J. M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing

August 24, 2015
Drawing on Coetzee’s manuscripts, notebooks, and other archival papers, his former student Attwell marches placidly through the South African novelist’s writings, from his debut, Dusklands (1974), to his most recent novel, The Childhood of Jesus (2013). Unsurprisingly, Attwell discovers that Coetzee’s fiction is heavily autobiographical, even when it strives for a sense of artistic detachment. In Dusklands, Coetzee situates himself and his family history against the history and cartography of colonial South Africa, searching to discover “whose fault I am.” Life & Times of Michael K (1983), whose outlaw title character is named for Kafka’s Josef K., takes place in South Africa’s mostly barren Karoo region. The bleak setting, a symbol for the barrenness of society, becomes a central motif in Coetzee’s work. Foe (1986) contains Coetzee’s feelings about both the injustices of colonialism and “failure of post-colonial nationalism.” Through his close readings of Coetzee’s manuscripts and other archival materials, Attwell provides a glimpse into the Nobel laureate’s creative process: much of Coetzee’s writing begins with the ordinary and continues onto a “determined process of deliteralization.” While fans of Coetzee will find little that’s new, Attwell’s study may entice readers unfamiliar with the author to pick up his novels for the first time.

August 1, 2015
A literary biography illuminating the development of the Nobel Prize-winning author's work. Identity is a crucial issue in the writing of Coetzee (The Childhood of Jesus, 2013, etc.), a literary master for whom the central question is not "who I am, as much as...what I am." He was born in South Africa; he received his doctorate and started his academic career in the United States, from which he was exiled for a political protest; and he has been a naturalized Australian citizen for more than a decade. He writes fiction, nonfiction, and criticism, and his career as an academic has deeply informed his novels. He was a family man, though the wife from whom he was divorced in 1980 figures little in his work or this biography. "Aspects of Coetzee's life that have little bearing on his authorship have little relevance to this book," writes Attwell (English/Univ. of York), who was once his subject's student and has remained a scholar of his work. Complicating the identity question is Coetzee's "strong desire for self-masking." He has written a series of memoirs in the third person, as if writing about another character, while in his fiction, he has frequently employed characters with some variation on his name. Rather than serving as an introduction to his work, this book will enrich the understanding of those already well-versed in the literature-it requires close reading of Coetzee, and it rewards it. The study untangles the threads of a creative process that always involves multiple drafts and often finds him juggling multiple projects, with passages put aside only to appear years or decades later in a new work. Though Coetzee is often considered more of a philosophical novelist or novelist of ideas, Attwell shows just how deeply the life and work are intertwined. The author quotes his subject: "All writing is autobiography...[and] all autobiography is storytelling." Recent work receives comparatively short shrift, but Attwell provides a solid foundation for a literary appreciation.

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April 15, 2015

University of York professor Attwell, who had Nobel Prize-winning novelist J.M. Coetzee as a supervisor when he completed an MA in African literary theory and criticism at the University of Cape Town, considers how deeply self-reflective Coetzee's fiction really is.

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