Where to go with this one? Two novellas together or one novel in two parts? Two parts and the same story. Two different stories?

Coetzee's first published novel and a belter arrival on the scene.

The first part is the Vietnam Project - psychops narrative of Eugene Dawn. A diatribe. On propaganda against the North Vietnamese. But he's in California and obsessed with the project. But his findings go against the military or are couched in a way that the military are not going to accept. His superior has carefully asked him to re-write his report bearing in mind to whom it is addressed. His superior is Coetzee (whether that is important or not or just a trick on JMC's part I can't make up my mind, but given the title of the second novella leads me to suspect something with more purpose than mere putting himself in the stories). But he takes this as a put-down and an attack from Coetzee. What follows is the report and the more we read of it, whilst being to a degree quite believable (especially since there are archived examples out there on the net of programmes like the one written up here) the more deranged he seems. Not just obsessed with the project but internalised and obsessed with himself. He carries these photos of brutalities with him like obscenities and war crimes which elicit a frisson which is intellectual rather than sexual. He has all the bravado and over-confidence of the unconfident. He is megalomanic. And deranged.n  

It is the voice of 'Why are the Americans in Vietnam?'. We wanted to help you but you wouldn't look at us.; we wanted to give you things but you wouldn't accept them; we thought you might be gods, but you were empty. So we killed you instead. And then we ran out of pity.

nThe whole basis appears to be 'guide it from within'; i.e. infiltrate and control it, or eradicate it. A plan that might envisage total genocide for non-compliance.

His derangement continues unabated and he kidnaps his son and takes off. When he is tracked down, he stabs his son. In the final part we hear his internal monologue in the prison mental institution where he is incarcerated. Its clear he is never going to change or only to the degree that he can convince the institution that he is changed.

From that slap in the face we pass on to the second novella purporting to be the Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee, an 18th century Africaans settler and explorer. He heads north into little charted territory, the land of the Namaqua, with his black bondsmen bearing gifts for the natives in exchange for non-violent passage over their lands to gain ivory and return to the Cape. But he falls ill on encountering the tribe and barely survives. When he finally emerges from his delirium he finds himself deserted by all his bondsmen bar one and thrown out with all his goods stolen. He manages to trek back against all odds to the Cape and returns with force to annihilate the bondsmen who betrayed him and all the Namaqua.

So... back to my first question.... one novel or two novellas? What connects them is the blatant deranged racism in both tales. And the dealing with that in both novellas is by violence. Both are the voices of bigotted self-contained righteousness. It doesn't matter what the 'others' think; they either comply or they die. Because we KNOW. And if you missed it or did not check back to it there is the reference in the first part to the anthroplogy of Franz Boas, the father of American anthropology and the opponent of 'scientific racism' - they are who they are because of their racial characteristics. There is also this sense of uncontrolled hitting out. Both Eugene Dawn and Jacobus Coetzee feel that they have been got the better of by people they feel completely superior to. So the people must suffer for their indignant actions in bettering their superiors. Dawn and Coetzee, as superiors, demand respect. If they don't get it then the penalty is death. They are both about power; deranged power; the closet and not-so-closetted power of colonialism. For Dawn it is his intellectual superiority. For Coetzee it is his racial superiority as well as his belief in religion and the truth in God. Both of them feel they are 'forgers ahead', explorers on the edge, pushing the boundaries, both solitary but confirmed in their own views - both megalmaniacs. Neither can fathom the 'others' they encounter.

This is a short novel but it is another powerful work from Coetzee, less of a parable than many of his other novels but with a strong message particularly given its genesis in 1974. In many ways it might be seen as a precursor to many of the themes which Coetzee would go on to develop more fully in Waiting for the Barbarians.

“Ținuturi în crepuscul” nu e altceva decât povestea sfâșietoare a mai multor lumi, ținuturi, triburi (dacă îmi este îngăduit să le numesc așa), gândiri.
E o trezire din normalitate. E haos și pare deseori că luminița de la capătul tunelului nu va apărea. Te ține cu sufletul la gură într-o permanentă tensiune. E despre război, dar și despre iubire. E despre speranță, dar și pierzanie, mai ales aceasta.

Pe alocuri este scris sub forma unui jurnal intim, singurul spațiu sigur să îți mărturisești cele mai negre gânduri, pe care altfel n-ai avea curajul să le rostești.

“Vorbesc în vremuri tulburi și vă spun să redeveniți copii. Mă adresez jumătăților frânte ale ființelor noastre și le spun să se îmbrățișeze, iubind ce e mai rău și deopotrivă ce e mai bun.”

