Absolutely the biggest piece of wankery I've read in a very long time.

There was way too much going on in such a small book, and not enough of it making any sense. And then, Barton and Foe become lovers, because why not? Seriously, what the actual fuck? And if someone can please explain the end to me ... that would be great.

I read this a long time ago and have only just got round to thinking about a review now. Now is me sitting in front a netbook with a large glass of red wine, the work phone switched off (praise all your gods, it is the weekend) and a pile of salted cashew nuts to hand. You could cast me adrift on a desert island now, with no hope of redemption and as long as I could take the wine and the nuts (I'll leave the works phone, thanks) then I probably wouldn't utter so much as a squeak of protest.

Turns out that leaving it a while to review this book was probably a tactical faux pas on my part because it has not left enough of an impression to allow the memories of salient points ( a fellow goodreader pointed out today that book amnesia is frequently the benchmark of a bad book), witty lines and poetic description to come flooding back. Give me an hour, more wine and I'll probably fill in the blanks with some kind of skewed version of Coetzee's sequel/ parallel to Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (recently read and reviewed), but I'll try to finish writing before it gets to that sloppy point.

In lieu of being able to offer any new startling observations on this text I have just read two excellent reviews:

Chris Holmes' http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

and Brian's review http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

both which are worth reading with or without the wine.

Coetzee tackles the story of Robinson Crusoe and his castaway years by adding into the mix, a female companion who has returned to England and brought with her the story of her life on an island with the now deceased Cruso and the man Friday. The story she tells is very different to that of the Crusoe we know from popular publication. Does this make it any less true? I suppose the point is that communication, or if you are Friday, lack thereof, is constantly open to interpretation. Is what we say actually interpreted by those who hear it in the way we mean it? Probably not. The faceless communications of today (text, Tweet, blog and even goodreads) leave a lot of scope for misinterpretation and error. With Cruso I guess the question is, how much of his-story is in this case her story?

Oh heck. I simply have no patience for this. I appreciate that other readers find within this novella some commentary on such topics as memory, language, slavery, the status of minorities, etc. But I personally am overwhelmed with boredom by what seems to me endless mental masturbation on the topic of writing and storytelling. I can't help it - I like narrative fiction - and there's no real narrative here.

I would definitely recommend that readers have already read, or at least have a good familiarity with the story Robinson Crusoe.

I'm personally disappointed in this, my second foray into this Nobel laureate's work, and wondering whether I'll find anything to suit me in any of his other novels, especially those that have made the 1001 list. I suspect that the 1001 editors are completely enamored of self-referential works, as opposed to straight-forward narrative fiction. Ah well.

Coetzee's sometimes strained exercise here is to write together the narratives of Daniel Defoe's two major novels, Pamela and Robinson Crusoe. Once again, the central undertaking is Coetzee's straining to hear the voice of the subaltern through his characters and once again concluding with the best-solution-possible as some complicated ritual of bodily compassion and performative abjection. As the characters of The Darjeeling Limited need a drowned Indian boy to make their trip meaningful, Coetzee needs Friday to have no tongue to stand in as a cipher of the Unknowable. After my third Coetzee novel in less than as many months, the anguished to-and-froing about who owns whom, and who speaks/writes/acts whom and whether or not this is the very tension/question that we are forced to forever grapple with (it is, it seems) is starting to feel like the repetitive tongue-and-groove chafing of a masochist's wrist ties. It's enough to make you want to say Uncle (or Empire) and be done. Or at least find a partner with different ropes and different knots.

This is a parallel novel to Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Yet the parallel lines are drawn free handed and with much liberty. Coetzee steps boldly in the story - unafraid that we might see him. He dares us to see him. Dares us to question his tale. He'll tell us the story he wants us to hear. Yeah, so there is a "real" story. There's got to be more to it. You know there is something that Susan is not sharing. And Friday ain't telling us anything. Robinson Crusoe is dead - so what choice does he have? The cannibals are there though. They were too good to erase.

Fancy being driven to pictures.

When I read a novel, I'm looking for this:



and this:



with big hints along the way like:


and this:



I thought I was doing fine with this Coetzee I found in Leiden recently. There's a woman and she is on a desert island for a while and then she's rescued and she's bogged down with Man Friday and Daniel Defoe's in it writing her story and I thought I got it. But I couldn't help feeling now and again like:



and trying to figure it all out made things worse.



