The work of nostalgia in Denis Hirson’s I Remember King Kong (The Boxer)

Abstract

This paper examines the work of nostalgia in Denis Hirson’s I Remember King Kong (The Boxer), a poetic memoir of childhood that met with both critical acclaim and remarkable commercial success when it was published in South Africa in 2004. The book provides a telling case study of the multifaceted operation of nostalgia in literature and culture, which is explored in this paper as not only a concern within literature, but also an affect produced in the reading of literature, which may take on ethical, social or political significance as a personal or cultural narrative as well as value as a commodity. Accordingly, the discussion attends both to the literary features of King Kong and to its publication and reception in South Africa. It is argued that the text presents a reflective engagement with memory that foregrounds the fluid and often dissonant relationship between the past and present, individual memory and public history. Yet the reception of this book about white childhood in a predominantly white market, within a society in which white nostalgia is an especially vexed phenomenon, also foregrounds nostalgia’s ambivalent potential for both critique and consolation in the post-apartheid literary and cultural field.

Keywords: Denis Hirson, nostalgia, memory, reader response, reception, whiteness