Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [228]
How do I see our relationship? John was a marked Francophile of the kind who believes that if he can acquire for himself a French mistress then supreme felicity will be his. Of the French mistress it will be expected that she recite Ronsard and play Couperin on the clavecin while simultaneously inducting her lover into the amatory mysteries, French style. I exaggerate, of course.
Was I the French mistress of his fantasy? I doubt it very much. Looking back, I now see our relationship as comical in its essence. Comico-sentimental. Based on a comic premise. Yet with a further element that I must not minimize, namely, that he helped me escape from a bad marriage, for which I remain grateful to this day.
Comico-sentimental … You make it sound rather light. Did Coetzee not leave a deeper imprint on you, and you on him?
As to what imprint I may have left on him, that I am not in a position to judge. But in general I would say that unless you have a strong presence you do not leave a deep imprint; and John did not have a strong presence. I don’t mean to sound flippant. I know he had many admirers; he was not awarded the Nobel Prize for nothing; and of course you would not be here today, pursuing these researches, if you did not think he was important as a writer. But – to be serious for a moment – in all the time I was with him I never had the feeling I was with an exceptional person, a truly exceptional human being. It is a cruel thing to say, I know, but regrettably it is true. I experienced no flash of lightning from him that suddenly illuminated the world. Or if there were flashes, I was blind to them.
I found John clever, I found him knowledgeable, I admired him in many ways. As a writer he knew what he was doing, he had a certain style, and in style lies the beginning of distinction. But he had no special sensitivity that I could detect, no original insight into the human condition. He was just a man, a man of his time, talented, maybe even gifted, but, frankly, not a giant. I am sorry if I disappoint you. From other people who knew him you will get a different picture, I am sure.
Turning to his writings: speaking objectively, as a critic, what is your estimation of his books?
I liked the early work best. In a book like In the Heart of the Country there is a certain daring, a certain wildness, that I can still admire. In Foe as well, which is not so early. But after that he became more respectable, and in my view more tame. After Disgrace I lost interest. I did not read the later stuff.
In general I would say his work lacks ambition. Control over the elements of the fiction is too tight. You do not sense you are in the presence of a writer who is deforming his medium in order to say what has never been said before, which is to me the mark of great writing. Too cool, too neat, I would say. Too easy. Too lacking in passion, creative passion. That’s all.
Interview conducted in Paris in January 2008.
Notebooks: Undated fragments
Undated fragment
IT IS A SATURDAY afternoon in winter, ritual time for the game of rugby. With his father he catches a train to Newlands in time for the 2.15 curtain-raiser. The curtain-raiser will be followed at 4.00 by the main match. After the main match they will catch a train home again.
He goes with his father to Newlands because sport – rugby in winter, cricket in summer – is the strongest surviving bond between them, and because it went through his heart like a knife, the first Saturday after his return to the country, to see his father put on his coat and without a word go off to Newlands like a lonely child.
His father has no friends. Nor has he, though for a different reason. He had friends when he was younger; but these old friends are by now dispersed all over the world, and he seems to have lost the knack, or perhaps the will, to make new ones. So he is cast back on his father, as his father is cast back on him. As they live together, so on Saturdays they take their pleasure together. That is the law of the family.
It surprised him, when