Oye la señora buena pa la trifulca

I am beyond time's envious grasp, our eponymous character says in this book, and I know what she means, some evenings I feel it; but we don't talk like that that around here. We talk, too, about not eating meat, but we don't bring Kafka into the discussion. We tell stories about humans, but not Humanity, and certainly not the Humanities.

Elizabeth Costello, in this book, is an old woman, and a writer. She would define herself as a writer. Yet in this book she does not write. She lectures, to audiences large and small. She's very intelligent, as Coetzee is very intelligent. But glibly so. Such that when she is ultimately asked - and I do mean ultimately - what she believes in, she replies: I have beliefs but I do not believe in them.

This is a cleverly constructed book. And engaging, in a way. I heard someone say once that classical music was the kind of music that you kept hoping would turn into a tune. That's nonsense, of course. Still, Elizabeth Costello gave speeches, went on rants, and I kept waiting for her to turn into a character. This talks about important themes. It's just that we don't talk like that around here.

We do talk about writing though. Here, here; and Goodreads, here. We make friends over books. That's nice, when there isn't a lot of booktalk in the here, here. Which is why I blushed when I read: They were no longer speaking about writing, if they ever were.

Here's a book that resists, or at least can often appear to resist a single and supreme interpretation. Ambiguity - I'm in. My take on what is happening through what is mostly a series of speech-giving events (each more or less one part intriguing philosophical debate, one part silly human bickering) is that the book is a sort of delineation on the sad complexity that is aging as a novelist/intellectual, our protagonist Elizabeth Costello. Concurrently with the freedom of 'not giving a fuck,' is the aging human's slow loss of their mind. Autopilot is not good enough. Time simply runs out. One was once capable. But what was that capability put to? This is the way the book seems to be going when I read:

"Let us not forget that, Blanche, she thinks to herself: let us not forget the pain. The terrors of death not enough: on top of them pain, crescendo."

Colon, colon, crescendo, period. Upon that word - crescendo - I said to Mr. Coetzee, 'I'm going to hold you to that. The end is, of course, death and you sir just promised me a crescendo before.' Indeed the very next sentence reads:

"As a way of putting a close to our visit to this world, what could be more ingeniously, more devilishly cruel?"

But the end of the book is both curiously unexpected and a tinge anticlimactic, in that I couldn't hear the crescendo. So perhaps, yes, ingeniously and devilishly cruel. But I will concede that 'it' may be there in a very close listening. The snippets we get of Ms. Costello, however revealing they may be, never seem to be all that revealing; because they always come in the service of presenting oneself to the 'other'. Even in the quote above, you'll notice, her thoughts are in the midst of one of those hypothetical conversations we all all too often have. So I don't see the 'At the Gate' chapter as any different. Constructed in a consciously Kafkaesque scene, she is still presenting herself. And, in my view, heaven is not really at stake. Rather, heaven, in this scene, is another concept, like 'novelis't and 'belief' that the dying mind is struggling with. It is in living a life of words that consigns us into the confines of the Kafka nightmare.

The cryptic postscript perhaps does not give us the key, but throws at us a handful of keys. And perhaps, therein lies the crescendo, in the sound of those keys careening across the floor. Only if we listen very closely, might we be able to find them in this dark:

"Only for extreme souls may it have been intended to live thus, where words give way beneath your feet like rotting boards."

"All is allegory,…each creature is the key to all other creatures." "Presences of the Infinite"

"Drowning, we write out of our separate fates. Save us."

Se trata de una novela que requiere concentración y cierta madurez lectora y conocimiento literario si bien también requiere de ciertas dotes que solo la experiencia vital más práctica puede proporcionar sobre todo para entender las discusiones y los momentos más pasionales de la novela. Es una obra que rezuma (interesante esta palabra sobre la que se divaga en el libro) intelectualidad y en la que las confrontaciones polémicas tienen gran importancias si bien aparecen siempre revestidas de elegancia literaria y del cierto, valga decirlo, aire esperpéntico que irradia Elisabeth. Esperpéntica y lúcida, una figura quijotesta que tiene a su hijo como escudero. En ocasiones me he perdido en ciertos pasajes por lo que espero volver a releer el libro que, en mi opinión, podría considerarse un clásico de no ser por la falta de condensación en algunos capítulos los cuales se hacen de alguna forma redundantes.

