Abstract
<p>South African author William Dicey’s 2016 collection of essays, Mongrel, operates as a literary prism, refracting and clarifying literary and sociological elements of life. The book’s six essays grapple with a sprawling range of subjects, including: the elusive distinction between fiction and non-fiction, literary footnotes, the endeavor of writing, the search for truth, the citizen’s search for community, the relevance of ethnicity in post-apartheid society, the perpetuation of socioeconomic disadvantage, the tragedy of criminal justice, and collective moral culpability for climate change. History, economics, and practical ethics underscore the entire collection, and exogenous sources such as Nabokov’s Pale Fire and Coetzee’s Disgrace can lend depth to the works. The essays of Mongrel can be understood as six discrete works, but they can also be understood as a meta-narrative that takes as its object the sociological search for restored community and the literary quest for authenticity. </p>
Highlights
The essay, as a Western literary form, is typically attributed to Michel de Montaigne (1588/1958) and its earliest examples, in English, are associated with Francis Bacon (1597/1985) (Gualtieri, 2008). These early authors paved the way for subsequent, iconic works such as “Common Sense” (Paine, 1776), “A Modest Proposal” (Swift, 1729), “Self-Reliance” (Emerson, 1841/1907), and “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” (Thoreau, 1849)
Baker, and Willeford cannot all be understood in terms of footnotes or the B project, but all of the books can be understood as works, more cognitive than affective, that restored to William Dicey a sense of pleasure in the consumption of fiction
When the old coloured staff try to train them, they tell them to fuck off (p. 81). Dicey realizes his readers might discount the magistrate’s observation as the scorn of another disaffected white South African, like the meaty-handed farmer who observed that coloureds grant one another nothing, so he points out that, perhaps unexpectedly, the former magistrate had been a victim of apartheid, not its beneficiary
Summary
The essay, as a Western literary form, is typically attributed to Michel de Montaigne (1588/1958) and its earliest examples, in English, are associated with Francis Bacon (1597/1985) (Gualtieri, 2008). Examining a variety of subjects that span apartheid, climate change, homicide trials, as well as the contested boundaries between fact and fiction, Dicey’s book makes for a challenging and provocative read; the essays in Mongrel, are even more compelling when they are read in the light of external, exogenous sources. This approach was adopted when conducting the current analysis. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the cross-cutting themes in the essays, and identifies some of the implications of Dicey’s work
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