Abstract
The farm novel occupies a prominent position in the history of Afrikaans literature. It was one of the first and most significant prose genres to develop in the language. Critics contend that in the first half of the 20th century white Afrikaans speakers voiced their anxieties around industrialisation and urbanisation in and through this genre, and as such it could be considered a cultural product that developed alongside and in conversation with Afrikaner nationalism. Because of the centrality of the farm novel in Afrikaans literature, novels set in the city are usually read as antipoles of the farm novel. Afrikaans city novels often share the ideological substructure of the farm novel, in that cities are depicted as morally suspect and erosive. There are exceptions: Afrikaans novels which, notwithstanding the hegemonic narrative, depict the city and urban life in more nuanced ways. Relative to the farm and city novel, little attention (academic and other) has been paid to the Afrikaans town novel. This reflects international trends, where pastoral literature and urban literature have been thoroughly theorised, but little has been written on literature about in-between spaces such as the town.
In this article I read Ingrid Winterbach’s novels Buller se plan (Buller’s plan) (1999) and Onrus op Steynshoop (Unrest in Steynshoop) (2024) as two instantiations of the Afrikaans town novel. The two novels are set in the same fictional town of Steynshoop. Investigating the (narratological and representational) differences in the Steynshoops of the two novels allows me the opportunity to reflect on how rural South Africa has changed in the quarter century between the two novels, and how these changes are mirrored and negotiated in the genre of the town novel.
The most seminal literary historiographical and theoretical work on the Afrikaans town novel as a subgenre is that of H.P. van Coller. Van Coller (2006:94) argues, inter alia, that the urbanisation of white Afrikaans speakers since the end of the 19th century resulted not only in the farm and city novel, but in four spatially oriented genres: the farm novel, the town novel, the suburban novel and the city novel.
A reason Van Coller (2006:100) gives for the lesser attention paid to the town novel (as compared with the farm and city novel) is that the small South African town was historically established in order to service the needs of the surrounding agricultural community. This resulted in towns often being represented in Afrikaans literature as extensions of the farm. On the other hand, towns are sometimes also represented as a smaller, and slightly less threatening, version of the city. The fictional town is often inhabited by degrading stereotypes of Jewish, Indian and English people, portrayed as corrupt materialists. The town of Afrikaans literature is often, like the city, where innocent rural people are confronted with vices such as alcohol abuse, infidelity, gambling, etc. (Van Coller 2006:100).
As Van Coller points out, there are, however, also meaningful differences between the Afrikaans farm, town, suburban and city novel, which means that they cannot be read as merely subtypes of the farm novel. While these genres to a large extent share an ideological orientation, it manifests in specific ways in the town novel – ways which warrant more extensive formal and historical research.
In writing on the history of the Afrikaans farm novel, a distinction is made between a first wave of “normative farm novels” published in the 1920s and 1930s, which for the most part implicitly or explicitly support Afrikaner ideals (Prinsloo 2006:36), and a second wave of “contestatory farm novels” – the first of which was Etienne Leroux’s 1962 Sewe dae by die Silbersteins (Seven days at the Silbersteins in a later English translation). Second-wave farm novels write back to, satirise and criticise the ideological values and formal attributes of first-wave normative farm novels (37). Contestatory farm novels by writers such as Etienne Leroux, Etienne van Heerden, Eben Venter and Marlene van Niekerk experiment with genre conventions in order to reflect on the continuing significance of soil and land ownership in a changing South Africa. Van Coller contends that there is a similar differentiation to be made between first- and second-wave Afrikaans town novels, with the writers of the second-wave novels taking a critical and metatextual approach to the genre (2006:102). Whereas the first second-wave farm novels were published in the 1960s, the second-wave town novel came into existence only in the 1990s.
Although second-wave town novels are more critical than their first-wave predecessors, some older Afrikaans town novels already subvert the simplistic view of small towns as calm and idyllic. Often, such as in Purper skaduwees (Purple shadows) (1948) by Sophie Roux, this subversion takes the form of a plot centred around an outsider or newcomer (often a young unmarried woman) who unravels the secrets and hidden dramas of a town (Van Coller 2006:102). In the novels of the first wave these secrets and conflicts usually relate to vices such as gossip, infidelity or gambling, and to the concomitant dangers that the town and city are seen as entailing for the Afrikaner. In the second-wave town novel, however, the secrets are such that they bring into question the project of Afrikaner nationalism, and of the place (if any) of white Afrikaans people in contemporary South Africa.
Van Coller (2006:102) cites In die somer van ’36 (In the summer of ’36) (1991) by Klaas Steytler and Die onderskepper, of Die dorp wat op ’n posseël pas (The interceptor, or The town that fits on a postage stamp) (1997) by George Weideman as being prototypical of the second wave. Karolina Ferreira (The elusive moth in a later English translation) (1993) by Lettie Viljoen, Die werfbobbejaan (The yard baboon) (1994) by Alexander Strachan, and Die swye van Mario Salviati (translated as The long silence of Mario Salviati) (2002) by Etienne van Heerden have similar narrative patterns (Van Coller 2006:103).
This plot is not only typical of so-called literary town novels, it can also be found in popular fiction. The typical town novel’s concern with the exposure of secrets mean that many town novels are also crime or detective novels. Roos (2012:178–9) says, in this regard, that stories written by Hendrik Brand in the 1920s and 1930s, the contemporary novels of Deon Meyer that are set in Loxton in the Karoo, and Plaasmoord (Farm murder) (2009) by Karin Brynard are examples of crime fiction that are also town novels.