Difficult but very interesting. On opposites and its fictional separation (Animal-Human-God and the like). Our language creating these because of our need for order, to understand, and have opinions on, everything. But mostly to avoid uncertain insecure feelings and to verify our choices. Reminds me of Ali Smiths authorship.

2,5* Ir ne todėl, kad kažkas ne taip su tekstu, jo vertimu ar siužetu, bet todėl, kad tos kelios dienos buvo ne tos knygos laikas. Taip, gvildenamos temos apie rašytojo atsakomybę bei mūsų teisę nežinoti, apie įsitikinimus ir jų buvimą (arba ne), apie ėjimą kūrybos ir gyvenimo keliu neišvengiant tiek išorinių, tiek vidinių pokyčių. Bet.... buvo momentų, kuomet tekstas išsilysdavo, pabėgdavo ir nutoldavo, buvo momentų, kuomet nesupratau, ką čia ir apie ką čia skaitau ir kokia viso to pagrindinė mintis, nes jokia neateidavo į galvą. Reikia tiesiog treniruotis ir tikėtis, kad kitiems šio rašytojams kada nors bus ir laikas, ir vieta.

Launched vertically by Grendel's certain hand, a well aimed bathroom plunger shot upward, without swerve, with intent to stick to the ceiling high above his head. Instantly upon the squishy-sloppy noise of the plunger's sticky impact, the pennies harbored within its muffling bell softly jingled. This strange dart joined the dozen or so others that already populated the target (a portrait of Emerson) projected onto the ceiling. And, joyfully, for Grendel, this last launch hit the "bull's eye": it neatly covered Emerson's mouth and nose as if it were a COVID mask. Grendel grinned and from Emerson's "Experience" recited, "Where do we find ourselves?"
Welcome to Grendel's DED Talks
I continue.
The unsavory gas of angst sublimed from a solid agenbite of inwit, a common human spoor, drives the Distracting Existential Difficulties of Coetzee's "Elizabeth Costello". Moreover, the olfactory rush offered by Coetzee's novel both compels pursuit yet baffles choice: I mean, so many scents so little time. So, in the interest of creating a Talk/Review whose tracking trail shapes a pleasing geometry rather than the knotted convolutions of postmodern commentaries, I will focus in this episode of my DED Talks on the novel's "Lesson 8" chapter.

So. Then. In Lesson 8, where does Elizabeth find herself? Well, given the other-worldly aspects of Lesson 8's setting: the sentful squalor of an very old town built, I think, to house the many that wish to gain access and passage to the pure and unsented light blocked behind a door of an unseen 'castle'. Here, then, now Elizabeth, I suggest, has come at last to a bureaucrat infested Purgatory designed by Kafka.

The bureaucrat that holds the key to the coveted door charges Elizabeth with the task of writing down what she 'believes' and if he/it approves of her presentation he/it lets her through the door. (To where or to what? To Pure odorless, colorless and static Reason: Reason masquerading as Wondrous Light?) She fails not once but twice. First with the door keeper and second with a Hearing Board of human-look-alikes - look-alikes that appear to be always near the edge of morphing into something else. (What are these beings? And more importantly, who appointed them to officiate this judgmental task? Lesson 8 provides no answer because no character that populates this Lesson ever asks.) And, so Elizabeth without a 'rule' or a model of success (perhaps, there aren't any successes, hence, the existence of the town?) to follow, how is she to go on? (Lesson 8 provides no answer. It is as if that Elizabeth finds herself embedded in Hamlet's Kafkaesque bequeath to Ophelia: no matter how virtuous a life you live, there are bureaucrats that will happily call you whore.)

[At this point, a plunger here and there loses its grip, spills its pennies and falls to the floor around Grendel.]

Grendel grins, "Is this our lucky day? Pennies from the ceiling...or is it rather a dramatic visual that shows what happens when our words, our concepts fail to stick to their targets and spill their cents' of meaning?" And, this sense of loss, of bafflement and its attendant isolation Elizabeth embodies in "Elizabeth Costello." So, then where do we (Elizabeth, Grendel and readers) find ourselves in Coetzee's novel?

