On painting pictures. With words.

I’m reading stories by Alex LaGuma. He was born in Cape Town in 1925. So I don’t know if he’s still living. Never heard of him before. He’s a good writer. But not my kind of writer. Because he bedecks his stories with lots of physical description. Of people. And the environment. Very detailed. Like a painter, I suppose. Trying to paint a picture. With words. When I write a story, I’m more focused on thoughts. On what’s going on inside my protagonist. Why is he what he is? I like LaGuma’s use of words. Just by the sound. The flow. The flavor. But I sometimes think his words are wasted. They are too flowery. He doesn’t cut to the chase, so to speak. Still, maybe I have a lot to learn from LaGuma. But I don’t want to be like him. I don’t want to borrow his style. Still, I want to appreciate the way he writes. I want to understand him. Know more about him. What makes him tick. And I’d like to know more about the characters in the story I’m reading. ‘A Walk in the Night.’ I get a sense of what they look like. And I get a sense of the environment in which they live. But I think I come up short knowing the characters in depth. LaGuma worked as a clerk, factory hand, bookkeeper and journalist. Involved in South African politics from an early age, he was arrested for treason with 155 others in 1956 and finally acquitted in 1960. During the State of Emergency following the Sharpeville massacre he was detained for five months. LaGuma left South Africa as a refugee in September 1966, and went to live with his family in exile in London. --Jim Broede