It is very nearly time to head home, but before I go, allow me to tell you about a writer that has greatness in him.
Perhaps his greatness will not be evident in one book or even in his eventual literary oeuvre, but it surely is already part of Shaun Johnson’s life. That is, if there is more than a casual relationship between greatness and success.
This year, Johnson has already been awarded the title Best Book in Africa as part of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and, latterly, the M-NET Literary Award for Best English fiction. (The M-NET and Via Afrika Awards took place in Cape Town on June 17).
The culprit: His first novel, The Native Commissioner.
One of the first things evident about the effort is discipline. A genius for dedication shines through the thorough research Johnson found necessary to explore the myths of his past.
Like the one where his dad, a native commissioner by trade, shot himself when Johnson was eight years old. Or the latent fear of South Africans in the 1960s and 70s, the scene for the author’s as yet untitled second novel.
“Now I must get on with book two, among other things to make sure number one wasn’t a fluke,” he says, comfortable enough in self-deprecation for it to seem genuine.
The only real issues at stake with Johnson are time and hope, one feels. If his very genuine appreciation of the awards his book has garnered is an indication, the man has always, consciously or not, fashioned his life to be an author.
Like my grandma used to say: My goeie here, waar kry die man tyd vir alles wat hy doen (My god lord, where does the man find the time for all he does).
So, Shaun Johnson may not overtly speak this truth, so I will: With some luck we may have an author in the making of the class of André met ‘n P Brink or Nadine Gordimer or people of that ilk. Johnson quotes J.M. Coetzee before the narrative begins. He takes a line from Coetzee’s memoir, Boyhood.
If, one suspects, Johnson can marry the “he really makes you think” kind of hypnotic quality of Coetzee’s books that the enfant terrible among our scribes, Rian Malan, found so compelling, with the dreams of others like Herman Charles Bosman, Bob’s your uncle.
And if Bob’s your uncle Shaun Johnson can transcend parochial comparisons to be up with the better of the best. To be a writer of, I say genuine, influence.
So, to test these parameters – as one should if you are dealing with the unbridled success of Johnson’s life, including a successful career as journalist and businessman and marriage to who one should confess a true beauty and a daughter named Luna born on Nelson Mandela’s birthday – we asked the man to recount his memories of the 1960s and 70s.
“Super-wide flared trousers called Oxford Bags. Goophees platform shoes. Going to bioscopes and ‘sessions’. Personal confusion brought about by the developing knowledge that there was something wrong with the country I was growing up in, and the suspicion that there was therefore probably also something wrong with me. A sense of a building storm I didn’t fully understand; fear just below the surface.”
Suddenly he reminds me of Martin Amis. Shaun Athol Johnson.
Following the publication of his first book, a reportage on South Africa called Strange Days Indeed, which shored up his first career, he became quality management material and rose to the position of Deputy Chief Executive of Independent News & Media South Africa. He helped launch the Mandela Rhodes Foundation where he now holds the position of Chief Executive, where he still works by day.
At night, in airplanes and such refines, he writes. Clearly, the ambition in his eyes is to become a full-time author. Thus joining the ranks of those who contribute to society, he says, “by telling stories as honestly and best they can”.
“For me,” he continues, “a well-told story that moves me in some way is more influential than perfect facts and sciences.”
So, to the question of his major influences? “Literally dozens of authors – I read incessantly – and those are just the contemporary ones. Many of them South Africans. Historically, two strong and very different memories of writing that set my mind on fire. Herman Charles Bosman’s in In the Withaak’s Shade, read as a classroom setwork. J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, read when I had just arrived at Oxford. In both cases I suppose I was saying to myself: ‘If fellow South Africans can write like this …!’, and starting to dream.”
“Steady on” with talk of greatness, Johnson protests, because he has “some very hard yards still to put in before I can call myself an established novelist”.
He adds in similar vein: “The thing is, for me anyway, to learn to savour and share it while it lasts, and then move on.”
Thus, here, a line from The Native Commissioner: “We feel immense relief at being together, even though my mother’s dream of the whole family being under one roof is not realized on this night.”
He comments on family: “My family is what holds me together and, because my own childhood was somewhat fractured, it is of overwhelming importance to me that my daughter grows up secure and happy and nurtured.”
Moving on then, I award Shaun Johnson enough time and enough hope to be all he can be as a writer and father. He certainly has a very nice name for a writer.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, really ….
Also, for mischief, his ID Book picture really does not do him justice.
Website: www.shaunjohnson.co.za
