This is the fourth in the series of reviews of books of those authors who have won the Nobel Prize in Literature. J.M. Coetzee received the prize in 2003.
I have read 5 books by J.M. Coetzee; two before he received the honor (In the Heart of the Country, Vintage books, 1977 and Waiting for the Barbarians, Vintage Books, 1980) and three after he was awarded the Nobel Prize (The Childhood of Jesus, Harvill Secker, 2013, The Schooldays of Jesus, Harvill Secker, 2016, and The Death of Jesus, Harvill Secker, 2019).
There is no doubt that J.M. Coetzee is a consummate narrator whose power of expression wins over any hesitation to continue reading. The themes in the novels embrace a vast array of specific topics, some of which are dealt with below. The characters themselves do not exhibit great resolve, but definitely a great strength in searching for the meaning in their lives. This search is expressed in very different ways in the 5 novels.
In the Heart of the Country is written in a first person narrative, from a perspective of a “melancholy spinster” (p.3) who lives on a farm far from other farms or indeed towns or cities, among “brown folk” she is the “black widow” in an undisclosed country, although the use of “veld” narrows it to South Africa. The story which this spinster offers us is very limiting, prompting her to ask, almost right at the outset, “Does an elementary life burn people down to elementary states, to pure anger, pure gluttony, pure sloth? Am I unfitted by my upbringing for a life of more complex feelings? Is that why I have never left the farm, foreign to townslife, preferring to immerse myself in a landscape of symbol where simple passions can spin and fume around their own centers, in limited space, in endless time, working out their own forms of damnation? (p. 13) The question of the utmost importance of upbringing for the development of a human being’s life is taken up in the “Jesus” series as well. In any case, the introspective narration of this utterly lonely woman contains at least one murder, lots of desire for human relationships of all kinds, and, above all, the need to understand oneself. Language, therefore, plays a crucial role, and there are a number of musings about especially words that the spinster presents to us. On the one hand, “Words are coin. Words alienate. Language is no medium for desire.” (p. 28), on the other hand, “Perhaps…if I stopped talking I would fall into panic, losing my hold on the world I know best.” (p. 85) She is “the poetess of interiority” (p. 38), and yet she wants to be noticed (yet another leitmotif in these novels). She feels she is like “a great emptiness…filled with a great absence…which is desire to be filled, to be fulfilled” (p. 125). She explains that she is “a sheath, a matrix, a protectrix of vacant space. I move through the world as a hole, … I am a hole crying to be whole.* I know that this is in one sense just a way of speaking, a way of thinking about myself, but if one cannot think of oneself in words, in pictures, then what is there to think of oneself in?” (44-45) But more than anything else, “I need people to talk to, brothers and sisters or fathers and mothers, I need a history and a culture, I need hopes and aspirations, I need a moral sense and a teleology before I will be happy, not to mention food and drink” (13-131). The main point of the novel, therefore, is an answer to the question “What happens to a person when her/his life experiences are lived through a language which is devoid of the connections between language and culture, language and politics, language and history, language and philosophy?” (The Jesus trilogy also brings up this theme.) The answer seems to point to a desperation of the blackest type because it looks like the language we have cannot be separated from other expressions of the human psyche. If this connection does not exist, the person is forever searching for answers that cannot be given and therefore desperation ensues. It seems we need what Lyotard called grand narratives to anchor us in time and space so that we can keep on living. Interestingly, the spinster does not mention religion nor philosophy nor music nor any arts, so clearly her language is disjointed from experiences of a different sort than the one she made for herself: carnal desire.
