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Article: Optimistic tragedies. (From South Africa, special issue of TriQuarterly)
- Article from:
- The Nation
- Article date:
- October 24, 1987
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1987 The Nation Company L.P. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Optimistic Tragedies
FROM SOUTH AFRICA: New Writing, Photographs and Art. David Bunn and Jane Taylor, eds., with Reginald Gibbons and Sterling Plumpp. Special issue of TriQuarterly (Spring/Summer 1987). Northwestern University. 496 pp. $13.50.
The flaming sky on the cover is lit by a sun which may be rising or sinking; the ambiguity seems important. That opening conundrum of a South African dusk-dawn permits two views of the present era. It alludes, in the process, to the two prevailing impulses in TriQuarterly's splendid anthology of contemporary South African culture: the corrosive satirizing of a social order destined to decline and the ...