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Wednesday 30 September 2009

Coetzee's 'Summertime'

Maurice Blanchot observed that there was a tripartite structure to literature: allegory, myth, symbol. A story is allegoric (always already a great big metaphor), mythic (specific; about what the story says it is about) and symbolic (or, think, subversive; about itself, about itself as a text, about itself as a written artefact; writing, on some level, is always writing about writing). A book like Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the 70s, world-conquering, self-help classic, foregrounds the allegorical aspect so much that it is clearly no longer really a novella about a big bird, but rather fully an attempt to say something (something rather cheesey, for sure) about life's big questions. Most novels emphasise their story and plot -- and, with (Establishment) Literary Fiction, especially the elegance and care with which that story is written. It will speed us to my substantive points if I am allowed to claim that Modernism, with its focus on form, was predominantly interested in the symbolic, the subversive. It is easy to see how criticism itself tends to hone in on one particular of these elements to foreground its own concerns (most book reviews of ELF titles are merely plot synopses with attitude). Where literature leads, criticism follows. This is why great, groundbreaking books teach you how to read and good books remind you how. The best book to teach you how to read Proust's ISOLT is Proust's ISOLT, and the best guide to Joyce's Ulysses is Joyce's Ulysses itself.

Summertime, J.M. Coetzee's latest novel, is a very good book. It is the third in a loose series of books of fictional autobiography following Boyhood and Youth. It is, ostensibly, so clever and playful -- and both these adjectives are particular weak in the face of Coetzee's work -- that whilst unveiling itself it seems it has already, simultaneously, done a very good job of reading itself too. The form of the novel need not detain us for too long. We are presented with a casebook of unfinished texts which themselves are presented as the working documents for a biography of John Coetzee, now deceased. A few fragments of John's notebooks occupy the first chapter, then we have transcripts of interviews between John's would-be biographer and four women and one man who have occupied important positions in John's life. Most of these interviews take the form of written Q and As, but one of the 'interviews' is presented to us, with the occassional interuption, in the form of an extended narrative -- the abstract artist reminding us of just how good at figurative drawing he still is, perhaps? The novel ends with several more fragments from John's notebooks.

Coetzee's metafiction (for want of a better term) has, it would seem, already thought about and answered all the questions most critics are likely to want to ask of it or draw out from it; especially if those critics labour under the misapprehension that this is, indeed, something called 'fictional autobiography'. Coetzee's book is, doubtless, a compelling work of auto-critique, but such critique is not hermetic; it always leaks. Freud's self-analyses tell us more about Freud than he ever knew -- as does his the whole body of his work. Any idea that auto-critique can be complete and whole unto itself falls under the anthropologist's fallacy of objectivity. The scientist always affects the results, simply by asking the questions in the first place. Coetzee, of course, knows this. So, are we really in such dangerous, vertiginous, Dante-esque territory? A lit theory hell where nominal crises arise and set in? Is this meta-auto-critical fake-real / real-fake (auto)(biography)? Well, it is both more simple and more complex than that. This is merely a novel and that is, already, already more than enough. Summertime is always tempting us to misread it as a biography of some kind (transcripts, interviewees, references to real events in J.M. Coetzee's real life, even a jacket cover photo that shows JMC at the age he was when the events we are reading about were taking place). We can enjoy it more, however, and get much more from it, if we remember that this is a novel; if we note that Summertime is very clear to remind us of this simple fact all the way down; and that it is about the very temptation it induces fully to misapprehend it.

Despite what some reviewers have suggested, then, this is not a fictionalised biography of John Coetzee because the texts we read are not yet worked up to the standard that biography (even fictionalised biography) demands. For example, when speaking to his interviewees, our would-be biographer says that he will change aspects of the interview if his interviewees are not happy with any part of what he has written; often, they are not happy, and call for changes to the text. These are, then, fictionalised transcripts presented as unfinished. This, then, isn't just J.M. Coetzee's fictionalised autobiography of his life during the 70s in South Africa when he was writing some of his most important work. It isn't just this because this is a novel and JMC knows, as a novelist, that some of all its levels of meaning, despite his care, will always evade him. Indeed, what makes Summertime such a very good book is that it is precisely that lesson that is emphasised in a careful reading of it. Despite how knowing a writer JMC is and despite how knowing he makes us feel and helps us be (and reminds us we should be in general as readers far more attentive than we habitually are) something remains outside of his grasp. Texts, like people, can never be wholly self-aware or self-available nor can they ever be fully appropriated. Therapists, recall, can be nutters too!

