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Stranger Shores: Literary Essays
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J.M. Coetzee's latest novel, The Schooldays of Jesus , is now available from Viking. Late 2006-2016 will be available January 2018.
Two-time Booker Prize-winner J. M. Coetzee is one of the world's greatest novelists. This thought-provoking collection gathers twenty-six of his essays on books and writing. In his opening piece, "What Is a Classic?", Coetzee asks, "What does it mean in living terms to say that the classic is what survives?" He explores the answer by way of T. S. Eliot, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Zbigniew Herbert. Coetzee goes on to discuss eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors such as Defoe and Turgenev, the German modernists such as Rilke, Kafka, and Musil, and the giants of late-twentieth-century literature, among them Brodsky, Gordimer, Rushdie, and Lessing.
Two-time Booker Prize-winner J. M. Coetzee is one of the world's greatest novelists. This thought-provoking collection gathers twenty-six of his essays on books and writing. In his opening piece, "What Is a Classic?", Coetzee asks, "What does it mean in living terms to say that the classic is what survives?" He explores the answer by way of T. S. Eliot, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Zbigniew Herbert. Coetzee goes on to discuss eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors such as Defoe and Turgenev, the German modernists such as Rilke, Kafka, and Musil, and the giants of late-twentieth-century literature, among them Brodsky, Gordimer, Rushdie, and Lessing.
304 pages, Paperback
First published August 27,2001
This edition
- Format
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304 pages, Paperback
- Published
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August 27, 2002 by Penguin Books
- ISBN
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9780142001370
- ASIN
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0142001376
- Language
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English
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29 reviews All reviews
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If you want to know anything about Dutch and African literature it's a good start.
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Mostly read in summer 2004, summer 2006, and consulter thereafter.
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Insightful essays that perhaps aren't as academic as those found in his previous essay collections, but they are just as challenging and insightful. I don't know where he has the time to read all of this and form such tight opinions (ouch to Caryl Phillips and AS Byatt; well done Breyten Breytenbach [hmm...] and Aharon Appelfeld). The questions of 'What is a Classic?' and how to film Richardson's Clarissa are of particular interest.
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To write a review about Strangers Shores - essays feels a bit like a Droste: most of the essays are so close to reviews that it’s hard to distinguish between the two. That’s not implying that Coetzee doesn’t reach a certain depth like one expects in essays, but he does remain superficial now and then, notating not much more than what’s in the reviewed books and ending with a summing up of some of it’s faults. If I would condense his criticism to stars I’d say he gives most three stars.
Another thing that I noticed is the order of the essays. Though his interests range from
Tolstoy to the South African rugby championship of 1995, most of the less intellectual subjects come at the end of the book. There seems to be a need to rank Coetzee as a serious intellectual with a casual interest in more plain themes. Strangely the more popular subjects lend them very good for his way of analyzing. He has a smart eye and wide range of interests to write about someone like William Gass, but there’s always the competition with another great writer that you can read in his words. Being the great writer Coetzee is more interesting to see analyzing the lesser, like Daphne Rook – of whom I’d never heard – or Thomas Pringle. It seems also that the more local his subjects become – like Noël Mosterts book on the history of the Eastern Cape Frontier – the further back they are in the collection. This is clearly with an international audience in mind, but those essays captivate me more since I hardly know anything about them.
It’s off course nice to read essays from his point of view about big Dutch writers like Nooteboom, Mulisch and Emants, but I have the feeling they don’t hold up very well. Mulisch was the only one I got more interested in by reading Coetzee. It seems our writers have a very regional appeal and limited reach compared to other international writers Coetzee talks about. Or is it just that he sounds so authorative and is one of the few who English speakers who can read Dutch that I am impressed more than I need to be? We do need more critics from abroad judging Dutch books, that’s clear. There is something to win by joining the larger languages like English.
Another thing that I noticed is the order of the essays. Though his interests range from
Tolstoy to the South African rugby championship of 1995, most of the less intellectual subjects come at the end of the book. There seems to be a need to rank Coetzee as a serious intellectual with a casual interest in more plain themes. Strangely the more popular subjects lend them very good for his way of analyzing. He has a smart eye and wide range of interests to write about someone like William Gass, but there’s always the competition with another great writer that you can read in his words. Being the great writer Coetzee is more interesting to see analyzing the lesser, like Daphne Rook – of whom I’d never heard – or Thomas Pringle. It seems also that the more local his subjects become – like Noël Mosterts book on the history of the Eastern Cape Frontier – the further back they are in the collection. This is clearly with an international audience in mind, but those essays captivate me more since I hardly know anything about them.
It’s off course nice to read essays from his point of view about big Dutch writers like Nooteboom, Mulisch and Emants, but I have the feeling they don’t hold up very well. Mulisch was the only one I got more interested in by reading Coetzee. It seems our writers have a very regional appeal and limited reach compared to other international writers Coetzee talks about. Or is it just that he sounds so authorative and is one of the few who English speakers who can read Dutch that I am impressed more than I need to be? We do need more critics from abroad judging Dutch books, that’s clear. There is something to win by joining the larger languages like English.
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Astute, assured, but often pedantic
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Análisis muy sobrios por parte de J. M. Coetzee, sobre los contextos afectivos y socio-políticos en los que se desenvolvieron los diversos autores -la mayoría surafricanos- que nos presenta.
Un viaje por diversas costas que nos enseñan mucho sobre las disputas de derechas e izquierdas, liberalismos y conservadurismos que han marcado los últimos siglos sin someterse a las pasiones; y a su vez, un viaje que le enseña al extranjero un poco de la historia desconocida de Suráfrica.
Un viaje por diversas costas que nos enseñan mucho sobre las disputas de derechas e izquierdas, liberalismos y conservadurismos que han marcado los últimos siglos sin someterse a las pasiones; y a su vez, un viaje que le enseña al extranjero un poco de la historia desconocida de Suráfrica.
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Confirms my impression of Coetzee as "hard" - the essays provide information but aren't particularly illuminating, if you compare him to other writer-critics like Josipovici and Kundera.
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