J.M. Coetzee: Fictions of the Real

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351759981
Total Pages : 162 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (517 download)

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Book Synopsis J.M. Coetzee: Fictions of the Real by : Anthony Uhlmann

Download or read book J.M. Coetzee: Fictions of the Real written by Anthony Uhlmann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: J.M. Coetzee has new things to say about this relation between the ‘real’ and ‘fictions of the real’, and while much has already been written about him, these questions need to be more fully explored. The contributions to this volume are drawn together by the idea of the hinge between the world (whether understood in ontological, bio-ethical, personal and interpersonal, or socio-political terms) and fictional representations of it (whether understood in epistemological, ficto-biographical, formal, or stylistic terms). In this collection, the question of understanding itself — how we understand or imagine our place in the world — is shown to be central to our conception of that world. That is, rather than beginning with forms developed in socio-political understandings, Coetzee’s works ask us to consider what role fiction might play in relation to politics, in relation to history, in relation to ethics and our understanding of human agency and responsibility. Coetzee has a profound interest in the methods through which we make sense of the contemporary world and our place in it, and his approach appeals to readers of fiction, critics and philosophers alike. The central problems he deals with in his fiction are of the kind that confront people everywhere and so involve a "translatability" that allow the works to maintain relevance across cultures. Added to this, though, his fiction makes us question the nature of understanding itself. This book was originally published as a special issue of Textual Practice.

A Story of South Africa

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis A Story of South Africa by : Susan V. Gallagher

Download or read book A Story of South Africa written by Susan V. Gallagher and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the publication of Age of Iron--winner of Britain's richest fiction prize, the Sunday Express Book of the Year for 1990--J. M. Coetzee is now recognized as one of the foremost writers of our day. In this timely study of Coetzee's fiction, Susan Gallagher places his work in the context of South African history and politics. Her close historical readings of Coetzee's six major novels explore how he lays bare the "dense complicity between thought and language" in South Africa. Following a penetrating description of the unique difficulties facing writers under apartheid, Gallagher recounts how history, language, and authority have been used to marginalize the majority of South Africa's people. Her story reaches from the beginnings of Afrikaner nationalism to the recent past: the Sharpeville massacre, the jailing of Nelson Mandela, and the Soweto uprising. As a result of his rejection of liberal and socialist realism, Coetzee has been branded an escapist, but Gallagher ably defends him from this charge. Her cogent, convincingly argued examination of his novels demonstrates that Coetzee's fictional response is "apocalyptic in the most profound Biblical sense, obscurely pointing toward ineffable realities transcending discursive definition." Viewing Coetzee's fiction in this context, Gallagher describes a new kind of novel "that arises out of history, but also rivals history." This analysis reveals Coetzee's novels to be profound responses to their time and place as well as richly rewarding investigations of the storyteller's art.

Countries of the Mind

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Author :
Publisher : Praeger
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 184 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Countries of the Mind by : Allen Richard Penner

Download or read book Countries of the Mind written by Allen Richard Penner and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1989-06-23 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the publication of his first novel in 1974, J. M. Coetzee has attained a reputation as one of the world's most respected novelists. The demand for his works is related to the world's interest in the politics, literature, culture, and society of South Africa. However, Coetzee's fictions remain significant, according to Penner, apart from their South African context, because of their artistry and because they transform urgent societal concerns into more enduring questions regarding colonialism and the relationships of mastery and servitude between cultures and individuals. Penner provides an in-depth, critical reading of Coetzee's five novels, drawing upon primary and critical texts on Western and South African literature and society. He argues that Coetzee's writings subvert traditional novel forms and thus become self-reflexive commentaries on the nature of fiction and fiction writing. Despite the diversity of their forms, Coetzee's novels all deal with the Cartesian division between the self and others that is at the base of all colonial and master/slave relationships. Many of Coetzee's protagonists who struggle to escape this Cartesian dichotomy and the colonizing mentality it fosters also hold a privileged status within their societies. As a result, they face a moral dilemma: even if they are personally innocent of any acts of oppression, they still share responsibility as members of the colonizing group. If Coetzee does not provide solutions or a direct call to action to resolve South Africa's enormous problems, Penner suggests, it is because Coetzee is striking at a more fundamental problem: the psychological, philosophical, and linguistic foundations of the colonial dilemma. Penner also deals with the question of Coetzee's identity as a South African writer, arguing that his tradition is the broader Western literary tradition of which South Africa is a part. This book should be read by anyone interested in Coetzee's fiction, modern fiction, and Third World and South African literature.