Frankly, in the end, I felt like I was in the middle of xkcd's google map directions (goodreads has made a hash of this, please go link: here to see it:



I don't know, Mr Coetzee. I really don't know. I wish when I'd got to the lake and saw the trouble ahead, I'd just turned back. I'm going to have a lie down and a nice cup of tea now. That's if I'm still alive, if I was real. Perhaps the book has the answer to that.

Atmospheric and thought-provoking, but ultimately too reticent to be either satisfying or fully engaging.

Foe is a consciously literary novel. The first section is exquisitely rendered, but as soon as the metafiction really kicks in, I found it obtrusive. The exploration of the blurred lines between fiction and reality, power and language, Friday’s story and the notion of double consciousness (and of being a stranger everywhere, even his own homeland, were he to return) is fascinating – it’s a shame the narrative descends into the pretentious, only to drown in its own artifice. (That ending, though?!)

I disliked the way Coetzee depicted women here. Quite frankly, I wanted to throttle Susan for her subservience, whining and bizarre decisions. Perhaps the worst, however, was the visitations of the muse. (Ugh.) It is interesting that Coetzee chose to introduce a woman into the narrative, but it becomes clear fairly early on that it is only so she can serve the functions traditionally assigned to females; procreation, inspiration, being disbelieved/exploited/dismissed. It gives a pretty unambiguous idea of what a woman’s purpose is perceived to be.

Disappointing, but certainly an improvement on the original.

I think it’s important that I note that this is not the kind of book that I would normally gravitate towards in the first place. While it was not my taste, I can understand why it would definitely be in other readers’ wheelhouses.

“Quando rifletto sulla mia storia, mi pare di esistere solo come colei che è giunta, colei che è stata testimone, colei che anelava ad andarsene: un essere senza consistenza, un fantasma accanto al corpo vero di Cruso. È dunque questo il destino di chi narra storie?”

Non Crusoe, ma Susan Barton, naufragata nell’isola più celebre della letteratura, che testimonia la testardaggine e la musoneria di Cruso, il naufrago per eccellenza, che però non possiede nemmeno una delle qualità tanto decantate da Defoe, simboli dell’intraprendenza, del buonsenso borghese e dell’ottimismo di un’epoca.
Ma Coetzee riscrive la storia con una lucida consapevolezza postcolonialista e in un’ottica postmoderna.
Perciò il libro è difficile, a tratti astruso, di certo meditativo, filosofico e metaletterario.

Una donna ha bisogno di un uomo (lo scrittore Foe, decurtato del prefisso nobiliare) per trasformare la sua storia in scrittura e farne un prodotto appetibile per un mercato di lettori avidi di ingredienti stimolanti e colpi di scena esagerati. Niente di tutto questo invece: c’è la storia di una donna che tenta invano di comunicare con uomo chiuso in se stesso e insieme la storia di uno schiavo nero (Venerdì) a cui è stata mozzata la lingua: muto, mutilato e reietto si esprime in un linguaggio di gesti e di musica, solipsistico e incomprensibile al mondo.
Al centro del discorso il mistero della scrittura narrativa, strumento ambiguo e potente, falsificazione necessaria per dare voce a uno stralcio di verità. O forse soltanto al suo fantasma.

“ Dimenticavo che siete uno scrittore e dunque sapete quante parole si possono succhiare da un festino di cannibali, e quanto poche da una donna in cerca di un riparo dal vento.”

"You should read Defoe's Robinson Crusoe before reading Coetzee's Foe"
-said anyone with the least of literary sensitivity and there is me who totally went full throttle on this book.The narrative perspective here is as slippery as a mouldy bar of soap.During the last chapter, I was basically yelling:" Who is talking, here?? Foe, Susan,Heck, is it Friday?!!" Now, I understand why it is considered as a pillar in the metafictional genre.Way to fill my soul with doubt, Coetzee.Now, I will be questioning every narrator and doubting every POV because your scope of perception was all over the place.

Šta bi se dogodilo ako bi se na pustom ostrvu Robinsona Krusoa pojavila žena? Kako bi to narušilo njegov i Petkov život? Da li bi bio srećan što posle toliko vremena vidi još neko ljudsko biće?

Suzan Barton je brodolomnica koja igrom slučaja i zlehude sudbine dospeva na Robinsonovo ostrvo nakon što je na brodu koji je plovio iz Brazila za Lisabon izbila pobuna. Kapetan je ubijen, a ona strpana s njim u čamac i prepuštena moru. Kada više nije imala snage da vesla, skliznula je u vodu i prepustila se talasima.

