Double Negative Ivan Vladislavic 9781415201329-978-1-4152-0132-9

Double Negative, by Ivan Vladislavic. Random House Struik Umuzi. Cape Town, South Africa 2011. ISBN 9781415201329 / ISBN 978-1-4152-0132-9

Ivan Vladislavic's novel "Double Negative" was first published in 2010 in as the fictional companion to David Goldblatt’s book of Johannesburg photographs titled "TJ". It has been short listed for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize 2011.

Ivan Vladislavić  

Just when I started to learn something, I dropped out of university, although this makes it sound more decisive than it was. I slipped sideways. After two years of English Literature and Classics, not to mention History, Sociology and Political Science, as we used to call it, my head grew heavy and I no longer wanted to be a student. Once my studies were over I would have to go to the army, which I did not have the stomach for either, so I registered for my majors at the beginning of the academic year and stopped going to lectures. When my father found out, he was furious. I was wasting my time and his money. The fact that I was living under his roof again, after a year or two of standing on my own feet, made it worse. How can I explain it now? I wanted to be in the real world, but I wasn't sure how to set about it. My studies had awakened a social conscience in me, on which I was incapable of acting. So 1 wandered around in town, seeing imperfection and injustice at every turn, working myself into a childish temper, and then I went home and criticized my parents and their friends. We sat around the dinner table arguing about wishy-washy liberalism and the wages of domestic workers while Paulina, who had been with my family since before I was born, clattered the dishes away through the serving hatch. After an argument in which my father threatened to cut off my allowance, I drove over to the Norwood Hypermarket, in the Datsun he'd bought me for my eighteenth birthday, to look at the community notice board. Most of the adverts for part-time employment were for students, which suited me. Technically, I was still a student, while having no real studies to pursue made me flexible. I flipped through the handwritten notices with their gap-toothed fringes of telephone numbers. Door-to-door salesmen,  envelope stuffers, waiters. It might be amusing to watch the middle classes fattening themselves for the slaughter. 'Record shop assistant' was appealing: I knew someone who worked Saturday mornings at Hi-Fi Heaven and she always had the latest albums. But it all seemed so bourgeois. I wanted to get my hands dirty. I would have gone picking tomatoes if that had been an option, following the seasonal harvest like some buddy of Jack Kerouac's. The ad that caught my eye looked like a note from a serial killer. Not everyone was a graphic artist in those days, a cut-and-paste job still took a pair of scissors and a pot of glue. I tore a number from a full row. Jaco Els painted lines and arrows in parking lots. This kind of work was usually done with brushes and rollers; Jaco was faster and cheaper with a spray gun and stencils. He got more work than he could handle on his own. First impressions? He was my idea of a snooker player, slim and pointed, and a bit of a dandy. Slightly seedy too. He gave me a powdery handshake while he sized me up, working out an angle. Later I discovered that he had acquired the chalky fingertips in the line of duty. [...]

This is an excerpt from the novel: Double Negative, by Ivan Vladislavic.

Title: Double Negative
Author: Ivan Vladislavic
Genre: Novel
Publisher: Random House Struik
Imprint: Umuzi
Cape Town, South Africa 2011
ISBN 9781415201329 / ISBN 978-1-4152-0132-9
Softcover, 14 x 21 cm, 208 pages