Customer Reviews

Stranger Shores: Literary Essays 1986-1999

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is, overall, an excellent book, and provides exemplary models of both the literary essay and sympathetic criticism. Coetzee also sets the bar at fluency in three languages.

The standout pieces are those focusing on T.S. Eliot, Gass's Rilke, Dostoevsky, and Turgenev. Overall, his treatments of German, South African, and Russian literatures are the strongest, and essays are grouped more or less by subject nationalities. There are also thematic threads running between pieces that give the book a sense of organization by chapter, rather than of separate works grouped together. Coetzee is careful to balance the strengths and weaknesses of each author, referring to collective works to find explanations when they are not readily available in the individual pieces. He is highly sympathetic with the process of writing a novel, and treats most of his subjects in light of this recognition.

Given all this, I was a little baffled when I came to his essay on Brodsky. Though he does acknowledge Brodsky's genius in the final paragraph, the piece as a whole feels like the expulsion of a long-held grudge against the writer. He thoroughly undermines Brodsky's philosophies and politics (whose identical characteristics he supports wholeheartedly when they appear in Borges' and Dostoevsky's works); and does so to the exclusion of an actual discussion of Brodsky's writing.

As a whole, however, this is an excellent collection. For those new to literary criticism, it brings a clear and unique insight to the evaluation of (and creation of) a novel's structure; and for those who are much more well-read in criticism, a clear respect for the author and a unique manipulation of a reader's curiosity and intelligence. I think that's enough caveats for one review:) I definitely recommend this book.

This book is very exceptional. Coetzee's literary criticisms are of the highest level. He discusses a very broad range of writers and books, including; Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe; Samuel Richardson's odd novel Clarissa; Cees Nooteboom's retelling of fairy tales; a critique of William Gass's critique of the poems of Rilke; the difficulty in translating Kafka; the novel The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil, as well as Musil's Diaries published after his death; the most productive years of Dostoevsky; the essays (as well as career and poems) of Joseph Brodsky; a fantastic summary of the career and work of J.L. Borges; another penetrating essay on the serial works of A. S. Byatt; the novels of Caryl Phillips; the career of Salman Rushdie; a review of Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz's The Harafish; a fascinating essay on Daphne Rooke; an essay on Nadine Gordimer's advice to South African writers to look to the Russian intellectuals prior to the fall of Nicholas and Alexandria for resonance with current South Africa's dilema; and a wonderful essay on Doris Lessings life and work.

Coetzee is brilliant, I have loved his novels, but his literary critism is some of the most thought provoking essays I have read in years. This book is highly recommended.

J. M. Coetzee delves deep into the (hidden) soul of the authors and their work reviewed in these splendid essays. Many novels are (or will become) `classics', in Coetzee's words, `works of art which retain meaning for succeeding ages and which continue to `live''.

Daniel Defoe is an author eclipsed by one of his creations (Robinson Crusoe).
The `Four Quartets' of T.S. Eliot are an attempt to give a historical backing for a radical conservative program for a Europe of nation-states with the Catholic Church as the principal supranational organization.
Samuel Richardson's `Clarissa' is a fight on two fronts. A social one: Clarissa is a member of a powerful family and bringing her down would bring down her family. A gender one: the virtue in women is not proof against the traitorous sexual desire which a skilful seducer can arouse.
Cees Nooteboom is an intelligent traveler, but nevertheless part of the tourism industry.
In `A posthumous confession', Marcellus Emants turns a confession of a worthless life into a work of art.
R.M. Rilke's doctrine excuses all sins except those against Art.
F. M. Dostoevsky conducts a searching interrogation of the `Reason of the Enlightenment'.
The eccentric J. Brodsky elevates prosody to metaphysical status. He despairs of politics and looks to literature for redemption.
For J.L. Borges, the poetic imagination enables the writer to join the universal creative principle. This principle has the nature of Will rather than Reason (Schopenhauer).
A. Oz escapes the intolerance and intransigence which have marred the public face of Israel.
N. Mahfouz's main concern is to link private virtue with civic justice.
D. Lessing explores the mystery of the self and the destiny it elects.
For N. Gordimer, the artist has a special calling. His art tells a truth transcending the truth of history. The goal of art is to transform society and reunite what has been put asunder.
B. Breytenbach's credo is to be against the norm, hegemony, the State and power.

These formidable essays contain also comments on the problems of translation (F. Kafka) and the media (the camera has no ideology: it will lie on behalf of whoever points it and presses the button.
Africa - a continent abused, exploited and patronized by foreigners - is still in the aftershock of colonialism. It is now confronted with hard choices between economic stagnation coupled with a fast rising birth rate or un-African Western science and technology, rationalism, materialism, the profit motive, the cult of the individual and the nuclear family.

These model reviews written by a superb free mind, are a must read for all literature students and lovers of world literature.

What I appreciated most about this book was Coetzee's ability to describe his thinking and his influences. He does a great job of outlining arguments and writing cogently throughout. I was glad to see that his non-fiction work is as strong as his fiction.

