It seems a lifetime ago that I read Robinson Crusoe and I can hardly remember anything from it other than knowing it's obvious storyline of a guy being marooned on an island. I wondered whether or not it would make any difference in regards to reading Foe. In the end it didn't really matter, as I found this messy re-working not that special anyway. Of the four Coetzee novels I've now read, Foe I found to be the weakest. It's a clever idea, giving the classic a deconstructionist turn by adding new characters and including the original author himself, with his disputed reactions and shrewd wisdom, and it's written well enough, but when compared to his extraordinarily convincing novels Waiting for the Barbarians & disgrace then Foe just isn't on the same island, more like stuck on a reef.
The young castaway widow Susan Barton is really central to this parable tale, and not Cruso (Coetzee omits the e from his name), who is an irascible, lazy, imperious man who has little interest in actually trying to escape from the island, with poor old Friday just moping at his side without the ability to talk seeing as he has no tongue, which could be viewed as a social emblem for black South Africans, seeing as Coetzee has used allegorical political material before. After rescue, Cruso snuffs it, and back in England, the main focus is of Susan and Friday's travels and then Foe, and her efforts to persuade him to turn her account of life on the island into an adventure book. He on the other hand is far more interested in Susan's two years spent in Bahia, which was a time of indifference to her. This side-story, then sort of becomes the main story, when the supposed daughter of Susan shows up out of nowhere, and yet she has no recollection of her. But she does in fact have a missing daughter who was abducted and conveyed to the New World. She went looking for her in Brazil before taking a ship to Lisbon and becoming the captain's lover before the sailors mutiny wreaks havoc. I found there to be too much going on in the last third of the novel, like it's pulling in all sorts of directions not knowing where it wants to go. I didn't think much of its ambiguous ending either. I did though like Susan Barton, in the fact that she took on the responsibility of trying to find a safe passage home for Friday, who was completely lost at sea wandering around southern England with her. She could have quite easily just left him in a ditch somewhere. Still, would probably have been better off reading Defoe's classic - that will always stand the test of time, whereas this won't

This was one brilliant read. I began it with much skepticism, having been disappointed by the substance of Robinson Crusoe, I had to read this for my comparative literature paper, to compare it with the master text of Crusoe, and the way it began, slow and ambiguous, and yet thrusting the reader into the narrative without any such introduction, I hated it.

But as I continued reading and understanding the complexity of Susan, the protagonist's thoughts, as well as of the text and the writing of the text itself, I realised this to be a work of great importance. The questions Susan tackles with, of reality, myth, narration, writing and storytelling, all left me dumbfounded.

The way the characters, taken from Robinson Crusoe, of Cruso, the white master of the island, Friday, the tongueless slave and Foe, the white master of Susan's narrative and consciousness of the past and present, all distorted mirrors of Robinson Crusoe, Friday and the former author Daniel Defoe himself, are presented to reveal the reality behind the facade of the primary colonial text.

The use of plot devices by both Coetzee and Foe, in the form of the unknown daughter and the forced daughter Susan Barton, Friday's tonguelessness, the surreality of many of the episodes and the part IV of the book, all reveal the reflexivity and metafictionality of Foe, which is a brilliant text, wherein I might not have been able to understand a few things at the end, but overall, I think this is a stellar exemplification of a post modern, post colonial, re-writing of a colonial text.

How do I review this? How do I review a book of this magnitude? Anything I say here will not do this book justice, but I will try. Let me say this...Foe is my favourite book of 2015 so far.

First off, I don't know why I refused to read this book for so long. This was a school book, and I waited 9 months until I actually devoured it. I'm not a big fan of classics, but this was simply amazing.

This is a retelling of The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Cruso, written by Daniel Defoe in 1719. But in this novel, Defoe is a character, and the main protagonist Susan Barton-a castaway that found herself on an island with Cruso and his slave, Friday.

The first thing that struck me was the writing. I adored the writing. It flowed really well, and read like poetry. Around two thirds of the book was Susan retelling her story, and I found that quite a change from the format of usual books, but it wasn't jarring in any way.

I know that a lot of people found this book confusing, and it probably has something to do with the way the story was told. We only see the present in the last dozen pages, but I honestly loved it.

The underlying theme in this novel is storytelling and authorship. How is a story told, and why. The art of writing, and whether truth is necessary. Susan wants the truth of her tale-how they got off the island, how Cruso died, how she and Friday survived-told, even if the story is dull. However, Foe wants to change the story up, add embellishments, and write it in a way that is sellable. In the end, it is your story that survives. If you are misrepresented, or written out of history, did you even exist at all? How fitting is this tale, when we are all living, breathing mortals that could die at any moment. We die, and only our memory survives. But if that memory lives on, incorrect in it's prose, then only that version of you lives on. You are gone.

