Genre Fiction
![J. M. Coetzee - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B000AQ6MTM.jpg)
Elizabeth Costello: Fiction
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.
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.
Editorial Reviews
[Elizabeth Costello] resonates in the mind long after it has been put aside. (John Banville, The Nation)
Readers Top Reviews
fadouaA.C.
Coetzee’s novel is an invitation to ask questions on various controversial topics: The failure of modern philosophy in face of animal rights, the relationship between the West and Africa, the significance of teaching humanities at universities, the Sisyphean debate between the doubtful intellect and the religious hardliner… Coetzee, through his protagonist Elizabeth, shows the intellectual satisfaction that comes from encountering such topics- of which I was not aware.
WeAreWhatWeRead
I agree with the other reviewers - to call this a novel is completely wrong. I suspect the extraordinary J. M. Coetzee was pushed into this by his publishers, keen to catch as many readers as possible in the net, but it was a mistake. I would have much preferred to be told from the start that this is a collection of essays, rather than being lied to and served up essays and a discussion of pure ideas under the guise of a contrived and incomplete narrative, with no story and a main character who is a famous writer and clearly Coetzee's pensive alter ego. So I too wasted a lot of time looking for the story etc, and I can understand the frustration readers have expressed on finding there was none. I mean, there really was no need for the subterfuge; we're not all a bunch of clods, many of us WILL buy and read a book of essays. Having said that, I found the essays themselves superb. Balanced arguments persuasively made, and so masterfully written that I became interested even in the matters I didn't care much about, or disagreed with. There is an obvious homage to Kafka at the end which I also found very good and deeply unsettling and thought-provoking. Well worth a read.
Luc REYNAERT
In this more or less loosely constructed novel built around lectures given by the author's double, the Australian writer Elisabeth Costello, J. M. Coetzee puts himself `tout nu' by tackling head-on all important human issues as there are literature (writing and the responsibility of the writer), evil (holocausts), religion, the ravages of politics, the role of the university or sex. Literature, the miracle of writing and crisis Books are put better together than the writer, whose aim is to live on through its creatures (seeking immortality) and to measure himself against the masters. `His business is to bring inert matter to life or opening eyes to human depravity (shaking people).' But the writer has also responsibilities, for `certain things are not good to read or to write.' Like the great writer H. Von Hofmannsthal in `The Lord Chandos Letter' (quoted in this novel), an author has also self-doubts: `has everything she has said, all her finger-pointing and accusing, been not only wrong-headed, but mad, completely mad?' Evil (against animals) In extremely harsh words, J.M. Coetzee denounces the places of death (the slaughterhouses) around us, making evil a banality. `Each day a fresh holocaust, yet our moral being is untouched.' `At the bottom, we protect our own kind. Thumbs up to human babies, thumbs down to veal calves. Evil (by religion) Christianism killed everything: `the Greeks were damned, the Indians were damned, the Zulus were damned', because `extra ecclesiam nulla salvatio.' `We need Hellenism as an alternative to Christianity. We should not live in the hereafter but in the here and now.' Evil (by universities) The core of the universities today is moneymaking. The Studio humanitatis died as sterile text analysis (textual scholarship). Evil (by politics) The author's target here are the Europeans and their historical guilt for the extermination of whole peoples, for its wars and its colonialism: `Europe has spread across the world like a cancer, until today it ravages life forms, animals, plants, habitats, languages.' Dream The author's nirvana is the classless society or a world from which poverty, disease, illiteracy, racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and the rest of the bad litany have been exorcised. Sex In the former USSR, people were fed up with lectures about communism. To attract at least some audience, party members had to invent teasing titles like `The three Forms of Love'. Of course, the lecture room was packed. The speaker began his lecture as follows: the first form of love, heterosexuality, is, I hope, known by everybody. The second form of love, homosexuality is, as you know, forbidden in our country. So, there rests only the third form of love for our lecture today and that is the love of the people for our Party. (courtesy A. Zinoviev...
