I came across
this novel from my favorite Kannada blogger and profound literary critic,
Narendra Pai in one of his blogposts.
I am sure every
mortal has spared a thought about how would world remember him after his death.
This novel is entirely a collection of interviews of people who were once close
to J M Coetzee in the 1970s – a period, an English interviewer Vincent
considers to be a very important phase in the life of the character J M Coetzee
after latter’s death! The character J M Coetzee in the novel is also a writer
sharing great similarities with the real life novelist himself. The boundary between
real Coetzee and the character in the novel is blurry.
The novel starts
with some interesting fragments from the diary of J M Coetzee, some of them
ending with a curious footnote reading “to be expanded later”. Then the
interviews begin of Julia – a married woman with whom Coetzee had an illicit
affair, Margot – Coetzee’s cousin, Adrina – Brazilian dancer who claims Coetzee
almost stalked her and her daughter, Martin – Coetzee’s once colleague and
Sophie – Coetzee’s another colleague with whom Coetzee had an affair. Quite
predictably there are more women who opines about Coetzee than men, as woman
could bring out the best and also the worst in a man. Also it’s always
interesting to know Venusian retrospect of a Martian and vice versa. Moreover,
all these interviews are not sequential, as in Vincent did not interview these
in the same order as narrated in the book.
With some of these
interviewees ready to bare all to Vincent, while some judiciously revealing the
bits and pieces about Coetzee – as a loner, not a man of great character, surely
not charming, incompetent, introverted, highly opinionated, who always carried
this mysterious aura around – the reader tries to complete the jigsaw puzzle
from the pieces collected from these interviews. As mentioned in Narendra Pai’s
blog, if we do not read the interviews as narrated in the book and pick them up
randomly, there are chances that we get a different image of Coetzee. A slightly
different man, than we perceived him to be. That’s really an amazing technique
in the narration, to play with the minds of the readers.
But why try to
understand a writer from interviews of some people, and why not his novels,
writings, letters and memoirs. When the same question is asked by one of the
interviewees, Vincent justifies by saying it would not be right to trust
Coetzee from his memoirs and letters as he was a fictioneer. From the interviews
of Margot and Julia, it was evident that Coetzee wanted to be remembered even
after his death for the generations to come, if not for time immemorial. Hence
Vincent could be right in saying that Coetzee being a fictioneer could have
projected an altered self in his memoirs and letters. That raises a very
interesting question of how do you describe the true self of a man? It is
understandable and natural too if there is a gap between what we think we are
and what we actually are, but from the above lines of Vincent, what we get to
know about a person is always an opinion or is it a version of him or an
interpretation. Is objective review almost an improbable thing… That's a pretty
interesting thought.
Summertime is actually the third book in the
trilogy by J M Coetzee. It’s time for me to pick up the first two – Boyhood and
Youth soon.