Waiting for the Barbarians made me remember Dino Buzzati’s Il deserto dei Tartari, since the setting is a military outpost of invaders representing the Empire surrounded by a desolate land. Life in this outpost is relatively calm, until a colonel of the Civil Guard comes in and stirs up the idea that the tribes (the barbarians) are likely to storm the outpost, so the military comes in to embark on an expedition to defeat these barbarians. However, no barbarian invasion happens, it is the military who return from the action, badly beaten, to this outpost whose peaceful existence they themselves destroyed. The story is told in the first person by the Magistrate of the outpost who sees all the injustices perpetrated by the invaders (of whom he is a part), of the physical, psychological, sexual tortures the tribespeople endure, and he himself becomes the victim of the colonel’s wrath. He is very much a man of honor, and he knows when his actions are those of an invader: “I do not want to see a parasite settlement grow up on the fringes of the town populated with beggars and vagrants enslaved to strong drink. It always pained me in the old days to see these people fall victim to the guile of shopkeepers, exchanging their goods for trinkets, lying drunk in the gutter, and confirming thereby the settlers’ litany of prejudice: that barbarians are lazy, immoral, filthy, stupid. Where civilization entailed the corruption of barbarian virtues and the creation of a dependent people, I decided, I was opposed to civilization: and upon this resolution I based the conduct of my administration. (I say this who now keep a barbarian girl for my bed!)” (p. 41)The Magistrate is not a hero, but “the lie that Empire tells itself when times are easy”, as opposed to the Colonel, who is “the truth that Empire tells when harsh winds blow” (p. 148). The colonizing effects (obviously negative for the tribespeople and for those invaders, like the Magistrate, who are aware of the consequences of substituting the old ways of the tribes with the new ways of the invaders) are powerfully spelled out in this novel.
The “Jesus” trilogy, on the surface, analyzes elements connected to childhood, schooling, and death. We look at the actions through the eyes of an omniscient author who takes the perspective of Simon, a 42-years old migrant. In the first volume, Simon leaves his old life behind and embarks on a new one. The old life comes with a five-year old boy whose mother disappears while many migrants cross the sea to their new land. In this way, Simon becomes the uncle, or godfather, to the boy, David, and it is his responsibility to take care of him until the real mother is found. The new land expects the newcomers to shed everything that was their past. This place, where transportation and public schooling, as well as certain meals are free, may be a spoof on Cuba – the newcomers have to learn Spanish, and criticizing matters is not tolerated. Language is again important: on many an occasion, Simon says he cannot express himself well since he is still learning Spanish, and yet David has no problem to express himself. Simon chooses a mother to David when they see Ines playing tennis in an exclusive residence. Ines agrees to take care of the child. David is an exceptional child and all his desires and wishes command Simon’s and Ines’ life. Since he has learnt to read by himself (using the novel Don Quixote for children), he is disruptive in class, and it is suggested that he attend a reformatory school. His parents disagree with this decision, so the three of them escape to another town where they start a new life. The second volume deals with this new setting. In this town, David is enrolled in a Dance Academy, where he hones his special skills of forming an unusual picture of his life, of the universe, of numbers, of music. There he befriends a strange person who will have an unusual hold over him but who is also a murderer. Since his desires are not met even in the Academy, he escapes to a School for Orphans, as he believes he is an orphan. He claims Simon does not understand him. He wants to be recognized – a recognition similar to the spinter’s in the novel In the Heart of the Country. In the third volume, a long and unpleasant agony of David’s illness is described. He loses the use of his legs, presumably due to a neuropathy. David dies alone, in the hospital, without ever telling Simon a special message that he apparently had for him. Clearly, the book is meant to be read as an allegory on many levels, starting from the name Jesus, which is probably the real name of David used in his old life (the biblical names are not used by chance). David never delivers the special message, however, due to his sense of being different than everyone else and due to his illness. The setting, too, depicts a country in which things function superficially, People are neither happy nor sad, there is no laughter, no music, no real abandon to passions. Simon tries his best to explain to David some intricacies of life, but he does so in a didactic and unimaginative manner. David is put off these explanations, and insists on his own views, especially the one that takes Don Quixote as a model to emulate. David wants to help people but he also wants to be recognized by people. He is recognized as someone special, particularly by Simon and Ines, but this recognition does not satisfy him.
In conclusion, there is no doubt that J.M. Coetzee’s literary output gives readers a lot of satisfaction. The language is rich, the actions interesting, the messages profound. But at the end, the feeling that remains is of our own detachment. This detachment, this lack of crucial understanding of the depth and function of our language, makes for a superficial life. The characters are searching, but searching perhaps in the wrong place. Overall, the female characters’ depiction is disappointing, showing the manner in which women are thought of as beings limited in their purpose for men, not as partners in this trip on which we are together.
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*Until this section, I wasn’t sure whether J.M. Coetzee was a man or a woman. These sentences clearly showed he is a man, because a woman, no matter how much debased, how much maligned, lonely, desperate, would never think of herself in these terms.
Reading rascal 