Chowing chops at Diemersdal yesterday, watching Mango on final approach to CPT International over the Durbanville hills rolling with wheat, sheep and grapes, I wondered which was the hill writer Pat Hopkins hurled himself off while writing Johnny Golightly Comes Home: a portrait of eccentricity (Penguin, 2009), breaking his ankle. Then I remembered I’d written a review of the book for the Sunday Times, one of many that never appeared.

Desperation hill in Durbanville

To be hailed one of the world’s 100 most influential people, as Johannesburg artist William Kentridge was by Time magazine in May is one thing. But to have the appreciation written by bad boy Lou Reed of Velvet Underground and Walk on the Wild Side fame, is another thing entirely. Let’s hope collaboration on an opera will be the next installment.

A picture may be worth 1000 words but Pat Hopkins has written over 50 000 about Nelspruit artist John Anthony Boerma (trading as the Truman Capote construct Johnny/Holly Golightly, a persona filched from Christopher Isherwood). Or more accurately, has written over 50 000 words about writing a book about Boerma. A bit like Geoff Dyer’s magisterial Out of Sheer Rage (Abacus, 1997) which is more writing about writing about DH Lawrence than contributing anything to the groaning shelves of Lawrenciana. And Dyer’s title may very well have been how Hopkins felt about his subject by the end of the book.

As Reed opined of Kentridge “interior reflections are personal to the artist, who must accept that he is putting the deepest part of his soul and mind in his work and then showing it to the world.” Ditto the writer and in this case, showing it to an external examiner as well, as this volume “was written as part of a dissertation for a master’s in Creative Writing at the University of the Witwatersrand.” Although quite why the author of a whole shelf load of books needs an MA in Creative Writing, is moot.

But having been one myself, one thing externals are keen on is getting the facts right so let’s hope it’s not too late to fix a couple of typos: Boerma’s New York muse “the straight, sallow Frenchman Benjamin Wiel” was surely Mr. Weil; Boerma’s Last Supper place setting would surely sit fashion icon Diana Vreeland between Madonna and Gala Dalí ahead of Diane Friedland (who’s she?) and the artist featured at the Graskop Hotel is still Willem Boshoff, not Boschoff, a case of mistaken identity carried over from Hopkins’ last book 101 Beloved Bars of Southern Africa (Zebra, 2007) written with Chris Marais.

Other recollections, like having arts facilitator Sue Glanville bump into Boerma in Miami (an encounter which caused him to return to SA) must be laid at Boerma’s door as Glanville admits “I’ve never been to Miami.”

But when it comes to exposing his soul, Hopkins does a Full Monty. The most moving writing is at the beginning when Hopkins tells of a fugitive episode with his dad, a leading dagga farmer in KwaZulu-Natal. From describing himself as “a fat baby with grey hair” Hopkins declares his flirtation with workaholism and alcoholism and proceeds to the climax of an attempted suicide, throwing himself off the Durbanville Hills. Probably the one owned by our new Minister of Human Settlements, Tokyo Sexwale. But when he starts to doubt his own sexual identity, you wonder if there is not some kind of Stockholm syndrome at work with author morphing into subject.

As for the subtitle, Boerma is definitely an “ic” but whether “eccentric” or “alcoholic” is less clear after reading this book. But is it Art? Boerma is something of a lowveld Beezy Bailey, provocative and shocking. Calling him a “sphinx without a secret” as Capote dubbed Andy Warhol (both firm fixtures in the Boerma cannon) is to miss the point. Sometimes superficiality can be its own intention. Which makes the cover photograph of the artist clutching the Boerma family jewels – a cross between the camp clichés of Pierre et Giles and the high concept aesthetic Annie Liebovitz applied so successfully to Keith Haring - completely à propos.

Another Hopkins collaborator, Bridget Hilton-Barber [Worst Journeys (Zebra, 2005)], tells the author on page 221 “it was a poncy idea” to write a book about Boerma. A bit late in the piece and a bit like finding out you’ve written your whole Master’s thesis on a false premise. So in the nick of time the candidate stops trying to nail pink jelly to the wall, turns the story so far into a book about a book about Boerma and nails the degree.

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