Inner Workings: Literary Essays 2000-2005 by j.m. coetzee

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

As both academic and celebrated novelist, Coetzee’s reviews are almost always first-class. I’ve also loved getting a sense of what appears to be a chunk of his personal canon. And now I’m already on to another of his books of literary essays, Stranger Shores.

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Dong_Bong_Wong

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

This is the second collection of essays I've read by JM Coetzee. It includes pieces on over twenty writers, some of whom --such as Philip Roth and Graham Greene--I was very familiar with, and others --Italo Svevo and Hugo Claus--of which I knew nothing. Regardless of the level of familiarity, all the essays are written intelligently and can be appreciated for their insights into specific works and their general understanding of literature. This is the type of criticism that is no longer found in most English departments, which have become insufferably burdened by theory. Coetzee worked as a professor for many years. I'm sure his students were enriched by his knowledge, just as I was by reading this book.

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Takasugi3647

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

its a full pleasure to read good writers writing about other good writers. love. this.

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meima

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

Big fan of a couple of Coetzee's novels and this was my first time trying his nonfiction, of which I was left both absorbed and rather bored. Some essays were hard work, not helped by the fact he writes about certain books I haven't read - like Roth's The Plot Against America, and Sebald's After Nature, but there is no doubt the guy writes terrifically well outside his fiction. Highlights for me were on Graham Greene's Brighton Rock (love the novel), Gabriel García Márquez, Bruno Schulz, and the poet Paul Celan, but I yawned somewhat when it came to William Faulkner, V.S. Naipaul, and Walt Whitman (nothing against them, just not interested). Will stick to Coetzee's novels from now on.

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bimbambusse

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

It's interesting how modern many of the themes seem to be in the writings Coetzee reviews, even though some were writing more than a hundred years ago. It's so easy to read Coetzee's non-fiction! His mind is so sharp and his writing so clear, it makes me want to read all the books he reviews.

Fascinating that so many are rooted in Eastern Europe, particularly in and just after the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its collapse at the beginning of the 20th century. While the stories are mostly about personal passions, the backdrop is an empire that had managed to encompass lots of diversity and was then breaking up into it ethnic components - a process we saw continuing in the rest of the 20th century.

It has echoes for today's world, and the competing tensions of embracing diversity and dividing ourselves up into ethnically homogenous states.

Coetzee writes in a way that gives a good name to literary criticism. Far less obscure and tortured than a lot of his own early fiction, full of wit and insight, a feast of intellectual delight.

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Oki_Orka

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

Leitura 02/2021
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Mecanismos internos [2007]
Orig. Inner workings - Literary Essays 2000-2005
J. M. Coetzee (South Africa, 1940-)
Cia das Letras, 2011, 360 p.
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“A função do escritor é agir de tal maneira que ninguém possa ignorar o mundo, nem dizer que não tem culpa do que está acontecendo” (Posição Kindle 4109/81%).
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Quando “Desonra”, em novembro de 2016, tinha me prometido ler outras cousas do escritor sul-africano J. M. Coetzee. De lá para cá, juntei alguns romances seus, mas a minha teimosa preguiça e a ainda mais insolente e caótica maneira como vou dirimindo minha infindável lista de livros a ler, o projeto foi ficando esquecido. Aí de mim!
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Então pego para ler o “Mecanismos internos”, uma coletânea de ensaios literários que Coetzee produziu entre os anos 2000 a 2005. Nela, estão reunidos 21 textos seus sobre vários autores e suas “manobras” criativas. Sempre que posso, gosto de buscar livros assim, que narram o processo criativo do escritor, que buscam desvendar o que há por trás de cada romance produzido.
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No livro de Coetzee, apesar de os textos terem uma franqueza clara e simples, penso que seu teor vai agradar muito mais a especialistas do que um leitor comum. Mas é claro que é possível navegar neles sem muita dificuldade, principalmente por abordarem escritores que povoam minha estante e a memória de meu kindle, como Sándor Márai, Garcia Márquez e Philip Roth, a cujos ensaios mais gostei. Contudo, o livro é recheado de vários outros excelentes escritores e Coetzee mostra um bom estofo ao tratar com a devida atenção de algumas das obras mais importantes da literatura contemporânea, tais como os romances de Robert Musil, Robert Walser, Bruno Schulz, Beckett, Sebald, Bellow e Naipaul. Um tudo de tudo reunido num bom e honesto livro de ensaios.

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seiba_

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

Brings to light the process and thinking of writing.

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Dorothea

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

Raccolta di una ventina di saggi su nomi noti della letteratura europea e americana.
Nonostante le tematiche non sempre immediate lo stile è scorrevole, e i riferimenti alle opere, di cui è presentato sempre un breve riassunto, sono chiari e precisi. Ho avuto l'impressione di un reale intento comunicativo da parte dell'autore, cosa non sempre scontata nelle opere di critica letteraria..

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Inner Workings: Literary Essays 2000-2005

j.m. coetzee derek attridge

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