Susan is stuck in Cruso's world-in his reality-when she was on the island. He lived a lifestyle completely opposite to her own, and rejected her every suggestion. In a way, she became someone different, because your lifestyle, and the lenses that you view the world in shapes you and your perception.

What we never figure out is if Cruso did indeed cut out Friday's tongue. Was it the slavers as Cruso says, or did Cruso do it to silence Friday-to make him the perfect docile slave. In this way, we never see the truth of Cruso and Friday. What happens to them remains a mystery, and through Friday we see the importance of language and words. It is something we use everyday, that we tend to take it for granted. But to be deprived of speech, and to not have the ability to understand written or spoken words...what a lonely world he must live in.

I also want to draw attention to the dance scene when Susan danced in an attempt to communicate with Friday. Susan is trying to give a voice to Friday-a representation of the oppressed-and by doing so, she is trying to see how he thinks and communicates. This is important in the real world too. In order to understand a particular person/culture, you need to see the world from their eyes, and be willing to look over cultural differences and boundaries. And even if you don't fully understand them, and they you, at least you tried, and you come out wiser and less ignorant.

Favourite quotes:
"...their trade is in books, not in truth."

"I would rather be the author of my own story than have lies told about me." (And yet, because of Foe, this ends up happening.)

"We are all punished every day. This island is our punishment, this island and one another's company, to the death."

"You speak as if language were one of the banes of life, like money or the pox."

"What benefit is their in a life of silence?"

"Friday has no command of words and therefore no defence against being re-shaped day by day in conformity with the desires of others. I say he is a cannibal, and he becomes a cannibal."

"Friday is Friday. But that is not so. No matter what he is to himself, what he is to the world is what makes of him."

"The island is not a story in itself...we can bring it to life only by setting it within a larger story."

"A woman may bear a child she does not want, and rear it without loving it, yet be ready to defend it with her life."

"The tongue is like a heart, in that way, is it not?"

"Yet where would you be without the woman?"

"Nothing is forgotten...nothing I have forgotten is worth the remembering."

"There is no shame in forgetting: it is our nature to forget as it is our nature to grow old and pass away."

"For surely, with every day that passes, our memories grow less certain."

ترجمه‌ ي ونداد جليلي چندان دلچسب نبود و ديگر اينكه رمان بيش از اندازه درونگرا و پر استعاره است و به گمانم خواننده ي انگليسي زبان بسيار ازش لذت خواهد برد تا خواننده ي ترجمه هاي دم دستي خوان ِ پارسي

Swobodna impresja na temat "Przypadków Robinsona Kruzoe" autorstwa Daniela Defoe. Pod płaszczykiem opowieści wyspiarskich i postwyspiarskich kryją się rozważania na temat muz, siły kobiet oraz zależności treści historii od tego, kto ją opowiada. Zgodnie bowiem z informacją od wydawcy, niniejsza powieść "jest grą, którą południowoafrykański noblista podejmuje ze znaną historią, wykraczając poza szablony i dopuszczając do głosu postacie milczące: kobietę oraz niewolnika".

Nie szarżowałabym z tym oddawaniem głosu Piętaszkowi, bo po pierwsze - ucięto mu język, po drugie - jego komunikaty są mocno przepuszczone przez filtr zwany Susan. Sama Susan natomiast jest postacią, której nie kupuję. Jeśli ma symbolizować kobiety jako płeć, muzy artystów, opiekunki słabszych od siebie, to dla mnie nie jest w tym wiarygodna. Wszystkie te kwestie są ledwie maźnięte, co sprawia, że gdzieś w konstrukcji tej postaci gra dziwny fałsz. Sama narracja (tak, narratorką jest nasza bohaterka) jest bardzo wydumana, a konstrukcje zdaniowe i słownictwo - nieprzystępne. Do tego stopnia, że trudno tu mówić o jakiejkolwiek przyjemności z czytania.

Wg mnie bardzo słaba pozycja literacka jak na tego autora, co nie oznacza, że słaba w ogóle. Po prostu mi szkoda, ponieważ ciekawy koncept został przedstawiony w wyjątkowo nudny i trudny w odbiorze sposób.

Ovaj roman sažimam kroz psovanje. Prvo sam psovala fakultetskoj obavezi jer bih ovo kao "morala" pročitati, pa sam psovala profesorici kojoj je ovo nadroman i na koji vjerovatno masturbira, pa sam onda psovala sebi jer sam uzela da čitam ovo sranje, i onda na kraju malo psovke i za autora. Nemoguće je ne opsovat majku i zapitat se kako neko na 150 stranica može strpati toliko sranja i šatrologije!

