Despite the levity of the introduction, ‘Buttons for Gaia’ is a dark journey through a part of South African culture that few tourists get to see. It’s a horror novel for the new age, steeped in black comedy.

Engler’s work has appeared in many mainstream South African magazines (Mens Health, GQ, FHM, Cosmo, SL, Zigzag, Blunt, Shape), mysterious underground 'zines and short story and popular-culture anthologies (Skyf!, Laugh It Off, Urban) He also writes under the pseudonyms Haai van der Schyff and Inspector Ras.

‘Buttons for Gaia’ is Hagen's fifth book and his second novel. Other titles include ‘Life's A Beach,’ ‘Water Features’, ‘Skyf!’, ‘Greener Grass’ and ‘Magnum Chic’. He lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Hagen, tell me something of your family origins and what you were like as a child?

My dad is German; my mom is a fourth-generation South African. My mom’s side of the family is from Port St Johns in the Eastern Cape. I grew up in Port Elizabeth, also in the Eastern Cape. It’s a fascinating part of the country – where English and Afrikaans, Xhosa and Koi-Koi first met in the early 1800s and therefore a great microcosm of the South African cultural melting pot. I was a mellow lightie. I grew up in the surfing subculture.

What memories do you have of your childhood in the Eastern Cape?

Surfing J-Bay, Seal Point and St Francis Bay. My home surf spot was a place called the Fence, a little beachbreak peak on a desolate beach next to the harbour wall. Port Elizabeth is a rather bleak, working-class, industrial city of about a million people. But with good friends, loving family and mild weather, childhood can be blissful, as mine was.

Who do you consider to be your greatest creative influences?

I’ve played in bands and released albums, so some of my influences are musical. I’m influenced by any artist who has an authentic colloquial voice. The South African musicians James Phillips, Jeremy Taylor, Koos Kombuis and Anton Calitz. The playwright Athol Fugard, who’s also from Port Elizabeth. Among novelists, Irvine Welsh, certainly. Brett Easton Ellis for his fearless, gritty prose. K Sello Duiker. And structurally, a guy called Mark Z Danielewski, who wrote a punk-rock book called The House Of Leaves, which is quite unlike anything else I’ve ever read.

When did your passion for words develop? When did you start writing?

At school, my best subject was creative writing, so I always intended to work in English prose. I studied journalism at Rhodes University. Then I began work as a journalist at a paper in Port Elizabeth. Then I became a columnist, started freelancing for magazines. I got a bit of a following, published a zine, put out a book of bits and pieces in 1997. Did my first novel in 1999. All self-published in a punk-rock, DIY kind of way. It all started with a love of reading, instilled by my mother from when I was about 4 or 5.

Has growing up in a country with a policy of apartheid informed your writing and what you’ve chosen to write about?

To some extent. Some great writing came out of the struggle. Some great poetry too – Mzwake Mbuli, Lesego Rampolokeng, Don Mattera… I read Fugard, Andre Brink, Rian Malan, Nadine Gordimer and others. While I supported it, I was never actively part of the struggle. I think I was at one march in all my time! I like to think I’m part of a post-apartheid writing tradition. My first novel featured white guys trying to find their place the new South Africa, for instance. I am fortunate to live in a democratic South Africa and I’m grateful to those who sacrificed for my freedom. So the struggle informed my writing in that I now have absolute freedom of expression. But I do not write about the struggle. If I write about a white guy and a coloured girl making out behind the coloured nightclub, it’s not political, it’s sexual.

How effective do you think the Arts are as a medium to propagate social change?

They can be madly effective. Seeing Paul Slabolepszy’s ‘Saturday Night At The Palace’ as a lightie certainly opened my eyes to the reality of Apartheid. Same with listening to Juluka, or seeing those very basic struggle flicks like ‘The Stick’ etc. Still, I don’t think social change in South Africa was propagated by the arts. It was thanks to decades of social mobilisation, sacrifice and struggle by the liberation movement.

Can you elaborate on the way art and music have had an effect on your writing?

Like I said, it gave me an appreciation for how the colloquial tone can make the audience identify with the material. If you compare that to an artist who employs a foreign style or accent or form to express themselves – they will be seen as less credible, or just a poor local facsimile. The photographers Obie Oberholzer, Tim Hopwood and Marc Shoul shoot gritty local material with an elevating tone that helps you find joy in your immediate surroundings. Same with an artist like James Phillips, who sang with a South African accent and wrote songs about Toasted Take-aways and other slices of South African life. Koos Kombuis had a legendary album called ‘Ver van die ou Kalahari’, all in Afrikaans and intensely personal, but with a social comment that was so eloquent, you couldn’t help but identify. Geroformeerde Blues Band’s ‘Eet Kreef’ was insurrectionary rock in Afrikaans… All that encouraged me to use the Eastern Cape as a milieu and the PE voice as the voice of my characters.

