Coetzee's criticism, like his fiction, is tough, instructive.

I think I wanted more out of this book. I read a few sections, but, as sometimes with criticism, I want to read the stuff itself. I guess I think if I read article essays, I may know what to read and what to stay away from.

He's a good writer, but I guess I want the whole chocolate, not just a little nibble .

Coetzee always writes about authors so that you understand where they may have been coming from, both historically and personally and it makes for fascinating reading, even if you've never read the book. I came away from these essays with a list to read and excited to begin reading the works.

Reread:

Enjoyed learning about Walser. Was disgusted that Faulkner lied about his military service, though Larry Browm obfuscated his own bad conduct (not that I have room to talk) until his later interviews, when he had read enough of Faulkner to realize that Faulkner is totally full of shit in terms of military fiction.

In Faulker's 'Collected Stories,' I wanted to vomit at the onset of each military story. Pardon me, contemporary military story - his Civil War fiction is entertaining and nostalgic for the dead language of the Old South it holds, something mainstream America has beaten out of contemporary generations of southerners to varying degrees. I digress, slightly.

I don't think Coetzee has much respect for Faulkner. But he is too couth or breathing to outright eviscerate him, though the underlying contempt Coetzee seems to have for the Mississippian surfaces in many none too subtle jibes. Maybe I'm being sensitive because I'm a Mississippian. Maybe Faulkner is totally deserving of the criticism.

At any rate, I enjoyed these essays thoroughly, though it sucked to be reminded that Marquez went all Lolita there a couple of times. Whatever, it's fiction.

Graham let me borrow this. He said he liked the author because he was really critical and mean. It is true. His critical reading of literary and intellectual giants was really soothing actually.

Essays on Italo Svevo, Robert Walser, Robert Musil, Walter Benjamin, Bruno Schulz, Joseph Roth, Sandor Marai, Paul Celan, Günter Grass, W.G. Sebald, Hugo Claus, Graham Green, Samuel Beckett, Walt Whitman, Saul Bellow, Arthur Miller, Philip Roth, Nadine Gordimer, Gabriel Garcia Màrquez, and V.S. Naipaul.

The formula is the same: the plot summary of a book, a biographical sketch of the writer combined with some reflection on (all but for one exception) his impact in the kingdom of (European) letters, commentary on a bad translation (Coetzee seems to wear his knowledge lightly - noting here a bad translation choice of an Italian simile, there a more suitable word for the imagery depicted in the original Hungarian or German), a discussion of the writer's artistic merits - good prose stylist? easy wit? acceptable marriage of belletrism and storytelling? etc.

But the richness nonetheless slowly unfurls: it is clear this is a man discussing his peers, and so we are spared the causticity or the fawning of a reviewer who does not understand what goes into writing books - or good ones, at least. Respect is circumscribed but nonetheless given, and when criticism is levied, it is often noted as disagreement on validly contestable points. The effect becomes that one can see that Coetzee is a charitable reader, firm but fair. If there is anything remarkable in this volume, it is not any single piece of insight but rather the impression Coetzee leaves you with at the end, a mark not just of his breadth but also his acuity. To quote Naipaul: "Aloof everywhere, unsurprised, immensely knowing."

sheer genius

this book is written under three sections of world literature: 1) european, 2) american, and 3) rest of the world. in these three sections, i didn't like american literature section. those essays were so unnecessarily long, and sometimes, convoluted that i partly lost my interest. yet, i loved reading this book in which coetzee's genius literary mind shines in his writing and thoughts. in one of the most important arguments, he raised a strong and valid point for the ethics of translation and translated literature. this has never discussed that much in the discussions of literature.

"Inner Workings" is J.M. Coetzee's second collection of literary essays (my review of the outstanding first set, "Stranger Shores", can be found  here ), written between 2000 and 2005. Coetzee again covers a wide spectrum of authors, ranging from some very well known to me, like Gabriel Garcia Márquez, William Faulkner, or Günter Grass, to ones whose names - due to my ignorance about world literature - I can barely recognize, for example Walter Benjamin or Hugo Claus. Like in my review of the previous collection, I am just scribbling some random thoughts about selected essays, ones that resonated with me stronger. Let me say it up front, though: all 21 essays are superb and greatly recommended.

In the essay "Günter Grass and the Wilhelm Gustloff" Coetzee points out that Grass was among the first "to attack the consensus of silence about the complicity of ordinary Germans in Nazi rule". This is a very important point: one who reads about European history may be tempted to think that in 1930-1940s there was a strange nation living between the borders of France and Poland, the nation of Nazis. The sad truth is that this purported Naziland was called Germany, and its inhabitants were ordinary Germans. Not for the first time Coetzee suggests that ordinary people, people like you and me, can be led to commit unspeakable atrocities.

Günter Grass's "Tin Drum" was the first European work of magic realism, which provides a neat segue to the absolutely fascinating essay entitled "Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores", where Coetzee quotes Márquez' definition of magic realism: it is "a matter of telling hard-to-believe stories with a straight face, a trick he learned from his grandmother in Cartagena." To me, the highest point of this essay, and of the entire collection, is the juxtaposition of Cervantes' Dom Quixote and Garcia Marquez' Florentino Ariza: a nameless young factory girl is transformed into the virgin Delgadina by "the same process of idealisation by which the peasant girl of Toboso is transformed into the [Quixote's] Lady Dulcinea." While there are several other startling insights in this incomparable essay, not only am I unqualified to discuss them here, but first and foremost I lack the courage.

The essay on Walt Whitman shows a rare side of Coetzee - his sense of humor, constrained and acerbic yet very funny. Having defined the phrenological terms of "amativeness" (basically meaning "sexual ardor") and "adhesiveness" (meaning "attachment, friendship, comradeship"), notions that were very important for Whitman in his life, erotic or otherwise, Coetzee writes "'the nature of [Whitman's] physical relationship' with young men can refer to only one thing: what Whitman and the young men in question did with their organs of amativeness when they were alone together." In a fascinating aside Coetzee mentions the major change of paradigm of heterosexual versus homosexual that occurred some time after 1880: while in mid 1800s men could kiss in public and could hold hands in purely asexual way, the same actions signified altogether different relationship in the 20th century.

My review is, as usual, getting way too long, so here's an itemization of some other tasty morsels from "Inner Workings":

-> Walter Benjamin's Arcade Project", in Coetzee's words "a great ruin of twentieth-century literature", with its principle of "montage", which may be thought of as a very early version of the hypertext concept.

-> William Faulkner catching a glimpse of but not approaching James Joyce in a Parisian café.

-> Disturbing passages about capturing wild horses in Nevada, during filming a movie, in the essay "Arthur Miller, The Misfits".

-> The mathematical metaphor of rational vs. irrational numbers as applied to human behavior in the essay "Robert Musil, The Confusions of Young Törless"; only Coetzee, who has a degree in mathematics could pull this one off.

-> Bruno Schulz (the author of Cinnamon Shops) being too late with his planned escape from Drohobycz to Warsaw in 1942.

-> In-depth examinations of the art and craft of translation (Coetzee is an accomplished professional translator himself): about conveying the meaning, the rhythm, the tone, the mood, and the beauty of the original in a translation.

Four and a quarter stars.

helped me know what more to read ...
and gave a good insight on naipaul's writing

So impressed with the literary essays of Coetzee. I had no idea he was this brilliant and well-read. Plus this book had in it some of my favorite writers including Robert Walser and Max Sebald. Reading this book has now led me to writers I knew little about including Italo Svevo and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

even when i'm not erudite to know what he's talking about, i get a kick out of this man as a writer-craftsman.