Fluid book cover: Karavan Press; Robyn Perros, photo: provided
Short.Sharp.Stories is a platform showcasing top and emerging South African fiction writers. The theme of this year’s anthology is Fluid – freedom to be. Fluid, this year’s Short.Sharp.Stories anthology, seeks to engage fictional expression around identity, culture and society.
Joanne Hichens conducts interviews with the respective short story writers.
Mini-interview with Jarred Thompson, author of the short story “What we ride in on”, featured in the 2023 Short.Sharp.Stories anthology, Fluid.
The story was chosen by the judges – Niq Mhlongo, Shubnum Khan and Rešoketšwe Manenzhe - as “Highly commended”.
Jarred Thompson is a literary and cultural studies researcher and educator and works as a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Pretoria. He was the winner of the 2020 Afritondo Prize and has been the recipient of several prestigious scholarships, including the Chris van Wyk Creative Writing Scholarship and an NRF nGAP scholarship. His debut novel, The Institute for creative dying, was published in February 2023 through Picador Africa and Afritondo UK. He writes of his Short.Sharp.Story:
The story was inspired by the N1 highway. I was struck by the sense of being caught up with strangers all trying to stay alive while eking out a living. I wanted to explore the privilege of proximity. How some people have less choice of who they’re sitting next to.
JH: At what moment did you realise that the N1 highway was your “spark”?
JT: It was mid-morning traffic, so rather mild, when it struck me how much goes on beside the highway – hitchhikers, broken-down vehicles, people cutting grass. I was also struck by the debris of accidents, all signs of tragedy, and how eerie it feels to be driving by, all the while knowing that various people may have had their lives ended on the very road you’re using.
JH: Congratulations on a story that is fluid in every sense of the word – the changing perspectives, the different characters, the cultural crossover. What were the challenges of this when writing the story?
JT: I wanted to express the differing textures of space in South Africa, the different backgrounds that brush up against each other in all kinds of spaces. The challenge in this is to do your research into the kinds of concerns, idioms, diction and worldviews different characters might have, while also allowing them the space to be human – which is to say, allowing characters to hold all shapes of ambiguities and irreconcilable attachments to life simultaneously.
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I wanted to express the differing textures of space in South Africa, the different backgrounds that brush up against each other in all kinds of spaces.
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JH: You move from one character’s “head” to another’s – it works beautifully and really flows. Do you feel you have “broken rules” here?
JT: Not really. The “flow” of perspectives is a technique I carried forward from my debut novel, The Institute for creative dying. This way of writing really interests me, although I doubt I’m the first writer to undertake it. My first experiences of multiple perspectives were actually William Faulkner’s As I lay dying and K Sello Duiker’s The quiet violence of dreams. To take on multiple perspectives in a short story is more challenging, I think. You have to pick the most opportune moments to break away to the next character, so that it doesn’t feel artificial or leave your characters’ inner worlds shabbily truncated.
JH: Indeed, there’s a real sense of continuity, but also authenticity, as you move from one character to the next. Do you have experience of these kinds of characters, or were the men working for Suraj Construction a figment of your imagination?
JT: I have experience with handymen/construction workers, yes, but this is not to say that all construction workers are the same. I tried to draw from my experience while transplanting that experience into the lives of people very different to me. I enjoy challenging myself in this way. Writing toward what I don’t know has always been a productive exercise in empathy and vigilance that keeps me interested in storytelling.
JH: Talking of the recent (and acclaimed) publication of your debut novel, The Institute for creative dying, this is speculative fiction. Do you write across genres, and if so, for what reasons? Is this also a “fluidity” reflected in your writing?
JT: I do enjoy writing in as many genres as I can. I’ve written poetry, short and long fiction, drama and nonfiction in the form of analysis, critique and cultural commentary. I do this because each form offers a different space to work in; the space conditions the language and allows one to represent different amalgamations of things, ideas and people. Margaret Atwood describes it in terms of wavelengths. Poetry is a shorter wavelength of thought, and novels are longer wavelengths of thought. I like that way of thinking about it.
It certainly does reflect a fluidity in my artistic work that I’ve drawn attention to before. I think changing forms can open doorways for different ways of thinking and feeling; it also requires a different voice, or the construction of different voices, which all play a role in making one a perceptive writer.
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I do enjoy writing in as many genres as I can.
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JH: What is it about the short story genre that draws you particularly?
JT: Its flexibility. Its density. Its ability to be read in a single sitting. These three tenets allow the short form to grab a reader and not abate until the final full stop. The short form mimics the fragmentation of our daily lives that we consistently thread together (work, home, social media, weekend TV series bingeing, social functions, etc), and I think this is why it’ll endure. Its brevity also allows for the short form to mean beyond its bounds; by this I mean it forces a writer to make every word count, and a reader to draw connections from a handful of strung-together scenes into larger observations. So, it is both the challenge and the potential for innovation and surprise that draw me.
JH: Here’s my regular question in these interviews. In your case, as a lecturer in a department of English, what tip would you offer an aspiring writer?
JT: There’s no replacement for reading and writing. Actively read the things that interest you most. Try to spot the techniques that your favourite writers employ, and experiment with these on the page. Be reconciled to the fact that not everything comes out perfectly, but that experimentation and play are what matter most.
The challenge in South Africa is building a reading culture that spans all official languages in the country. For this, we need more writing workshops and residencies for writers of all levels to engage one another and build community. These do exist, but there could be many more.
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Actively read the things that interest you most. Try to spot the techniques that your favourite writers employ, and experiment with these on the page.
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JH: And lastly, can you give us a personal take on the value of competitions such as these?
The value for me is having pushed myself to meet a deadline and create a short story that I’m proud of. I always feel like I’ve gone through some form of transformation after finishing a story, like something in me has shifted or is able to envision a scene of life differently. I hold onto that nourishing element of writing. Meeting deadlines of competitions is also one way I show up for myself as a writer. Competitions exert a focused pressure that is fruitful for me.