The Good Story

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0698405218
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (984 download)

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Book Synopsis The Good Story by : J. M. Coetzee

Download or read book The Good Story written by J. M. Coetzee and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: J.M. Coetzee's latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018. J.M. Coetzee: What relationship do I have with my life history? Am I its conscious author, or should I think of myself as simply a voice uttering with as little interference as possible a stream of words welling up from my interior? Arabella Kurtz: One way of thinking about psychoanalysis is to say that it is aimed at setting free the narrative or autobiographical imagination. The Good Story is a fascinating dialogue about psychotherapy and the art of storytelling between a writer with a long-standing interest in moral psychology and a psychotherapist with training in literary studies. Coetzee and Kurtz consider psychotherapy and its wider social context from different perspectives, but at the heart of both of their approaches is a concern with narrative. Working alone, the writer is in control of the story he or she tells. The therapist, on the other hand, collaborates with the patient in developing an account of the patient's life and identity that is both meaningful and true. In a meeting of minds that is illuminating and thought-provoking, the authors discuss both individual psychology and the psychology of the group: the school classroom, gangs and the settler nation, in which the brutal deeds of ancestors are accommodated into a national story. Drawing on great writers like Cervantes and Dostoevsky and psychoanalysts like Freud and Melanie Klein, Coetzee and Kurtz explore the human capacity for self-examination, our wish to tell our own life stories and the resistances we encounter along the way.

Strong Opinions

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Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1441137149
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (411 download)

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Book Synopsis Strong Opinions by : Chris Danta

Download or read book Strong Opinions written by Chris Danta and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-07-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new collection of essays on Coetzee examines how his novels create and unsettle literary authority. Its unique contribution is to show how Coetzee provokes us into reconsidering certain basic formal and existential questions such as the nature of literary realism, the authority of the author and the constitution of the human self in a posthumanist setting by consciously revealing the literary-theoretical seams of his work. Strong Opinions makes the innovative claim that Coetzee's work is driven not by a sense of scepticism or nihilism but rather by a form of controlled exposure that defines the literary. The essays in the volume variously draw attention to three of Coetzee's most recent and significant experiments in controlled exposure. The first is the exposure of place-Coetzee's decision to set his novels in his newly adopted country of Australia. The second is the exposure of form-Coetzee's direct, almost essayistic address of literary-philosophical topics within his novels. And the third is the exposure of limits-Coetzee's explicit deconstruction of the traditional limits of human life.

J. M. Coetzee

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Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1501357484
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis J. M. Coetzee by : Anthony Uhlmann

Download or read book J. M. Coetzee written by Anthony Uhlmann and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-01-23 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: J. M. Coetzee: Truth, Meaning, Fiction illuminates the intellectual and philosophical interests that drive Coetzee's writing. In doing so, it makes the case for Coetzee as an important and original thinker in his own right. Whilst looking at Coetzee's writing career, from his dissertation through to The Schooldays of Jesus (2016), and interpreting running themes and scenarios, style and evolving attitudes to literary form, Anthony Uhlmann also offers revealing glimpses, informed by archival research, of Coetzee's writing process. Among the main themes that Uhlmann sees in Coetzee's writing, and which remains highly relevant today, is the awareness that there is truth in fiction, or that fiction can provide valuable insights into real world problems, and that there are also fictions of the truth: that we are surrounded, in our everyday lives, by stories we wish to believe are true. J. M. Coetzee: Truth, Meaning, Fiction offers a revealing new account of one of arguably our most important contemporary writers.