J.M. Coetzee's "Dusklands" is actually two short novellas -- both fairly brutal portrayals of revenge. I struggled through the first, "The Vietnam Project" which was really dry and somewhat boring until the final act, while I found "The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee" far more interesting.

This was Coetzee's debut novel -- I wouldn't say I particularly enjoyed these works, I can certainly see, if this is where he started, why he would go on to be awarded a Pulizter later on.

I've read this really isn't a great introduction to his works so I perhaps started reading him with the wrong book.

This book was so confusing to me - I am looking forward to discussing it in my class because I have so many questions after reading this! But it was on the other hand also intriguing and mysterious in a way that kept me going.

Opera prima di J.M. Coetzee, due racconti sul potere: lettura faticosa, meno gratificante di molte altre del grande scrittore.

A difficult and uncomfortable read. The lack of humanity is painful to read and has left me in despair for the crimes that have been committed in the pursuit of land, profit and ideology.

HEART OF DARKNESS



Ecco l’esordio di Coetzee, quasi cinquant’anni fa (1974), debutto fulminante: due racconti lunghi, il primo di una settantina di pagine è sulla guerra del Vietnam e i suoi effetti – più in particolare, su come la propaganda possa rimodellare la narrativa di quella guerra e allontanarla dall’inutile orrore che effettivamente fu.
Il secondo, più lungo (un centinaio di pagine) ci catapulta in tutt’altra zona del pianeta, il Sudafrica dove Coetzee è nato e vissuto a lungo (da qualche anno s’è trasferito ad Adelaide, in Australia, che credo sia quell’altra parte del mondo che più assomiglia al Sudafrica in quanto a storia coloniale – una scelta alquanto peculiare) – e il salto è doppio, non solo geografico ma anche temporale, perché dal XX secolo si passa indietro di tre secoli.



In entrambi i racconti Coetzee inserisce un alter ego, o presunto tale (precorrendo l’arrivo di Elizabeth Costello).
In entrambe le storie c’è un personaggio che si chiama Coetzee proprio come il suo autore: nella prima è il funzionario dei servizi incaricato di valutare la relazione del protagonista, Eugene Dawn [Eugene è l’alba – Dawn - di queste terre al crepuscolo], dedicata a come migliorare l’immagine degli Stati Uniti a seguito della guerra in Vietnam.
[Per inciso, s’è dovuto attendere fino all’11 settembre 2001 per riuscirci. Ma gli US hanno impiegato poco a rovinarla di nuovo: meno di trenta giorni dopo invadevano l’Afghanistan. Poco più di un anno dopo invadevano l’Iraq, a caccia di armi di distruzione di massa, alla fine mai trovate, simili a quelle usate dagli USA nella guerra in Vietnam, le stesse che l’Uomo Nero Saddam Hussein aveva già usato proprio sotto l’occhio comprensivo e protettivo degli stessi USA].



Nella seconda storia Coetzee, Jacobus, compare proprio nel titolo, è un antenato, o spacciato come tale, dell’autore, che racconta un episodio di caccia e guerra ai namaqua, una tribù dei nativi ottentotti. In questo caso, gli indigeni sono colpevoli di non avere trattato Jacobus Coetzee con il dovuto rispetto, quello da tributare a un bianco (invasore e colonizzatore, schiavista e genocidario…).
Ma non basta: c’è un S. J. Coetzee, fantasioso padre dello scrittore, che raccoglie il racconto dell’antenato in olandese e lo completa con un’introduzione in afrikaans, che il presunto figlio, J. M. Coetzee, traduce dall’afrikaans in inglese e dà alle stampe.



Leggo che il tema affrontato è quello che sta più a cuore a J. M. Coetzee, e cioè:
il rapporto inestricabile tra il male e il bene, tra bianchi e neri, tra colonialismo e civiltà, il cuore di tenebra dell'umanità.
Aggiungerei che tra le sane condivisibili e ammirevoli fissazioni, ossessioni di J. M. Coetzee c’è quella col potere in genere, con l’autorità pubblica, il rapporto tra entità statale e singolo individuo.



Eugene Dawn lavora alla sua relazione, uno studio che diventa sempre meno scientifico, o forse sempre più scientifico nel momento in cui comprende i limiti della propaganda. Più Dawn capisce cos’è realmente successo in Vietnam, quali siano state le atrocità commesse dagli yankee, la brutalità del loro intervento, le atrocità pianificate e commesse nel più barbaro dei modi, più Dawn scivola progressivamente in modo irrecuperabile verso la pazzia: pur se messo in guardia, conclude il suo percorso in manicomio, dove aver tentato di sequestrare il suo stesso figlio.

