GQ South Africa — May 2017

MAY 2017 GQ.CO.ZA 45

Who Killed

Piet Barol? by

Richard Mason

(Orion, R340)

made them promise to lay down their
weapons – and then broke his word. It’s
too simplistic to say ‘things were different
in the past’. If you’re one human being
talking to another human being,
persuading them to take a life-changing
decision, in their own language, and
making a commitment to them, what
does it do to your own soul
when you break that
commitment? What is it like
to be someone who can
persuade someone like that,
which is extraordinary in
itself, and then to break it

• what does that do to you?
  And so this character, Piet
  Barol, came to me. He’s
  a risk-taker, he’s actually very
  tender-hearted, but I gave
  him the ability to read people
  well, which sometimes I have.
  But I often don’t use that
  information, whereas I
  thought it would be quite fun
  to have a character who reads
  people and does things with it.

GQ: You’ve tackled topics relevant to
everyday South Africans, and in your
philanthropic work you’ve aimed to help
the poorest citizens. Do the privileged
have a responsibility to help others?
RM: I guess I do, but I’d phrase it more as
being an opportunity. It’s an audacious
thing for a privileged white South African
to try and write black characters. Apartheid
kept us very successfully apart, and I had to
go on a major quest for lived experience
to do that. My feeling is that South Africa
is a great country because individuals can

make a difference, and we cannot just wait

for the government to fi x everything. Yeah,

the government can do a much better job

than it’s doing, but actually the problem is

too vast. The solution to South Africa’s

issues is for each of us to say, ‘ How can

I help someone else?’ It’s not required that

you give away ever y thing you have and sell

your house, but you know,

‘Whose kid do I know who

needs a textbook that they

can’t afford? Do I know

someone who lives in a shack?

Can I waterproof that shack?’

There’s only so long that you

can expect people to live in

a township and not face

some serious and justifi able

anger. So I do think that it’s

a responsibility. But it’s an

opportunity because being

generous drastically enriches

your own life. Watching

someone get an education,

knowing that the things

you’ve done have had an

impact, is an amazing feeling.

GQ: You’ve spoken about ‘getting the

joy back’ in your writing. How do you do

that in a process that’s become work?

RM: Writing, for me, has always been

a private pleasure – I couldn’t not do it. Then

suddenly the thing you love doing becomes

your job. Also suddenly, The New York Times

is going to review the next thing that you’re

going to write. You know that you’re going to

write something, and then someone’s going

to sit down and read it, and write about it for

a national newspaper, and in fact a lot of

people are going to do that. What you start

to do is writing to please other people.

I had quite a lot of personal suffering while

I was writing Us, my second book, and the

Kay Mason Foundation was just taking

off and I’d actually had no idea how

hectic it is to educate 30 kids, and the rand

strengthened a lot after the Iraq War and

we didn’t have enough money. Then my

American publishers wanted me to make

the book I was working on a lot more

commercial, so I pulled apart a complicated

literary novel and turned it into a pot-boiler,

just to make the money, which is a terrible

thing to do to yourself psychologically.

In the end, I didn’t have to publish it,

because my readers gave a lot of money to

the foundation, but I did it, and after that

I was in the position where I didn’t want to

write another sentence. I thought, ‘I’ve lost

who I am. What am I going to do?’ There’s

only so much psychological strain you can

take, and I thought, ‘Should I just stop?’

but I realised that at some point I would

regret it, because I have a career, I have

readers, I’ve worked for that. Instead of

endlessly asking myself if I should become

a lawyer or a waiter, I decided I would write

one more book, but do it entirely my way –

not send it to anybody, not ask anyone’s

opinion, anyone’s permission. I went on a

personal quest for the joy of telling a story.

And that book was The Lighted Rooms.

GQ: If you had one piece of advice for

yourself before you wrote your fi rst

novel, what would it be?

RM: Be patient. I was impatient with life –

I was up for an adventure and I wanted it to

start. I went to the same school as Shelley,

the poet, and I remember that he had a

book of poems on sale in the High Street

while he was still at school, and I was like,

right – game on! When I was young, I felt

that life was going to be ver y shor t, and

that I had to accomplish everything

tomorrow. As you get older you see that

while life is very short in universal, cosmic

terms, actually it’s quite long, and there’s

time to do all these things.

Franschhoek

Literary Festival

Catch Richard Mason and authors

including Jonathan Ancer, Zahira Asmal,

Mike Nichol, Rebecca Davis, Antjie Krog,

Fred Khumalo, Justice Malala, Marianne

Thamm and Zapiro talking about their

writing. From 19-21 May

flf.co.za