BRINGING UP SPUD

Spud is the best-selling work of fiction in South African publishing history and it spawned three movies. We chat to author John van de Ruit ahead of the launch of the sixth and final instalment in the series at the Hilton Arts Festival in August.

- Glynis Horning

Dressed in a faded T-shirt and jeans, drinking an iced latte under the trees at the KwaZulu-Natal Society of the Arts café, John van de Ruit is as charmingly boyish and wildly effervescent at 51 as when I last saw him 16 years ago. His canny publicist had run a competition to see who could read Spud in the most unusual setting. My younger son, all of 14, sealed his lovingly thumbed edition in ziplock bags, and was snapped reading it among the stingrays and turtles in a tank at uShaka Marine World. He thought he had the competition in the bag, too, but was pipped by a boy whose mom stowed a copy in her backpack, no doubt instead of high-energy chocolate bars, and was shot reading it at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. Such is the mad devotion Spud has evoked in boys and their moms since its launch 21 years ago at the Hilton Arts Festival.

Q: What is Spud’s appeal?

A: I think people see themselves in this boy trying to make it in an absurd world where he struggles to fit in. We've all been there. Like Spud, I was from an ordinary, happily dysfunctional middle-class family in Durban North, learning to survive in an exclusive private school like Michaelhouse on a cricket bursary. I had to deal with my folks rattling up in a jalopy on sports days, and whipping out a skottel and plonk while other parents sipped soft drinks from picnic hampers. But many of the upper-class kids there had struggles of their own, whether it was excessive shyness or families who didn’t really care.

However, I think the biggest appeal of the Spud books is their humour. Beyond the odd drunken uncle, there’s very little of it in South African literature, which tends to take itself very seriously, espousing noble causes in a sincere way. There is some great struggle writing, but it becomes almost like a sermon.