The couple’s spiritual journey is paralleled by the son’s journey. In the remote location of his prison cell, Duncan too has undergone an inner transformation. He is now able to integrate the previous conflicts of his bisexuality. By taking responsibility for previously separate mind-states, he is able in his mind to go beyond the tragedy of the murder. His new-found emotional independence, which he has gained through the suffering of self-examination and remorse, sen-sitises him to the ‘grace’ that, according to Simone Weil, exposes us to a profound awareness of our vulnerabilities (1974: 88). It is from the fertile ground of this kind of grace that, in TheHouse Gun, reconciliation becomes possible: parents forgive each other and their son; son forgives lovers and himself, and – in both real and symbolic culmination – he convinces his parents to help raise Natalie’s child, the child of the bisexual triangle: “It does not matter whether or not anyone else will understand: Carl, Natalie/Nastasya and me, the three of us. I’ve had to find a way to bring death and life together” (1998: 294; my emphasis). In this way The House Gun sublimates the horror of the ‘unpresentable’ through soul-search-ing and remorseful reparation. Duncan and his parents regain control of their lives: the spiritual in the secular gives to each the insights and quiet strength of sympathetic responsiveness towards those unlike one’s self, even when bound by the conventions of family. As I have suggested, The House Gun (1998) both reflects the author’s invocation of the spiri-tual and lends itself to a spiritualising re-reading. I return to my earlier question as to whether the spiritual is a new preoccupation forGordimer orwhether it is symptomatic of our reading through a new interpretative frame. The question – I hope to have shown – is not reducible to either/or; it may be applied with value, nonetheless, to Gordimer’s other more recent works. There are certainly ‘gleams of transcendence’ in None to Accompany Me (1994), a novel depicting a gradual stripping of old selves, which have become a burden in Vera Stark’s quest to redefine a role for herself. What is noteworthy is that the new role pertains not only to the new South Africa, but also to the new stage of her private life: a stage of material disinvestment (Vera leaves behind a suburban life-style, to live in a garden annexe), while her focus turns to intimations of spiritual presencing. Vera’s process of material disinvestment includes – after a life-time of intense social and sexual involvement – her embarking on a close, Platonic relation-ship with Zeph Rapulana, the man on whose property she now lives as a tenant. In The Pickup (2001), too, Gordimer takes us on a journey of inner discovery. This is a story of emigration from South Africa with the protagonist, Julie Summers, overcoming the confinements of old boundaries as she attempts to start a new life in a faraway North African country. The nameless desert is presented as a place of spiritual communion and life-changing epiphanies. The desert grows into a real presence for Julie, and gradually comes to replace the increasingly sterile (although sexually satisfying) relationship with her husband, Abdu. In Get a Life (2005) Gordimer also seeks to find moments of epiphanic insight into the con-cealed significance of phenomena salvaged from the neglected spaces of everyday living. The novel tells the unexceptional life-story of aman, PaulBannerman,who is forced by a life-threaten-ing disease to undergo a private review of feelings of insignificance, both private and public, feel-ings that takehim throughacts ofanamnesis.BothPaul andJuliehave intenseglimpsesofmeaning and purpose amid the everyday scramble for survival.While Julie communeswith the desert, Paul retreats to the family garden as a place that facilitates his life-changing spiritual introspection. Paul thusmanages to regain his health, and later, the sexual intimacywith hiswife; the novel concludes, symbolically, with the birth of a son. These new socio-psychic spaces – the desert, the garden – functionas formsof sacredspace in theKristevansense: ascontainersof “themysteryofemergence of meaning” (Kristeva and Clement 2001: 13). Yet this “mystery of emergence of meaning” can hardly be granted to Gordimer’s most recent novel,NoTime like the Present (2012).With the characters rarely going deeper into their personal

DOI link for The couple’s spiritual journey is paralleled by the son’s journey. In the remote location of his prison cell, Duncan too has undergone an inner transformation. He is now able to integrate the previous conflicts of his bisexuality. By taking responsibility for previously separate mind-states, he is able in his mind to go beyond the tragedy of the murder. His new-found emotional independence, which he has gained through the suffering of self-examination and remorse, sen-sitises him to the ‘grace’ that, according to Simone Weil, exposes us to a profound awareness of our vulnerabilities (1974: 88). It is from the fertile ground of this kind of grace that, in TheHouse Gun, reconciliation becomes possible: parents forgive each other and their son; son forgives lovers and himself, and – in both real and symbolic culmination – he convinces his parents to help raise Natalie’s child, the child of the bisexual triangle: “It does not matter whether or not anyone else will understand: Carl, Natalie/Nastasya and me, the three of us. I’ve had to find a way to bring death and life together” (1998: 294; my emphasis). In this way The House Gun sublimates the horror of the ‘unpresentable’ through soul-search-ing and remorseful reparation. Duncan and his parents regain control of their lives: the spiritual in the secular gives to each the insights and quiet strength of sympathetic responsiveness towards those unlike one’s self, even when bound by the conventions of family. As I have suggested, The House Gun (1998) both reflects the author’s invocation of the spiri-tual and lends itself to a spiritualising re-reading. I return to my earlier question as to whether the spiritual is a new preoccupation forGordimer orwhether it is symptomatic of our reading through a new interpretative frame. The question – I hope to have shown – is not reducible to either/or; it may be applied with value, nonetheless, to Gordimer’s other more recent works. There are certainly ‘gleams of transcendence’ in None to Accompany Me (1994), a novel depicting a gradual stripping of old selves, which have become a burden in Vera Stark’s quest to redefine a role for herself. What is noteworthy is that the new role pertains