Comments on Coetzee and the books Elizabeth Costello, Diary of a Bad Year and Summertime

J.M. Coetzee’s work is more often about himself than not, in subtle reflections that achieve the necessary universality. Yet I feel a great unease about it. The undertone of self-criticism and mockery is subverted by the very fact that he is writing about himself. In effect saying that that is what is important. I know that it is deeper than that, that he uses himself consciously as a device, one that is central to his approach to fiction, but I also know that sadness and depression come from loneliness.

However, Coetzee has succeeded in reaching others, he has two Bookers, a Nobel and is loved by readers and writers, including me. He says things that need to be said, with courage and balance.

But, and this is what gnaws at me, there is the self-centredness, the one he is aware of, that he digs into all the time, the fatal flaw.

Maybe I can talk about the novels I mention in the title, to give examples. Elizabeth Costello reads like a crotchety set of essays by someone who does not care how they are perceived, because they are gone, above criticism. Costello is dead at the end, in a sort of purgatory, and this gives closure to all the ranting. It is good ranting though, holds your attention, and despite the characterization, shows balance. This is the tour de force. The hard foundations of Coetzee’s writing are a) humanism, probably more accurate to say animalism, avoiding pain, b) guilt about colonialism, and anger about the guilt, since he is not directly guilty, he is constantly trying to extricate himself from it c) self and others, connection, sex as a mystery.

Elizabeth Costello contains a casual sexual encounter in a hotel, between business travellers that is masterful in showing how a we inhabit our bodies when close to one another, how strange, beautiful and limiting awareness of sexual contact is. Sex and loneliness in Coetzee’s work are bound tightly. He does not really understand the other, despite all the voices.

This brings me to Summertime, where he reflects on his middle years through women that have known him. This is masterfully written, but the uneasiness I feel about it relates to the above, he cannot get out of himself. He realizes it, since his characters allude to his “autism”. Realizing it and trying to exorcise it and ultimately failing in my view is what makes the work so strong, but also so flawed. He can go on telling us he knows this, and there are two possible conclusions: i) he is truly failing - case closed ii) he is using this mechanism to drive his creativity, it is a shtick. I refuse to believe the second.

In Diary of a Bad Year, he tries again to bring out Coetzee from his shell. Two and a half points of view. Himself, as always, a young woman who becomes his typist, and the views of her boyfriend, an foil to the humanist/animalism/anarchist Coetzee character. Archetype does not mean one-dimensional here. He is fully fleshed, but a bit distant, a bit vague, a bit too consistent. Coetzee is getting revenge it seems on that type. I know these types well, I dislike them too, but again, I almost want to not believe that Coetzee is exercising a form of petty literary revenge. Not petty I guess, the themes are broad enough, but in all three books there is a sort of accounts settling smell, things that his “autism” may have prevented him from doing in real time may be coming out.

So in conclusion, I must admire the man and admit that I enjoy the work, but some of it seems to evade complete control, which to me is a criterion of classic art. This is the mystery of Coetzee’s work.