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Thursday, March 12, 2020
Jm Coetzee Essays
Jm Coetzee Essays Jm Coetzee Paper Jm Coetzee Paper Residence at the time of the award: South Africa Prize motivation: who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider Language: English Biographical John Maxwell Coetzee was born in Cape Town, South Africa, on 9 February 1940, the elder of two children. His mother was a primary school teacher. His father was trained as an attorney, but practiced as such only intermittently; during the years 1941–45 he served with the South African forces in North Africa and Italy. Though Coetzees parents were not of British descent, the language spoken at home was English. Coetzee received his primary schooling in Cape Town and in the nearby town of Worcester. For his secondary education he attended a school in Cape Town run by a Catholic order, the Marist Brothers. He matriculated in 1956. Coetzee entered the University of Cape Town in 1957, and in 1960 and 1961 graduated successively with honours degrees in English and mathematics. He spent the years 1962–65 in England, working as a computer programmer while doing research for a thesis on the English novelist Ford Madox Ford. In 1963 he married Philippa Jubber (1939–1991). They had two children, Nicolas (1966–1989) and Gisela (b. 1968). In 1965 Coetzee entered the graduate school of the University of Texas at Austin, and in 1968 graduated with a PhD in English, linguistics, and Germanic languages. His doctoral dissertation was on the early fiction of Samuel Beckett. For three years (1968–71) Coetzee was assistant professor of English at the State University of New York in Buffalo. After an application for permanent residence in the United States was denied, he returned to South Africa. From 1972 until 2000 he held a series of positions at the University of Cape Town, the last of them as Distinguished Professor of Literature. Between 1984 and 2003 he also taught frequently in the United States: at the State University of New York, Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, Stanford University, and the University of Chicago, where for six years he was a member of the Committee on Social Thought. Coetzee began writing fiction in 1969. His first book, Dusklands, was published in South Africa in 1974. In the Heart of the Country (1977) won South Africas then principal literary award, the CNA Prize, and was published in Britain and the USA. Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) received international notice. His reputation was confirmed by Life amp; Times of Michael K (1983), which won Britains Booker Prize. It was followed by Foe (1986), Age of Iron (1990), The Master of Petersburg (1994), and Disgrace (1999), which again won the Booker Prize. Coetzee also wrote two fictionalized memoirs, Boyhood (1997) and Youth (2002). The Lives of Animals (1999) is a fictionalized lecture, later absorbed into Elizabeth Costello (2003). White Writing (1988) is a set of essays on South African literature and culture. Doubling the Point (1992) consists of essays and interviews with David Attwell. Giving Offense (1996) is a study of literary censorship. Stranger Shores (2001) collects his later literary essays. Coetzee has also been active as a translator of Dutch and Afrikaans literature. In 2002 Coetzee emigrated to Australia. He lives with his partner Dorothy Driver in Adelaide, South Australia, where he holds an honorary position at the University of Adelaide. Excerpts from Disgrace Excerpts selected by Lars Rydquist, head librarian, Nobel Library of the Swedish Academy. (Pages 111-112 and 183-184) As gently as he can, he offers his question again. Lucy, my dearest, why dont you want to tell? It was a crime. There is no shame in being the object of a crime. You did not choose to be the object. You are an innocent party. Sitting across the table from him, Lucy draws a deep breath, gathers herself, then breathes out again and shakes her head. Can I guess? he says. Are you trying to remind me of something? Am I trying to remind you of what? Of what women undergo at the hands of men. Nothing could be further from my thoughts. This has nothing to do with you, David. You want to know why I have not laid a particular charge with the police. I will tell you, as long as you agree not to raise the subject agai n. The reason is that, as far as I am concerned, what happened to me is a purely private matter. In another time, in another place it might be held to be a public matter. But in this place, at this time, it is not. It is my business, mine alone. This place being what? This place being South Africa. I dont agree. I dont agree with what you are doing. Do you think that by meekly accepting what happened to you, you can set yourself apart from farmers like Ettinger? Do you think what happened here was an exam: if you come through, you get a diploma and safe conduct into the future, or a sign to paint on the door-lintel that will make the plague pass you by? That is not how vengeance works, Lucy. Vengeance is like a fire. The more it devours, the hungrier it gets. Stop it, David! I dont want to hear this talk of plagues and fires. I am not just trying to save my skin. If that is what you think, you miss the point entirely. Then help me. Is it some form of private salvation you are trying to work out? Do you hope you can expiate the crimes of the past by suffering in the present? No. You keep misreading