Once upon a Time

Once Upon A Time (1989) by Nadine Gordimer Once Upon a Time” follows many of the devices and elements of a fairy tale (hence the title, which is use of the ubiquitously in fairy tale) begins with a framing element,in which Nadine Gordimer herself is a character that is asked to write a short story for a children’s book. She does not want to, rejecting the idea because she does not view it as her duty, as the person asking her to write the story says it is, and also because she doesn’t think that an artist of any sort should be forced to create work on demand. This, she thinks, goes against the idea of artistic freedom. The night following her rejection of the story, the character Gordimer is awakened by a noise that she can’t at first identify. After realizing it isn’t a robber or someone else looking to do her harm (it’s only the floorboards, it turns out), she decides to tell herself a story in order to fall back asleep.

Quotes

 * I reply that I don’t write children’s stories; and he writes back that at a recent congress/book fair/seminar a certain novelist said every writer ought to write at least one story for children. I think of sending a postcard saying I don’t accept that I ‘ought’ to write anything.
 * Page 67


 * A creaking of the kind made by the weight carried by one foot after another along a wooden floor. I listened. I felt the apertures of my ears distend with concentration.
 * Page 67


 * I have no burglar bars, no gun under the pillow. But I have the same fears as people who do take these precautions, and my windowpanes are thin as rime, could shatter like a wine glass.
 * Page 67


 * But I learned that I was to be neither threatened nor spared. There was no human weight pressing on the boards, the creaking was a buckling, an epicenter of stress. I was in it.
 * Nadine Gordimer


 * It was not possible to insure the house, the swimming pool or the car against riot damage. There were riots, but these were outside the city, where people of another color were quartered. These people were not allowed into the suburb except as reliable housemaids and gardeners, so there was nothing to fear, the husband told the wife. Yet she was afraid that some day such people might come up the street and tear off the plaque YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED and open the gates and stream in... Nonsense, my dear, said the husband, there are police and soldiers and tear-gas and guns to keep them away.
 * Narrator


 * The man and his wife, talking of the latest armed robbery in the suburb, were distracted by the sight of the little boy's pet cat effortlessly arriving over the seven-foot wall, descending first with a rapid bracing of extended forepaws down on the sheer vertical surface, and then a graceful launch, landing with swishing tail within the property.
 * Narrator