HEY bru, shot about the new book (Durban Poison by Ben Trovato ISBN: 978-928420-66-8).
Loved it. The fact that you sweetened the deal by sending two Durban Poison beers and a pack of Rizzlers with the review copy was genius.
Mixed it up and what a heady potion it was. While imbibing the beer (etc) I read to the fam and we fell about, rocking your sardonic take on the world.
I entered your zone, man, and it’s a trip – a veritable roller-coaster ride between Durban and Cape Town with epic stops along the way.
So, I lived in Kommetjie, Cape Town but prefer Durban, so I get why your tale weaves between the two cities. That Cape of Storms is no misnomer.
I bought the damn Sunday Tribune for your Durban Poison column needing that brilliant comic relief to break the doomsday press reports. And then it ended resulting in a gnashing of teeth and serious withdrawals manifesting as a-weeping and a-wailing.
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Then you your new book, Durban Poison, was published. Aah, a tonic – with scooshes of gin, of course – to be digested with some timely puffs of ye olde Durban poison. As I said, a cauldron with the kick of your observant eye-of-newt making (non)sense of this crazy country and its irascible people.
You continue to share your daily life with us with your dollops of scrutinies of the mundane and offbeat described with ascerbic wit and witticms.
Your sense of humour is impressively multi-faceted as it meanders along dry paths of the deadpan to suddenly leap out and wallop you across the face with its paranomasia, bon mot and riposte, before it drifts down the rabbit hole of black (oops, we can’t get racist here as this would horrify you) into the rather dark or gallows humour.
Albert Einstein attributed his brilliant mind to having a child-like sense of humour. Indeed, a number of studies have found an association between humour and intelligence.
Researchers in Austria recently discovered that funny people, particularly those who enjoy dark humour, have higher IQs than their less funny peers. They argue that it takes both cognitive and emotional ability to process and produce humour and have higher verbal and non-verbal intelligence; and they score lower in mood disturbance and aggressiveness.
‘Nuff said.
To wet appetites, here are some chapter titles: Licensed to drain the psychedelic swap; Broken marriage turn man into rent boy; Tripping like an attention deficit bipolar bear; Malice in Blunderland and Painfully schooled in the fine art of sadism.
I say no more except to urge the clever folk to get off their lazy derrieres and go and buy the book. For the vacuous, there’s a theme/recipe for the best results: Durban Poison: the book the beer and the, well, the poison. Happy imbibed reading.
Ben Trovato has been keeping the nation amused and outraged since 2001 when he published his first book, The Ben Trovato Files, which was long-listed for the Sunday Times Alan Paton Award for non-fiction. He was also nominated for a Safta award for writing on the satirical television show ZA News: Puppet Nation.
He is prolific writer and has written many books including Ben Trovato’s Art of Survival, Ben Trovato’s Guide to Everything, Ben Trovato – Stirred not Shaken and The Ben Trovato Files.
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