This book is sheer poetry. The language, the pacing, the images - a feast for the mind!
As I see it Coetzee is the most important writer of our times. It is almost ridiculous to praise his style, as the way he formulates the questions and ideas of his writing is so perfectly self-contained and self-explanatory. Unaffected simplicity and clarity translate into utmost sophistication.
At the centre of his work lies the idea of compassion: for animals, for the ones left behind by society, for the crippled, for the ridiculous, for the invisible. A light is cast upon them in his writing by most naturally granting them the position of visible characters - no slick tricks, no handy word games. One of the most humbling of Coetzee's gifts.

I will keep coming back to this book, just like I do with all of Coetzee's books, in hope to prevent myself from forgetting their questions and at the same time to grant myself relief though his unparalleled art of conveying them.

3.5 *

i can see why my professor fawns over this

Creo que Foe es la viva prueba de que no se necesita hacer una obra excesivamente extensa para ahondar en problemas filosóficos serios (si es que existen aquellos que no lo son). En Foe, Coetzee revisita Robison Crusoe y, a pesar de que no he leído la obra de cabecera del escritor británico, puedo afirmar que el ejercicio realizado por Coetzee en esta obra es supremamente interesante. En tal sentido, considero que no es casualidad que el autor vuelva a este relato en su discurso de aceptación del Nobel (He and his man). De alguna manera, Foe entraña el mismo proceso de creación literaria y quiero pensar que, precisamente por tal motivo, Coetzee acude a esta obra al recibir el galardón más prestigioso de las letras. En esta novela subyace una idea que, a mi parecer, es de gran belleza: si bien el autor crea a sus personajes, estos nacen también para transformar la vida de quien los elabora.

Por otra parte, las reflexiones realizadas en torno al lenguaje y al inevitable silencio son increíblemente lúcidas. Tal es la razón por la que, a la final, Viernes termina siendo el protagonista inesperado de esta novela. Por ello, considero que no es descabellado afirmar que Viernes es la personificación de aquello que escapa a las palabras (en muchos casos, la esencia misma de las cosas).

In recent readings of Coetzee's Defoe-pastiche, I have become facinated with the figure of Friday's "empty" mouth. Obviously the open-O, the unvoiced scream, the signs arranged on the beach as evidence of Friday's voice as it is both silenced and withheld, speaks to the trope of subaltern. That said, I believe Coetzee is more interested in our assumption that Friday is without a speech organ, tongue-less. Recall that the only evidence of this tonguelessness comes from the travel narrative that Crusoe gives where he imagines Friday's suffering at the hands of slave-traders and other "savages", as well, in each instance of Susan's quest to see the "stub", the remains, she turns away from what she imagines will be too physical and too evocative fleshy remnants. What does it mean that we fill in the gap in the gape? Friday is tongueless because we agree to the imagining protocol that names him as such?

سوزان به کروزو می‌گوید: «وقتی از دوردورها به زندگی نگاه می‌کنی یواش‌یواش دیگر چیز خاصی در آن نمی‌بینی. کشتی‌شکسته‌ها همه عین هم می‌شوند و پناه‌آورده‌ها به جزایر عین هم، همه آفتاب‌سوخته، تنها، با لباسی از پوست حیواناتی که کشته‌اند. چیزی که ماجرای تو را فقط مختص خودت می‌کند و تو را از ملوان‌های کهنی که پای آتش، افسانه‌های هیولاها و پری‌های دریایی را سینه‌به‌سینه نقل می‌کنند جدا می‌کند، هزاران کار کوچکی است که شاید امروز به‌نظر بی‌اهمیت باشند.»
کروزو به این حرف‌ها بی‌اعتناست: «هر چه ارزش به یاد ماندن داشته باشد فراموش نکرده‌ام.» ظاهراً همین‌قدر هم بی‌علاقه است که به فکر گریختن از جزیره بیفتد: «شاید بهتر است که او این‌جا باشد و من این‌جا باشم و تو هم این‌جا باشی، گیرم ما جور دیگری فکر کنیم.»

رمان «دشمن» نوعی بازنویسی رابینسون کروزو از رمان دفو‌ است که‌ در این بازنویسی زنی به داستان اضافه شده، جمعه از سخن گفتن عاجز است و خود رابینسون کروزو علاقه‌ای به مکتوب کردن خاطراتش ندارد. در رمان شخصی به نام فو داستان شخصیت زنی که اضافه شده را می‌نویسد و در این حین درس‌هایی در باب چطور نوشتن می‌دهد. من کتاب را دوست نداشتم چون هم از بازنویسی داستان‌ها یا نوشتن ادامه‌ای برایشان خوشم نمی‌آید. ضمن اینکه دوست ندارم حین خواندن داستان آموزش ببینم. چه فلسفی، چه مذهبی و چه نگارش. در انتهای کتاب هم نقدی آورده شده که به نظرم خیلی طولانی و کمی پیچیده بود.