Seize the chance to think for yourself

THIS is the last hurrah; gather around the "deathbed" and join me as I ride slowly into the sunset.

I imposed this column on the newspaper. There was no write-up to fill the space and the copy I cobbled together was then paraded as the first book column here.

I have not regretted this one bit. But like all good chapters, this too has come to an end.

I come from the era of Moroka Swallows Big XV, the bell-bottoms, the Valiant and that virago known as the shebeen queen.

This was the time of James Hadley Chase, Mills & Boon and cheap Western paperbacks.

I often lie to the vulnerable suckers and brag that I could read long before I could walk. I could devour a Chase and, movie-like, regale my peers with the magic of its content and plot.

Those were the days!

When the time came to dodge apartheid bullets and hurl stones at the Mellow Yellow - this is what the darned police vehicular monstrosity has always been - I was high on the African Writers Series. There was only one thing to equal the magic of Bessie Head, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Chinua Achebe et al - my mother's steaming hot bean soup.

This is the time around which I was "born" as a man of letters.

I later graduated to thick volumes; the bigger, the better and it helped if the tome had a strange title, like Das Kapital.

Lately, my (scholastic) interest is in the works of those who've won the Nobel Peace Prize in literature, among them Orhan Pamuk, Mario Vargas Llosa and my ultimate favourite literary lunatic, JM Coetzee.

Many of the ideas that carried this column came from books. This has often led me to ask: where do people who don't read get their ideas from? No wonder gossip has been elevated to such a refined art-form.

The youngest of my six-strong brood has started reading to me and this fills me with immense pride. I have books in my house; so many, in fact, that the cockroaches have started contending with them for space on almost every shelf.

Studies show that "first-year students have low-level reading and writing skills" and that worries me a lot. I'd hate for the status quo to remain and that's the sole reason why I want my children - and yours - to keep reading.

I'm told that more than half of South African households do not have books and that the parents do "not buy (any) books, let alone books for recreational reading".

I was chuffed when I heard Simphiwe Dana was performing in Bloemfontein. She didn't just bring the house down with her dazzling performance but she was singing for a cause close to my heart - collecting books.

Those who attended were asked to either buy a book to take home or bring one to be donated to those without. There and then I decided I was going to buy her music.

In my own small way, I was saying through this column that it is kosher to read. If you have read me up to this point, do me a favour, finish a whole book soon.

As for me, I paraphrase Ray Bradbury's wise counsel: "You must stay drunk on reading so reality cannot destroy you."

My story is told.

Goodbye.