Indeed, the way to read Summertime I think is to see how it tempts (aware, of course, of the Freudian overtones of the word) a particular response (the response we've seen in many reviews, the response to it as fictional autobiography) which actually, over the piece, it fully counsels against. Summertime requires a creative, novelistic reading not a reductive, (pseudo-)biographical reading; indeed, is about such a reading. On a quick glance, it looks like this fragmentary 'thing' is something that the reader is being asked to bring together into a unitary whole (to finish the unfinished biographical fragments and turn the pieces into a whole biography). But that is the most dangerous misreading of them all. And that is the temptation that this particular novel (and, indeed, the Novel -- Literature as a whole, as a fragmentary history) warns us fully away from. This is what Summertime is about.

The last chapter of the book containing yet more of John's notebook entries evidences this most clearly. JMC gives us five short fragments of John's unfinished notebook materials that act as a coda to the novel we've just read. The temptation here -- and I think JMC is tempting us, and I'm not sure if this may actually be a weakening in his resolve, if he really does want to help orientate us with a Key to All Mythologies -- is to see each of these fragments as representing each of the major themes of the novel, perhaps even the themes of JMC's life itself. But life doesn't have 'themes' and only an overly simplistic reading of a novel thinks that listing a work's themes somehow 'gets it down'. We have, then, in the fragments, the father/son relationship, John's education, his relationship with women, with writing , with death (and this is the order in which they appear, tempting us to think about such themes hierarchically). But we do not, with this, capture all that the novel is about. The biggest temptation -- to return to Blanchot's formula -- is to read this novel as myth. To think that any novel can ever be read by reducing it to its themes; to think a novel is about just what it is ostensibly about, and not to see that as a possibly very conscious mis-steer, or a very easy way of reducing it to -- following Blanchot -- just one third of all it could be on a more sympathetic reading. It is not only that something always remains after we've reduced a novel to its themes -- which is a commonplace; Moby-Dick, we all know, is not just a novel about a monomaniac -- but to say that we've barely begun even to focus on what it is about even after iterating a whole list of themes, presenting a synopsis, deconstructing its ambiguities, etc.. JMC tempts us to do so, but the whole novel works to show that it would be foolish to succumb. Summertime is about the very misreadings which have subsequently happened to it. It is an ambiguous schooling in the ambiguous nature of writing (and reading) – an ambiguity that it sometimes looks as if JMC is seeking to control, but which the whole novel simultaneously shows is always one step ahead of both him and us, the readers.

To see Summertime as a failed or veiled (auto)biography, then, is precisely to fail to read it as a novel. JMC has foregrounded the Real -- it is about John Coetzee who has written novels called what JMC's novels are called and who shares many verifiable life events with JMC -- only to show the Real is never congruent with the Truth. It is not then of much interest to disentangle how much of JMC's actual biography inheres in his latest work. Rather, we should see that Summertime perpetually problematises a fixed point from which to orientate oneself about anything -- particulary about reading the Novel and particularly about reading this particularly fine example of the modern novel by one of its best practitioners.

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: authors, book review

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Wednesday 30 September 2009

RSB: delights to come!

Well, ReadySteadyBook, as you'll have noticed, is slowly starting to wake from its long summer slumber. I'm now pretty settled in sunny West London -- and it has been a quite beautiful September weather-wise -- and beginning, I think, to find my feet. I trust that this means that there will be more -- and more regular -- blogging here on ReadySteadyBlog and more content in general throughout the site (with URLs and links to generally interesting stuff also flying out from Twitter). I'm attending an awful lot of launches at the moment, so you may hear about a good few of those too.

On Monday, Robin Durie reviewed Kim Stanley Robinson Galileo's Dream, pondering throughout SF's literary value on the back of Robinson's recent Booker-inspired comments. Yesterday, Pakistan-born writer, and long term contributor to RSB, Soniah Kamal took on Ali Sethi's novel of his Pakistani childhood, The Wish Maker. Later today, Barry Baldwin will review Orwell's 1984 -- is there really anything more to say about this, ahem, "enduring classic"? Barry reckons there is, and I do too after reading his excellent piece. Tomorrow, theatre-expert Natasha Tripney reviews Percival Everett's Erasure. And on Friday, my good friend Kit Maude, now resident in Argentina, makes his first intervention as my Latin American Editor. At some point, I'll also post a longish review of Coetzee's excellent new novel Summertime...