One has come to expect solid, erudite, balanced essays from J. M. Coetzee, and this is exactly what one finds in this wide-ranging collection. Among recent Nobel prize-winning authors, Coetzee is one of the few who has made the promotion of international literature his vocation. Coetzee is extraordinary in the way that America 's Susan Sontag was in his ability to write sustained introductory essays on such far-flung authors as Rilke, Borges, and Musil. John Updike has this kind of learning, too, but somehow neither Updike nor Coetzee succeeds in writing with passion and excitement. As good as these essays are, they lack the wit and sparkle that one might find in an Amis essay or even in one by Ms Sontag. Coetzee's reach is far, however; who else could write so thoroughly on such disparate authors as South African Daphne Rooke and Czech Josef Skvorecky? Who could write a line by line analysis of recent translations of Kafka? This is an invaluable survey of modern fiction. One only missed a certain playful brilliance.

Many topics. As I expected, Coetzee displays a profound knowledge of Kafka. Amazing how much of it can be communicated by discussing problems of translation.
I found the essays on South African literature and history very informative.
Certainly to be recommended to every lover of Coetzee's candid prose.

Coetzee writes that T.S. Eliot was invested in his English identity by 1944. Eliot wrote an essay about Virgil, about the Aeneid, about the classics at that time. He sensed the war would bring about change. The classics are what survives. The music of Bach, for example, has survived.

The author disliked watching the TV version of Richardson's CLARISSA. He writes that in 1740 there was an idea of beauty. Lovelace is a rake. Richardson is a Christian, but not a religious writer. Clarissa is trapped in a certain mythic dualism. She suffers ontological damage. Clarissa's self-interpretation carries conviction. Lovelace is a thoroughly debased version of the lover worshipper of female beauty.

The principal subject of the Dutch writer, Marcellus Emants, is love and marriage. He is pessimistic and is interested in psychological processes. The Dutch writer Harry Mulisch wrote a fictional account of the story of his own parents. A theme of his has been the failure of the imagination in the face of the atrocious evil of, say, Auschwitz. Mulisch has an intensely felt personal preoccupation with the historical trauma of European facism.

Cees Nooteboom, another Dutch novelist, is too intelligent to commit himself to constructing the grand illusions of realism. Nooteboom has a version of Andersen's "The Snow Queen." Nooteboom's initial reputation was gained as a travel writer. One of the constants of his life has been his love of Spain. Religious tourism makes up a large part of the tourism industry in Europe.

Coetzee notes that Rainer Maria Rilke was attracted to a non-German identity. Rilke visited Russia and after Word War I visited Switzerland. He was attacked as a cultural renegade but claimed he was merely being a good European. Rilke had a gift for languages.

Edwin and Willa Muir became professional translators. They produced translations of Kafka. Edwin Muir was also a poet of some note. At any rate, the Muir's conception of Kafka was that he was a religious writer. Coetzee claims that the Muir monopoly has assumed a scandalous air in that it has produced numerous misreadings. Their knowledge of German terms pertaining to law and the legal bureaucracy was sketchy. The Muirs are uncertain guides to the everyday material culture of middle Europe. Max Brod, who delivered Kafka to the world, was, of course, no ordinary editor. He saved Kafka's manuscripts from destruction. Coetzee describes Kafka's language as clear, specific, and neutral. His language may have been influenced by the precision of good legal prose.

Robert Musil served the Hapsburg Empire in World War I and died during World War II. THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES was left unfinished. In 1938 Musil and his wife became trapped in Switzerland. Musil thought German culture was retrogressive in compartmentalizing intellect from feeling. Nietzsche's influence on Musil was decisive.

1865-1871 were the years of Dostoevsky's greatest achievement. Dostoevsky's biographer calls him a literary proletarian. His second wife was able to divorce his gambling mania from his personality. In Dostoevsky's novels there are competing voices and discourses. Dostevsky's historical intuitions were usually right.

Joseph Brodsky criticizes Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn for refusing to accept that humankind is radically bad. The author writes of A.S. Byatt, Aharon Appelfeld, Naguib Mahfouz, Nadine Gordimer and Doris Lessing in addition to the literary figures covered above at greater length.

The essays by this Nobel Prize winner are useful guides to various writers and works without being overly scholarly.

Well, I was somewhat disappointed. I have read most o Coetzee's work, and i found this book rather weak in comparison to others. Though it covers a large variety of writers and different thougths (ranging from translation ones to ones about apartheid and South African politics) I found it that only the first essay "What is a Classic" can stand for grandiousness of thought that I expect from nobel prize writer. Others range from good ones to ones that look like they have been written by High school student. Essays does not offer provoking thoughts, after reading them you will not feel smarter, you'll not thirst for knowledge, and in the world that I inhabit, I value only those kind of essays. I must say that I don't recommend this book, though I reccomended most of them in these pages...