If this monster (now more Grover than Grendel) has offended think (maybe) this and yet find (still) very little mended that Elizabeth and Grendel are but fictional characters here. Moreover, that they write and comment and so on about other fictional characters. Can this be "Real"? In what sense real? Whether it celebrates Platonic Purity or Empirical Decay, novels, in rapturous anarchy, mix the twain together. And, what are readers to make of the facts that Elizabeth in her Lesson 8 challenge to declare her beliefs (that is to say to answer the question, a la Thomas Nagel, "what is like to be Elizabeth Costello?") that she neither describes herself in terms of Kafka's Red Peter nor, does she express her existential difficulty with the horrors of meat processing that brought the fall of her cents filled plungers of moral concepts. Perhaps, in Lesson 8, the social isolation that informed the previous lessons found relief if not solution. That is to ask, that through the trials of Lesson 8, does Elizabeth ever discover or create (an on- going task), to her own satisfaction, her 'self'? Moreover, do the Lessons of "Elizabeth Costello" show a reader a way to go on? I don't know. But, we must go on.
Coraggio.


t

this is not an easy book, uneven in presentation and a cranky kind of form. Yet do not be surprised: its vintage Coetzee and this is a great book for those who can appreciate the structure.
The themes tackled here just about cover all the bases: the role of reason vs belief is the subtext in all of the chapters and there is a brilliant meditation on the role and the obligations of a writer.
I will add some quotes asap
however, I must confess to being absolutely baffled by the very last bit. comments anybody?

Tak, ale

Ai personaggi di Coetzee si addice l'esitazione che paralizza o stizzisce. Questo romanzo interessante, sperimentale - come per certi aspetti Coetzee è sempre stato - esprime la poetica di Coetzee al suo meglio. Elizabeth Costello è una scrittrice che ha superato i sessanta, suo malgrado è tenuta a presiedere premi letterari e imbastire discorsi. Il libro è una spirale di impressioni in cui ad evidenziarsi è il lato assurdo, quasi casuale, della comprensione e della comunicazione.
Il figlio della protagonista l'accompagna e la sostiene ma anche lui fatica ad accettare che sua madre sia la stessa autrice di romanzi aspri e Joyciani che con la Elizabeth Costello che conosce non hanno niente a che fare; e sua madre è la stessa che scrive libri e che gridava come una pazza quando lui era bambino: gridava "voi mi uccidete".
Ora deve trattare davanti a una platea su "Che cos'è il realismo?", accennare alla stato della narrativa africana, ma fino a dove deve spingersi nelle descrizioni cruente uno scrittore dinanzi
agli altri?
Eccola che pensa che «non sarebbe mai dovuta venire. I convegni sono fatti per scambiarsi le idee, o almeno così dovrebbe essere. Non è possibile scambiarsi le idee se non si sa cosa si pensa.»
Sua sorella è diventata una missionaria e tra loro ci sarà un bellissimo scambio di opinioni.
Sua sorella crede nel Cristo sofferente, Elizabeth Costello crede a poche cose e non le sa definire, nell'ultimo capitolo una sorta di commissione kafkiana le chiederà di chiarire in cosa crede. Un tempo credeva nell'ebbrezza del corpo, adesso crede in qualcosa che sta per "insopprimibile spirito umano".
Un filo di pietà sopravvive sulle ceneri proprio perché nessuno si capisce, lei e gli altri scrittori, il pubblico che le fa domande, suo figlio, sua sorella. Anche per se stessa Elizabeth ha esperienze che non ha mai rivelato a nessuno.
Viveva a Melburne e si era lasciata rimorchiare da uno scaricatore nel porto della città, lui aveva 30 anni ed era brutale, lei 19, era giovane appassionata d'arte e ribelle e voleva fare l'amore con uno sconosciuto come se fosse un esperimento. Quando nella camera d'albergo decide di tirarsi indietro lui la prende a pugni, la spoglia e la scaraventa sul marciapiede nuda. Non lo dirà mai a nessuno e col tempo non lo dirà nemmeno più a se stessa perché nemmeno a se stessi bisogna dire tutto nell'eterogenea, complessa strategia per andare avanti che è la metamorfosi.