J.M. Coetzee and the Archive

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Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350165972
Total Pages : 365 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (51 download)

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Book Synopsis J.M. Coetzee and the Archive by : Marc Farrant

Download or read book J.M. Coetzee and the Archive written by Marc Farrant and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-03-25 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making extensive use of the rich archival material contained within the Coetzee collections in Texas and South Africa, from the earliest drafts and notebooks to the research notes and digital records that document his later career as both writer and academic, this volume investigates the historical, cultural and aesthetic contexts of Coetzee's oeuvre. Cutting-edge and interdisciplinary in approach, the book looks both at the prolific archival traces of Coetzee's early and middle work as well as examines his more recent work (which has yet to be archived), and a wide range of materials beyond the manuscripts, including family albums, school notebooks and correspondence. Navigating Coetzee's interests in areas as diverse as literature, photography, autobiography, philosophy, animals and embodied life, this is also an exploration of the archive as both theory and practice. It raises questions about the tensions, contradictions and discoveries of archival research, and suggests that a literary engagement with the past is crucial to a recovery of culture in the present.

Strong Opinions

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Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1441105301
Total Pages : 186 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (411 download)

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Book Synopsis Strong Opinions by : Chris Danta

Download or read book Strong Opinions written by Chris Danta and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-07-14 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new collection of essays on Coetzee examines how his novels create and unsettle literary authority. Its unique contribution is to show how Coetzee provokes us into reconsidering certain basic formal and existential questions such as the nature of literary realism, the authority of the author and the constitution of the human self in a posthumanist setting by consciously revealing the literary-theoretical seams of his work. Strong Opinions makes the innovative claim that Coetzee's work is driven not by a sense of scepticism or nihilism but rather by a form of controlled exposure that defines the literary. The essays in the volume variously draw attention to three of Coetzee's most recent and significant experiments in controlled exposure. The first is the exposure of place-Coetzee's decision to set his novels in his newly adopted country of Australia. The second is the exposure of form-Coetzee's direct, almost essayistic address of literary-philosophical topics within his novels. And the third is the exposure of limits-Coetzee's explicit deconstruction of the traditional limits of human life.

Narratives of Disability and Illness in the Fiction of J. M. Coetzee

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Author :
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
ISBN 13 : 1399522590
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (995 download)

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Book Synopsis Narratives of Disability and Illness in the Fiction of J. M. Coetzee by : Pawel Wojtas

Download or read book Narratives of Disability and Illness in the Fiction of J. M. Coetzee written by Pawel Wojtas and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2024-03-31 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study offers a detailed analysis of the fiction of J. M. Coetzee, including the novels of the South African and Australian periods, to demonstrate the development of Coetzee's engagement with the complexities of non-normative embodiment. In this illuminating monograph, Pawel Wojtas demonstrates the extent to which Coetzee's multifaceted depictions of disability offer a sustained critique of the ableist implications of political violence and neoliberal inclusionism alike. Exploring a wide range of notions, such as ocularnormativism, mute speech, eco-disability, disability Gothic, dismodernism, autogerontography, and bibliotherapy, Wojtas shows how Coetzee's 'disabled textuality' provokes a sustained meditation on various forms of cultural denigration of disability experience.

Elizabeth Costello

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1524705500
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (247 download)

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Book Synopsis Elizabeth Costello by : J. M. Coetzee

Download or read book Elizabeth Costello written by J. M. Coetzee and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: J.M. Coetzee's latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018. Since 1982, J. M. Coetzee has been dazzling the literary world. After eight novels that have won, among other awards, two Booker Prizes, and most recently, the Nobel Prize, Coetzee has once again crafted an unusual and deeply affecting tale. Told through an ingenious series of formal addresses, Elizabeth Costello is, on the surface, the story of a woman's life as mother, sister, lover, and writer. Yet it is also a profound and haunting meditation on the nature of storytelling.

