Here's one from 2003:
Based on several previously published articles by Coetzee (and a couple of new ones), Elizabeth Costello is essentially a collection of essays, or lessons, on the nature of writing, and more importantly reading. Linking these themes is Costello, an aging Australian author who seemingly revels in the success of past glories as she reluctantly accepts a series invitations around the world, an irony buried in her reliance on well-worn rhetoric. Yet it is this irony that is most enticing, Costello?s shell cracks, increasingly challenging her contemporaries and ultimately her own beliefs.
This fragmented collection is to be applauded on one level as it is a unique way to present a collection of disparate stories, encased in the fiction of one person?s final years. However, I?m not sure there was enough development of Costello?s personality to carry the novel?s philosophical weight. It is obvious that Coetzee is experimenting with the device of lessons as a bedrock for character development, but for me it was the issues alluded to - the relationships between mother and son, the sparsely mentioned daughter and ex-lovers - rather than the issues addressed - animal rights and eroticism - that carry the reader from chapter to chapter.
But of course, that is to focus heavily on the narrative of Costello the character, one could just as easily review this book from the substance of lessons alone. On that level Coetzee is raising some fascinating topics, through which the prism of fiction allows his to work up both sides of the argument, achieved to great effect in lesson two, The Novel in Africa. Still, the lessons that ring the loudest for me are those in which Costello faces an internal, rather than external, debate, the strongest of these were The Problem of Evil and At the Gate. Each embodies a power not matched elsewhere, achieving the right balance of exploring the lesson?s theme and adding to our understanding of Costello?s character.
It is a strange little book in which to first start reading Coetzee, although this is his first post-Nobel work it is not this prize, nor his double wins of the Booker Prize and Commonwealth Writers Prize that drew me in. If is was I would have probably started with the much lauded Disgrace. Rather, I chose Elizabeth Costello because I am interested in how Coetzee has approached writing about an Australian protagonist, his nuance in identity. A unique perspective as Coetzee is now Australian citizen, living in Adelaide for about the last five years.
From what is written about Coetzee it is obvious he isn?t one to embrace the limelight, it seems he is reluctant for any attention beyond his published work. So as a reflection of the man himself, Elizabeth Costello provides a surprising insight to its author, as opposed to the author it presents. On this level, Coetzee deals with at least three important issues we accept are vital to his own character: the future of South African literature, the identity of his adopted homeland and the varied moral debates of literature. Added to this are obvious issue of passion: animal rights, evil, belief systems, etc. But in these instances we are left wondering if Coetzee agrees or disagrees with Costello. But then again, maybe that is the final lesson.
How's this for a cracking passage:
'The future of the novel is not a subject I am much interested in? she beings, trying to give her auditors a jolt. ?In fact the future is general does not much interest me. What is the future, after all, but a structure of hopes and expectations? Its residence is in the mind; it has no reality.?
?Of course, you might reply that the past is likewise a fiction. The past is history, and what is history but a story made up of air that we tell ourselves? Nevertheless, there is something miraculous about the past is that we have succeeded - God only knows - in making thousands and millions of individual fictions, fictions created by individual human beings, locked well enough into one another to give us what looks like a common past, a shared story.?
?The future is different. We do not possess a shared story of the future. The creation of the past seems to exhaust our collective creative energies. Compared with our fiction of the past, our fiction of the future is a sketchy, bloodless affair, as visions of heaven tend to be. Of heaven and even of hell.?
Based on several previously published articles by Coetzee (and a couple of new ones), Elizabeth Costello is essentially a collection of essays, or lessons, on the nature of writing, and more importantly reading. Linking these themes is Costello, an aging Australian author who seemingly revels in the success of past glories as she reluctantly accepts a series invitations around the world, an irony buried in her reliance on well-worn rhetoric. Yet it is this irony that is most enticing, Costello?s shell cracks, increasingly challenging her contemporaries and ultimately her own beliefs.
This fragmented collection is to be applauded on one level as it is a unique way to present a collection of disparate stories, encased in the fiction of one person?s final years. However, I?m not sure there was enough development of Costello?s personality to carry the novel?s philosophical weight. It is obvious that Coetzee is experimenting with the device of lessons as a bedrock for character development, but for me it was the issues alluded to - the relationships between mother and son, the sparsely mentioned daughter and ex-lovers - rather than the issues addressed - animal rights and eroticism - that carry the reader from chapter to chapter.
But of course, that is to focus heavily on the narrative of Costello the character, one could just as easily review this book from the substance of lessons alone. On that level Coetzee is raising some fascinating topics, through which the prism of fiction allows his to work up both sides of the argument, achieved to great effect in lesson two, The Novel in Africa. Still, the lessons that ring the loudest for me are those in which Costello faces an internal, rather than external, debate, the strongest of these were The Problem of Evil and At the Gate. Each embodies a power not matched elsewhere, achieving the right balance of exploring the lesson?s theme and adding to our understanding of Costello?s character.
It is a strange little book in which to first start reading Coetzee, although this is his first post-Nobel work it is not this prize, nor his double wins of the Booker Prize and Commonwealth Writers Prize that drew me in. If is was I would have probably started with the much lauded Disgrace. Rather, I chose Elizabeth Costello because I am interested in how Coetzee has approached writing about an Australian protagonist, his nuance in identity. A unique perspective as Coetzee is now Australian citizen, living in Adelaide for about the last five years.
From what is written about Coetzee it is obvious he isn?t one to embrace the limelight, it seems he is reluctant for any attention beyond his published work. So as a reflection of the man himself, Elizabeth Costello provides a surprising insight to its author, as opposed to the author it presents. On this level, Coetzee deals with at least three important issues we accept are vital to his own character: the future of South African literature, the identity of his adopted homeland and the varied moral debates of literature. Added to this are obvious issue of passion: animal rights, evil, belief systems, etc. But in these instances we are left wondering if Coetzee agrees or disagrees with Costello. But then again, maybe that is the final lesson.
How's this for a cracking passage:
'The future of the novel is not a subject I am much interested in? she beings, trying to give her auditors a jolt. ?In fact the future is general does not much interest me. What is the future, after all, but a structure of hopes and expectations? Its residence is in the mind; it has no reality.?
?Of course, you might reply that the past is likewise a fiction. The past is history, and what is history but a story made up of air that we tell ourselves? Nevertheless, there is something miraculous about the past is that we have succeeded - God only knows - in making thousands and millions of individual fictions, fictions created by individual human beings, locked well enough into one another to give us what looks like a common past, a shared story.?
?The future is different. We do not possess a shared story of the future. The creation of the past seems to exhaust our collective creative energies. Compared with our fiction of the past, our fiction of the future is a sketchy, bloodless affair, as visions of heaven tend to be. Of heaven and even of hell.?