Tim Hopwood also made a PE documentary film called ‘Fort’ that was equally influential. Full of outsider poets like Grant Bain. These are the words to a song of his, as I remember:

“She was buying a packet of pork rinds, I was buying a packet of Gauloises. I said, “Hey baby! Let me chew the stockings off your legs!”

Yet another song of his is about a black woman hanging herself because she’s having a white man’s baby. It’s sometimes harrowing stuff, but it’s self-expression, with no commercial compromise at all.

Do you believe in the artistic concept of The Muse? What guise would she take in human form?

That would depend on the artist. Some are heavily influenced by muses. Some of my female characters certainly have been influenced by women I’ve known. Songs I wrote with Jedi Rollers were about relationships I had with women. I’ve not found one muse to inspire all my work, though. I’ve actually found I’m a little more productive in the periods between relationships, perhaps because that’s when all the emotions come tumbling out. When you’re in a relationship, things can become nice and cosy and one might be less inclined to sit in a cold room and type, or to spend hours rehearsing in a smoky jam room. That said, I have a gorgeous girlfriend whom I love dearly and wouldn’t mind at all if she became my muse. Still, I get more work done when she’s at her place. If she’s around, we just lie in the lounge reading The Sunday Times.

Tell me about your article ‘Ten Reasons Cape Town Can Fuck Off…’

It first appeared in Skyf! The PE scene ‘zine in 1998. It was an expletive-ridden satirical diatribe against Cape Town, which is the sacred cow of the pretentious South African social scene. Point seven reads:

“(7) Everyone's off their tits from drugs. It's common knowledge that the only people in Cape Town who aren’t alcoholics, smackies, E-freaks, charlie-junkies, goofballs, acid-heads or nexus-fiends are Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Tunisian high commissioner. For this reason, everyone you speak to in Cape Town is mad, either because they’re high, or because they spent the whole of the 90s eating pills and now they’ve had to stop because they weigh 12kg and they can’t even remember what high school they went to any more. Compare that to PE, that haven of temperance, propriety and good clean fun, and you begin to see all too clearly why Cape Town can fuck right off."

A friend of mine asked me to email it to him once and then it seemed to become some kind of forward-mail hit. I was being sent it for years afterwards. It seems to have hit a nerve. I was interviewed on radio shows, TV, the works, after that. Half of it was shocked Capetonians asking me to explain myself and the other half was people sick of the whole Cape Town condescension saying, “Ja. Fuck them!” It was written at a time when a lot of people were moving to Cape Town to make their fortune and ending up as waiters. From the PE perspective it was similar to the syndrome of young South Africans heading over to London and ending up in a squat with eight other South Africans and being a furniture mover. Or ripping gullets out of ducks on a farm somewhere. I was saying the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.

Hagen, how would you describe your latest novel, ‘Buttons for Gaia’? What provided the initial inspiration for the novel and how did you decide upon the intriguing title?

‘Buttons for Gaia’ is a kind of horror novel. In a recent radio interview, I said it was the prose equivalent of death metal music. It’s disturbing, but it’s about passing through the dark side and finding redemption. On another level it’s an analogy about September 11. It was written in the period just after the attacks and I was wondering what kind of retribution the USA was justified in taking following the attacks. An alternative title I had throughout the writing of the novel was ‘Buttons for Gaia or On The Use Of Evil Means to Avenge The Rape Of Goodness’. If something terrible happens to you, should you do something equally terrible to take revenge? Those are the questions I’m grappling with in the novel. In all my writing I’m intrigued by the idea of dichotomies, schizophrenia, etc. I suppose a lot of it comes from being a European African, where you wonder whether you should return to your supposed “roots” in Europe. Of course, the minute you try do that, you realise how African you actually are. White South Africans in England or Germany, say, can feel incredibly alienated. The title is a yin-yang opposition.

Buttons is the street name for mandrax, a headache pill that is crushed into a bottleneck of dagga (weed) and smoked. Gaia is the earth mother goddess. So, it’s the most disgusting drug known to man and the goddess of creation. In the book, the main character finds his way to Gaia on a path that started at the lowest ebb, smoking buttons. Redemption through the dark side. The title is also an ironic statement. A lot of people taking drugs seem to believe they’re reaching some kind of divine state. Wine is a Catholic sacrament, so perhaps the Church believes a similar thing.