not only to the new South Africa, but also to the new stage of her private life: a stage of material disinvestment (Vera leaves behind a suburban life-style, to live in a garden annexe), while her focus turns to intimations of spiritual presencing. Vera’s process of material disinvestment includes – after a life-time of intense social and sexual involvement – her embarking on a close, Platonic relation-ship with Zeph Rapulana, the man on whose property she now lives as a tenant. In The Pickup (2001), too, Gordimer takes us on a journey of inner discovery. This is a story of emigration from South Africa with the protagonist, Julie Summers, overcoming the confinements of old boundaries as she attempts to start a new life in a faraway North African country. The nameless desert is presented as a place of spiritual communion and life-changing epiphanies. The desert grows into a real presence for Julie, and gradually comes to replace the increasingly sterile (although sexually satisfying) relationship with her husband, Abdu. In Get a Life (2005) Gordimer also seeks to find moments of epiphanic insight into the con-cealed significance of phenomena salvaged from the neglected spaces of everyday living. The novel tells the unexceptional life-story of aman, PaulBannerman,who is forced by a life-threaten-ing disease to undergo a private review of feelings of insignificance, both private and public, feel-ings that takehim throughacts ofanamnesis.BothPaul andJuliehave intenseglimpsesofmeaning and purpose amid the everyday scramble for survival.While Julie communeswith the desert, Paul retreats to the family garden as a place that facilitates his life-changing spiritual introspection. Paul thusmanages to regain his health, and later, the sexual intimacywith hiswife; the novel concludes, symbolically, with the birth of a son. These new socio-psychic spaces – the desert, the garden – functionas formsof sacredspace in theKristevansense: ascontainersof “themysteryofemergence of meaning” (Kristeva and Clement 2001: 13). Yet this “mystery of emergence of meaning” can hardly be granted to Gordimer’s most recent novel,NoTime like the Present (2012).With the characters rarely going deeper into their personal

The couple’s spiritual journey is paralleled by the son’s journey. In the remote location of his prison cell, Duncan too has undergone an inner transformation. He is now able to integrate the previous conflicts of his bisexuality. By taking responsibility for previously separate mind-states, he is able in his mind to go beyond the tragedy of the murder. His new-found emotional independence, which he has gained through the suffering of self-examination and remorse, sen-sitises him to the ‘grace’ that, according to Simone Weil, exposes us to a profound awareness of our vulnerabilities (1974: 88). It is from the fertile ground of this kind of grace that, in TheHouse Gun, reconciliation becomes possible: parents forgive each other and their son; son forgives lovers and himself, and – in both real and symbolic culmination – he convinces his parents to help raise Natalie’s child, the child of the bisexual triangle: “It does not matter whether or not anyone else will understand: Carl, Natalie/Nastasya and me, the three of us. I’ve had to find a way to bring death and life together” (1998: 294; my emphasis). In this way The House Gun sublimates the horror of the ‘unpresentable’ through soul-search-ing and remorseful reparation. Duncan and his parents regain control of their lives: the spiritual in the secular gives to each the insights and quiet strength of sympathetic responsiveness towards those unlike one’s self, even when bound by the conventions of family. As I have suggested, The House Gun (1998) both reflects the author’s invocation of the spiri-tual and lends itself to a spiritualising re-reading. I return to my earlier question as to whether the spiritual is a new preoccupation forGordimer orwhether it is symptomatic of our reading through a new interpretative frame. The question – I hope to have shown – is not reducible to either/or; it may be applied with value, nonetheless, to Gordimer’s other more recent works. There are certainly ‘gleams of transcendence’ in None to Accompany Me (1994), a novel depicting a gradual stripping of old selves, which have become a burden in Vera Stark’s quest to redefine a role for herself. What is noteworthy is that the new role pertains not only to the new South Africa, but also to the new stage of her private life: a stage of material disinvestment (Vera leaves behind a suburban life-style, to live in a garden annexe), while her focus turns to intimations of spiritual presencing. Vera’s process of material disinvestment includes – after a life-time of intense social and sexual involvement – her embarking on a close, Platonic relation-ship with Zeph Rapulana, the man on whose property she now lives as a tenant. In The Pickup (2001), too, Gordimer takes us on a journey of inner discovery. This is a story of emigration from South Africa with the protagonist, Julie Summers, overcoming the confinements of old boundaries as she attempts to start a new life in a faraway North African country. The nameless desert is presented as a place of spiritual communion and life-changing epiphanies. The desert grows into a real presence for Julie, and gradually comes to replace the increasingly sterile (although sexually satisfying) relationship with her husband, Abdu. In Get a Life (2005) Gordimer also seeks to find moments of epiphanic insight into the con-cealed significance of phenomena salvaged from the neglected spaces of everyday living. The novel tells the unexceptional life-story of aman, PaulBannerman,who is forced by a life-threaten-ing disease to undergo a private review of feelings of insignificance, both private and public, feel-ings that takehim throughacts ofanamnesis.BothPaul andJuliehave intenseglimpsesofmeaning and purpose amid the everyday scramble for survival.While Julie communeswith the desert, Paul retreats to the family garden as a place that facilitates his life-changing spiritual introspection. Paul thusmanages to regain his health, and later, the sexual intimacywith hiswife; the novel concludes, symbolically, with the birth of a son. These new socio-psychic spaces – the desert, the garden – functionas formsof sacredspace in theKristevansense: ascontainersof “themysteryofemergence of meaning” (Kristeva and Clement 2001: 13). Yet this “mystery of emergence of meaning” can hardly be granted to Gordimer’s most recent novel,NoTime like the Present (2012).With the characters rarely going deeper into their personal