Nadine Gordimer Interview (page: 2 / 8) Nobel Prize in Literature	Print Interview

You mentioned that people in America, England and other countries were able to read your books, even when they were banned in your own country. Are you conscious of writing for a particular audience?

Nadine Gordimer: No, no. I write for anybody who reads me.

Do readers ever tell you about things that they've found in your books? Does that ever influence your writing?

Nadine Gordimer: No. They tell me sometimes, but it doesn't influence my writing.

Do you think a writer has a responsibility to push cultural limits, in a given country, or in a given era?

Nadine Gordimer: I'm looking more from the point of view of justice in the country, rather than the cultural side, but I suppose it all comes into it.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Albert Camus, who is one of the great writers that did mean a tremendous amount to me and still do -- unfortunately dead as you know -- he said, and this is engraved somewhere in me, "The day that I am no more than a writer, I shall no longer write." Because you can't just live in an ivory tower. This doesn't mean to say that you write propaganda. That's a task for people directly in politics. And indeed, for a writer to begin to be a propagandist is the death of the talent that that writer has. But you are not only a writer, you are also a human being living among your fellow human beings in your society, in your country. You're enclosed by the laws of that country. You're enclosed by the morals and attitudes of the people around you. You have to be in relation to that as well, take your responsibility of being a human being in a human society.

[ Key to Success ] Integrity

You were born into a very particular society. Can you tell us a little about your childhood? Where were you born?

Nadine Gordimer: I was born in a little gold mining town called Springs. There was no spring around, I don't know why it was called that, and I spent my school days there. I grew up there.

Did you have any siblings?

Nadine Gordimer: Yes, I had one sister.

Could you tell us about your parents, Isidore and Nan?

Nadine Gordimer: Well, Nan was my mother and she came from England as a child with her parents. My father came from Latvia, from some tiny little village somewhere. So they came from very different backgrounds and they were very different people.

Were you named after a family member?

Nadine Gordimer: No. My mother went to a dancing exhibition of some friend of hers who was a dancing teacher. There was a little girl there who danced beautifully and who was called Nadine. She was pregnant and she decided that if she had a daughter again -- because my older sister was already there -- she would call her Nadine. So that's how I got my name.

So your father was from Latvia and your mother was from London. Was religion a big part of your childhood?

Nadine Gordimer: No. They were both Jews, but my mother was an agnostic and my sister and I didn't have any education as Jewish children. My father used to go to synagogue on occasion, fasting and days like that, and to honor his parents and the anniversary of their death, but that was all. I went to the Convent of Our Lady of Mercy, a Catholic convent school, and nobody tried to convert me to anything.

Did you find that a difficult experience, going to an all-white all-girls Catholic school?

Nadine Gordimer: Well, Catholic had nothing to do with it. Perhaps if I'd had a Jewish education, it would have meant something to me. The fact that it was all white...

Get the Flash Player to see this video. You must remember that I was born into a society where there was no question of "mixed" pupils at schools. But I early on began to realize how artificial our life was, and indeed to think, "Well, I go to this school..." of course it was all all-girls as well -- and on Saturday, great time, pocket money and after the movies -- no black could go to see a film. And I just as a small child presumed they were not interested and didn't like it, it was not for them. But the most important thing was that I was made, by my mother, a member of the children's library when I was six years old, and became a great reader, and very soon left the children's department and took what I liked from the adults'. And I realized later in my life, this was my education, really, because I became a great reader and I had the library. We were not rich and nobody could have bought enough books to satisfy my desire to read. If I had been a black little girl, I couldn't have used that library. It was closed to black people, a municipal library. So there you are.

Who did you find inspiring as a young person? Was your mother an inspiration to you?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Nadine Gordimer: I don't like this word "inspire." I think you have to find what wakes up what is latent in you. You may admire someone else, but to inspire suggests that you want to emulate them or be like them. You cannot be like anybody else, not even the great writer or the great actress that you happen to admire. I think that, again, I come back to books. My desire to understand life, to explore it, came through literature, through reading. And I always tell aspiring young writers, "Forget about creative writing classes." You can't teach people to write poetry or novels or short stories. You can teach them to be good journalists, that's another thing. But you cannot teach them literature this way. And the only way you can teach yourself is to read, read, read. Not in order to emulate or copy what you read, but to become self-critical, to look then at your own little efforts and think, "My God! Look what this one and that one can do with a word that I haven't even touched yet."

[ Key to Success ] Preparation

Can a young writer without much life experience be a good writer? What makes a good writer?

Nadine Gordimer: It's a combination of life experience, what's happening around you, the kind of society that contains you, and your development in yourself, your emotions, your relations with other people.

Going back to your school years, were you a good student?

Nadine Gordimer: No, not particularly. The teaching wasn't very inspiring.

Do you wish that you had a better education as a young person?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Nadine Gordimer: I wish only one thing, and that is that I had learned an African language. We have 11 languages in South Africa and of course we were taught, as whites, only English and Afrikaans, but not an African language. But I reproach myself now, because why didn't I learn one when I grew up? But by then of course, any excuse. I was concentrating, as a writer must, on the language that he or she is writing in. But I still, that is my great regret that I did not learn an African language, and that I did not see to it that I learned when I was adult.

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