Shaun de Waal applauds David Attwell’s survey of JM Coetzee’s manuscripts and notes to self.
JM COETZEE AND THE LIFE OF WRITING by David Attwell (Jacana)
JC Kannemeyer, the biographer of several Afrikaans literary giants (Leipoldt, Langenhoven, Krige), ended his writing career with a biography of JM Coetzee, almost as though he were absorbing him into the Afrikaans literary tradition instead of that of the English in which Coetzee writes. Kannemeyer died before the biography was quite finished, and it was published after his death. It’s a monumental work of fact-finding, though most of the facts are dull, and it had some referencing problems (I am quoted as the author of a review I didn’t write).
Focusing on the life rather than the writing as such, Kannemeyer paid only “cursory” attention to the manuscripts of Coetzee’s novels (now in the archive of the University of Texas, Austin) or to the notes related to the process of writing them. These documents are a key part of David Attwell’s examination of Coetzee’s “authorship”, and what a treasure trove they are.
One presumed Coetzee kept a close critical eye on his works as he wrote them (he is, after all, a master critic too), but notes so detailed, so exacting, so open? They provide a fascinating insight into the development of his fiction, his own textual and emotional manoeuvres, and the mind of the writer.
He bemoans being trapped in the easy prison of naturalism, as might any novelist working on the edges of the realist tradition. During the writing of Foe Coetzee asks himself, as many readers did too once it was published: “What is the whole thing all about?” He is finding he has “no interest in this woman”, meaning the pivotal figure of Susan Barton, and in a text composed of different voices, and about who tells whose story, he revealingly asks: “When am I going to enter?”
Foe was a relatively smooth writing process for Coetzee, perhaps because it had a textual tradition behind it upon which he could draw, and a prose model in the works of Daniel Defoe. Other novels were not nearly so easy – 12 or 14 drafts are “not uncommon”, says Attwell.
The full report by Shaun de Waal in the Mail & Guardian ends with the pithy comment:
It’s rather touching, and will be comforting to any aspiring novelists, to read this sidelong note from Coetzee: “Every morning since 1 Jan 1970 I have sat down to write. I HATE it.”