In the town novel of the second wave the town is, however, not only depicted as a space characterised by crime, conservatism or malice. Van Coller (2006:103) says that the interloper protagonist usually experiences growth during her stay in the town, and often returns to the city at the end of the novel as an initiate who has undergone a process of individuation.
Van Coller’s work on the town novel was influential and inspired a flourish, albeit short-lived, of (especially postgraduate) studies on the Afrikaans town novel – see, for example, Beuke-Muir (2010), Coertzen (2014), Alt-Erasmus (2016) and Ströh (2017). Following on Van Coller’s publications, there was also an uptick in book reviews characterising the titles concerned as town novels – see, for example, Van Zyl (2009) and Roos (2012). The most recent review I could find that makes mention of the town novel genre is Salzwedel’s review (2014:9) of Anchien Troskie’s Vermis op Allesverloren (Missing in Allesverloren) (2014). This despite the fact that more recent novels, such as Smit Motors (2019) by Réney Warrington and Roman (Novel) (2022) by Cas Wepener also possess characteristics typical of the second-wave farm novel. It appears that academic and critical interest in the town novel waned before the phenomenon had been thoroughly theorised and researched.
It is against this background that I investigate whether Buller se plan and Onrus op Steynshoop could be considered town novels, and what the value of such an approach is for an understanding of both novels, and of the town novel as a genre.
Onrus op Steynshoop’s melodramatic title centralises the town where the novel is set, and the reader familiar with Winterbach’s oeuvre might suspect that the title indicates that the text can be read as a satire of traditional town novels. The title also indicates an intertextual conversation with Winterbach’s previous novel set in Steynshoop, Buller se plan. Many reviewers (for example Jansen 2024) point to this intertextuality. They focus mostly on the character of Benna – the protagonist and main focaliser of Onrus op Steynshoop and a background character in Buller se plan (in which he is referred to by the diminutised name Bennie). In this article I depart from this approach by paying particular attention to the town of Steynshoop, and the similarities and differences in its depiction in the two novels. I also compare the novels’ stylistic and narrative elements and try to determine how each can be positioned with regard to the first and second wave of Afrikaans town novels in terms of both form and content.
I come to the conclusion that although Buller se plan is usually considered a second-wave town novel, it also deviates in some respects from the characteristics of this genre. Like the typical second-wave town novel, Buller se plan deals with an urban woman who visits a rural town, where she encounters crime and secrets. As is the case in many other second-wave town novels it can be read as a critique of how first-wave Afrikaans town novels’ seemingly apoliticality serve to naturalise Afrikaner nationalism. Buller se plan differs from other second-wave town novels, however, in that Ester, its protagonist, does not solve the mysteries she encounters. As is typical of Winterbach’s oeuvre, the novel foregrounds precisely the ultimate unsolvability of existential dilemmas and the unreachability of its protagonist’s aims.
Onrus op Steynshoop departs even more from the norms of the second-wave town novel. The focaliser of this novel is not an urban outsider, but rather a lifelong inhabitant of the town in which it is set. I argue that Benna’s nuanced insider perspective results in a representation of Steynshoop that challenges both idealistic and despairing views of the contemporary South African town. Using the parlance of Jennifer Robinson (2005) with regard to hierarchies that characterise certain (usually Western) cities as exemplar and other (often African) cities as failing, Steynshoop could be considered an “ordinary” city – neither a rural idyll nor a spectacular image of neglect and conservatism.
Plot plays a more prominent role in Onrus op Steynshoop than in Buller se plan, but in both novels the emphasis is on the texture of the world depicted rather than on the chain of events of the plot (see Gouws 2008 for a discussion of the primacy of texture in Winterbach’s visual and literary oeuvre). A stylistic attribute of both novels is long lists, the enumeration of diverse and seemingly worthless objects. I bring these lists into conversation with urban theorist Michel de Certeau’s claim that “[s]tories about places are makeshift things. They are composed with the world’s debris” (1988:107). Steynshoop’s stories are made of the goods in shops, items in museums and, in Buller se plan, the scrap items on waste pickers’ trolleys. These lists of objects contribute to the texture of the depicted town and provide the reader with an (often humorous) idea of what knick-knacks, souvenirs and consumer disposables Steynshoop is made of, and how the town changes over time. The biggest change conveyed in these items is the Chinese influence on the 21st-century Steynshoop (as portrayed in the later novel). Conveying real fears about neocolonialism and a desire for more consumer goods, Chinese influence on Steynshoop is, at the same time, comically overblown and ultimately short-lived, again emphasising the “ordinary” experiences of the town’s inhabitants over simplistic political and cultural discourses.
While Buller se plan could, to some extent, be considered a second-wave town novel, and Onrus op Steynshoop engages with the genre but seems to move away from most of its narratological attributes, the emphasis on enumeration and, in Onrus op Steynshoop, on the everyday experiences of the people living in towns (in contrast with the emphasis on urban perspectives in previous iterations of the town novel), distinguishes Winterbach’s take on the genre from those of other authors.
Keywords: genre; place in literature; town novels; H.P. van Coller; Ingrid Winterbach
- This article’s featured image contains the book covers of Buller se plan (Human & Rousseau, 1999) and Onrus op Steynshoop (Human & Rousseau, 2024), as well as elements obtained from Canva.
Lees die volledige artikel in Afrikaans
Ingrid Winterbach se Buller se plan (1999) en Onrus op Steynshoop (2024) as dorpromans