Justin Cartwright

South Africa’s Brave New World: The Beloved Country since Apartheid, by R. W. Johnson After the Party: Corruption and the ANC, by Andrew Feinstein I am writing this in Cape Town on the very day that Jacob Zuma is exonerated of all charges of corruption, racketeering and money-laundering — not by a judge, but by an ANC-appointed acting Director of the National Prosecuting Authority. This man defended his decision by claiming that there had been an abuse of due process when the head of the Scorpions anti-corruption unit was recorded by the National Intelligence Agency talking with ANC high-ups, including Thabo Mbeki, about the timing of Zuma’s prosecution. This abuse of process has apparently made the strong case against Zuma unwinnable.

When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas by Justin Cartwright In 1920, at the age of 38, Franz Kafka wrote a letter to his father, Hermann, accusing him of ruining his life by his dictatorial and insensitive behaviour, which left him lacking in self-belief and unable to escape his father’s dominance. Kafka never sent this letter to his father, but instead showed it to friends. Justin Cartwright imagines the father’s reply. My dear Franz, Your letter to me, which I read with disgust and sorrow, is the product of your oversensitive imagination and your weak constitution, both of which are, alas, faults with which you were born.

The Widows of Eastwick, by John Updike The Witches of Eastwick was published in 1984; it was a retrospective cele- bration of the new sexual liberties and powers available to women in the 1960s. The book aroused interest both by its unexpected boldness of design and by its frankness and it became a successful movie. Three young women, all living in Eastwick, Alexandra Spofford, Jane Smart and Sukie Rougemont, abandoned their husbands and neglected their children in favour of a more louche life with a charming scoundrel called Darryl Van Horne. In his house, the Lennox Mansion, Van Horne dabbled in magic and involved the women in his pot-smoking, hot-tub shenanigans, diabolism and sexual experimentation.

Powers of Persuasion: The Story of British Advertising by Winston Fletcher The impression you get from reading this book, which covers post-war advertising until the present, is of a chaotic, self-serving, occasionally brilliant, but ultimately shallow business. It is full of accounts of crassness, of overstated promise, of meaningless awards, fly-by-night companies, promotion of the semi-talented and clashing egos. It’s quite comprehensive and at times entertaining, as we hear of the hubris of the ridiculous Saatchis, the naivete of politicians and the endless attempts by ad agencies to carve out a little philosophical niche for themselves, be it the derided USP or the idea of account management.

As we now know, the unimaginably awful Third Reich did not spring fully formed from Hitler’s mind. Its antecedents can be traced to the predominantly upper-class and reactionary parties of the late 19th century, to Bismarck’s Slavic preoccupation, to a long history of racial and mythical obsessions with Deutschtum or German-ness, and on into Weimar with its manifold resentments. We also know that the myth of efficiency and single-mindedness was an illusion: the Third Reich was a shambles, both organisationally and ideologically. Much of the policy was made on the hoof, with the SS, the Gauleiters, the Army and the Civil Service in competition for power, and for Hitler’s attention.

Weimar lasted 14 years, the Third Reich only 12. Yet Weimar is always seen as a prelude to the Third Reich, which appears to have been created by Weimar’s failures. Actually, as Eric Weitz argues, the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) was not responsible for the Reich; it was a democratic, socially aware and progressive government, way ahead of many other European governments in its introduction of workers’ rights, public housing, unemployment benefit and suffrage for women. However, Weimar was, from the beginning, the target of the anti-democratic forces of the established Right — as Weitz describes the disparate forces which could be found in the nobility, the army, business, the churches and in the civil service.

It is a commonplace to say that novelists should be judged by their work rather than their private lives or their publicly expressed views. And writers, of course, subscribe enthusiastically to this idea. It is true that it is usually for their books that novelists reserve their most considered and ordered thoughts; but the fact is they arise inescapably from one consciousness, the same one that is occupied in all the other activities which make up a life. In Graham Greene’s case, I don’t think his novels are the key to understanding him. He writes, ‘I am my books,’ but this admirable volume of his letters suggests that for all his success he is not his books.

Recently, Adam Mars Jones accused me in the Observer of being in some ways worse than Hitler, because at least Hitler had an excuse for idolising the German upper classes, namely race science, which I didn’t. I was outraged, and seriously considered suing him. I have since calmed down a little and see now that novels set in the recent past are particularly prone to judgments which are more about the history than the fiction, and sometimes even confuse the author with the fictional voice.  This was the point Allan Massie made so eloquently in these pages a few weeks ago.       Dancing with Eva raises some of these questions.