Late Essays: 2006-2016

October 30, 2017
In this collection of 23 essays, Coetzee (The Schooldays of Jesus) offers striking, imaginative insights into a varied group of writers, from German poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843) to modern-day master Philip Roth. Coetzee’s entries, roving from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to Leo Tolstoy, Samuel Beckett, and Patrick White, raise numerous questions: Why do novels lie to us? What makes Samuel Beckett like Herman Melville? How do translators make choices? In his essay on playwright and fiction writer Heinrich von Kleist, Coetzee reflects on the author’s enigmatic novella The Marquise of O, asking whether there can be aspects of a story that remain unknown even to the author. Yet there are limits to Coetzee’s scope: the authors in this collection are, except for Irene Nemirovsky, male. Moreover, Coetzee reveals a blindness to the female experience, as made apparent when he writes, about the heroine of Daniel Defoe’s Roxana: A Fortunate Mistress, that anything “resistible” isn’t rape and questions how she could be sexually alluring at 50. Nevertheless, Coetzee’s many strong and provocative essays, along with the clarity of his writing and the literary biographies he weaves into his analyses, make this in general a worthwhile work of literary criticism. Agent: Peter Lampack, Peter Lampack Agency.

November 1, 2017
Nobel and Booker Prize winner Coetzee (The Schooldays of Jesus, 2017, etc.) offers another collection of reflective and erudite essays on a variety of poets and novelists.Originally published as introductions to foreign translations or in the New York Review of Books, some of the author's favorites recur: Daniel Defoe, Robert Walser, Zbigniew Herbert, Philip Roth, and Samuel Beckett, the "philosophical satirist," whom Coetzee covers in four of the essays. While discussing Beckett's letters and two novels--Watt, a "fable cum treatise that for long stretches manages to be hypnotically fascinating," and Molloy, a "mysterious work, inviting interpretation and resisting it at the same time"--the author focuses on Beckett's language, a "self-enclosed system, a labyrinth without issue, in which human beings are trapped." An acclaimed translator himself, Coetzee is particularly interested in the translations of some authors' works. He laments that any translation of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther that would be "true" for readers of the 1770s as well as for today's is "an unattainable ideal." He quibbles that Michael Hamburger's translations of Friedrich Holderlin's poetry are "only intermittently...touched with divine fire." But the "achievement is nevertheless considerable." The essay on Patrick White, the "greatest writer Australia has produced," confronts the dilemma faced by literary executors. Coetzee praises White's agent Barbara Mobbs as well as Kafka's friend Max Brod for refusing to carry out their authors' wishes to have their writings destroyed. As Coetzee writes, "the world is a richer place now that we have [White's] The Hanging Garden." As a longtime advocate for animal rights, his short piece on Juan Ramon Jimenez's tale of a donkey, Platero and I, is especially poignant. Other subjects of Coetzee's probing eye include Flaubert, Tolstoy, Hawthorne, Heinrich Von Kleist, Antonio Di Benedetto, Les Murray, Gerald Murnane, Irene Nemirovsky, Ford Madox Ford, and Hendrik Witbooi.Thought-provoking essays that offer more than mere opinion, as the author plumbs the writers' philosophical and psychological depths.

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Starred review from January 1, 2018
Continuing in the vein of his earlier essay collections, including Inner Workings (2007), Nobel laureate Coetzee again demonstrates his range and precision as a literary critic and his gift for rendering challenging material accessible. His interest is in probing the Western canon for works that are praiseworthy, but also those that fall short in interesting ways. His observations often have biographical significance, as when he suggests that in writing The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne had reason to think of himself as a traitor to his traditions. When he writes that Madame Bovary's brilliance had much to do with Flaubert's ability to present big questions as problems of composition, he reminds us that his own approach is also greatly informed by his compositional endeavors. Such perspectives have the effect of bringing even the loftiest literary lights within reach, as seen in pieces on difficult German-language greats Goethe, Holderlin, Kleist and Walser, and in a four-essay excursion into Samuel Beckett. In discussing Patrick White and other Australian writers, Coetzee deftly unpacks the literature of his adoptive home. We never get Coetzee on Coetzee, but in his dissections and his exegesis, his delicate praise and his casual dismissals, we find some revealing glimpses.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2018

With this third collection of essays, Nobel Laureate and Man Booker Prize winner Coetzee (Life and Times of Michael K., Disgrace, etc.) brings a novelist's sensibility to the art of literary criticism. The wide range of novels discussed form a chronological look at the genre's development, from Coetzee's perspective. He includes such classics as Daniel Defoe's Roxana, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich, along with more contemporary works by Philip Roth, Ford Maddox Ford, Irene N'mirovsky, and others. In examining the novels of Nobel Prize winner Patrick White, Coetzee praises the decision of White's literary agent to publish The Hanging Garden posthumously, despite the author's instructions to burn any fragments found after his death. Most noteworthy is Coetzee's thought-provoking analysis of Samuel Beckett's writing, especially the novels Watt and Molloy. Presenting possible interpretations of these challenging works encourages readers who otherwise might never consider them. VERDICT Coetzee is unparalleled in his ability to penetrate the philosophical and psychological mysteries in a work of art. This will appeal to scholars and readers of serious fiction. [See Prepub Alert, 7/17/17.]--Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2018

Coetzee has certainly made his mark in fiction, having won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003 and been the first author to be awarded the Booker Prize twice, for Life & Times of Michael K and Disgrace. But he's also an insightful critic, and the subjects of these 23 recent essays range from Daniel Defoe, Samuel Beckett, and Philip Roth to Goethe, Irene Nemirovsky, and Patrick White. Not just for scholars; with a 20,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.