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Does God read J. M. Coetzee?
The voice of Paul Reyment in SLOW MAN is very similar to the main character in Iris Murdoch’s novel THE SEA, THE SEA. They are both older, white, Brit (empire), educated, artistic, lonely men who have strong feelings, clear thoughts, but don’t hold to a certain philosophical structure (say, Christianity or leftist politics) that color everything. They are intelligent freelancers in life, aware that, given their age, it is highly unlikely that they will ever get answers to the philosophical questions they continue to ask (mostly of themselves) and nearly all the time.
The voice is similar to Philip Roth’s (EXIT GHOST) voices and Richard Ford (INDEPENDANCE DAY, and THE LAY OF THE LAND), but much more compelling for me. Roth is irascable, smart, and cranky. Ford is opinionated, human, realistic, and ultimately boring. Neither Roth nor Ford, though highly intelligent, I would call philosophical novelists. A philosophical novelist (or character voice) is one that questions the meaning of life more or less constantly at the same time he or she goes through their series of mishaps that constitute a plot. Some of Graham Greene’s characters have this philosophical approach, though it’s often in the context of a worldview (shared by many around him) that is crumbling, a worldview that once attempted to explain life. So his becomes a cynical voice–life has no meaning, at least not in THAT (old) sense. Paul Rayment (SLOW MAN) is always questioning at every moment — what does that mean? is that all there is to (human) life? It might sound irritating, and it is when the narrator is too young– Holden Caulfield being an exception there. When an older person still questions the meaning of life without falling completely into victimhoood (why did my kids and wife and etc. abandon me?) I find it interesting. The character who steps back, watches his life while remaining totally in it (not “alienated” or depressed) is interesting to me. It’s a person who I want to follow. I enjoy seeing/hearing them interact with the mundane events tossed more or less randomly at them.
The device in SLOW MAN of adding a character from an earlier novel (which, oddly, I haven’t read yet), Elizabeth Costello, creates a very mild form of magical realism. The characters, Paul and Elizabeth, seem pushed together by (almost) mystical forces but in world where no one particularly believes such mystical forces are possible.
All the voices, Roth, Ford and Coetzee deal with love, unrequited mostly, but only in Coetzee is the yearning elevated to what the Tibetan Buddhist Pema Chodran calls “unrequited love is the heart of the world.” Bummer. Can this be true? Only Coetzee’s characters (in a completely non-religious style) could contemplate this as a visceral possibility. In other words, like the song Blasphemous Rumors by Depeche Mode, “I think that god’s got a sick sense of humor… and when I die, I expect to find him laughing.”
Either that or reading Coetzee.
November 30th, 2008 at 9:54 am
I like Roth, Ford and Coetzee too. I find your commentary interesting.
For me Coetzee especially represents the sense of deplacement that many older white males feel nowadays. Me for one anyway. The fall from power and privilege of the white South African is hard to imagine because it is such a big fall. I feel closer with the old white Communists in the former Soviet Union and neighboring countries–perhaps a Russian man in Estonia, for example. At the University of Wisconsin in the sixties the history faculty were mostly marxist and I would say I spent about half of college studying marxism. You can imagine how useless I feel now. Fallen from power or privilege or just out of favor such like the complaining
old American Jew in Roth’s Everyman. I liked that one.
The only Richard Ford I read was called Women with men, three stories, one taking place in Paris and suburban Chicago. I couldn’t put that one down. All three of these guys are testy old farts, grumpy male chauvinists and merit being disliked by many. I am so much fascinated by Coatzee that I read Boyhood which was really a masterpiece! I felt embarrassed to buy it. I wanted to understand his displacement better. I collected stamps as a boy. Boyhood by nature is outdated.
That empty or unrequited feeling, the sense that most of what you have done in life is for naught and leads to nothing is touched on by all three of these authors.
Perhaps their books merit a spot on the shelf and the range to bitch and complain to future human beings. perhaps that is meaningless. But is at least purposeful.