GILES HUGO reviews J M Coetzee's novel, Elizabeth Costello
J M COETZEE: INTERROGATION OF A WRITER
Inquisitor: You are before this inquiry to give your response
to J M Coetzee’s latest work, Elizabeth Costello.
How
do you plead?
Reader: I plead the Fifth Amendment – I
have no wish to incriminate myself.
I: You have no choice. All readers of J M Coetzee
must register their response in this court of consequences, this
critical theatre of the deconstructed mind, this maze of postmodern...
R: That’s exactly the word I would choose
to describe Elizabeth Costello. It’s mucho macho postmod,
and I confess I dislike most things thus tagged.
I: Your record shows you have previously railed
against ‘pissed modernists’. Can your response to Coetzee
be unprejudiced?
R: Prejudice can be two-faced – I
have for almost thirty years been an avid reader
of J M Coetzee’s fiction. And when he won
the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature I rejoiced,
because at last the right South African had won.
I greatly respect 1991 winner Nadine Gordimer but
I prefer Coetzee. He demands more from his readers.
I: Can you forgive him his postmodernism in Elizabeth
Costello?
R: At the end of my first reading I would have said
no. But, after a second reading, I admit that the content and intelligence
of the arguments outweigh my reservations about structural form and
certain devices.
I: Such as?
R: A couple of times he explains what he is doing,
as a writer, in a kind of smart alec way, such as: ‘There is
a scene in the restaurant, mainly dialogue, which we will skip.’ And
later: ‘The presentation scene itself we skip. It is not a
good idea to interrupt the narrative too often, since storytellying
works by lulling the reader or listener into a dreamlike state in
which the time and space of the real world fade away, superseded
by the time and space of the fiction. Breaking into the dream draws
attention to the constructedness of the story, and plays havoc with
the realist illusion. However, unless certain scenes are skipped
over we will be here all afternoon. The skips are not part of the
text, they are part of the performance.’ This I find either
astringently droll or suspiciously ‘Pretentious, moi?’
I: Is he mocking pretension?
R: Even after two readings, Coetzee often remains
enigmatic. He can be engagingly self-contradictory – frustratingly
so, like his main character. Acclaimed sixtysomething Melbourne writer
Elizabeth Costello is becoming increasingly outspoken, clashing with
fellow writers, academics and family – the usual suspects in
this milieu. Coetzee uses her as the vehicle for delivering – or
learning – the ‘Eight Lessons’ into which this ‘work
of fiction’ is divided. I wanted to know more about her past,
friends and lovers, but Coetzee is almost as reticent about her as
he is about himself. However, he runs a fantastic debate, or series
of debates. Once I had accepted it as mostly a conflict of ideas – like
rugby for the mind – rather than a narrative, I enjoyed it
enormously.
I: Do you feel guilty for enjoying such an openly
PM work?
R: All readers are guilty – as are all writers – of
enjoying some writing when they wonder if enjoyment is the most appropriate
response. In ‘Lesson 6: The Problem of Evil’, Elizabeth
Costello feels stricken by a book about the brutal execution of the
Nazi officers who plotted the failed Hitler assassination. She finds
this exploration of extreme cruelty and evil utterly horrifying and
debasing... but she doesn’t stop reading.
I: Your reading?
R: In his rare early 1990s interview with Coetzee,
Rian Malan (My Traitor’s Heart) is confounded when
his subject writes down all his questions, cogitates, then answers
in a way that reveals more about the questioner than himself. In
desperation, Malan finally asks: ‘Is this not what you are
saying?’ After due process, Coetzee responds: ‘I would
not wish to deny you your reading.’1
I: Evasion... your reading?
R: Elliptically speaking, I believe Coetzee is partly
reflecting on some criticism of his last novel. Disgrace was
excessively stark and negative about the worst aspects of the new
South Africa. One reader whose opinion I respect greatly said that
at the end of Disgrace she felt Coetzee had been messing
with her head. Some in South Africa seem to think the novel’s
conclusion is either a ‘cop-out’ – perhaps a false
redemption – or a deep betrayal, especially because since writing
it he has left South Africa and settled in Adelaide. In my reading
of Disgrace the banality of the new/old evil is particularly
manifest in extremes of violence and situations of conflict that
can actually coerce a victim into perpetuating abuse – simply
in order to survive.