The Slow Philosophy of J. M. Coetzee

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Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1474256465
Total Pages : 263 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis The Slow Philosophy of J. M. Coetzee by : Jan Wilm

Download or read book The Slow Philosophy of J. M. Coetzee written by Jan Wilm and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-06-16 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Slow Philosophy of J.M. Coetzee Jan Wilm analyses Coetzee's singular aesthetic style which, he argues, provokes the reader to read his works slowly. The effected 'slow reading' is developed into a method specifically geared to analyzing Coetzee's singular oeuvre, and it is shown that his works productively decelerate the reading process only to dynamize the reader's reflexion in a way that may be termed philosophical. Drawing on fresh archival material, this is the first study of its kind to explore Coetzee's writing process as already slow; as a program of seemingly relentless revision which brings forth his uniquely dense and crystalline style. Through the incorporation of material from drafts and notebooks, this study is also the first to combine an exploration of the writer's stylistic choices with a rigorous analysis of the reader's responses. The book includes close readings of Coetzee's popular and lesser known work, including Disgrace, Waiting for the Barbarians, Elizabeth Costello, Life and Times of Michael K and Slow Man.

Disgrace

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1524705462
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (247 download)

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Book Synopsis Disgrace by : J. M. Coetzee

Download or read book Disgrace written by J. M. Coetzee and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-01-03 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: J.M. Coetzee's latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus, is now available from Viking. Late Essays: 2006-2016 will be available January 2018. Set in post-apartheid South Africa, J. M. Coetzee’s searing novel tells the story of David Lurie, a twice divorced, 52-year-old professor of communications and Romantic Poetry at Cape Technical University. Lurie believes he has created a comfortable, if somewhat passionless, life for himself. He lives within his financial and emotional means. Though his position at the university has been reduced, he teaches his classes dutifully; and while age has diminished his attractiveness, weekly visits to a prostitute satisfy his sexual needs. He considers himself happy. But when Lurie seduces one of his students, he sets in motion a chain of events that will shatter his complacency and leave him utterly disgraced. Lurie pursues his relationship with the young Melanie—whom he describes as having hips “as slim as a twelve-year-old’s”—obsessively and narcissistically, ignoring, on one occasion, her wish not to have sex. When Melanie and her father lodge a complaint against him, Lurie is brought before an academic committee where he admits he is guilty of all the charges but refuses to express any repentance for his acts. In the furor of the scandal, jeered at by students, threatened by Melanie’s boyfriend, ridiculed by his ex-wife, Lurie is forced to resign and flees Cape Town for his daughter Lucy’s smallholding in the country. There he struggles to rekindle his relationship with Lucy and to understand the changing relations of blacks and whites in the new South Africa. But when three black strangers appear at their house asking to make a phone call, a harrowing afternoon of violence follows which leaves both of them badly shaken and further estranged from one another. After a brief return to Cape Town, where Lurie discovers his home has also been vandalized, he decides to stay on with his daughter, who is pregnant with the child of one of her attackers. Now thoroughly humiliated, Lurie devotes himself to volunteering at the animal clinic, where he helps put down diseased and unwanted dogs. It is here, Coetzee seems to suggest, that Lurie gains a redeeming sense of compassion absent from his life up to this point. Written with the austere clarity that has made J. M. Coetzee the winner of two Booker Prizes, Disgrace explores the downfall of one man and dramatizes, with unforgettable, at times almost unbearable, vividness the plight of a country caught in the chaotic aftermath of centuries of racial oppression.

Narratives of Disability and Illness in the Fiction of J. M. Coetzee

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Author :
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
ISBN 13 : 1399522604
Total Pages : 427 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (995 download)

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Book Synopsis Narratives of Disability and Illness in the Fiction of J. M. Coetzee by : Pawel Wojtas

Download or read book Narratives of Disability and Illness in the Fiction of J. M. Coetzee written by Pawel Wojtas and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2024-03-31 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study offers a detailed analysis of the fiction of J. M. Coetzee, including the novels of the South African and Australian periods, to demonstrate the development of Coetzee's engagement with the complexities of non-normative embodiment. In this illuminating monograph, Pawel Wojtas demonstrates the extent to which Coetzee's multifaceted depictions of disability offer a sustained critique of the ableist implications of political violence and neoliberal inclusionism alike. Exploring a wide range of notions, such as ocularnormativism, mute speech, eco-disability, disability Gothic, dismodernism, autogerontography, and bibliotherapy, Wojtas shows how Coetzee's 'disabled textuality' provokes a sustained meditation on various forms of cultural denigration of disability experience.

