Knocking on the Door is a collection of short pieces written between 1923 and 1974 and hitherto unpublished or otherwise inaccessible. The chronological arrangement provides insight into the growth of Paton's moral vision, and the book is less valuable for the "creative" pieces, which are of minor importance in his canon, than for the articles and speeches, which are vital to an understanding of the tensions and contradictions which burden the life of South Africa and which provide much of the power of its best fiction. One piece, "Why I Write" (1974), is of great importance, not only as an expression of Paton's own artistic motives but as an expression of his sensitivity to the Afrikaners, who consider themselves Africans. It is a fact that anthologies or surveys of African literature almost never include works by white South Africans, who are apparently presumed to be European sojourners in a black continent. Paton provides a corrective: "When we talk of 'home' we mean the country in which [we] were born, which commands our affections, and excites our desire to write of what we know and understand." Paton knows that the real South African drama is in the souls of the whites, where fear must contend with love and justice; and a number of these pieces are designed to save that literary subject from those who seek simpler solutions in racial, political or economic theories.
Paton recognizes the conflict in himself between "the desire to write and the desire to do." As a writer he has resembled his Mr. Thomson in the story "The Hero of Currie Road" (1972), who argues that Mau Mau violence is no better than white violence and returns to his typewriter when he is booed by an audience of (black) Africans. As a man of action he spoke in 1968 on behalf of "the right to live under the rule of law"—scarcely a popular position with those who pervert words to justify violence; and his "Memorial to Luthuli" (1972) is an eloquent defense of "knocking on the door"—the act of either the artist or the political leader who demands admission to the hall of justice. (p. 492)
Robert L. Berner, in World Literature Today (copyright 1977 by the University of Oklahoma Press), Vol. 51, No. 3, Summer, 1977.
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