Public Radio - Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer

Nadine Gordimer’s story "Loot" rolls around so smoothly in my mouth. I heard her read it some years ago at Santa Fe’s premier performance space, The Lensic, as part of a Lannan Foundation Reading & Conversation. It will be fun, and tongue-twisting, to read into the station’s half-falling apart microphone “feet slipped and slithered on seaweed and sank in soggy sand, gasping sea-plants gaped at them, no one remarked there were no fish…”

Try reading that aloud. It’s different from seeing the words on the page; these words especially are demanding to be spoken. The whole story is like that. It keeps rushing along, with its litany of lists and commas. And, even though I’m not reading this part on the air, I love the image and the wording of “disintegrated human ribs and metatarsals.” There’s a glorious rhythm to that, even in its appalling imagery. Say it aloud. Watch what your mouth does.