Are there any similarities between Wax Wilson, your protagonist, and yourself?

Clearly. He’s a young Cape Town hipster, which is what I fancied myself as when I started the novel. (In one of life’s supreme ironies, shortly after writing ‘10 Reasons Cape Town Can Fuck Off’ I moved to Cape Town – I only lasted 10 months, though. I now live in Jo’burg). I have several friends who’ve worked or do work in the Cape Town movie industry, so he’s a composite character of myself and three or four of my mates.

What did you enjoy most about researching and writing ‘Buttons for Gaia’?

The problem-solving process of deciding what to do with the characters. It’s a lot like one of those PlayStation adventure games. You get your characters into a situation and then you have to get them out. They need to find a resolution in a way that makes sense and is true to their personalities. For me, the storytelling process really begins with the characters. If you really understand your characters, then you know what they are capable of, and thus, where your story can go. In some ways, your characters guide you. It’s a rather complex mind game, and great fun. It gets more and more complicated the further you get, but then also more fulfilling every time to resolve a problem.

What was the greatest difficulty you faced writing the book?

Resolving some of those logistical issues. At one stage, Wax, Louise and Alexandra are kidnapped by the Satanists. I had to find a way for them to get out of that situation. How would a skinny goofball and two girls overcome a couple of massive, possessed satanic lunatics? Then I realised Louise was a Wiccan priestess and I decided to go down a more metaphysical route. A kind of spiritual showdown. And that was a way for even the evil character to find redemption.

Without giving too much away, a number of scenes in ‘Buttons for Gaia’ revolve around the porn industry. What are your views on porn?

Well, there it is, really. It’s part of life. Camille Paglia says the roots of porn go back to the nudes of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, that it’s a primal celebration of fertility. Porn can be completely consensual and the whole industry can work in a way that does no one any harm. I’ve certainly used a lot of it in my time. But a point I wanted to make in the novel is that a lot of porn is exploitative and perhaps some porn that looks consensual, might not be. It’s not the most wholesome industry. But then the normal movie industry’s not wholesome either. Just because you don’t depict erect penises doesn’t mean your industry isn’t exploitive. Real sex involves erect penises and that can be the most loving thing in the world.

Ideally, what would you like your readers to get out of reading ‘Buttons for Gaia’?

A harrowing, exhilarating read. A couple of laughs. A bit of horniness in parts. A thoughtful ponder on the nature of the soul, perhaps. A bonus short story in the middle bit. And closure, of sorts.

Are you happy with the reviews and public response you've received so far?

Ja. As I expected, most reviewers have been a little startled at the novel’s more hardcore bits. It’s certainly heavier than some of my earlier stuff. But everyone who’s reviewed it has seemed quite impressed with it. I don’t think my mom’s managed to get through it yet, though.

Where has the novel been distributed and how can we get hold of a copy?

Order a copy through www.hagenshouse.co.za. We’re going to the London Book Fair in March to see who’s interested there.

What is the definition of 'punk publishing'? Tell me about Pocket Assegaai Publications and why you decided to take the 'punk publishing' route.

That’s almost a term I came with myself. But I guess it’s just doing it yourself. Not sending your manuscript off to dozens of publishers hoping for approval from someone. In the punk publishing way, you write the book, edit it yourself, typeset it, print it, distribute it, plan a media strategy and sell it. Out of your car boot, a lot of the time. I started off in PE, where I had a bit of a following. And it’s a tiny town, so there’s no need for a publisher when you can phone express Litho yourself, print it and then go drop some books off at the two bookshops in town. And if you have a smallish market, as I have, you can sell books through your website and people who really want one will be able to get hold of you. A lot of it is also word of mouth. You need to spend some money on hiring a publicist and give away the first couple of dozen books for review and to influential people, so the word gets out. I obviously finance this myself through the princely process of my work as Deputy Editor at FHM magazine.

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts on mainstream publishing in South Africa at the moment…

It brings some great literature to the people. But I’m not convinced every writer worth reading is getting published. But that’s fine. It’s not too expensive to print your own stuff. Public performance is a great way for poets to self-publish, for instance. Most books that really sell will always be overseas bestsellers and non-fiction hits. You can’t blame publishers for not taking a chance on writers with a tiny audience – they wouldn’t make any money on them! Michelle Matthews at Oshun has published some great woman writers. Before publishing this novel, I made a pass at a few publishers to see if anyone was interested and they were not. One said, “we don’t publish local fiction.” Another said, “We only do literary fiction”… So it can be a little demoralising and then you decide, fuck it, I’ll do it myself. That’s what makes it punk publishing. The tradition of editing is also a rarity. As a writer, it is a blessing to find someone prepared to read your manuscript and make some suggestions on how it can be improved. I certainly never found anyone like that at the mainstream publishers. I did get some great help from my friends Justine Nurse of Laugh It Off and publicist and former book publisher Dave Chislett.

