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Inner Workings: Literary Essays 2000-2005

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"Inner Workings" represents a collection of J.M. Coetzee's literary essays from 2000-2005. The majority, even those on important figures, are little more than book reviews or occasional work; they are almost never "critical" in either sense of the term. Coetzee's usual approach is to provide a general summary of the book under consideration, an overview of the author's life story, and a brief concluding remark that is more often than not laudatory or so gnomic as to hardly provide any literary perspective. That being said there is a great deal to be learned from this volume, especially in regard to the Central European authors who either influenced Kafka or were influenced by him. A majority of these authors were Jewish and Coetzee comprehensively discusses the manner in which their lives were compromised either through surrender to the majoritarian culture or through outright physical annihilation. The roster of middle European authors includes Italo Svevo, Robert Walser, Robert Musil, Walter Benjamin (a fine essay), Bruno Schulz, Joseph Roth, and (by extension)Paul Celan; an essay on Franz Kafka would have been a logical inclusion. Coetzee is very good on the hazards of translation, especially in regard to German-speaking writers. The second area of emphasis is on post-World War II American and English authors like Graham Greene, Beckett, Faulkner, Bellow, Arthur Miller and Philip Roth. He takes Roth's measure accurately and his love of Bellow as perhaps the greatest writer of his generation is evident. As a poet I especially enjoyed his explications of Celan and Whitman. His essay on Gabriel Garcia Marquez is somewhat dismissive, critiquing "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" as an updating and apologia for "Love in The Time of Cholera", the brilliance of which he severely underestimates. Of most of his opinions there is little to argue with; whether we read these writers with more intelligence because of what he himself has written is subject to dispute. At times it seems as if he writes only to acknowledge his fellow Nobel Laureates but he does manage to humanize them, and for that we can be grateful.

INNER WORKINGS is a collection of 21 essays by J.M. Coetzee, 16 of which first appeared (in an earlier form) in the "New York Review of Books." With the sole exception of Walt Whitman, all of the subjects are authors of the 20th century (several are still alive and productive, though years from now they surely will be thought of as 20th-century writers). For the most part the essays follow the format common to the "New York Review of Books": some biographical information about the author; relatively brief discussion of his (or, in the case of Nadine Gordimer, her) place or significance in 20th-century literature; more detailed discussion of one or more works of the author; and, where applicable, some mention of the merits of the translation into English.

I was prompted to buy the book when, picking it up in the bookstore last week and skimming its table of contents, I saw that a number of the essays deal with authors I have been reading in the past two or three years -- specifically, the ones listed in the title to this review. I have now read the essays on those authors, as well as ones on Italo Svevo, Robert Musil, and Graham Greene. If and when I have time to read (or re-read) several other authors covered in the book (e.g., Samuel Beckett, Saul Bellow, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Philip Roth), I will make a point of going back and reading what Coetzee has to say about them.

The essays are intelligent and informative, well-written and easily comprehensible. There is no in-depth analysis or exegesis, but neither are the essays superficial. Only in some of the essays does Coetzee express strong critical judgments. A few of those are negative. (For instance, he concludes that Sandor Marai's novelistic achievements are "slight.") I don't think INNER WORKINGS constitutes literary criticism or analysis of the first order, but that's alright by me. In each essay I read there was enough new information or fresh perspectives on the author and work(s) at issue to make my reading the essay worth my time.

I will end by quoting two sentences from Coetzee's essay on W.G. Sebald: "Sebald did not call himself a novelist -- prose writer was the term he preferred -- but his enterprise nevertheless depends for its success on attaining lift-off from the biographical or the essayistic -- the prosaic in the everyday sense of the word -- into the realm of the imaginative. The mysterious ease with which he is able to achieve such lift-off is the clearest proof of his genius."

This was a highly engaging series of essays, short and to the point. I liked how Coetzee would focus primarily on one literary product from each of the writers he selected and often integrated that essay with examples from other works by the same writer or else related relevant biographical detail.