me. Guilt and salvation are abstractions. I dont act in terms of abstractions. Until you make an effort to see that, I cant help you. He wants to respond, but she cuts him short. David, we agreed. I dont want to go on with this conversation. Never yet have they been so far and so bitterly apart. He is shaken. /- -/ Working as swiftly as he can, holding tight to Teresa, he tries to sketch out the opening pages of a libretto. Get the words down on paper, he tells himself. Once that is done it will all be easier. Then there will be time to search through the masters through Gluck, for instance lifting melodies, perhaps who knows? lifting ideas too. But by steps, as he begins to live his days more fully with Teresa and the dead Byron, it becomes clear that purloined songs will not be good enough, that the two will demand a music of their own. And, astonishingly, in dribs and drabs, the music comes. Sometimes the contour of a phrase occurs to him before he has a hint of what the words themselves will be; sometimes the words call forth the cadence; sometimes th e shade of a melody, having hovered for days on the edge of hearing, unfolds and blessedly reveals itself. As the action begins to unwind, furthermore, it calls up of its own accord modulations and transitions that he feels in his blood even when he has not the musical resources to realize them. At the piano he sets to work piecing together and writing down the beginnings of a score. But there is something about the sound of the piano that hinders him: too rounded, too physical, too rich. From the attic, from a crate full of old books and toys of Lucys, he recovers the odd little seven-stringed banjo that he bought for her on the streets of KwaMashu when she was a child. With the aid of the banjo he begins to notate the music that Teresa, now mournful, now angry, will sing to her dead lover, and that pale-voiced Byron will sing back to her from the land of the shades. The deeper he follows the Contessa into her underworld, singing her words for her or humming her vocal line, the more inseparable from her, to his surprise, becomes the silly plink-plonk of the toy banjo. The lush arias he had dreamed of giving her he quietly abandons; from there it is but a short step to putting the instrument into her hands. Instead of stalking the stage, Teresa now sits staring out over the marshes toward the gates of hell, cradling the mandolin on which she accompanies herself in her lyric flights; while to one side a discreet trio in knee-breeches (cello, flute, bassoon) fill in the entractes or comment sparingly between stanzas. References 1.       Argentina: Nearly Half of Argentines Demand End to Privatization. (2002, July 11). Asia Africa Intelligence Wire. 2.       Argentina: Ten Years of Privatization Made a Crisis Worse. (2003, June 24). Interpress Service. 3.       Baker, Dean, and Mark Weisbrot. (2002, April 16). The Role of Social Security Privatization in Argentinas Economic Crisis. Center for Economic and Policy Research. Retrieved from cepr.net/publications/argentina_2002_04.htm. (23 February 2007). 4.       Cavallo, Domingo F. (1997). Lessons from Argentinas Privatization Experience. Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 50. 5.       Chisari, Omar, Antonio Estache, and Carlos Romero. Winners and Losers from Utility Privatization in Argentina: Lessons from a General Equilibrium Model. World Bank. Retrieved from worldbank.org/html/dec/Publications/Workpapers/WPS1800series/wps1824/wps1824.pdf. (23 February 2007). 6.       Confronting the Social and Labor Challenges of Privatization: Multinational Enterprises in Telecommunications in the 1990s. International Labor Organization. Working Paper. Retrieved from ilo.org/public/english/employment/multi/download/wp90.pdf. (23 February 2007). 7.       Davis, Neal C. (1997, October 22). Electricity Reform Abroad and U.S. Investment: A Historical Perspective for Argentine Privatization Efforts. Retrieved from eia.doe.gov/emeu/pgem/electric/ch411.html. (23 February 2007). 8.       Galiani, Sebastian, Paul Gertler, and Ernesto Schargrodsky. (2002, June 30). Water for Life: The Impact of Privatization of Water Services on Child Mortality. Working Paper. Retrieved from http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/gertler/working_papers/Water%20for%20Life%20June30.pdf. (23 February 2007). 9.       Hacher, Sebastian. (2004, February 26). Argentina Water Privatization Scheme Runs Dry. Global Policy Forum. Retrieved from globalpolicy.org/. (23 February 2007). 10.     Health Care Privatization in Argentina. (2001). National Center for Policy Analysis. Idea House. Retrieved from ncpa.org/. (23 February 2007). 11.     Multinational water companies desperate to get out of Argentina. (2005, December 18). Catholic New Times. 12.     National Framework for Globalization. International Labor Organization. Retrieved from ilo.org/. (23 February 2007). 13.     Privatization Link. Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency: World Bank Group. Retrieved from fdi.net/index.cfm. (23 February 2007). 14.     Saba, Roberto Pablo, and Luigi Manzetti. (1997). Privatization in Argentina: The implications for corruption. Crime, Law, and Social Change, 25. 15.     Valente, Marcela. (2006). De-Privatisation Purely Pragmatic, Say Observers. Inter Press Service News Agency. Retrieved from http://ipsnews.net/headlines.asp. (23 February 2007).
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