White Writing

"Since it first appeared in 1988, JM Coetzee's first volume of criticism has emerged as an indispensable reference in the study of South African literature.

In the seven essays comprising the collection, he reads a range of texts, in various genres, which represent the endeavours of white writers to come to terms with the South African landscape and their tenuous place within it.

The seven essays concern a wide range of works written in both English and Afrikaans, including the nineteenth-century travel writing of William Burchell, which compares the landscapes of England and South Africa, always to the latter's detriment, is discussed in relation to subsequent engagements by Thomas Pringle, WEG Louw, WC Scully and Roy Campbell.

In addition to landscape, land ownership and pastoralist ideologies, the studies address the versions of race developed, implicitly or explicitly, in writings by authors as diverse as Pauline Smith, Mikro, Alan Paton and Gertrude Millin.

Tobey became renowned for an energetic, Eastern influenced "white writing" style of abstraction painted originally to express the frenetic pulse of New York City, a style which influenced Jackson Pollock among others.