The Pickup

Check out maps from The Pickup!

I am posting this announcement from the Collection of Maps and Geospatial Information on their current exhibition.

Nadine Gordimer's novel moves through three distinct worlds. As presented in the staccato stream of the characters' consciousness these are sometimes destinations of hope, just as often, worlds rejected. All three worlds are strangely non-specific, each one stripped in varying degrees of the national characteristics we use to define places in the real world. Gordimer doesn't want her geography freighted with our preconceptions, and so constructs a geographic backdrop against which her characters, at turns rootless and yearning for roots, can play out their story. In doing so she leaves us with a difficult challenge: what maps can we display to enhance our understanding of the novel without adding more specificity than the author intended?

We begin in South Africa -- never named in the novel, but some offhand touches of description allow us to identify it. South Africa as nation is almost incidental. Its geography, although unique, is not defining; its bureaucracy could be any bureaucracy.  The city, where Julie Summers and Abdu meet, could be any urban agglomeration in the developed world. Its streets could be any streets. We have enough to identify Johannesburg, although our initial identification is from an off-hand allusion to Soweto, Johannesburg's most well-known neighborhood. The rest is purposefully generic: "The Suburbs," or "The Northern Suburbs."

We've chosen maps that help American readers, perhaps unfamiliar with South Africa, orient themselves. Post-apartheid South Africa is only glimpsed in the novel, but we have displayed maps that provide some background for the history and the broad social forces at work in the city and the country. This world, once a hopeful destination for Abdu, rejects him. At the same time Julie discards it "rejects" is too strong a term. Both on different terms "go to another country."

That other country, even more anonymous and unspecified than South Africa, is Abdu/Ibrahim's homeland. Never named, the novel presents the country as little more than a cultural milieu and a physical geography. We see with compelling clarity the Islamic world and the Islamic family challenged by the twentieth century. We also experience the desert at the end of the village as a defining, transforming space. This space is one that Ibrahim has rejected, along with much of his culture, long before, in order to "go to another country," but it is this space which seduces Julie until she embraces it completely.

Ibrahim's homeland is not meant to be identified. Five different reviewers have confidently asserted five different countries, a testament to Gordimer's skill at presenting an Islamic country that is at once generic and convincing. We've decided to pretend that the country is Morocco. The "tomb of Sidi Yusuf" around which the place grew, according to Ibrahim, brings to mind the real tomb in Marrakesh and the environment of the Maghreb, where pilgrimages are made to tombs of Sufi holy men. Marrakesh, quite a large city, couldn?t be Ibrahim?s village, so we postulate a place like Erfoud, east of Marrakesh and on the edge of the Sahara. We have chosen maps to illustrate the many kinds of cartography that can represent a place like that, without insisting too strongly on the place itself.

The third world is the world of Ibrahim?s aspiration. Australia, Canada, Sweden, places where many like him hope to immigrate. We've used Geographic Information System (GIS) software to produce thematic maps of Detroit and Chicago -- the final(?) stops on Ibrahim's itinerary of escape.

We hope you find the maps interesting and useful adjuncts to enjoying The Pickup. Perhaps they will help you understand the state of mind which compels many, either in imagination or in reality, to "go to another country."

Picking up Cornell

As a partial answer to the most asked question of the summer, we are reading this particular book because so many of the concerns described in it continue to resonate in our daily news headlines. Globalization, immigration, and economic and social inequality are not merely topical issues; they are among the world’s largest unresolved problems.

Cornell is striving to be a part of their solutions.

Last month President Skorton testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology about Cornell’s efforts to increase its global presence.  He told them: “any cooperation across borders can play an important role in promoting cross-cultural understanding, and that real and substantial benefits accrue to the U.S. and to the process of innovation -- the driver of our global economic competitiveness."

Cornell has a long history of "internationalization."  Thousands of international students study in Ithaca every year. Review the International Students & Scholars Office Annual Statistical Reports to see where they come from, and look at Cornell Abroad to see where Cornell students are studying around the world. There is also The Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies with its descriptions of numerous interdisciplinary programs, projects, institutes and initiatives. To get a sense of just how much is happening; check out the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development’s list of Related International Resources at Cornell.

Cornell is a transnational university. Cornell is committed to cross-cultural understanding, social engagement, and diversity. Ezra Cornell’s famous words are not just the university’s motto. They are a call to action. He did found an institution where any student could find instruction in any subject. Or read a book on any subject--and this year, this book.

You’ve read it. You're thinking about it. Now do something with that knowledge.

Soundtrack for The Pickup

When Abdu first visits Julie’s place he looks through her pile of CDs and discovers a common interest.

“They found they did share something: an enthusiasm for Salif Keita, Youssou N’Dour and Rhythm & Blues, and listened to her recordings on her system, of which he highly approved.  You like to drive a second-hand car but you have first-class equipment for music.” (p.20)

A few pages later their “pub-crawls’ and club hopping included bars “with ikon posters  BOB MARLEY LIVES   HUGH MASEKELA   BRENDA FASSIE IS BACK  stuck to the walls.”

Popping these names into ITunes and YouTube allows us to create our own Pickup soundtracks.  Listen to Youssou N'Dour's song "Immigres" or his duet with Neneh Cherry, "7 Seconds."  (There is also his live duet with Peter Gabriel singing, "Biko," a song about the famous anti-apartheid activist.)

And check out the two versions of the Salif Keita's "Madan." There's the made in Mali version, and then there this "naughty" version that you probably did not see on MTV or anywhere else:

It's The Pickup as a music video.  Sort of.

For those of you interested in finding out more, you can visit the Music of South Africa and the detailed South African Music web sites.  And here at Cornell we have both a Music Library and an Africana Library to explore.

Gnarled Syntax

You probably have noticed that the language and writing style of The Pickup can make it a challenge to read, at first. The point of view and narrative perspective seem to shift, and the fragmentary sentences and syntax are difficult to follow. Sometimes I have to reread a paragraph or dialogue sequence to figure our who is saying what to whom.  The lack of quotation marks doesn't help. Why did she leave them out?

Nadine Gordimer is an author who experiments with prose techniques and conventional storytelling.  As described in an online guide to her writing, "her robust prose style, [is]composed of dense, powerful imagery, rich vocabularly, gnarled syntax, and sinuous prose rhythms."  In a 1981 interview, she explains her style this way:  "In order to grasp a subject, you need to use all the means at your disposal: the inner narrative, the outer, the reflection on an individual from other people, even the different possibilities of language, the syntax itself, which take hold of different parts of reality."

So don't call the grammar police, the author knows that she is breaking a few of the rules presented by Cornellians, Strunk and White in their classic writing manual, The Elements of Style.  And you won't need the Punctuation Repair Kit in Lynn Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves just yet.  But maybe in your First-Year Writing Seminars.