Summertime_ Scenes From Provincial Life - J. M. Coetzee [88]
Did you ever find yourself at odds with him over questions of politics?
That is a difficult question. Where, after all, does character end and politics begin? At a personal level, I saw him as rather too fatalistic and therefore too passive. Did his mistrust of political activism express itself in passivity in the conduct of his life, or did an innate fatalism express itself in mistrust of political action? I cannot decide. But yes, at a personal level there was a certain tension between us. I wanted our relationship to grow and develop, he wanted it to remain the same, without change. That was what caused the breach, in the end. Because between a man and a woman there is no standing still, in my view. Either you are going up or you are going down.
When did the breach occur?
In 1980. I left Cape Town and came back to France.
Did you and he have no further contact?
For a while he wrote to me. He sent me his books. Then he stopped writing. I presumed he had found someone else.
And when you look back over the relationship, how do you see it?
How do I see our relationship? John was the kind of man who is convinced that supreme felicity will be his if only he can acquire a French mistress who will recite Ronsard to him and play Couperin on the clavecin while simultaneously inducting him into the mysteries of love, French style. I exaggerate, of course. Nevertheless, he was a marked Francophile.
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, doing 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 harsh 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 style is 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 did not read all of them. After Disgrace I lost interest. In general I would say that his work lacks ambition. The control of the elements is too tight. Nowhere do you get a feeling of a writer 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