Next week, I will do a little intro to Sarah Hesketh which, I'm hoping, will make her out herself as my poetry editor (her recently published collection, Napoleon's Travelling Bookshelf (Penned in the Margins), is mighty fine and requires my review. I am on task, promise! In the meantime, nice review of Napoleon here.) Also, by that time, I'm hoping Mr Richard Seymour (yes, he of Lenin's Tomb fame) will have penned me a little something too.

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: rsb

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Tuesday 29 September 2009

Borges's 'Arte Poetica'

Nice (thanks vaghe.stelle): a reading of Jorge Luis Borges's Arte Poetica, in the original Spanish, accompanied by some slightly trancey visuals and classical chill-out! Is this Borges himself speaking? (Or download the mp3 file or watch the video.)

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: internet

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Tuesday 29 September 2009

Defending the 'Sacred Defense'

The Complete Review's Literary Saloon continues to be the blogosphere's principal source of information about the global book business. If you want to know what Chinese, German, Turkish, whatever book has just won something, been reviewed somewhere, finally been translated into English or scandalously been ignored etc then the Literary Saloon will most likely have the story. Michael Orthofer, the site's founder and sole contributor, has wonderfully catholic tastes and casts his net worldwide; his global vision is certainly something fully to applaud and acclaim. He does, however, sometimes say the most stupid things.

Witness today's post about the Winners of Sacred Defense book festival. As Orthofer tells us, the 'Sacred Defense' is what Iran calls the Iran-Iraq conflict of the 1980s. In an offhand remark, tangled as ever inside a parenthesis locked inside yet another bracketed sub-clause, Orthofer complains that it is astonishing and sad that the war "is still a major (and I mean major) one in contemporary Iranian literature." Astonishing and sad!? What is astonishing and sad -- beyond the fact that such a well-respected blog still cannot use ellipses properly -- is that such an ignorant statement should occur so casually.

During the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War -- backed and extended by the US for numerous geopolitical reasons -- "perhaps as many as a million people died, many more were wounded, and millions were made refugees" (Iran Chamber Society). That it continues to be a focus for Iranian literature, a mere twenty years after it ended, is hardly astonishing and sad. Indeed, with a belligerent USA still stalking the region, it is entirely understandable. And nor is it particular different to "our" own obsessions. The UK book market continues to be flooded with books, fiction and non-fiction, besotted with both world wars; a growing stack of 9/11 novels infects the US. Astonishing and sad, then, that Iran's literary preoccupations are not seen as being remarkably similar to our own.

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: blogosphere

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Monday 28 September 2009

Books of the week w/c 28.09.09

This week's two highlighted RSB Books of the Week are The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl by J.N. Mohanty (Yale University Press) described in the publisher blurb as a "deeply insightful book [that] traces the development of Husserl's thought from his earliest investigations in philosophy... to his publication of Ideas in 1913" and On the Death and Life of Languages by Claude Hagege (again, Yale University Press) which "seeks to make clear the magnitude of the cultural loss represented by the crisis of language death" -- the rate of attrition comes in at the loss of 25 languages each year.

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: language, rsb

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Monday 28 September 2009

Tindal Street Press is Ten

Independent, Midlands-based publisher, Tindal Street Press, celebrate their tenth birthday this year -- and have, quite rightly, seen fit to upgrade their web presence: www.tindalstreet.co.uk

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: internet, publishing news

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Monday 28 September 2009

Durie on Robinson

In the latest review here on ReadySteadyBook, Robin Durie reviews Galileo's Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson:

I was intrigued by Kim Stanley Robinson's attack on the conservatism of the Booker prize, its tendency to favour historical fiction whilst overlooking science fiction, and his claim that science fiction at its best explores the new, for a number of reasons. First, I think the general thrust of his critique is well justified. Second, over the last 12 months I have consciously begun reading a fair bit of science fiction (a genre I had more or less ignored since my teenage years). And, third, when I read the article, I was in the midst of reading Robinson’s new novel, Galileo's Dream.

Whilst Robinson was making specific claims about the UK SF scene, the timing of his intervention nevertheless prompted the question of how his own book measures up to the criteria of his critique. The book -- which, at nearly 600 large scale pages, shares a common predicament with the tendency of both historical fiction and SF to indulge in length, often, it seems, for its own sake -- has a structure which has felt forced and not entirely successful to most reviewers. In "parallel" stories (how and why they are not parallel will prove to be significant), Robinson depicts Galileo more or less biographically, as his astronomical observations and interpretations inexorably lead him into conflict with the Catholic church; whilst, at the same time, Galileo makes a series of journeys to the moons of Jupiter, at a time some 3000 years in the future, where the descendants of humanity are about to encounter their first alien species. The threat would have been that, by this plot device, Robinson might risk undermining the scientific achievements of Galileo. Whilst for much of the book, the "parallel" stories do sit uncomfortably alongside one another, by its conclusion, Robinson's gamble reaps a very rich reward (more...)