Dospevši na ostrvo pokušava da se navikne na ustaljeni ritam dvojice starosedelaca. Osim majmuna i vetra koji neprekidno duva nema mnogo dešavanja. Domaćin se drži na distanci. Škrt je u razgovoru i inicijativi da prihvati bilo kakvu promenu koju Suzan predlaže kako bi poboljšali opstanak na ovom surovom mestu. Petko ćuti jer mu je odsečen jezik (ko je to uradio Kruso ili trgovci robljem nije do kraja jasno) i opslužuje gospodara. Zajedno slažu kamenje i prave platoe za sadnju pšenice koju se nadaju da će doneti sledeći brod koji pristane.

Suzan se prepušta vetru i pokušava da se prilagodi novonastalim uslovima. Razmišlja o ćerci koju je oteo engleski prevoznik robe i odveo je u Baiju gde joj se gubi svaki trag. Majka je dve godine pokušavala da je pronađe, ali kada joj je ponestalo novca morala je da se vrati u Englesku.

Do tog ostrva stići će godinu i nešto kasnije kada nju, Robinsona i Petka spase posada trgovačkog broda koji je plovio za Ujedinjeno kraljevstvo. Kruso, oslabljenog tela već načetog groznicom, umire u toku puta. Suzan i Petko nastavljaju sami.

U Londonu ona presreće poznatog pisca, gospodina Foa, i nudi mu svoju priču kao materijal za njegovu novu knjigu. On je zainteresovan, ali ubrzo, pod teretom dugova, nestaje kako bi pobegao od poverenika. Petko i Suzan useljavaju se u praznu kuću gospodina Foa i čekaju ga da dođe živeći od onoga što mogu da prodaju od pokućstva.

U međuvremenu se ispred zdanja pojavljuje devojka koja tvrdi da se zove Suzan Barton i da je Suzanina ćerka. Ona odbija da poveruje u to jer je njena ćerka potpuno drugačija.

Tako život nastavlja da se oteže dok se konačno ne pojavi gospodin Fo koji želi da napiše priču drugačiju od one koje mu je Suzan ispovedila.

Koja je to priča i da li je mlađana Suzan samo plod piščeve mašte ili zaista oteta ćerka, kao i kakav završetak pripovesti Suzan priprema gospodinu Fou pitanja su na koje ćete moći da odgovoite tek kada pročitate roman do kraja.

Robinson Kruso vašeg detinjstva više nikad neće biti isti.

http://aleksandar-petrovic.com/2019/0...

Straight from Defoe's narrative 'Robinson Crusoe', I plunged into 'Foe' mainly because these two books make up a section of my Uni degree.

In 'Foe', Susan Barton becomes a castaway, being washed up on Cruso's (sic) island, where the intelligent, pious Crusoe portrayed by Defoe has become a grumpy, unfriendly man, and where Friday is portrayed as a mute simpleton, in an almost Conradian way. In saying that, the theme of 'Foe' seems to centre on the lack of words/speech given to him in Defoe's novel; how the oppressed (both women and "savages") are not given the power of speech, their muteness allowing others to effectively write their life stories for them, thereby denying them their freedom and true identity. This can be seen in Susan's frequent musings as to whether Friday is actually a cannibal, and is depicted symbolically by Friday's large empty mouth - devoid of tongue, devoid of words. This "black hole" is then paralleled to a black pupil of an eye, blackness into which nothing can be seen, and truth is concealed. I got to thinking of Kurtz's deathbed scene in Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' where he died with his mouth open "giving him a voracious aspect". Could Friday's black hole of a mouth symbolise "the horror! the horror!" exclaimed by Kurtz? Also, just as Kurtz's final words were uninterpretable (is that a word?), those of Friday - the an incomprehensible "stream" of water that exits his mouth in the last scene - and indeed the last section of the book, are too. Hmmmm. Stuff to think about there.

The ending of the book is a bit strange; almost taking the form of an alternative storyline, parallelling the author Foe's desire to reshape Susan's actual narrative in order to sell books and escape from bankruptcy. It's basically a battle of authority over a narrative. The end section is so unlike the rest of the novel, it left me totally confused!

So, on first reading, it appears to me as a book addressing the art of novel-writing, whilst introducing political issues, such as slavery and the misery of oppression. It's a quick read, and a good little novel to append onto any reading of Defoe's classic masterpiece. But very, very different!