There. You’ve seen. I’ve seen. The gesture. A woman in a traffic jam among those that are everyday in the city, any city. You won’t remember it, you won’t even know who she is.
This constitutes the second paragraph of the novel. In its entirety. And it is just the first of what will be many intrusions into the fictive construct of the narrative by its narrator. While third-person objective narrators used to intrude into the story with commentary and analysis on a fairly regular basis in the history of the novel, it is a device that essentially dropped out of vogue in the early years of the 20th century. Gordimer proves that, like most such devices, power is gained through the lack of universality.
Needs must. The only way to get into countries that don't want you is as a manual laborer or Mafia.
The Pickup is a romance, but one set against the culture clash of western democratic ideals and Islamic convention and tradition. The author goes deeper into the clash than the mere sophistry of religious differences to explore the ways that economics infiltrates cultures in essentially the same general overarching way, but with significant shifts in the effect of the details. Everything becomes transactional; the religious divide merely creates a patina over which this truth is either glossed or highlighted.
She might have realized by now that her father, as an investment banker in this era of expanding international financial opportunities and the hand-over-fist of black political power at home must have to add such names to the guest lists for a balance of his contacts.
Johannesburg is mentioned only once in the novel, toward the end in a reference contained in a letter written by the female protagonist. The setting in a “global city” is quite important to the novel, but it is significant that it is never directly identified. One completely unfamiliar with South Africa can only hazard to guess through allusive hints such as the one contained here that conflates investment banking, globalization and black power as a metaphorical enrichment of identity. While the author clearly intends for the story to have universality, the specific historical and cultural background associated with the revolutionary changes which took place in Johannesburg beginning in the final years of the 20th century is essential.
We were playing at reality; it was a doll’s house, the cottage; a game, the EL-AY Café.
Ultimately, the clash of cultural differences inevitably becomes a load too heavy to handle. The EL-AY is a café where she goes to be among the multicultural and democratically liberal friends from her life before meeting the Muslim man who changes everything. The very name of the café with its playful commingling of Arabic language and western cultural influence suggests that the game has been afoot the whole while.