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: book review, rsb

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Monday 28 September 2009

Why Not Socialism?

G.A. Cohen new book Why Not Socialism? (just out with Princeton University Press) looks interesting (and probably worth reading in conjunction with Negri's Goodbye Mr Socialism):

Is socialism desirable? Is it even possible? In this concise book, one of the world's leading political philosophers presents with clarity and wit a compelling moral case for socialism and argues that the obstacles in its way are exaggerated.

There are times, G.A. Cohen notes, when we all behave like socialists. On a camping trip, for example, campers wouldn't dream of charging each other to use a soccer ball or for fish that they happened to catch. Campers do not give merely to get, but relate to each other in a spirit of equality and community. Would such socialist norms be desirable across society as a whole? Why not? Whole societies may differ from camping trips, but it is still attractive when people treat each other with the equal regard that such trips exhibit.

But, however desirable it may be, many claim that socialism is impossible. Cohen writes that the biggest obstacle to socialism isn't, as often argued, intractable human selfishness -- it's rather the lack of obvious means to harness the human generosity that is there. Lacking those means, we rely on the market. But there are many ways of confining the sway of the market: there are desirable changes that can move us toward a socialist society in which, to quote Albert Einstein, humanity has "overcome and advanced beyond the predatory stage of human development."

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: politics, publishing news

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Monday 21 September 2009

'Cities' by Robert Kelly

From Steven Fama's blog the glade of theoric ornithic hermetica (don't blame me for the daft name!):

... despite, or maybe because of it ambiguous character given its prose, and somewhat occult status, Cities – a most fantastic work by Robert Kelly – ought to be celebrated as poetry, and more widely read. And thus the mission here today, in the glade: to show and tell a bit about Cities and its prose poetry, and perhaps encourage some to go out a find it (more...)

Steven suggests that Robert's Cities is hard to find -- the limited edition is, but the piece was reprinted in A Transparent Tree which should be a little easier to get your hands on.

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: blogosphere, book review, poetry

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Monday 21 September 2009

Woolf on SF

Nice article (from the New Scientist magazine) about Virginia Woolf and science fiction (thanks Robin)

I would have thanked you for your book before, but I have been very busy and have only just had time to read it. I don't suppose that I have understood more than a small part - all the same I have understood enough to be greatly interested, and elated too, since sometimes it seems to me that you are grasping ideas that I have tried to express, much more fumblingly, in fiction. But you have gone much further and I can't help envying you - as one does those who reach what one has aimed at.

Many thanks for giving me a copy,
yours sincerely,
Virginia Woolf


This was Virginia Woolf's reply to the influential science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon after he had sent her a copy of his recently published novel Star Maker. In an earlier exchange of letters, she made it clear that she had also enjoyed previous works of his, probably including Last and First Men from 1931. These two novels, Stapledon's masterpieces, are enduring monuments of science fiction and of British literature generally. Within a decade of Edwin Hubble's discovery of the red shift, which revealed the universe to be vastly bigger than anyone had imagined, Stapledon's work compressed an entire poetic history of humanity and the cosmos into two slight volumes (more...

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: authors, literary criticism, virginia woolf

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Thursday 17 September 2009

Point of view

Interesting post from Andrew Seal on point of view:

At times, I think David Foster Wallace actually takes his reader in the opposite direction: convincing them that they're reading a 'highbrow' modernist novel par excellence, where the question of point-of-view is always problematic and the reader mustn't fall into the trap of identifying with one point-of-view. And then he basically makes you commit to a point-of-view: I question whether anyone can get through it (and enjoy it) without doing so. And that doesn't mean that you pick a character to empathize with for the rest of the novel, but that you have to create a position of provisional coherence from which to view the events and data of the novel and process them—whether that is identified with a character or with the author or with some external position. So by the end, you're just reading a very complex "middlebrow" novel (more...)

