SOURCE: Froelich, Vera P., and Jennifer Halle. “Gordimer's ‘Once Upon a Time.’” Explicator 56, no. 4 (summer 1998): 213-15.

In the following essay, Froelich and Halle contend that “Once Upon a Time” reflects an important stage in Gordimer's political and literary development.

Although she feels a “realistic optimism” (qtd. in Lazar 163) about her country now, throughout her nearly half-century-long writing career, Nadine Gordimer has been one of South Africa's main critics; thus her difficulties with governmental censorship. Her criticism, however, was usually indirect, woven into the multifaceted, often lyrical portraits of her native land, its life and people. But as she became more publicly committed to the struggle against apartheid in the 1980s, her criticism turned more overt, and, interestingly, her literary approach, always essentially realistic, became more experimental.¹ Even a small work, such as her 1989 short story “Once Upon a Time,” well illustrates this new stage in Gordimer's development.

In...