Portrait with Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked by Ivan Vladislavić

Abstract

Ii discussion of the ups and downs of ' the Treuhand administration, but in I general Maron eschews facile vilifi , cation of that instrument of privati 1 zation and takes issue with G?nter I Grass's assertion that a gradual con 1 vergence and then confederation I of the two German states would 1 have served East Germans better; I in terms of her reporting, Maron's , story emphasizes biographical I and personality sketches obtained , through interviews and brief his 1 torical glances backward. I In the German Democratic 1 Republic, Bitterfeld certainly was I "the emblem of a ruined land." j Even if globalization and reces i sion gnaw today at its prosperity, , if spring floods threaten to decant 1 decades of discarded toxins, if I hopes of turning old strip-mining 1 pits into vacation lakes came to I naught and the settlement of new [ industry failed to reverse the pop i ulation decline?nonetheless, the , emergence of "green industry" in 1 the region orients Maron and her I reader toward the future. Many of 1 the Ossis she mentions remain skep i tical of democracy and uncertain 1 about their future, but, like the mas i sive new sculpture atop a nearby [ hill (theBitterfeldArch of the title), I the recent economic changes offer , new perspectives and present us 1 with a (qualified) East German suc i cess story. 1 John K. Cox INorth Dakota StateUniversity Ii Ivan Vladislavic. Portrait with Keys: , The City of Johannesburg Unlocked. ' New York. W.W. Norton. 2009. 203 ! pages. $ 14.95. isbn978-0-393-33540-8 i Sixteen years after the end of apart| heid, the new Johannesburg has I been fictionalized, editorialized, and , re-imagined. And it deserves the ? Paulo, Shanghai, New York, and London wrapped up in one place. It is the center of industry and the center of fashion. It is the fulcrum of the judiciary and thegreat patron city of the arts. There is, in short, a lothappening in Joburg. Ivan Vladislavic's Portrait with Keys is a sensitive, contemplative work that meanders with the allure and glitter of the gold reefs that underlie his cityof origin. The book is comprised of over 138 short chap ters thatdepict everything from the life of cobblers to the slaying of a gorilla in a zoo, from personal mus ings about purposeless street objects to tips about buying a reliable anti theft device for your car. The assem bled passages may be seen as a rich tapestry of South Africa's booming commercial capital. Vladislavic begins the book with nostalgic passages about the caf?s and eateries that he haunted as a child. The work seems like it will become just another elegy fora paradise lost?the kind of paradise that we now know was accessible to the very few, and which is best acknowledged and dismissed. Thankfully, Portrait with Keys is much more complex than that. As Johannesburg evolves with the "Rainbow Nation," the author attempts to change with it.While crime and petty theftwrack the streets, so too do countless new forms of artistic expression and inge nuity. Old ways die hard, but new ones are welcome?and if not wel come, inevitable. The European oaks on Vladislavic's street are trimmed and "savage[d]" by themunicipal ity to "remind them that they're in Africa." Yet he also delights in the planting of indigenous saplings of "melkhout, ash, yellowwood, iron wood, umbrella tree." The book is not an easy read. The restrained, detached voice of 55r" I'" I IS thenarrator and rapid shiftsof tone = in the microchapters can become E soporific. Only the phenomenally E beautiful precision of Vladislavic's E prose saves it. Entire paragraphs E could stand alone as finely craft- E ed stanzas of poetry: "Now you E must go into the veld?don't forget E your walking shoes?slowly, there's E no rush. Crystals of black ash and E charred stalks as brittle as thewing E bones of birds shatter under your E soles. Already assegais of new grass E are thrusting through the scorched E earth, prickling your eyes with E theirpointed green. The black crust E crackles underfoot like remembered...