Sabes esa sensación de acabar de leer un libro y pensar que has entendido solo la mitad porque la profundidad de la lectura y las referencias aportadas te superan,  y encima crees que no te dará la vida para sumergirte en todas ellas y volver a releer este libro?  Pues eso. Eso es lo que he sentido al terminar. Porque el epílogo no lograba entenderlo,  si,  el epílogo de este libro hay que leerlo,  para que?  Básicamente porque es un capítulo más. Una lectura que te lleva a otra lectura para volver a esta. 


Quién es Elizabeth Costello? Una escritora,  en la última etapa de su vida, enfadada,  arisca,  digamos que se va a ir de este mundo con la sensación de que era todo una farsa. Quizá porque lo kafkiano se ha apoderado de su visión de la vida. 


El impacto de la obra está en el centro de la misma. Cuando compara los campos de exterminio nazi con los mataderos,  criaderos,  y la forma humana de creernos superiores y por tanto con el poder para exterminar a todo ser vivo que consideramos inferior.  Y es en este punto donde el alter ego de coetzee nos hace un recorrido filosófico y poético sobre el poder humano en el mundo. Sobre un Dios incluso,  o sobre cómo nos creemos dioses,  no me ha quedado del todo claro.... Exagera Elizabeth en este planteamiento?  Pues a ver,  es discutible.... Y ya de paso nos damos un paseo por las tradiciones que nos llevan a disfrutar de la matanza pública de los toros,  por ejemplo,  que según unos hay que mantener porque forma parte de nuestra tradición y cultura y según otros es aberrante criar a animales única y exclusivamente para disfrute... Denso el tema,  lo advierto,  controvertido...que tienes las ideas muy claras sobre este tema?  Pues saldrás del libro  posiblemente de dos formas,  cabreado por la postura que la protagonista defiende desde las entrañas,  o enarbolando una bandera a su favor. Por si estamos poco polarizados,  Costello no ayuda en nada a llegar a un punto medio en este tema. 


Repasa también el sentido de la vida,  la moralidad, las renuncias, la sexualidad,  las relaciones familiares... Vamos que se da un paseo por temas que nos pinchan sí o si.  

Si tienes un bagaje lector considerable te sentirás cómodo,  sino,  te sentirás perdido y tendrás la sensación de que no sabes nada de nada. Ninguna novedad,  Sócrates tampoco sabia nada de nada y seguimos hablando de él. 


No entiendo la nota que aparece en goodreads,  el libro es de diez,  la que no soy de diez soy yo como lectora que me he visto pequeñita ante la voluptuosidad de esta pequeña obra. Mi sorpresa aumenta cuando encima,  un libro escrito por el puño  letra de un hombre narrado en la voz de una mujer no me chirría,  sino que me encaja perfectamente salvo en uno o dos párrafos que pueden ser mas una interpretación personal mía que un fallo en la narrativa. 


Lo volveré a leer?  Claro. Después de haberme leído todo lo aludido en estas páginas,  por lo que es posible que pasen años hasta volver a él.

Elizabeth Costello is a novel about an Australian writer who is famous primarily for an early work titled The House on Eccles Street where she uses the figure of Molly Bloom from James Joyce's Ulysses as the protagonist. Her writing career appears to be over and the novel goes on to tell of a series of engagements Elizabeth has at various locations around the world to expound some of her philosophical viewpoints. She is given an award from an American College and delivers a lecture on "realism." As part of this she talks about books and how they will perish: "they are going to be pulped because there is no buyer for them . . . they are going to be opened and read for a page or two and then yawned at and put aside for ever, they're going to be left behind at seaside hotels or in trains . . ." (This last point reminds me of bookcrossing.) At another lecture, she discusses animal rights and her view that the use of animals for food is comparable to the Holocaust of WWII and the slaughter of millions of Jews. This does not go over well with many of the listeners. Another lecture takes place in Africa where her sister is a missionary. Her sister is very religious and criticizes the humanities and Elizabeth's philosophy about Greek culture. And then there is a lecture on evil where Elizabeth criticizes a novel by Paul West titled n  The Very Rich Hours of Count von Stauffenbergn. The novel graphically details the execution of plotters against Hitler and Elizabeth feels the evil in this passage can affect both the writer and the reader of it. (This novel is real and of course I now want to read it.)

Overall, not a lot happens in this novel and to many readers it is probably going to be a boring read. However, the ideas presented in the novel are very stimulating and left me with a lot to think about.