When he died in 1996, Laurens van der Post was a celebrated polymath: war-hero, writer, explorer, mystic, Jungian, behind-the-scenes diplomat, and sage to Mrs Thatcher and Prince Charles. He was a secular saint. After J.D.F. Jones's authorised biography, he will be most famous for one skill: storytelling. His books and stories - of the bushmen of the Kalahari, of his friendship with Jung, of his diplomatic importance - may be inspiring. They are also largely fabricated.
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When he died in 1996, Laurens van der Post was a celebrated polymath: war-hero, writer, explorer, mystic, Jungian, behind-the-scenes diplomat, and sage to Mrs Thatcher and Prince Charles. He was a secular saint. After J.D.F. Jones's authorised biography, he will be most famous for one skill: storytelling. His books and stories - of the bushmen of the Kalahari, of his friendship with Jung, of his diplomatic importance - may be inspiring. They are also largely fabricated.
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Like many I've been entranced and inspired by van der Post's writing. I met him when he gave the key-note presentation for the World Wilderness Congress, Cairns 1981. The audience listened entranced. When he stopped speaking I realised that there was no way I could repeat or summarise his presentation, it was far too evocative and had no linear logic as far as I could remember. So that was the man.
Jones bio is mostly hailed by reviewers, who also reported on its many revelations. Indeed a friend's father had been in the one of the camps van der Post had written of, and he said "it wasn't quite like that", (as depicted in the Night of the New Moon" ), Max Hastings wrote in his family bio that his own father, as a journalist, had stumbled around in the Khalahari and caught up with wild bushmen, at the same time van der Post was on his 'expedition'. So I was prepared for 'revelations'
However as a bio it is quite disappointing. While it does seem it could be said that van der Post became somewhat of a fabulist, exagerating and putting himself at the center of events, nontheless, he did fight with Stirling in the desert, he did play a key role in the survival of the inmates in the Japanese prison camps, and he was assigned to stay on in Indonesia to manage Britain's administration of Indonesia after the war. All these things are achievements of some measure.
Jones somehow got stuck on the errors/exaggerations in van der Posts writing, so that book seems to work through his life and writings, ticking of errors as they are found. It fails to admit almost any accomplishment at all, or to explore the varied life and character of van der Post. And so while we can thank Jones for the list of errors and failings he has done little to go from there to reveal the life and the man.