Jacobus Coetzee vuole (deve?) vendicarsi dei namaqua che l’hanno raccolto malato, l’hanno curato in modo trascurabile (ma non l’hanno neppure ucciso, l’hanno comunque lasciato libero di seguire il percorso naturale della sua malattia, del suo corpo), e così facendo gli hanno profondamente mancato di rispetto, non l’hanno trattato come un bianco (occidentale, europeo, boero) merita di essere trattato. La sua vendetta (punizione?) sarà terribile.


Sulla copertina, Robert Riggs: Helicopters, 1965.

This is two separate narratives set in two separate times, both ‘pushing back the frontiers of knowledge and portraying dealers in death who denounce their own humanity and spurn their feelings of guilt’.
It was not easy to keep track of the events and I found myself muddling through at some points, but despite this it is a technically brilliant book.
A very bleak and upsetting read.

Coetzee retreads similar material in his work through what I see as near-perfect novels - even a debut, every sentence and paragraph as tight as a short story or poem (Morrison is similar to me in this way). His depth of insight and experimental nature keep the experience of reading his whole oeuvre interesting. This book also made me think of the concept of public guilt, expiation (in this culture we live in) and how Coetzee's own guilt (if it can be called this) seems a genuine form of that. How much more difficult self flagellation is than it seems. Which for us is often a defense, diversionary or escape mechanism.

The first novella funnily reminds me of Modiano's Occupation Trilogy and the second reminds me of Murnane - the metafictional self-referential aspect, the talk of the White man and his view of and movement towards the interior, escape from the coast. I do think that there is something to be said about the greater clarity and straightforwardness of his presentation in latter works - ex. Michael K, but there is also something to be gained in the construction of this one. Especially when possibly the main question is what do we lose to 'time,' 'history,' its curators? In the quietest way? The way the loudest of actions or events become silent by the subtlest means.

Δεν το τελείωσα ποτέ!
Πράγμα σπάνιο αλλά συμβαίνει.

In 1970s America, Eugene Dawn, an academic working for the state department, is being rushed to complete a report on the use of propaganda in the Vietnamese war while undergoing a messy divorce that will see his mental state tip over into a precarious state. In the 18th Century, a Dutch explorer called Jacobus Coetzee travels to the South African interior in search of ivory and, after being rendered dependent and dispossessed by a tribe there, and suffering the ignominy of an arduous journey home, he returns to visit his revenge in a senseless orgy of bloody retributive violence. The two distinct narratives are linked by the barest of threads - family names, ideas, shared mythology, conflict - and the growing sense of unease across these two versions, one ancient and one disturbingly close, of the old and horrific colonial project.

This is another book that I’m rereading more than a decade or so after my initial pass. I had only a mild memory of the book as a critique of colonialism and a rather oblique and fragmented narrative form. On this rereading, I was absolutely blown away by the disgust and disquiet it invoked. Certainly, I’ve developed as a reader and (hopefully) as a person in that time and also, certainly, developed a deeper sense of awareness of myself as a product of a colonised country. In short, I can see so much clearer now why this book is such an important artefact of literature of the late twentieth century.

I think nowadays it is hard not to be suspicious of the sort of ‘rationality’ and ‘enlightenment’ that underpinned the purported motives of colonial powers. And it must be hard as a writer not to make caricatures out of those historical figures who evoked such concepts while satiating a drive to conquer and possess and control other people. Coetzee is masterful in the manner in which he embodies these ideas within his characters' interior monologues and allows the narrators to undercut their own beliefs and actions without any apparent overt judgement. Consider Dawn, who constructs an abstract (and idiotic) justification for senseless violence in Vietnam with reference to Jungian psychology and tenuous references to archetypical mythology. And consider then the impact his pathetic justifications have when applied to his own family. This echos again in Jacobus Coetzee's narrative with his paternalistic attitude towards his Hottentot servents.

The real pleasure of Coetzee’s work is in the way the multiple texts engage in a dialogic relationship with each other and the echoes of Dawn’s story carries over into Coetzee’s own narrative. Dawn’s twisted paternalism has all that more impact when converted into a context where violence is not visited at a distance by bombers but directly by guns and knifes. This is a disturbing, disturbing book and one that everyone should be reading.

Powerful in places but not the best place to start reading Coetzee.