It was a bittersweet evening, a celebration and a longing. When C. J. (Jonty) Driver passed away last year, he left behind a memoir, which his friend and brother-in-law, J. M. Coetzee, edited and wrote the Foreword to. Nick Mulgrew at uHlanga Press and I at Karavan Press had the privilege of co-publishing Dayspring, and we launched it this week at Clarke’s Bookshop.
Two family friends, Maeder Osler (who features prominently in the book and could speak to the recalled memories) and David Attwell (who knew Jonty and has always admired his work), were in conversation about the memoir and invited questions and comments from the audience, which filled the bookshop to the brim.
I would like to thank everyone involved in bringing this book to life and in launching it! It is a pleasure to be able to share Dayspring with readers. The book includes six of Jonty’s poems selected by J. M. Coetzee, photographs and a deeply moving Afterword by Jonty’s children, Tamlyn, Dax and Dominic Driver.
Dayspring is a recollection of Driver’s South African youth – his childhood as a reverend’s son in Kroonstad and Grahamstown-Makhanda preceding his extraordinary student years at the University of Cape Town, during which he edited the student newspaper Varsity and became enmeshed in radical student politics.
As president of the anti-apartheid National Union of South African Students, Driver was detained by the security police, tortured and imprisoned in solitary confinement in Cape Town. Even after fleeing to England, Driver remained a bête-noire for the apartheid authorities, with ex-president B. J. Vorster keeping personal notes on Driver’s activities.
But all that comes later in his life. Dayspring is a tender and deeply personal book, offering an intimate picture of a family coming to terms with the losses of the Second World War. It is the story of a father and son recognising their differing beliefs, and of a young man navigating the joys and pitfalls of romance. As a direct descendant of the 1820 Settlers, Driver examines the contradictory beliefs and institutions of the South Africa he grew up in – particularly its boarding schools – with unique insight and humour.
Throughout the reader discovers the moments of inspiration, failure and literary exchange that were crucial to the development of Driver’s fiction, celebrated internationally during his lifetime, as well as his poetry, which, even before his death in 2023, has been lauded as one of the most significant bodies of work by a modern South African poet.
In Dayspring, we are witness to the formation of a sensitive, incisive intellect; someone who did not simply engage with the world through literature, but faced up to it, too. This is an extraordinary book.
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