Are you currently a full-time writer or do you have another job?

O, to be a full-time writer. We live in hope. No, at the moment I am Deputy Editor of FHM, a successful South African men’s magazine.

What happens on an average day when you're writing a book? Do you sit down to write at a certain time every day? Do you find it necessary to set yourself deadlines?

Vague deadlines, perhaps. Like “Okay, we gotta get this thing published this year, finally!” It took three years to get the whole thing done. Things come up. I was playing in a band in 2002, which involved a lot of travelling. Then I moved to Joburg, which set me back etc. When you’re settled, it is good to make a chore of it. I used to tell my housemates, “Okay, I’m gonna go do some typing now.” That way it can be part of your routine and you get to discipline yourself. It’s a lot like doing the dishes: getting started is the hardest part. Once you get going you’re fine.

What are you working on at the moment?

Right now I’m working on a screenplay adaptation of my first novel, ‘Greener Grass’. I’m also writing songs for a solo singer/songwriting idea.

Name a few of your favourite books and why they are important to you. ‘House Of Leaves’ by Mark Z Danielewski: A punk novel, self-financed and an absolutely revolutionary publishing achievement. Sidebars, shrinking test boxes, three stories at once, coded messages… And it’s bloody terrifying too.

‘Complete Works of Shakespeare’: The Master of rhythm, poetry, rhyme, allegory and the source of what has come since. True wisdom and literary genius.

‘Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas’ by Hunter S Thompson: He's the king of psychedelic realism.

‘Poetry And Life: Allan Ginsberg – A narrative poem’ by Ed Sanders: Ginsberg's biography written as a beat poem. A perfect interaction of rhyme, rhythm and storytelling.

‘100 Years of Solitude’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Magic realism, I think they call it. I love the way historical narrative and fantasy are interwoven. Laura Esquivel does a similar thing. It reminds me of how there’s a point where Greek myth and history become indistinguishable. A South African example is Thirteen Cents by K Sello Duiker. It’s about a street kid who liberates himself from his oppressive reality transcendence.

What are you currently reading?

The late Sello’s second novel, ‘The Quiet Violence of Dreams’

Tell me about the Jedi Rollers.

After my first book of extremely short prose snippets and short stories, I started doing public readings. Then I started doing readings with musical backing. I’d been writing songs for a while by that stage, so I was soon part of a band. The Rollers began at a freestyle improv evening at a late-night bar that later crystallised into a regular line-up. We put out three albums, got some singles onto compilations and onto the soundtracks of a couple of surf and skate movies. The style was everything from spoken word to rap metal to reggae to punk. The third album was actually okay, and made it onto the SA rock digest charts. Great fun. It helped me understand the convergence of all art. The thing with writing is you need to have rhythm for it to flow, and if it’s got rhythm, then it goes well with music. And if you can put something to music, you can put it with images. So all art is related and complementary.

What music do you enjoy and what are you listening to at the moment?

I’m into everything. I’m the music editor at FHM, so it’s not good to discriminate according to style. More according to quality. I grew up listening to rock and punk in the surf tradition. The Cure, the Clash, The Cult, B52s. But I was into SA crossover like Juluka, Savuka and eVoid. I had a rave phase in the Nineties – that’s the scene my first novel was set in. Now I listen to Classic FM and even appreciate good R&B, though I blame my girlfriend for that. At this very instant I am listening to the song ‘Velouria’ by The Pixies.

I think it's easy to become a product of the society we live in. Do you find yourself consciously rebelling against that to retain a sense of individuality?

Perhaps. I never really thought of it. I try to express what I believe in without censoring it too much, or compromising it. Just expressing the thing. For instance we had a single that was on the radio for a while, but it got taken off once the radio station worked out what the words were. There’s freedom of expression here, so it’s nice to press the boundaries, because you can really say whatever you like. And people are quite profane and blunt in normal life, so why not be so in what we publish. Also, there’s enough unthreatening entertainment in the mainstream media, so the underground press almost has a responsibility to be more edgy. I’m comfortable that I am an individual, but of course I’m a product of the society I live in. And I’m proud to be that. I’m a South African.

