SECOND “NATURE” AND AUTOFICTIONAL STRATEGIES IN IVAN VLADISLAVIC’S PORTRAIT WITH KEYS: JOBURG AND WHAT-WHAT

Abstract

In 2006, Ivan Vladislavic published Portrait with Keys. Very soon this text was described as the South African novelist’s “first non fiction work”. In this article, I show that Vladislavic’s text is not a non-fiction work but rather an expert mixture of autobiographical and factual information which can be described as autofictional (Doubrovsky.  1977; Hubier.  2003; Lecarme; & Lecarme-Tabone.  2004; Gasparini.  2008; Burgelin; Grell; & Roche.  2011).  As Lenta (2009) contends, Portrait with Keys is part of a hybrid genre, “an experiment with genre that combines biography, autobiography, historical writing and the essay to explore the everyday life of Johannesburg, the city in which its author lives and works”, influenced by French writers and documenters of the quotidian de Certeau, Pérec, Serres and Lefèbvre. In this odd urban dossier of Johannesburg the writer’s deliberate ‘ramblings’ invite the reader to enter this city, which can be analyzed as the author’s second nature on the one hand, and “nature”’s second nature on the other, as at once a significant South African space and as an individual autobiography which encompasses art and life, in short “the quirky art of living”. The emphasis here will be on the presence/absence of elements of nature and natural environment in contemporary autofictional writing. Keywords: autofiction; Mother nature; second nature; city; Ivan Vladislavic; Portrait with Keys