A re-read. 3.5-4.0

I have to do a lot of thinking about whether it is worth doing another review.

So good for that! At 2:30 this morning I realized I had to write about this book to understand what, it has meant to me.

A solid 4 stars.

A damming take down of the intellect, the intellectual. Poor bereft Elizabeth Costello,aged and aging. Alienated from her children, her sister, her intellect which she has depended upon through life; a life raft which can be grasped but as years pass the tether slips.

Her connection in a disconnected life are invitations to conferences to present or discuss on a number of topics. The reason however for the invitations is the acclaimed novel she wrote years ago. Nothing pertaining to who she is now. The sadness is that she is compelled to keep attending these conferences which means she must keep traveling. This has been her life, to travel, to be on the go, to be fueled and refueled but never landing in a rooted spot.

But now the travel and intellectual activity has become a demand, a compulsion, and Elizabeth keeps moving even as her thoughts and ideas are slipping from their once firm cohesion. She wants the animals safe, the food safe, her life safe, her mind… No longer caring about the outcomes of her speeches it is simply important to be needed and to keep plodding on the treadmill of intellect.

In the end has intellect provided answers no matter how long the ideas have been swilled? It should. She should know wizened in discourse and digression.

I’m rooting for her and have been throughout this read. She has been a thoughtful companion and visitor to my home. She has toted in bagfuls of books, suitcases bursting with reason and its logical consequences. Her stay will be memorable.


DISCLAIMER:
This is my take. Anything by Coetzee for me becomes questionable in my mind since I am captured by the silk of his prose which through the book is an all inclusive meditative chant.

CRITIQUE:

Serial Intertextuality

I decided to read this novel, because it’s referred to in Lance Olsen's novel, n  “Anxious Pleasures".n Both novels feature intertextuality. “Elizabeth Costello" in turn refers to Franz Kafka's story, “A Report to An Academy", which is narrated by Red Peter, an ape that/who has transformed into a human. Elizabeth, herself a novelist, has written a novel called "The House on Eccles Street" (1969), whose main character is Marion [Molly] Bloom, wife of Leopold Bloom, the principal character of n  "Ulysses"n (1922), by James Joyce.

Like many post-modern novels, “Elizabeth Costello" is a fiction that embraces and incorporates non-fiction. In many cases, this cross-referencing seems to appropriate its content and validity from post-modern philosophy. While this novel relies on intertextuality, its sources are much broader than post-modernism itself.

A Make-Believe Statement

“Elizabeth Costello" consists of eight chapters (or “lessons") and a postscript in the form of a letter.

Each chapter is an opportunity for Coetzee's protagonist to deliver a didactic speech or lesson on an ethical issue (such as realism, the post-imperialist novel in Africa, animal rights, the Holocaust, the role of the humanities, the problem of evil, and eroticism/sexuality), with which Coetzee might or might not agree. As has become customary, readers should not assume that Elizabeth Costello represents the views of Coetzee himself.

Elizabeth is in a long-term quandary, and might not even adhere to any/all of the views expressed in her lessons. The novel seems to interrogate the basis of her views and even the possibility that she might not still hold them. In the last story, Elizabeth waits at the gates of heaven, and must make a confession or statement of belief (i.e., a statement of what she believes, “not a statement of faith").

The Secretary of the Invisible

Elizabeth asks her interrogators/judges, “What if I do not believe? What if I am not a believer?” Her concern seems to be that she has regarded herself as an atheist for most of her life, and she wonders whether she will not be able to enter heaven, unless she professes to believe in God.

However, soon she identifies another concern: she is a writer, an author, and considers that “it is not my profession to believe, just to write. Not my business. I do imitations, as Aristotle would have said.” A writer is not supposed to deliver messages, to write didactic fiction.

She describes her function as “a secretary of the invisible...It is not for me to interrogate, to judge what is given me...When I claim to be a secretary clean of belief I refer to my ideal self, a self capable of holding opinions and prejudices at bay while the word which it is her function to conduct passes through her...

“To put it another way, I have beliefs but I do not believe in them. They are not important enough to believe in. My heart is not in them. My heart and my sense of duty.”

One of her interrogators asks her whether this means that she is “bankrupt of conscience".

She realises after the event that she should have replied, “I believe in the irrepressible human spirit.” However, she questions whether she honestly believes that. Does she believe in art, or at least the artist? Has Dostoevsky or Rilke or Van Gogh replaced the God that has failed?

One of the spectators advises her to “show them passion and they will let you through...Show them you feel and they will be satisfied.”

Little Frogs

Ultimately, she tells them that she believes in the tens of thousands of little frogs that live and hibernate around the Dulgannon River of her rural Victorian childhood.

One of her judges responds that “These Australian frogs of yours embody the spirit of life, which is what you as a storyteller believe in.”

The postscript purports to be a letter written by Elizabeth Lady Chandos in (September 11) 1603. She refers to the addressee as a man who is known to “select your words and set them in place and build your judgements as a mason builds a wall with bricks.” Perhaps this describes writers and humanists who write and think for a living.

Pass the Quandary

For all the post-modern devices, there is a countervailing humanism that seems determined to interrogate the strategies and artifices of post-modernism with which it flirts. Elizabeth as both author and character passes her quandary on to the reader of this novel. Coetzee doesn't convince us that he prefers one view or the other.

Date of Review: May 8, 2020


SOUNDTRACK:

The Goons - "What Time Is It, Eccles?"

https://youtu.be/-tjHlFPTwVk

Me pareció un libro interesante. Los argumentos no tenían un sostén sólido, pero nos hace reflexionar en cómo con la edad las ideas pueden cambiar. El estilo de Coetzee para escribir me pareció excelente.

An intellectual potboiler. A series of fictionalized essays, it̕s a great accomplishment, the book of Coetzee̕s that grabbed me the most and never let me go, even though it had all the possibility of being inconsistent, considering that its essays are related not by ideas, but by characters.

It wasn̕t so much the topics that interested me -- realism (hardly at all), the African novel (somewhat), animal rights (to an extent), the problem of evil (yes and no), eros (of course), and what follows death (not at all) -- it was Coetzee̕s writing, his mind, and the joy he took in his work, a joy I shared. And that̕s what it̕s all about. If only I could share most writers̕ joy. Or even their pain.