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The beloved South African

Abstract Alan Paton was the foremost commentator on South Africa in the United States magazine media for three decades. This paper maps the contours of Paton’s profile in the media and considers what factors and conditions were potentially at work in propelling him into a public domain in America, and in sustaining his pre-eminence there. Cry the beloved country is identified as the engine of his first elevation; and the popularity of the novel and Paton as commentator can be ascribed to a “multiplicity of forces” at work whenever a text crosses national boundaries. Chief among these factors is the operation of a mechanism of displacement, which allows an audience to imagine a world separate from its originating context, in which the issues and concerns of that audience can be played out. However, there is a danger that the text from “outside” will always be constrained by the limits of the local audience’s imaginings.