I: A dour conclusion?
R: Yes, but one which coincides with my experience
and explorations in my own fiction. It is devastating when you realise
what you will do to survive. It is a very... South African realisation.
Perhaps shared by the odd Serb... or Israeli, a few Americans, even
some Australians.
I: Do you — and indeed Coetzee — feel
guilt because of your shared white, male, born-in-the-’40s,
Boer/Afrikaner/Sefrikan background?
R: Guilt, yes, in ways many non-Sefrikans could
perhaps never understand. And I also feel understanding and gratitude
for that dark understanding. I believe his background has made Coetzee
truly serious about what is serious. He may play games and mess with
heads, but he’s entitled to; he’s been plunging us into
the depths of the pit for almost thirty years. Take a look at Dusklands,
his first novel, about the think-tank-inspired black-ops excesses
of military and CIA spooks in 1970s Vietnam, juxtaposed with the
cruelties of the early Cape settlement. He’s great on exploring
guilt by association. When Elizabeth Costello considers the question
of a reader or writer being corrupted by consideration of evil, she
denounces the writer as worthy of censorship for taking her beyond
her moral comfort zone. Ironically she is a PEN veteran, but extreme
feelings have led her again into head-on collisions with her principles
and beliefs.
I: And is she saved by – or from – her
beliefs?
R: Perhaps. In the last Lesson, Elizabeth is confronted
with a kind of parody Kafkaesque court – rather like this inquiry – which
demands a statement from her about what she believes. Initially she
responds that, professionally, as a writer she cannot have beliefs.
And, even if one has beliefs, one doesn’t necessarily believe
them. As a writer she feels she is more like a secretary, waiting
to take dictation when events or people speak. However, her final
lesson seems to be that beliefs are not enough: she must consider
passion.
I: Does Coetzee display passion?
R: Great passion for ideas: animal rights, Hellenism/humanism
versus Christianity, problems of belief, the writer’s dilemma...
but he gives us few details of Elizabeth’s emotional history.
However, there are two strikingly revelatory incidents. As a young
woman, she is physically attacked, tortured even, almost raped
by a would-be lover. Much later in life, while posing for a picture,
she makes a series of spontaneous sexual gestures to the artist,
a friend of her dying mother. Finally, impulsively, she fellates
him.
I: Some would call that – while politically
correct in being non-ageist – disturbing, gratuitously confronting
even?
R: I see it is a gesture of passionate humanity
that only the participants can fully understand. It’s like...
rugby.
I: Rugby...?
R: Ja, rugby: if you have ever played it,
you feel a kind of weird passionate humanity towards all other rugby
players. You have all survived the overwhelming body-contact brutality
of this most physical of contests. A bit like having lived in South
Africa for any length of time at any time in the last fifty or sixty
years. J M Coetzee would understand that. He is, reportedly, very
passionate about rugby. You can see his love of rugby in the way
he plays the postmodernist game – like the Boks – uncompromising,
ruthless defence, tremendous running with the ball because you could
be tackled any moment, so keep running... the joy of running with
the ball. Coetzee will, I believe, continue to surprise us with many
more tries, some opportunistic dropkicks and lots of conversions. Ja
wel, nou fine; I respectfully rest my case.
I: Thank you, Reader, your testimony is noted.
An appropriate penalty will be announced in due course.
GILES HUGO lives in Hobart. His work in progress is a novel, The
Bishop’s Wife.
NOTE
Malan, Rian, ‘A Veiled Genius : The Chilly Brilliance of Novelist
J M Coetzee, Africa’s new Nobel laureate’, in Time magazine,
volume 162 no. 14, October 13, 2003.
Last modified
22 June, 2004