In ‘10 Reasons Fame Can Go Fuck Itself’ you write: “Ous should find a chick that they dig and marry her and have kids, coz love is all that matters.” Do you want to get married and have children?

Sure, why not? After you’re dead, all that remains is whatever art work you created and whatever children you had. And it’s a part of life one should experience. That bit was in the ‘Laugh It Off’ annual and it was mainly a diatribe against celebrity culture. The actual context was:

"(4) Famous people work too hard. Even if they're only on the radio for three mingey hours a day, the rest of the time they're in the gym or doing appearances in shopping malls or pushing play on some fucked-up CD player in some kak club in Boksburg or judging shows where desperate laaities humiliate themselves for half a chance at ten seconds of semi-fame, which is fucked up to begin with anyway. Ous should find a chick that they dig and marry her and have kids, coz love is all that matters. Fame is a load of kak."

I thought it was nice and ironic to do it all laced with swearing but then recommend settling down with a wife and kids. Celebrity is incredibly nebulous and transient and I was just unimpressed with people pursuing fame like it’s an end in itself. Like fathering children and then refusing to acknowledge them because it might harm their career as a TV presenter.

How would you define yourself spiritually?

No hard and fast label, really. I was raised Catholic. But I’ve read the Baghavad Gita, some New Agey stuff, some Buddhist tracts. ‘Indaba My Children’ by Credo Mutwa, which is like the Old Testament of African animism...There’s a lot of wisdom out there.

Life is a vast, complex adventure and one’s philosophy evolves as you do. I try and find guidance and enlightenment where I can, but I certainly don’t live my life according to anyone else’s ideas and values.

I honestly think the book with the most life wisdom in it is The Collected Works of Shakespeare. I don’t know what happened there, but there’s some seriously deep stuff in his work. And it all has rhythm and rhyme too! It’s never been matched.

Do you have a life philosophy?

My mom taught me that the purpose of life is to be happy. That still holds true. Surfing – an excellent metaphor for life, by the way – taught me to live in the moment. The thing with riding a wave is that it is constantly changing. It’s a fluid pulse of energy, and you need to adapt your angle of incidence constantly. Waves are also a rhythmic pulse of the earth. So you learn to be in rhythm with the world’s energy. In surfing competitions, the judging criteria is “The surfer who executes the most radical, controlled manoeuvres in the most critical section of the biggest and/or best waves, shall be deemed the winner.” That’s a pretty good philosophy. Also African culture teaches you empathy and community. You can be too much of an individual sometimes. And from publishing books and mags and albums I’ve learnt to have vision and tenacity. To know what you’re trying to do and to stick at it.

What are you passionate about? What moves you, what inspires you, what brings you joy?

(Gee, I don’t think I’ve talked about myself this much before.) I enjoy music, uplifting wisdom. I love my girl, Nomfundo. I’m proud to be a South African. I believe in the creative work I do. And I love life.

What makes Jozi unique among cities you’ve lived in?

The particular mix of cultures. There must be 100 languages spoken in Jozi. I remember the one time on 5FM, a listener went door to door in the building where he stayed and asked the guys who lived there to say, “You're listening to Gareth Cliff on 5FM” in their mother tongue. There were okes from Congo, Uganda, Somalia. Blimming Chad. They say it’s the New York of Africa, and it really feels like that. It’s a conglomeration of villages too. I live one kilometre from my office because I live in the same village I work in, Sandton. That’s a white enclave, but there are Senegalese ones, Somalian, Chinese, Portuguese. Every city is a mix of cultures, but ours is unique.

What’s the best thing about living in South Africa at the moment?

The optimism of the people. There’s a real sense of things getting better and that just about anything is possible. You feel it more in Jo’burg, because this is where the money is, and you can see buildings being thrown up all over the place.

What's the biggest misconception about you, Hagen?

I don’t mind. If people care enough to actually hold any opinion about me, then I’m thrilled. However, there’s a lady in Australia who remains convinced that I slept with her blue-haired, 19-year-old younger sister in 1995. If I could take a polygraph on that one I would. But for the record, I did not. She left us in a room together for a few minutes and all we did was chat. Honest. I think the sister might have misinformed her.

Tell me one thing that has never been written about you and that people don't know about you.

I’ve bought some running shoes and I can already run for 90 minutes non-stop. I may run the Comrades if I don’t twist my ankle playing corporate soccer for the FHM Tigers.

So, if you had to choose a favourite literary quote, what would it be?

That depends on what I manage to find on the web…Ah, let’s go with these three words by William Shakespeare: “Action is eloquence.”

Michelle McGrane is a freelance writer, reviewer and poet. She lives in South Africa.

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.