By: Montle 26 year old Moorosi. (No gang affiliations…vigilante justice)
Usually I only pick up newspapers to wipe my ass when I run out of toilet paper, but it was a Sunday and I was visiting my parents, they have 4 ply toilet paper, which feels like wiping your ass with a silk shirt, while newspapers feel like wiping your ass with a lesbian’s moustache.
Newspapers? They’re the tumble weeds of the modern day west, they’re left in the rain to get stuck on our shoes, hobos sleep on them and use them as car washing rags and of course they wipe their asses with them too. I know someone who once wiped their ass with the Time magazine issue with Barack Obama just after he was sworn in as president.” you used the cover?” “It’s the first page, why not?”
“I have lost count of how many people I meet who identify themselves primarily as writers. Most of the time they are journalists, DJs, students, people who have at one point or the other sat down to post a blog, tweet, write down a rhyme…”
I remember reading this and breaking into “gastronomic” laughter, especially at the “write down a rhyme part”, it was slightly personally poignant and which is what made it funny in the first place. Suddenly a Sunday at my parent’s house didn’t seem that bad, but then I carried on reading, and I said to myself “Wow, Percy Zvomuya is one retarded wet back.”
In the latest issue of the white guilt ridden Mail and Guardian, one can find an opinion piece by Percy Zvomuya, a person whom I correctly assume (I’m allowed to do that) is of Shona descent and PROBABLY 75 years old in a wheel chair. "I'll beat an old man up,i'm not afariad"- Zach Galfianakis, The Hangover.
The measly corned meat and baby potatoes of his article is that young writers and editors in South Africa are not well read and need to read more Achebe and more Achebe. His examples are based on his tedious sojourns to poetry readings in Melville and at Real Men Talk. Wow. Let me say, Percy, your research skills are amazing, as the young kids say these days, “you’re a fucking legend”. You’re a grown man who still hangs out at varsities going to WH Auden’s readings and bitching about how the students don’t do their home work. I’m guessing you never actually went to school yourself, but that’s okay, because you know what they say “Bru, you don’t need to study to do journalism”. Percy says things like “gastronomic cliché” (do you mind if I call you Pussy instead of Percy?) funny guy, funny. I can see he used to be a playwright for a junta in a bush somewhere, dreaming of grandiose scenes of your plays being performed by Zakes Mokae. But now you are in the city, with nothing but a heart full of hate, a screen filled with the empty words of a mere critic and of course a mouth full of Chinua Achebe’s dick. Chinua Achebe is awesome, but I don’t think he’d like you very much, you’re quite retroactive, “anti-revolutionary”, “gay”, “what you have in your trousers is rubbish”.
And speaking of gay, which is not a problem but it would be great if you would just come out the closet and save yourself the trouble and heart ache, come on man, you’re a city slicker now, its even hip these days brother. Percy goes about how publishers and editors are to blame for the amount of bad writing by local aspiring writers, and he bases his example on Kopano Matlwa’s Spilt Milk. I haven’t read her book, and I doubt I ever will, but I do know that she’s very easy on the eyes, very easy on the eyes. Percy sat down and interviewed her, and he could do was sit there and think about literature when right in front of him sat a girl who on most normal occasions would probably caught dead with someone that looks like a child soldier, but today she was at the mercy of the journalist, Percy had her in his hands, but then he put her down to the ground gently as he silently called her filthy names. But then again Percy did go to Real Men Talk.
Percy also hates bad grammer, he’s going to love me and my editor. All these commas and full stops make us wet our shorts.
Throughout his article Percy constantly name drops. This dude is so funny, he’s like a 16 year old American tourist partying in Johannesburg “yeah, I fucking partied with Pauly D from Jersey Shore”. But what’s so funny about his name dropping is that he’s always saying that his friends are in the process of publishing books, what I want to know is when can we read your big book of critiques? It’s going to be a great read, I have faith in you man. Were black brother’s man, yeah. Woo fucking hoo! I hate to sound like Steve Hofmeyer or an axe yielding ignoramus baying for foreigner blood, but Percy, this is South Africa, everyone whose dick you suck so much aren’t South African writers.
“At times I feel that the best writing that has come out of Africa is from the older generation- the people born in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, writers such as Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Mongo Beti, Mariam Ba, Ferdinand oyono, Dambudzo Marechera, Charles Mungoshi, Sembene Ousmane…” Nadine Gordimer and JM Coetzee are the other only South African writers Percy mentions. Dude, you’re just mad that Kopano has a book and you don’t, and I can understand that. Take a deep breath, close your eyes and give yourself a hug. What i'm trying to say in Basic English without using terms like “gastronomic” is that the basis of your argument is as good as trying to make love to an elephant with a rat’s penis. How the hell is reading any of these writers going to improve the level of writing? I don’t get it? I really don’t. Did ever occur to you that influence is a relative thing? Did it ever occur to you that there are plenty of black guys who like Joseph Conrad? Achebe must be barn dancing in his grave. I read Heart of darkness it three times. Once for school, twice for fun.
“Are there many young writers working at the moment who are worthy of these forebears? I have to tread carefully now as some of these writers are my friends. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dinaw Mengestu, Hisham Matar, Jose Eduardo Agualusa and Sello k duiker aside, can we think of writers who are worthy of the average readers attention?”
Ha, ha, ha…or shall I say “lol” Percy just won’t stop with the jokes. First of all those writers names sound like they were taken from fusion food restaurant menu, or they could be carpenters, there’re names are so long I couldn’t even bother to copy paste them into Google…I once heard that Sello K Duiker likes to drink so I guess that’s okay. O.k., heres a list of writers who are worthy of the readers attention and they are also ummm my friends, Andy Davis, Rodger Young, Max Barashenkov, Brendon Edmonds, Robert Cockroft and Anneli Botes. (Just joking about Botes, I don’t know that bitch).
“Since men have learnt to shoot without missing the birds have learnt to fly without perching”- Chinua Achebe, so I guess since haters like you will always keep hating the younger one’s will always keep tweeting with our bad grammer, spelling and obscene abbreviations. Whether its our obsessions with Rihanna get her ass beat up or were eating sushi out of a white woman’s anus, nobody really knows why we do these things, and nobody ever will, and that’s the beauty of it. Rock and Roll bitch.
1 comment:
Nice One. I usually hate subject matter in your writing but you're spot on when it comes to this guy. I generally don't read the Sunday Times cos of all the wanking and dick sucking that goes on in that paper. In anycase, I've had a few encounters with African writers that think every-fucken-body should read Chinua Achebe book, fuck - I read Chimamanda and could get passed the first page. A few years ago, in my youth, I was invited to the Caine Prize workshop, which is a group of African Writers that come together to produce a book of short stories. Now, this was torture cos they all sounded like this Pussy guy - and there I was, a South African writer that identifies with one South African writer - Bessie Head. And the rest is stuff like Bukowski, Burroughs, Cohen, Cave, Welsh, etc. Ok, now I'm name dropping just like him but my point is that guys like Pussy need get over themselves and realise that we won't like the same shit just because we're african and shitloads of talent is coming from young writers - not just Kopano. Shot. Add yourself to the list of good writers! You should so email this to him...
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