What of the relationship between Coetzee the novelist and Coetzee the critic? In his introduction to the collection, Derek Attridge suggests that there is a gulf between the two. ‘One would not have predicted it if one had read the novels alone,’ he writes, ‘but Coetzee is an ideal reviewer.’ Well, Coetzee may be an ideal reviewer, but I’m not sure his criticism diverges that much from his fiction. Linguistically, they are of a piece: there is the same spare style, the same interrogative method of argument. His knowledge of literature is formidably wide-ranging, but he nonetheless displays a preference for writers of a certain kind, who in many cases are not dissimilar to him. He evidently sympathises with provincials and outsiders (V. S. Naipaul, Joseph Roth) and with novelists who have pursued other careers besides writing (Italo Svevo, W. G. Sebald). He is interested in novelists who take extreme, or heretical positions: what he describes as Gabriel García Márquez’s desire ‘to speak on behalf of paedophilia’ in Memories of my Melancholy Whores could be seen as paralleling his own suggestion, in various works, that the slaughter of animals for meat is an act of barbarity. Though an impeccable stylist in many ways, he is not greatly interested in, or impressed by, linguistic exuberance. For that reason, an essay on Saul Bellow sits rather awkwardly in this book, particularly as he makes the odd claim that Bellow’s best work is his second novel, The Victim.
What of the question of truthfulness? This is a complex matter with Coetzee, because he himself is so inscrutable. In his fictional writings (‘novels’ can seem a slightly misleading term) he has often come close to self-revelation, while always stopping just short. Is the protagonist of Boyhood and Youth really Coetzee? And what about Elizabeth Costello, the author figure at the centre of his two most recent novels? If Coetzee the novelist flirts with self-disclosure, Coetzee the critic adopts the opposite tack: compared with many critics, he gives little of his own opinions and prejudices away. But it is wholly characteristic of this unpredictable writer that this should be the case. For one thing is certain about Coetzee: we will never be entirely sure what he thinks.
William Skidelsky is Deputy Editor of Prospect magazine.
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