A Companion to the Works of J. M. Coetzee

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Author :
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 1571139028
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (711 download)

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Book Synopsis A Companion to the Works of J. M. Coetzee by : Tim Mehigan

Download or read book A Companion to the Works of J. M. Coetzee written by Tim Mehigan and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2014-02 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New essays providing critical views of Coetzee's major works for the scholar and the general reader.

Political Bodies and the Body Politic in J.M. Coetzee's Novels

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Publisher : LIT Verlag Münster
ISBN 13 : 364380105X
Total Pages : 181 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (438 download)

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Book Synopsis Political Bodies and the Body Politic in J.M. Coetzee's Novels by : Roman Silvani

Download or read book Political Bodies and the Body Politic in J.M. Coetzee's Novels written by Roman Silvani and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2012 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: J.M. Coetzee's novels can be considered a continued enterprise in figuring and varying the otherness of the human body, which, first and foremost, it comes forward in its vulnerability and pain. Coetzee's fiction offers an understanding that the body is a site upon which politics are played out and made manifest. Political Bodies and the Body Politic in J.M. Coetzee's Novels examines the various manifestations - ugliness, mutilation, cancer, etc. - with regard to the South African body politic. (Series: Transcultural Anglophone Studies - Vol. 3)

J. M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0698406710
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (984 download)

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Book Synopsis J. M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing by : David Attwell

Download or read book J. M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing written by David Attwell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An insightful literary biography of the Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee’s, illuminating the creation of his extraordinary novels J. M. Coetzee is one of the most renowned yet elusive authors of our time. Now, in J.M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing, David Attwell explores the extraordinary creative process behind Coetzee's work, from Dusklands to The Childhood of Jesus. Drawing on Coetzee's manuscripts, notebooks and research papers housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, Attwell reveals the fascinating ways in which Coetzee's famous novels developed, sometimes through more than fifteen drafts. He convincingly shows that Coetzee's work is strongly autobiographical, and that his writing proceeds with never-ending self-reflection while it moves toward aesthetic detachment. Above all, Attwell argues, South Africa, with its history, language, landscape and conflicts, is much more present in his novels than we have realized. Having worked closely with Coetzee on Doubling the Point, a collection of essays and interviews, Attwell is an engaging, authoritative source. J.M. Coetzee and The Life of Writing is the first book-length study to make use of Coetzee's extensive archive. A fresh, engaging and moving take on one of the world's foremost literary figures, it is bound to change the way Coetzee is read.

Secretary of the Invisible

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Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9042027134
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis Secretary of the Invisible by : Mike Marais

Download or read book Secretary of the Invisible written by Mike Marais and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do individuals, who are part of a community, respond to the stranger as a stranger: i.e. without simply positioning this outsider in opposition to the community in which they are located? How may individuals receive something unknown and therefore surprising into their world without compromising it by identifying it in the terms of that world? In this study, Mike Marais traces the various ways in which Coetzee’s fiction, from Dusklands through to Slow Man, repeatedly poses such questions of hospitality. It is shown that the form of ethical action staged in Coetzee’s writing is grounded not in the individual’s willed and rational achievement, but in his or her invasion and possession by the strangeness of the stranger. This ethic of hospitality, Marais argues, has a strong aesthetic dimension: for Coetzee, the writer is inspired to write by being acted upon by a force from beyond the phenomenal world. The writer is a secretary of the invisible. She or he is responsible to and for the invisible. Marais maintains that this understanding of writing as an involuntary response to that which exceeds history is evident from the first in Coetzee’s fiction. In readings of the novels of the apartheid era, he traces this writer’s rueful, ironic awareness of the limited, even incidental, form of political engagement that may emanate from such an aesthetic. He then goes on to argue that if it is the writer’s obligation to render visible the invisible, writing must be a task that can never be completed. What is more, such writing is thus bound to be iterative in form. With this in mind, he traces the structural similarities between Coetzee’s writing of the apartheid period and his post-apartheid and Australian writing, arguing that the later texts are self-reflexively aware of their endlessly repetitive nature. These contentions are developed incrementally through close readings of the individual novels that focus on recurring metaphors of hospitality – visitor, the stranger, the house, the castaway, the invisible, the dream, and the child.