Exploring a golden era in journalism
By Joshua Hammer |
June 13, 2010, Sunday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
BEFORE the rise of the Internet, before the elimination of international bureaus at magazines and newspapers, the Africa beat in the 1990s epitomized both the dangers and the romance of the foreign correspondentís life. As dictators fell, tribal animosities exploded and wide areas of the continent dissolved into anarchy, a pack of reporters and photographers shuttled from bush war to coup díetat, documenting the upheaval.
The outpouring of memoirs that resulted offers convincing evidence of the intensity of their experiences. Among the most memorable are Aidan Hartleyís ìZanzibar Chest,? about his days as a Reuters reporter in the Horn of Africa, Sudan, Rwanda and Burundi; Michela Wrongís ìIn the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz,? an account of the collapse of Zaire under the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko; and Keith Richburgís ìOut of America,? which recounted the conflicts and massacres through the eyes of an African-American journalist.
Ed OíLoughlinís first novel, ìNot Untrue and Not Unkind,? is a worthy fictional addition to this company. OíLoughlin, who reported from Africa for The Irish Times and other newspapers during that decade, tells the story of Owen Simmons, a former Johannesburg-based freelancer. The novel begins in a wintry city that seems like Dublin, where Simmons has been marooned for nearly a decade, bound to a desk job after an unspecified calamity that sent him home ìa hero? but left him with psychic and physical scars.
ìNights come early, the low buildings shrink from them, and I remember that most of the city is built on silt, and that out past the sea wall the waves are still hissing,? Simmons tells us, summoning an atmosphere of melancholy and loss. Cartwright, his longtime (and deeply unpopular) editor, has just been found dead in his home. Looking through the manís personal effects, Simmons discovers a dossier Cartwright has compiled on him, filled with his raw copy as well as photographs documenting his days in Africaís war zones.
The discovery prompts Simmons to take his own journey into the past, first to wartime Zaire during the last days of the Rwandan genocide. Almost 1 million Hutu refugees had crossed the border into Goma, where they were dying of cholera by the tens of thousands. ìIt was my first foreign story,? Simmons recalls, ìand none of it looked real ≠ó the light, the volcano, the polythene-green banana trees, fat Warsaw Pact freight planes sinking down from the sky.? Here the untested correspondent confronts mass death for the first time: ìThe bundles lay in two files, one on either side of the road, stretching with occasional gaps for 30 miles. ... They were the hardest things of all to believe in. Mummified by cholera, they didnít even smell.?
Doomed love affair
In Goma, and later in Kinshasa and Kigali, Simmons is introduced to a small group of Western journalists with whom he forms a tight yet complicated bond: a hard-living Scandinavian photographer with a collapsing marriage; an enthusiastic but green Italian photographer who becomes Simmonsí sidekick; a ìpig-ugly? British journalist who takes Simmons under his wing. A confidence-oozing reporter for a prestigious New York daily shows up to compete with Simmons for the affections of the enigmatic Beatrice, ìa diplomat brat? with whom Simmons engages in a doomed love affair.
The pack stays together through wartime adventures that OíLoughlin recreates in understated, haunting prose. In Kinshasa, they witness Mobutuís flight into exile and the seizure of the city by a rebel army.
Despite its eloquence, OíLoughlinís novel can be frustrating. Itís never entirely clear why Beatrice suddenly ends her affair with Simmons ó just after he learns about the death of her former lover in Bosnia.
Still, ìNot Untrue and Not Unkind? stands as an elegy not only for Simmonsí band of colleagues but for a golden era of journalism.
The outpouring of memoirs that resulted offers convincing evidence of the intensity of their experiences. Among the most memorable are Aidan Hartleyís ìZanzibar Chest,? about his days as a Reuters reporter in the Horn of Africa, Sudan, Rwanda and Burundi; Michela Wrongís ìIn the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz,? an account of the collapse of Zaire under the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko; and Keith Richburgís ìOut of America,? which recounted the conflicts and massacres through the eyes of an African-American journalist.
Ed OíLoughlinís first novel, ìNot Untrue and Not Unkind,? is a worthy fictional addition to this company. OíLoughlin, who reported from Africa for The Irish Times and other newspapers during that decade, tells the story of Owen Simmons, a former Johannesburg-based freelancer. The novel begins in a wintry city that seems like Dublin, where Simmons has been marooned for nearly a decade, bound to a desk job after an unspecified calamity that sent him home ìa hero? but left him with psychic and physical scars.
ìNights come early, the low buildings shrink from them, and I remember that most of the city is built on silt, and that out past the sea wall the waves are still hissing,? Simmons tells us, summoning an atmosphere of melancholy and loss. Cartwright, his longtime (and deeply unpopular) editor, has just been found dead in his home. Looking through the manís personal effects, Simmons discovers a dossier Cartwright has compiled on him, filled with his raw copy as well as photographs documenting his days in Africaís war zones.
The discovery prompts Simmons to take his own journey into the past, first to wartime Zaire during the last days of the Rwandan genocide. Almost 1 million Hutu refugees had crossed the border into Goma, where they were dying of cholera by the tens of thousands. ìIt was my first foreign story,? Simmons recalls, ìand none of it looked real ≠ó the light, the volcano, the polythene-green banana trees, fat Warsaw Pact freight planes sinking down from the sky.? Here the untested correspondent confronts mass death for the first time: ìThe bundles lay in two files, one on either side of the road, stretching with occasional gaps for 30 miles. ... They were the hardest things of all to believe in. Mummified by cholera, they didnít even smell.?
Doomed love affair
In Goma, and later in Kinshasa and Kigali, Simmons is introduced to a small group of Western journalists with whom he forms a tight yet complicated bond: a hard-living Scandinavian photographer with a collapsing marriage; an enthusiastic but green Italian photographer who becomes Simmonsí sidekick; a ìpig-ugly? British journalist who takes Simmons under his wing. A confidence-oozing reporter for a prestigious New York daily shows up to compete with Simmons for the affections of the enigmatic Beatrice, ìa diplomat brat? with whom Simmons engages in a doomed love affair.
The pack stays together through wartime adventures that OíLoughlin recreates in understated, haunting prose. In Kinshasa, they witness Mobutuís flight into exile and the seizure of the city by a rebel army.
Despite its eloquence, OíLoughlinís novel can be frustrating. Itís never entirely clear why Beatrice suddenly ends her affair with Simmons ó just after he learns about the death of her former lover in Bosnia.
Still, ìNot Untrue and Not Unkind? stands as an elegy not only for Simmonsí band of colleagues but for a golden era of journalism.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
