Published in the Sunday Times
In The Maid’s Room
Hagen Engler (Jacana)
I’m most satisfied with my writing when I’m nervous about it. When I’m not sure how it will be received. It might be an experiment with form, topic or style, or just pushing the boat out further than usual. I take solace in the fact that these people did it before me, and better …
Trainspotting adaptation by John Hodge: I read this as a screenplay when it came free with a copy of Loaded magazine in the ’90s. I was stoked that a story so visceral, surreal and uncompromising could be nominated for an Academy award. The swearing, the drugs, the bodily fluids and the raw Scots dialect from Irvine Welsh’s original novel made me realise there are no limits to writing and that dialogue in local dialect can be amazing.
Thirteen Cents by K Sello Duiker: The later Quiet Violence Of Dreams was more literary, and maybe better, but I read this first. This tiny book, with its magic realism, showed me Cape Town in such a fresh way … It became a place of dreams, monsters and people who fly. “I take out my money. Thirteen cents. I must have lost one cent on the mountain.” So powerful.
‘Master Harold’ … And the Boys by Athol Fugard: Another great book that was not a novel. It gave me a broader understanding of what a book is. Of course it also taught me that as a white person, much of whatever I had was built on the exploitation of other people. It’s an intensely human story told in 60 pages. The play opens, “The St George’s Park tearoom on a wet and windy Port Elizabeth afternoon.” I grew up 500m from there, so it couldn’t be closer to home.
House Of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski: Hundreds of pages, parallel and intersecting nightmare stories. Footnotes that grow and take over the main text, drawings, photos, poems, indexes, appendices, scripts … The creepiest, most ominous, disturbing book ever. Taught me to be episodic and unfettered by form and typography. And that if you’re going to write evil, do it properly.
City Of Nine Gates by Zebulon Dread: I bought this from the author himself, hand-to-hand in Melville. I’ve always believed in self-published authors and am one myself. This book of three stories is just so unfiltered. He drops two F-bombs on the copyright page and goes hard from there. Dread was an independent voice who would not be edited or constrained. With dreadlocks, a gown and a pair of underpants, he was living his aesthetic. Confirmed to me that you can write what you like. You will be called to account for it, though, so you must be brave.
Engler’s novel In The Maid’s Room (Jacana, R220) is about “the surfer, stoner culture of PE, but also the slow death of white entitlement”.
Book details
- In the Maid’s Room by Hagen Engler
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EAN: 9781431423767
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- Trainspotting Screenplay by John Hodge, Irvine Welsh
EAN: 9780571203208
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- Thirteen Cents by K Sello Duiker
EAN: 9780821420362
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- ‘Master Harold’ … and the Boys by Athol Fugard
EAN: 9780195708745
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- House Of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski
EAN: 9780375703768
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