face all heroes on their journeys, he has continued to believe in his dream of making books and literature part of the South African fabric. Reading this book is a joy. It’s like travelling along with David through the Karoo towns, meeting Patrick Mynhardt, Athol Fugard, Gcina Mhlophe, Thuli Madonsela, Luthando Lucas, Mongane Wally Serote and many more on the journey. David writes with an easy fluency, and he is unstintingly honest. You will learn of his betrayals, which are surprisingly many, and you will feel anger on his behalf against SARS and the municipality, who seemed to take joy in tormenting him. David names and shames and speaks truthfully of when matters were out of his hands, as in the political debacle after the Articulate Africa festival. It’s a heartfelt book and a somewhat terrifying insight into the politics of academia, book festivals and municipalities. Through it all, Darryl David has – like the poet William Ernest Henley – remained “bloody, but unbowed”. For documenting the literary landscape, this book, which has glossy photographs of the highlights of the journey, is a must-have. I loved every word.
Interview with Darryl David
1. Darryl, this book is a literary travelogue and memoir rolled into one. What was your aim in writing it? Was it to document the journey for your family or for posterity?
It was mainly to document for posterity and to set the record straight. Because I have been airbrushed from history and have had people claim they started certain festivals and pioneered certain major milestones in the literary life of South Africa, I felt I needed to put my side down on paper, otherwise I would be written out of history.
2. You have faced enormous racism in your life, even post 1994. Apart from the discrimination you suffered for speaking and lecturing in Afrikaans at UKZN about a decade ago, the most heart-breaking story for me was when you’d effectively bought the Olive Schreiner house in Hanover over email, but the seller changed their mind the minute they saw you were Indian. It really horrified me, as this was post 1994! Have you made peace with these slights, or do they still rankle you? And do you find that the attitudes in the Karoo have changed finally?
I suppose I’ve made peace with most of these slights – but they do resurface; I hear how companies and people change the truth when they now speak of me. However, the house is not what rankles me. What rankles me is how the City of Durban told me to step down as director of their Unesco City of Literature because they wanted a black director. I had very few problems of racism in the Karoo. The biggest problems were in Durban and Soweto. And to use that famous Clint Eastwood movie title, certain things are unforgiven!
3. Please explain to the readers your relationship with Seeff Properties and Pam Golding. (I think they should be named and shamed!) I was really moved by your account of Saag Visagie and his approach to you. There are some good people in this world.
Well, for years in my quest to buy property in the Karoo, I was thwarted by Pam Golding agents. It took a wonderful man, Saag Visagie, who at that time sold properties for Seeff, to allow me into the Karoo, and Richmond in particular. That is how Richmond became South Africa’s book town – because of Saag Visagie, who today owns many businesses in Richmond. The other day, I saw that his daughter has graduated as a doctor, and his son with a master’s degree, I believe, and I was so happy that God has showered his blessing on this man who treated me so kindly.
4. You had some angels coming into your life. The biggest one was Peter Baker. Perhaps you can tell the readers a bit about this big Canadian angel?
Well, I don’t want to give too much away, because I want people to buy the book. But Peter Baker was the first person to believe in my mad idea of creating a town full of bookshops in the middle of nowhere. Up until that point, absolutely no one believed in my vision. And unlike other festivals, where people had tried to sideline me and take over festivals I had founded, Peter proved to be a man who is comfortable in his own skin. And a man who would always back me when the chips were down.
5. You have also had some appalling demons. I think the letters S-A-R-S let you know the demons I’m referring to. For some reason, they went against you in a way which begs belief. Why do you think you’ve had such extreme reactions to your dream and to yourself as a person, some reactions which were so very good and some which were so very bad?
I won’t comment on the SARS issue, because I see a request for information from SARS in my mailbox! People say these letters are a hoax. I worry that someone in that organisation has read my book!
