I Speak of Africa by William Plomer (1927)

This was Plomer's second book, coming after the critically applauded excoriation of South African society Turbott Wolfe. Both are now very much eclipsed in popular terms; this one was arguably never really in the spotlight. This fate is not deserved, though I think I can put forward a theory as to why the quiescence may have occurred. His later books appear to be a lot 'softer' in their approach, quite a bit more middling. I say that having only dipped into them; this is a prognostic which I will gladly revise on fuller reading, and equally am interested to see how it happened if it did. There are included in this book 'three short novels', 'seven short stories' and 'two plays for puppets'. What binds them together is fierceness - an intensely realised dislike of limited, racist, domineering, white South Africa. The three novellas, Portraits in the Nude, Ula Masondo and Black Peril, as well as the first of the 'short' stories (actually longer and more involved than Black Peril, so no idea why it is so denominated) called Saturday, Sunday, Monday, all deal at sour length with limitation-blighted white or black lives, or poisonous relations between the races. The whites are usually locked into defensive patterns of prejudice and the blacks usually provide them with reality checks, which must have been quite liberating / shocking in those days. White women often use rape-allegations as a weapon against black men who don't oblige them in whatever way, or whom they want to be rid of. Whether Plomer had personal experience of this method being used during his time growing up there, or had his own prejudgments, is another issue to be grappled with. Portraits in the Nude also has a place in the history of modern gothic I think, with its tale of a white farmer whose mind has gradually curdled into religious fanaticism, around whom his whole family have built a frightened and yet protective barrier. His strange outbursts at times of tension, and peculiar behaviours and beliefs (taking all his clothes off and running the gamut of the town after church) are redolent of TF Powys' mad obsessed figures, and of the later monomaniacs of Flannery O'Connor. The short stories and playlets bring the same subject matter of stymied people into very bright focus, where all hinges on a single situation, or conversation. A couple of them are sketchlike slices of life, and attempt a slightly lighter tone, but there is no escaping Plomer's frustration and bitterness with what he clearly regards as a shower of foolishness and race-hate. The anger accords this its backbone - I hope I'm wrong about what seems to be his later diminution.