{"id":3881,"date":"2020-06-03T20:02:30","date_gmt":"2020-06-03T19:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/?p=3881"},"modified":"2020-06-18T22:25:40","modified_gmt":"2020-06-18T21:25:40","slug":"the-distance-floats-like-a-bee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/?p=3881","title":{"rendered":"The Distance: Floats like a bee"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Such a strange book, <\/strong>The Distance <\/strong><\/em>by Ivan Vladislavic. It\u2019s about Muhammad Ali, told from the view of a boy growing up around Pretoria in the 1970s. A boy who \u201cfell in love\u201d with him. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nFell in love in the way a boy can; a\nseemingly improbable infatuation with an idea. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also not about Muhammad Ali so much as it is about improbable infatuation, which in itself is can be about channeling one\u2019s focus into a narrow plane to avoid dealing with uncomfortable realities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Transvaal, and parts of Pretoria in the background, were also familiar, as was the facility, which young Joe displays, of inward focus to clear the disturbing clutter of contradictions that characterised apartheid South Africa. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nAli, as Joe prefers to refer to him,\nfor all the bombast and blood and lights of his fights, was abstract\nto a boy in sanctioned South Africa never able to see him, not even\non TV. Information only available from what was in the newspaper,\nwhich he clipped and filed obsessively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\nEven in this way Ali was many, many\ntimes more accessible than Nelson Mandela \u2013 mentioned once in the\nbook – who, through his absence determined by National Party\npropaganda, was an unspoken shadow behind a state whose fear, to\nparaphrase Bright Blue, was huge and angry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThen there is Branko, Joe\u2019s elder\nbrother, who in alternating passages provides his view on Joe\u2019s\nbehaviour. Branko is out there, questing rather than questioning. \nHis view of Joe\u2019s activities contains an elder brother\u2019s\nindulgence, but also an elder brother\u2019s detachment, which widens\ninto adulthood, until Joe and his Ali scrapbooks appear in his\nwell-ordered middle class existence. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nJoe mentions Ali not being quite\nblack, at least not in the way a white Pretoria boy would have been\nfamiliar with blackness, and thus somehow holding a middle ground,\nbeing, as it were, a racial bridge. Ali also spoke out, stood up for\nhis own agency, firmly stating he be addressed as Muhammad\nAli, his Islamic name, rather than his birth name, Cassius Clay. He\nwas famous for blowing his own trumpet, which was frowned upon by the\npatriarchal Afrikaaner culture that infused every aspect of whiteness\nno matter what language you spoke. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hence Joe\u2019s father rooting for more modest George Foreman, with Branko following his lead. Vladislavic doesn\u2019t say so, but supporting Ali, and particularly cutting every mention of him from the newspapers to be glued in a scrapbook, was in a conventional white South African household, a revolutionary act. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThis is something Branko has to make sense of later on. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nHaving the elder brother comment on\nthe younger is a wonderful lever for the author to view his younger\nself, although Vladislavik is too smooth a writer for this, or any\nother device, to seem obvious, which is what makes this book linger\nmuch longer than the recognition of time and place warrant in\nthemselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nIt was a strange read as in there\nwas no reason not to put the novel down at any point, yet the writing\nrolls on and through the next scenario, until you realise you\u2019ve\ngone further along than you expected, having enjoyed the view from\none bend to the next. And then finding a subtler picture underlaid,\nand a lingering unease, unsettling as the feel of glove on the cheek\nduring a mock-punch at the weigh-in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe Distance was published\nin 2019 by Umuzi. Vladislavic has published numerous novels and\nstories, won numerous accolades, including the Windham-Campbell Prize\nfor fiction, and is a Distinguished Professor in the Creative Writing\nDepartment at Wits. <\/em>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Such a strange book, The Distance by Ivan Vladislavic. It\u2019s about Muhammad Ali, told from the view of a boy growing up around Pretoria in the 1970s. A boy who … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3882,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[998],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3881"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3881"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3885,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3881\/revisions\/3885"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecritter.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}