Saved by fools he doesn’t suffer gladly

DISTINGUISHED professor Jared Borowitz does not "do" fools. Neither is he into conspiracy theorists, supernaturalists, card cheats, movie queue-jumpers or religious fundamentalists ¡ª to name just a few of the irritants that savage his rational world.

His creator, debut novelist Steven Boykey Sidley, while agreeing that Borowitz is a scaffold for his opinions, points out that his character is better looking, smarter, more charismatic and a physics boffin.

"But yes, I am grumpy about the same things; people who believe in all sorts of demonstrably untrue rubbish ranging from conspiracy theorists to homeopathy to creationists," Sidley says.

Entanglement (Picador Africa) starts with Borowitz addressing graduating college students and, instead of sticking to his prepared speech, he gives an off-the-cuff one in which he upbraids a world full of fools. He hopes some of the graduands "will be a bulwark against the tide of stupidity in the world".

Sidley¡¯s cue for writing the book is not dissimilar. It grew out of an Eastern Cape holiday dinner at which 20 of his close friends ("we know each other well enough to be insulting") expressed opinions that he regarded as "remarkably stupid".

Sidley uses one of his favourite phrases, "I stripped my moer." He walked out of the dinner and told his wife, journalist Kate Sidley, that he was going to fire all his pals, "and find a better class of friend".

He didn¡¯t, of course. Instead, he wrote a speech that became the catalyst for the plot of his book. Borowitz is its main protagonist ¡ª "handsome in a world-weary, don¡¯t-give-a-s**t sort of way". He¡¯s as fit as a mid-40s guy can hope for, enjoys financial security but doesn¡¯t crave great wealth because he¡¯s not interested in the temptations of discretionary income.

Katherine, his attractive, smart and intuitive partner, is a psychologist from an abused childhood and, as psychologists go, Sidley has got her dead right. Early on, we learn that his mentor, Derek, a giant of logic and of science ¡ª on a level with Stephen Hawking ¡ª is dying in London. As Borowitz readies to fly from his US home to his bedside, he mentions to Katherine that he thinks Derek might well be " vaguely amused at the whole dying thing". To his shock, not only is Derek terrified of dying but he dismisses Borowitz¡¯s irritation with the world, exhorting him to take some hallucinogenic drugs. "Your job on this earth is to have fun," says Derek, leaving a confused Borowitz to fly home to a weekend in the country.

It is there that the main action of the book takes place, shared by four opinionated friends of the Borowitzes.

They are Ryan, a brilliant, young but cocky award-winning author; Tam Tam, Ryan¡¯s South African jazz-playing girlfriend; Clive, a somewhat reclusive scholarly university student; and Barbara, Clive¡¯s too-gorgeous-for-her-own-good girlfriend.

Barbara is the lynchpin of the book¡¯s plot as she becomes the catalyst for the violence that hits their supposedly restorative weekend. The cast includes a brilliantly educated psychopath, who can play piano classics by Bach like a dream; and a mute thug.

Borowitz, the man of logic who doesn¡¯t understand violence, suddenly resorts to it early on in the story while on the London tube ¡ª something totally out of character. This sets in motion the violence that occurs later on. I dare not say more but can divulge that I had a stiff dop or two before the book was over.

Sidley created Borowitz in order, as the extreme rationalist he proclaims himself to be, to have the opportunity " to indulge in my favourite debates about God, faith, sex, violence, arrogance and timidity".

Sidley is a man of quick, light movements interspersed with thoughtful pauses as well as being an attentive listener, scooping up possible future material in the way authors do.

He¡¯s a Hyde Park High School and a Wits University educated Joburger. His father was a scientist and inventor and his American mother fed him a steady diet of authors such as Philip Roth, William Styron and Saul Bellow: " I grew up in a spectacularly intellectual environment where my parents gathered people in the arts, sciences, politics, around our dinner table."

Maybe he picked up his rapid-fire speech there and I check my iPad a couple of times to ensure it¡¯s keeping up with Sidley.

He moved to Los Angeles in 1980, where he lived for 15 years "during the Cambrian period of all sorts of scientific, film and writing creativity, as well as the birth of Apple and Microsoft". He was joined there, for a while, by his close childhood friend, author Rian Malan.

Sidley has had one of the most diverse careers imaginable, including being chief technology officer for a Fortune 500 company, a software developer, an animator, video game designer, private equity investor, technology entrepreneur and a jazz musician ( he plays the saxophone). He was well settled into US life when his father became seriously ill and he flew home. Three weeks before he was due to return, he met his wife Kate, and that was it.

"While I was romping through a number of careers here ¡ª Altech , Anglo American, Internet Solutions ¡ª there was something at the back of my mind telling me that I really should try to write."

Then came the holiday dinner party. Entanglement started life as a film script but a film-maker friend suggested he turn it into a novel.

A few thousand words into it, Sidley sent it to Malan, "who said, ¡®Good God, you have to finish this.¡¯"

Kate did a preliminary edit and "squeezed out most of the egregious crimes in novel writing, but she liked it".

Thus emboldened, and encouraged by writer Kevin Bloom, whose book shout says "a first-time novelist who should have come to the game a lot sooner", he sent it off to Picador.

So, no rejection slips later, Sidley has became an acclaimed author overnight. And, while he¡¯s a chief technology officer for a global company, and is mindful of his need to put bread on the table for his family, writing books is what he wants to do. Writing for him is not about telling a story, as it is in crime fiction, "but a mechanism for the author to offer his opinions about the world".

If the author hasn¡¯t got something interesting to present through his characters, about matters of the world, then Sidley¡¯s not interested.

His next book, due out next year, concerns a good man who reaches the end of his life having always done the right thing and asks himself: "Where are my rewards?" When he realises there are none, "any more than there are punishments for having lived a bad (life) ", he goes off the rails. "And that is a great subject to debate."

Entanglement, about a man who abhors fools but is ultimately saved by them, is an intellectual joy.

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