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Since the Harvard days, even though there has been infrequent
correspondence between us, I have become something of a Coetzee-watcher
and have been keeping a close tab on his works. If I were to
describe his writings, I would perhaps begin with a reference to
his remarks on Salman Rushdie: "Identity… has hovered as
a problem over Salman Rushdie’s head for most of his life.
India is where his imagination lives. Yet as a British citizen
of Muslim ancestry and, since Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa,
of indeterminate residence, it has become less and less easy for
him to assert, when he writes about India, the country of his
birth, that he writes as an insider." In Coetzee’s case,
such an identity problem does not exist. South Africa is where
his imagination lives and where he himself resides, teaching at
the University of Cape Town, taking time off occasionally for
various academic assignments in the USA. So his South African
identity is never in doubt.
A white man
from South Africa, Coetzee is deeply rooted in his environment,
he belongs to the land and people, can commiserate with their
sufferings and feel the deep pain of social chasms caused by the
country’s political history. He writes as an insider,
presenting the true story of South Africa to the world. It is
not simply the story of a nation emerging from the throes of
colonial rule, but goes far deeper. How does the white settler
feel when authority resides in other hands? What is it like for
the oppressed when they finally break free and come into power?
Coetzee’s novels tell us that there is no turning your back on
a nation’s history, for history continues to live in the
present, and into the future, moulding the character and actions
of the people it involves.
This theme
enters all his novels mutatis mutandis. The action
invariably takes place in Dusklands (the title of a 1977
novel) and yet, something in them transcends spatial boundaries,
making the experience palpable even to readers far removed from
the locale. Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) and Life
and Times of Michael K (1983), for instance, have a specific
chronotopic situation, yet the reverberations of their stories
can be felt and understood by readers across the globe. Coetzee’s
sympathies are for the underdog, the meek and the downtrodden.
It is his
ability to see the other’s point of view that informs Foe
(1986), a revisionist and experimental novel. Based on the story
of Robinson Crusoe, Coetzee’s novel focuses attention not on
the castaway but another character who is inserted into the
well-known story to view it from a totally different
perspective. A woman called Sue Barton is brought into the
eponymous hero’s exclusive domain in such a way as to make the
story relevant to the present times – times when the academia
prefers to view a text not from the conventional centre but from
the point of view of the ‘other.’ So the familiar story is
presented from the standpoint of a woman placed in an all-male
scenario, a woman representing the minority, the marginalised,
or the silenced other.
The Age of Iron
(1990), takes the form of a letter-diary from Mrs. Curren, a
former classics professor facing imminent death from cancer. The
horrors of Apartheid are revealed through her descriptions of
events that turn the social fabric topsy-turvy. The same theme
is explored from a different angle in the recent Booker-winning Disgrace
(1999), which begins as the story of a Professor of English
driven into professional disgrace after experiencing physical
intimacy with a student, but ultimately unfolds as the tale of
the white man in South Africa. Racial hatred is laid bare and
the harsh, ugly realities of post-apartheid South Africa, are
foregrounded. There is no doubt that apartheid is horrifying,
but the post-apartheid condition is equally vicious,
substituting one form of social malaise for another.
Coetzee is not
a writer given to confessional outpourings. He insists on
keeping the private out of his writings. Yet, he is capable of
recreating personal experiences, as seen from his Boyhood:
Scenes from Provincial Life (1997) which gives a graphic
description of his growing years. Strictly speaking, the novel
is not autobiographical as it uses the third person instead of
the first person singular. But the insights are deeply personal
and there is little doubt that it is the young Coetzee we
encounter in the narrative.
While childhood
is generally seen as an idyllic time when trailing clouds of
glory come from the heaven that is our home, Coetzee gives us an
unusual account, stripping childhood of its glamour, presenting
it as "a time of gritting the teeth and enduring".
Here, again, interwoven into the personal narrative, is the
writer’s favourite theme of inter-racial relationships between
the white coloniser, the local Afrikaan, and the white
settler. Coetzee’s loyalties are divided and he straddles
different worlds. He is not judgmental since he is capable of a
multi-perspective appreciation of his milieu. So he simply
presents reality, no matter how disquieting, before the reader
without any dogma or moralising.
No matter what his subject,
John Coetzee is undeniably a formidable writer today. He has to
be taken seriously for there is no nonsense or flamboyance about
him: each sentence, each phrase is deliberately chosen and falls
like the stroke of a hammer. As a writer, he stands head and
shoulders above other contemporary writers. True, he has
received recognition for his works, including two Bookers and
the Commonwealth Prize, but I’d like to think – and I’m
confident – that the best of Coetzee is yet to come. Perhaps
one day in the not-too-distant future, the Nobel Prize for
Literature will go to another South African novelist – my
friend, John Coetzee.
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