I really don’t know why some people despise me. And that word is not an exaggeration. I think it has something to do with the huge projects I have managed to get off the ground. Some people love me for what I have achieved, and others are not too thrilled. There are days I think of giving it all up, just to fit in. I think people might think I am a braggart because of all my Facebook posts. But these are posted only to promote the book festivals. The day I give up the book festivals, I will disappear from all forms of social media. That is why I’ve resisted Instagram. In academia, it does you no good when you feature in newspapers far more regularly than your HOD. I have found that my most peaceful years in academia were when I was HOD. That can’t be a coincidence. My years as English HOD, though, proved anything but peaceful and ended my days at UKZN.
6. I remember your feature about Henry which was published in The Witness. Even when I reread it now, it reduces me to tears. Did you win the feature competition that The Witness ran every year? Was it with the feature about Henry?
Janet, I did win that competition twice. But to my utter amazement, not with my story about Henry. I really felt that was the one story I should have won with. I read the story at Cradock last year, and I cried like it was 2007 all over again. I believe strongly that Henry Mkhize is my guardian angel.
7. You really have the ability to move people to tears with your writing. Your story about Patrick Mynhardt’s performance in Richmond ends with a tear-jerking codicil. Did you realise at the time that you were spending time with a legend of South African theatre? Or did it strike you only in hindsight?
Janet, the day I decided I wanted Patrick Mynhardt to open Book Town Richmond, I knew he was special. I knew he was a legend. He was a larger than life figure, and no one would ever have believed in our mad idea to start a town full of bookshops 1 000 kilometres from civilisation, except Patrick. I loved that man. My family loved that man. It remains one of the highlights of my life to have sat in the same car with Patrick on a 1 000-kilometre journey. And to hear him perform as Oom Schalk Lourens.
8. Can you explain to the readers of LitNet your reason for calling your book festival BookBedonnerd?
In Afrikaans, bedonnerd has pejorative associations. But I used the name to mean “crazy about books”. I feel that there is no greater word for my memoir than BookBedonnerd. Even before this book, people often called me Mr BookBedonnerd. It is an iconic name in literary South Africa.
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In Afrikaans, bedonnerd has pejorative associations. But I used the name to mean “crazy about books”. I feel that there is no greater word for my memoir than BookBedonnerd. Even before this book, people often called me Mr BookBedonnerd.
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9. Please tell the readers about your coup of getting JM Coetzee to support one of your biggest Richmond BookBedonnerd Festivals, and how you filled the programme.
You know, everyone thinks that John Coetzee is this aloof, unfriendly writer, but I found him to be one of the friendliest writers I have ever dealt with. From the word go, he was so supportive of the JM Coetzee Festival in Richmond. Luckily, I knew the literary terrain quite well when it came to JM Coetzee. And to my mind, the English lecturers at Rhodes University were producing some of the finest work on Coetzee. Yes, there was David Attwell, but he was in the UK. At that time, I rated Rhodes as the finest English Department in the country. And so I built the festival around them. But more than just them, around that giant of a biographer, John Kannemeyer, who was working on the biography of JM Coetzee. I owe so much to the Afrikaans academics John Kannemeyer and Wium van Zyl. Once I had Rhodes and John Kannemeyer behind me, I knew it would be a festival that would take South Africa by storm.
10. Lastly, what are your plans for your future for book towns and literary festivals? Do you feel you’ve achieved your dream which started all those years ago?
To a large extent, I think everything has been achieved. A book town. A Unesco City of Literature. No one else in the world has achieved that double. Sadly, it has come at great cost, as the book makes clear. Now a succession plan is uppermost in my mind. The weakness of all book towns is that most of them die or regress once the founder dies or retires. I’m still young, but Peter Baker is about 75! The sense of an ending now hovers over us. We pray that someone will come along and take over the running of the book town. However, because it is not a paid position, there are few takers. Peter is a semi-retired vet. I am a wannabe retired lecturer. We’re the last of the amateurs who keep turning the pages because of our love for the written word and the story book town that is Richmond in the Great Karoo.
Also read:
Mr BookFestivals talks about his autobiography, BookBedonnerd | Etienne van Heerden Veldsoirée 2023
Die Adam Small Boekefees | 23 tot 25 Februarie 2024 in Pniël: ’n onderhoud met Darryl David
Madibaland @ Bookbedonnerd 2023: an interview with Darryl David