Ethan CooperN
ELIZABETH COSTELLO is an episodic literary novel that Coetzee writes in the form of eight "lessons" and a postscript. In the first six of these lessons, Elizabeth Costello, an elderly novelist acclaimed mostly for the work of her youth, is presenting a paper, making a speech on a cruise ship, or listening to her sister speak at a conference. In each of these lessons, there's lots of literate back-and-forth between professors while the themes of its academic presentations bleed in surprising ways across the lessons. In lesson one, for example, an old and exhausted Elizabeth discusses her métier, which is liberating secondary characters from great novels written by men. And as she presents her paper on this subject, she works to maintain her old-lady novelist's image while her son, her acolyte at the conference, gets a little sex on the side. In contrast, lesson two features an African writer who challenges the realism of Western masterpieces while he turns academic presentations into mere shtick. There is sex, once again exploitive. But this time, it elicits resentment. Anyway, this is the technique. Sometimes, the connection between lessons is Elizabeth, a dull and slightly eccentric presenter, while the conference subject shifts from literature to animal rights and the holocaust. Other times, themes, such as literary history or the brutality of existence, make the primary connection between lessons while Elizabeth slips to the periphery. Altogether, this technique generates a subtle and involving literary machine, written with Coetzee's usual diamond-hard prose. And in this way, Coetzee is able to backtrack and reexamine his issues, adding nuance and depth to his concerns with sex, brutality, moral blindness, responsibility, and making a living. In his last two lessons and postscript, Coetzee then turns matters inside out. Through lesson six, sex is basically a physical experience with partners fighting for the upper hand. But in lesson seven and the postscript, Coetzee makes sex paramount and either ethereal or mystical. Meanwhile, the scholarly presentations, which are told in realistic fashion in the first six lessons, become Kafkaesque in lesson eight, where Elizabeth explores what she believes. These last chapters are a stylistic twist and add depth to the book. I've read several novels by Coetzee. IMHO, his best novels place imperfect people in situations where their pathetic existence represents a moral failure in their culture (
Short Excerpt Teaser
THERE IS FIRST of all the problem of the opening, namely, how to get us from where we are, which is, as yet, nowhere, to the far bank. It is a simple bridging problem, a problem of knocking together a bridge.People solve such problems every day. They solve them, and having solved them push on.Let us assume that, however it may have been done, it is done. Let us take it that the bridge is built andcrossed, that we can put it out of our mind. We have left behind the territory in which we were. We are inthe far territory; where we want to be.
Elizabeth Costello is a writer, born in 1928, which makes her sixty-six years old, going on sixty-seven. Shehas written nine novels, two books of poems, a book on bird life, and a body of journalism. By birth she isAustralian. She was born in Melbourne and still lives there, though she spent the years 1951 to 1963abroad, in England and France. She has been married twice. She has two children, one by each marriage.
Elizabeth Costello made her name with her fourth novel, The House on Eccles Street (1969), whose main character is Marion Bloom, wife of Leopold Bloom, principal character of another novel, Ulysses (1922),by James Joyce. In the past decade there has grown up around her a small critical industry; there is even anElizabeth Costello Society, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which puts out a quarterly ElizabethCostello Newsletter.
In the spring of 1995 Elizabeth Costello traveled, or travels (present tense henceforth), to Williamstown,Pennsylvania, to Altona College, to receive the Stowe Award. The award is made biennially to a majorworld writer, selected by a jury of critics and writers. It consists of a purse of $5o,ooo, funded by a bequestfrom the Stowe estate, and a gold medal. It is one of the larger literary prizes in the United States.
On her visit to Pennsylvania Elizabeth Costello (Costello is her maiden name) is accompanied by her sonJohn. John has a job teaching physics and astronomy at a college in Massachusetts, but for reasons of hisown is on leave for the year. Elizabeth has become a little frail: without the help of her son she would notbe under taking this taxing trip across half the world.
We skip. They have reached Williamstown and have been conveyed to their hotel, a surprisingly largebuilding for a small city, a tall hexagon, all dark marble outside and crystal and mirrors inside. In her rooma dialogue takes place.
'Will you be comfortable?' asks the son.
'I am sure I will she replies. The room is on the twelfth floor, with a prospect over a golf course and,beyond that, over wooded hills.
'Then why not have a rest? They are fetching us at six thirty I'll give you a call a few minutes beforehand.'
He is about to leave. She speaks.
'John, what exactly do they want from me?'
'Tonight? Nothing. It's just a dinner with members of the jury. We won't let it turn into a long evening. I'llremind them you are tired.'
'And tomorrow?'
'Tomorrow is a different story. You'll have to gird your loins for tomorrow, I am afraid.'
'I have forgotten why I agreed to come. It seems a great ordeal to put oneself through, for no good reason. Ishould have asked them to forget the ceremony and send the checque in the mail.'
