Mr. Coetzee

Just read Disgrace, enjoyed it. The first 30 pages are a good rendition of a familiar professor-under-siege story.

Severest man I've ever met in my life.

Not surprising, but how so?

Quiet, black suit, not suffering fools for a moment in conversation, not revealing anything, and very, very formal. I think he visited my college about the same time he visited UW Madison, a visit that seems to be the basis for a Lorrie Moore short story.

"Disgrace" is truly amazing but everything else i've read by him has left me extremely depressed. I think i read three in a row and wanted to stay in bed for a fortnight afterwards. I don't think i've read another writer who is so completely joyless. is that fair or not?

iirc remy told a story about meeting him and him being rude as hell.

Actually the only one I read was Disgrace and then I was afraid to read any others for the reasons you describe.

I don't think i've read another writer who is so completely joyless

Now I really want to read his stuff.

Ha! I was just reading a couple of essays (collected in a bk) by him before logging on. I can see what Easy is saying. Comes across as v serious, analytical - really does put anything he is reading under severe scrutiny.

Actually I don't think he mentions the humour in Musil (though I'll re-read that one again to check).

joyless maybe but not humourless

joyless maybe but not humourless

Definitely--see 'Boyhood' and especially 'Youth', in which he pretty mercilessly takes the piss out of himself.

I especially love 'Disgrace', 'Waiting for the Barbarians', the two mentioned above plus 'Summertime'

He lives round the corner and up the street from me. I often walk the dog past his house, and soemtiems see his Nobel-prize-winner's underpants hanging on the clothes line.

I thought he came into his own as a novelist from Disgrace onward. I loved Elizabeth Costello, especially the scenes between Costello and her sister, a nun; their chats presaged scenes in Gilead by a couple of years.

Summertime, his attempt at Rothian quasi-memoir, is his most unsatisfying novel in years.

Hm, I just bought that a few weeks ago. I'm working up to a big cull including much unread stuff - you make it sound ripe for the pile.

All these fragments shored up against his ruin, to paraphrase Eliot, and for what?

I really liked Summertime. Now, Diary of a Bady year -- that was unsatisfying-- instantly dated, half-hearted po-mo shenanigans, nonsensical geography

He's at his best in the Brazilian woman section: clipped, brisk, unsentimental.

yeah i couldn't finish diary of a bad year. sort of want coetzee to take a break for a while so i can catch up.

How about "Slow Man"? I read that in December and I have no idea what he was trying to do in that book.

I really enjoyed "Youth" though.

Weird fact I just discovered: someone on my street is about to self-publish 50 copies of a local area history; when the project was first planned, 4 years ago, Coetzee offered to help write it, but was rejected by the chap whose baby it was.

hahaha - I hope Penguin offered him a massive advance and he knocked them back too

Re: Summertime, it's basically comedy. Coetzee may be joyless in person, but he's frequently laugh-out-loud funny in his books. And I do think he took joy in writing Summertime, because the take-downs pile up on each other with a sitcom's sense of timing.

Started Summertime the other day, enjoying it so far. Disgrace was pretty great, and Youth absolutely destroyed me; what a novel!

Always wanted to read Coetzee, but I never did! What book should I (one) read first? I'm intrigued by the prospect of books so depressing they make you want to "stay in bed for a fortnight" (tho I don't necessarily want to read those books). What are his most depressing books though?

N.B. there is a good article in the latest LRB about his new one, The Childhood of Jesus (sounds ok) and a biography of him (sounds bad), and a book of correspondence w/ Paul Auster (sounds weird!), is what made me think of it. ppl who read/subscribe to the LRB should read it.

Waiting for the Barbarians is exceptionally bleak. Also The Life and TImes of Michael K. But bleakness isn't necessarily depressing and imo Coetzee is good because he's too interesting to be depressing.

disgrace maybe?

disgrace is extraordinary

finished reading it on public transport, almost burst into embarrassing tears

Quiet, black suit, not suffering fools for a moment in conversation, not revealing anything, and very, very formal. I think he visited my college about the same time he visited UW Madison, a visit that seems to be the basis for a Lorrie Moore short story.

wait, what?

the idea that coetzee corresponds with paul auster is pretty dispiriting

yeah blown away by disgrace. manages to cram so much into such a slender frame; themes of transition, accountability, male desire, mistreatment of animals, the mechanics of apology, and how societies w/dark shears in their fabric can rebuild and reconfigure themselves, into something livable and something with a future and a past

bit didactic in places maybe

i read a review of the coetzee/auster book which made it sound like Coetzee asks all these deep questions, writes deep mini-essays as letters, and auster responds with buffoonish out-of-his-depth stuff. Sounded entertaining, actually.

"disgrace" on my to-read list this summer

One chapter from the end of Elizabeth Costello and I'm completely blown away by it. I'll write more when I've finished it but it's overarching narrative of having challenging opinions [....] and worrying about the reception of those Challlops the feeling that maybe you don't hold that opinion after all then getting desperate and depressed and wondering how you got here but still being very convinced that you are/were right but can't explain how. It's really fascinating. It's very humane too.

There's lots of stuff about the Greeks vs Christianity that I don't understand but there are some shocking images in there, like this after a discussion of Leda and her swan, then making love to Eros, being on top of him while his wings are spread, flattened and useless and useless then...:

"The seed of gods would seem to gush hugely (This must have been Mary of Nazareth's experience too, waking from her dream, still slightly trembly with the issue of The Holy Ghost running down her thighs)"