Summertime_ Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [83]
But what if we are all fictioneers, as you call Coetzee? What if we all continually make up the stories of our lives? Why should what I tell you about Coetzee be any worthier of credence than what he tells you himself?
Of course we are all fictioneers. I do not deny that. But which would you rather have: a set of independent reports from a range of independent perspectives, from which you can then try to synthesize a whole; or the massive, unitary self-projection comprised by his oeuvre? I know which I would prefer.
Yes, I can see that. There remains the question of discretion. I am not one of those who believe that once a person is dead all restraint falls away. What existed between him and me I am not necessarily prepared to share with the world.
I accept that. It is your privilege, your right. But I ask you to pause and consider. A great writer becomes the property of all of us. You knew Coetzee closely. One of these days you too will no longer be with us. Do you think it good that your memories should pass away with you?
A great writer? How John would laugh if he could hear you! The day of the great writer is gone for ever, he would say.
The day of the writer as oracle – yes, I would agree, that day is past. But would you not accept that a well-known writer – let us call him that instead – a well-known figure in our common cultural life, is to some extent public property?
On that subject my opinion is irrelevant. What is relevant is what he himself believed. And there the answer is clear. He believed our life-stories are ours to construct as we wish, within or even against the constraints imposed by the real world – as you yourself acknowledged a moment ago. That is why I asked about authorization, a question which you brushed aside. It was not the authorization of his family or his executors that I had in mind, it was his own authorization. If you were not authorized by him to expose the private side of his life, then I certainly won't assist you.
He cannot have authorized me for the simple reason that he and I never had any contact. So let us abandon that line of inquiry and return instead to the course you mentioned, the course you and he taught together. One remark that you made intrigues me. You said you and he did not attract the more radical African students. Why do you think that was so?
Because we were not radicals ourselves, not by their standards. We had both, of course, been affected by 1968. In 1968 I was a student at the Sorbonne, and took part in the manifestations, the days in May. John was in the United States at the time, and fell foul of the authorities there, I don't remember the details, but I know it was a turning-point in his life. Yet I stress we were not Marxists, either of us, and certainly not Maoists. I was probably to the left of him, but I could afford that because I was shielded by my status in the French diplomatic enclave. If I had gotten into trouble with the South African police I would have been discreetly put on a plane to Paris, and that would have been the end of the matter. I would not have ended up in a prison cell.
Whereas Coetzee . . .
Coetzee would not have ended up in a prison cell either. He was not a militant. His politics were too idealistic, too Utopian for that. In fact he was not political at all. He looked down on politics. He didn't like political writers, writers who espoused a political programme.
Yet he published some quite left-leaning commentary in the 1970s. I think of his essays on Alex La Guma, for example. He was sympathetic to La Guma, and La Guma was a communist.
La Guma was a special