There were many highlights in these essays. The homoeroticism of Walt Whitman's poetic works and volunteer work with the wounded Union soldiers in Washington D.C. was interesting in regard to the perception of same sex affection and attachment in different eras. What seems to be clearly homoerotic in our own era is not necessarily viewed so 150 years ago, especially when Whitman purposely was evasive about his sexuality. Coetzee tries to sort this out and seems to point out that often it was difficult to observe what you think does not exist. Another essay is an analysis of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores which Coetzee relates to Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera but also relates to Cervantes' Don Quixote. The concept that obsession and projection may in fact be a catalyst to higher attainment and even if the obsession seems hopeless and the projection seems unrealistic, that the higher attainment may be real and thus is worth the illusion. Coetzee's description of Saul Bellow's The Victim created such a sense of dread that I am now curious about the novel but certain that it will disturb me greatly. Coetzee offers a great analysis of Nadine Gordimer's The Pickup, which seems to be a novel perfect for our cross cultural understandings and misunderstandings. Coetzee casts a cool eye on William Faulkner, recognizing his amazing literary innovation and also his self destructive tendencies. In the essay on V.S. Naipaul we get a spot-on analysis and interpretation of Half a Life, a sweeping novel on intergenerational consciousness development, exploring how consciousness is shaped by context and time. He also reviews Phillip Roth's The Plot Against America which he reviewed in such detail that I feel no desire to read the novel but I did grow curious about Sabbath's Theater, which Coetzee mentions in just enough detail to heighten my desire to read more. Bruno Schulz, the artist and writer, is also discussed- a man of surreal genius. Graham Greene's Brighton Rock seems deterministic and supportive of Greene's Catholic philosophy that underlies his novels. The most enjoyable essay was commentary on Arthur Miller's screenplay The Misfits. Coetzee analyzes both the screenplay and the manner in which Marilyn Monroe, Eli Wallach, Montgomery Cliff, Clark Gable, and Thelma Ritter brought that screenplay to life. Coetzee points out that a strength of the film is that Monroe plays a women who is essentially herself and thus she had no need to act but to only be herself in the film. It is a screenplay of great power and Coetzee's analysis is superb. The literary essays of Coetzee always make me wish to read and understand more. They fascinate as they explain.

Coetzee, whose background is Dutch, lives in Australia. He is known, of course, as a South African, but his roots belong to Europe. He has an affinity for the hard, dense German authors and writes about them well. As in his other collected essays, he likes to talk about translators and their work. Clearly, he has the expertise to do so. His close readings of Celan's poetry and of Kafka's prose give one an insight into his mental processes, which are exacting. Unlike Sontag, for example, one doesn't always come away excited to read further; instead one feels duty-bound to do so. I especially appreciated his essay on Arthur Miller's "The Misfits," which is an often ignored masterpiece of John Huston. He offers appraisals of Robert Walser, Robert Musil, Walter Benjamin, and other modern masters of the German-speaking world. These, too, are Sontag's favorites. On Americans such as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, he covers familiar territory, but seems to have no feeling for their humor. He faults Bellow for not doing more with philosophy, which may be fair, but doesn't touch sufficiently on the development of his comic genius. In my view, Sontag writes a better essay, while Coetzee writes far superior fiction.

Coetzee has recently emerged as one of the leading figures in contemporary fiction. His style is dark, obscure, and undeniably Kafkaesque. If you'd like to learn who his other literary influences are, this volume is an excellent help.

Coetzee is highly preoccupied with modernist German literature. There are some excellent reviews in here on Walter Benjamin, Paul Celan, Gunter Grass, and Robert Musil. He also weighs in on American heavy-weights like William Faulkner and Saul Bellow.

The bulk of the content in here is predominantly biographical. I particularly enjoyed his discussion of Faulkner's peculiarly hermetic life, as well as his elaboration on the common view of Benjamin's final days in Europe.

All in all, 'Inner Workings' is a fine collection of essays, and a very enjoyable read, though it is far from landmark literary criticism.

This bundle of essays contains superb reviews of important authors and (part of) their work.
Hereafter, a brief summary of Coetzee's comments and evaluations, with a few remarks.

Italo Svevo considered himself as a peer, a fellow researcher of Freud into the grip of the unconscious on conscious life.
Robert Musil (Young Törless) was skeptical of the power of reason to guide human conduct.
Robert Walzer (Jakob von Gunten) considered himself as a `Man von Unten' (an underdog).
Bruno Schulz's book `Cinnamon Shops' is a recreation of childhood consciousnesses, full of terror, obsessions and crazy glories.
Joseph Roth's `The Radetzky March' is a great poem of elegy to Habsburg Austria.
Sándor Márai considered himself as a dupe of history. He behaved like a caricature of the bourgeois intellectual, scorning the rabble of the right and the left.
Günter Grass's `Crabwalk' should be considered a breakthrough, as war crimes against Germans during WW II are not taboo anymore.
Graham Greene's `Brighton Rock' is a confrontation between religious Good and Evil and materialist right and wrong.
For Saul Bellow, literature is an interpretation of the chaos of life.
Philip Roth's `The Plot against America' paints a vision of a world based on hatred and suspicion, a world of them and us.
Nadine Gordimer's `The Pickup' is a dismissal of the false gods of the West, the gods of market capital.
Gabriel García Márquez's so-called magic realism is simply a matter of telling hard-to-believe stories.
For V.S. Naipaul, self-denial is the road of weakness.
J.M. Coetzee pierces the veil of Walt Whitman's amativeness. Whitman's democracy is a civic religion energized by a broadly erotic feeling.
J.M. Coetzee gives brilliant comments on translation problems for hermetic poetry (Paul Celan). Hermetic poetry seems to be mostly, as it is here, more puzzle work than poetry.
I only disagree with the author's review of Samuel Beckett's work. Here I side with another Nobel Prize winner, Naguib Mahfuz (Adrift on the Nile).

This book is a must read for all lovers of world literature. Of course, one should read most of the books reviewed in these essays.