Coetzee is the kind of writer you like if you identify with his point of view. After reading Summertime I believe I do in some ways identify with his viewpoint, and therefore I must also say I like his writing. I might not be qualified to make such statements, though, as I have yet to read his fiction, but this volume of experimental memoir makes me eager to start.
I was gifted the second volume of his autobiographical trilogy, Youth, when I was in my early twenties. I read it, liked it and largely forgot it. I remember seeing a copy of his Disgrace in the lunch room of my workplace around this time, but I wasn’t at the time tempted to give it a try. I knew Coetzee was a Nobel laureate, but somehow I had gotten the idea that his writing was difficult and cumbersome. Now, 13 years later, I tried my luck sampling the catalogue of Coetzee for the second time. Oddly enough, this time with yet another volume of autobiography: Summertime, the third volume of his autobiographical writings, from 2009. The book covers a period in Coetzee’s early thirties, a time when he moved back to South Africa from the US, in part to take care of his ailing and aging father. What sets this book apart from the earlier two volumes (Boyhood, 1997 and Youth, 2002) is that this is written with quite the innovative literary conceit. It is based on fictitious interviews with people who knew Coetzee during these years, as were they conducted by a biographer intending to write a book on the recently deceased author (that’s right, in this version of reality Coetzee has died, but in real reality it is he who is writing the book… rather nifty, eh?). Anyway, I was inspired to take up this short memoir when i learned of its composition. I have myself daydreamed about the very same literary exercise!
The structure reminds me of Emanuel Bove‘s quiet masterpiece Mes amis (1924), with one chapter devoted to each friend. The writing is at times also reminiscent of the metafictive noodlings of Philip Roth‘s undeservedly forgotten gem Counterlife from 1986.
The five interviews paint an unusual picture of an insecure man, a ridiculous man, full of strange ideas and self-doubt. It is interesting that Coetzee allows himself to be presented in such an unfavorable light, which sometimes reads as a somewhat disingenuous modesty. In reading the book (which only took a couple of hours in total) I identified more than once with the idiosyncrasies of the main character, his social ineptness, his inability to convey his viewpoint to his cousins, his silent manner. His intellectual ambitions also resemble those I once held – and possibly still retain. It shook me a bit to discover that I saw myself in Coetzee (or at least this version of Coetzee), and I wondered if I am the kind of reader who always overidentifies with the material? I know I often think that What I read most recently is somehow always the best thing I’ve ever read, but this time it was different. Maybe this can teach me something? I became curious about Coetzee’s real biography and when learning that he had been married twice and had grown children, i reassessed the image I got of him from the txt. He did probably exaggerate his social gracelessness, an impression that loses its punch a bit when his real life social standing is revealed. I mean, the person in the story could just as well have ended up a bum (as Emanuel Bove actually did).
I should mention something of Coetzee’s treatment of South Africa. All the talk of colonialism and the relations during apartheid was interesting stuff. I started imagining what it would be like if Sweden had had a colonial territory and how this would have affected the Swedish consciousness. I read Christian Kracht‘s Imperium, a book about German colonies in New Guinea last year, which also left an impression of colonialism on my mind. I think Swedish crime writer Niklas Nattochdag actually does mention the temporary Swedish colony St. Barthélémy in his 1794, but it’s not really comparable.
Back to Coetzee – he has also written extensive collections of essays and his seems a very sharp mind indeed. I hope i will get to his fiction before another 13 years pass.
Kinship of all Species 