After the long flight, she is looking her age. She has never taken care of her appearance; she used to be ableto get away with it; now it shows. Old and tired.'It doesn't work that way, I am afraid, Mother. If you accept the money, you must go through with theshow.'
She shakes her head. She is still wearing the old blue raincoat she wore from the airport. Her hair has agreasy, lifeless look. She has made no move to unpack. If he leaves her now, what will she do? Lie down inher raincoat and shoes?
He is here, with her, out of love. He cannot imagine her getting through this trial without him at her side.He stands by her because he is her son, her loving son. But he is also on the point of becoming - distastefulword - her trainer.
He thinks of her as a seal, an old, tired circus seal. One more time she must heave herself up on to the tub,one more time show that she can balance the ball on her nose. Up to him to coax her, put heart in her, gether through the performance.
'It is the only way they have,' he says as gently as he can. 'They admire you, they want to honour you. It isthe best way they can think of doing that. Giving you money. Broadcasting your name. Using the one to dothe other.'
Standing over...
Elizabeth Costello is a writer, born in 1928, which makes her sixty-six years old, going on sixty-seven. Shehas written nine novels, two books of poems, a book on bird life, and a body of journalism. By birth she isAustralian. She was born in Melbourne and still lives there, though she spent the years 1951 to 1963abroad, in England and France. She has been married twice. She has two children, one by each marriage.
Elizabeth Costello made her name with her fourth novel, The House on Eccles Street (1969), whose main character is Marion Bloom, wife of Leopold Bloom, principal character of another novel, Ulysses (1922),by James Joyce. In the past decade there has grown up around her a small critical industry; there is even anElizabeth Costello Society, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which puts out a quarterly ElizabethCostello Newsletter.
In the spring of 1995 Elizabeth Costello traveled, or travels (present tense henceforth), to Williamstown,Pennsylvania, to Altona College, to receive the Stowe Award. The award is made biennially to a majorworld writer, selected by a jury of critics and writers. It consists of a purse of $5o,ooo, funded by a bequestfrom the Stowe estate, and a gold medal. It is one of the larger literary prizes in the United States.
On her visit to Pennsylvania Elizabeth Costello (Costello is her maiden name) is accompanied by her sonJohn. John has a job teaching physics and astronomy at a college in Massachusetts, but for reasons of hisown is on leave for the year. Elizabeth has become a little frail: without the help of her son she would notbe under taking this taxing trip across half the world.
We skip. They have reached Williamstown and have been conveyed to their hotel, a surprisingly largebuilding for a small city, a tall hexagon, all dark marble outside and crystal and mirrors inside. In her rooma dialogue takes place.
'Will you be comfortable?' asks the son.
'I am sure I will she replies. The room is on the twelfth floor, with a prospect over a golf course and,beyond that, over wooded hills.
'Then why not have a rest? They are fetching us at six thirty I'll give you a call a few minutes beforehand.'
He is about to leave. She speaks.
'John, what exactly do they want from me?'
'Tonight? Nothing. It's just a dinner with members of the jury. We won't let it turn into a long evening. I'llremind them you are tired.'
'And tomorrow?'
'Tomorrow is a different story. You'll have to gird your loins for tomorrow, I am afraid.'
'I have forgotten why I agreed to come. It seems a great ordeal to put oneself through, for no good reason. Ishould have asked them to forget the ceremony and send the checque in the mail.'
After the long flight, she is looking her age. She has never taken care of her appearance; she used to be ableto get away with it; now it shows. Old and tired.'It doesn't work that way, I am afraid, Mother. If you accept the money, you must go through with theshow.'
She shakes her head. She is still wearing the old blue raincoat she wore from the airport. Her hair has agreasy, lifeless look. She has made no move to unpack. If he leaves her now, what will she do? Lie down inher raincoat and shoes?
He is here, with her, out of love. He cannot imagine her getting through this trial without him at her side.He stands by her because he is her son, her loving son. But he is also on the point of becoming - distastefulword - her trainer.
He thinks of her as a seal, an old, tired circus seal. One more time she must heave herself up on to the tub,one more time show that she can balance the ball on her nose. Up to him to coax her, put heart in her, gether through the performance.
'It is the only way they have,' he says as gently as he can. 'They admire you, they want to honour you. It isthe best way they can think of doing that. Giving you money. Broadcasting your name. Using the one to dothe other.'
Standing over...