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: blogosphere, literary criticism

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Wednesday 16 September 2009

Mitchelmore on Bunny Munro

Steve reviews Nick Cave's new novel, The Death of Bunny Munro:

Nick Cave's new novel is an impressive performance. Two features stand out. The first is the pleasure it takes in words and vivid descriptions: Bunny Munro is a man of the world, a cosmetics salesman on the move; he's always swigging from a bottle of whiskey and emitting "furious tusks of smoke" from his Lambert & Butler cigarettes. It's a lifestyle that takes its toll: he eyes are always "granulated", yet he maintains his appearance: the curl of hair on his forehead is always "pomaded". In order to read his watch, Bunny "trombones" his wrist out of its sleeve. And Bunny never closes his mobile, he "clamshells it shut" or "castaneted the phone". Of course, this is very reminiscent not of Cave's darkly romantic songs but of Martin Amis in his moneyed pomp. Had Bunny Munro contemplated a haircut, he would no doubt instead have considered "a rug rethink". This is why The Death of Bunny Munro has a conspicuously anachronistic quality (more...)

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: blogosphere, book news

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Monday 14 September 2009

'Wandering with Robert Walser' online

Thanks to Dave Lull for pointing me to this from Sam Jones:

A few weeks ago, my fellow literary obsessive and author of the wonderful blog Vertigo shared some interesting news. Bob Skinner, who began an English-language translation of Wandering with Robert Walser long before Smyth and I began ours, has shared his translation online. This is the first time that Seelig’s book has ever been available in English in (what seems to be) its entirely. Do check it out. It’s a bit of a revelation for Walser lovers.

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: authors, blogosphere

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Thursday 10 September 2009

Review of new Josipovici

The Jewish Chronicle offers the first review of After & Making Mistakes, Gabriel Josipovici's two new novels in one (very handsome) volume (via This Space):

Dissatisfaction is a peculiarly middle-class indulgence. A life that from the outside appears perfect — moderate success, sufficient income, a loving family — can from feel from within claustrophobic and merely adequate, plagued by thoughts of the successes unachieved, the ones that got away, and a nagging lack of purpose.

Gabriel Josipovici’s two new novellas — each barely over 130 pages and issued together under one, elegant cover — both deal with this quiet despair of the bourgeoisie (more...)

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: blogosphere, book review, gabriel josipovici

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Thursday 10 September 2009

Cambridge University Library attempt to acquire Sassoon's papers

Interesting news via Booksurfer: "Cambridge University Library have launched a fund-raising campaign to acquire the archive of First world War poet Siegried Sassoon's personal papers. These include a draft of the controversial anti-war statement A Soldier's Declaration. The archive is comprised of seven boxes of material, among which are 'Sassoon's journals, pocket notebooks compiled on the Western Front, poetry books and photographs, love-letters to his wife Hester, and letters sent to Sassoon by writers and other distinguished figures'."

The Soldier's Declaration, made in July 1917 was "an act of wilful defiance of military authority. Sent to his commanding officer, it states his refusal to return to duty and his belief that the war, which he "entered as a war of defence and liberation", had become "a war of aggression and conquest" which was being "deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it."

The declaration was subsequently read in the House of Commons on July 30, and caused a storm which only abated after fellow officer Robert Graves persuaded the authorities to send Sassoon to Craiglockhart Hospital for the treatment of shell-shock.

The power of Sassoon's statement resonates as powerfully now as when first written:

I am making this statement as an act of willful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defense and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow-soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: blogosphere, poetry, politics

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Wednesday 09 September 2009

KRCW reaches a thousand

Michael Silverblatt's KCRW Bookworm programme has posted nearly 1000 interviews online. And -- never expected to link here! -- there is a profile of the programme in Oprah Mag!

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: internet

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Wednesday 09 September 2009

Litro

Litro is "a free monthly literary magazine that publishes new, original short fiction that excites us and offers a creative alternative to disposable free papers. Previous contributors include Irvine Welsh, Yiyun Li, Glyn Maxwell, Benjamin Zephaniah and Andrew Crumey. Litro is published by Ocean Media and 100000 copies are distributed monthly around London and the UK, including in underground stations, libraries, galleries, bars and cafes, as well as online."

As you would expect, they also have a blog, mostly written by the novelist Ali Shaw, which is just beginning to take shape.

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: internet

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Wednesday 09 September 2009

Marion Boyars "winding down"

Marion Boyars Publishers "started out in the sixties as the firm Calder and Boyars which was run jointly by John Calder and Marion Boyars. When the firm split in 1975, Marion Boyars Publishers was formed." When Marion Boyars died in 1999, her daughter Catheryn Kilgarriff took over as the Managing Director. Renowned for publishing "adventurous and occasionally controversial fiction and non-fiction, especially in translation," their best known authors include Ken Kesey, Hubert Selby Jr, Kenzaburo Oe, Ivan Illich and Georges Bataille.

Well, looks like they are calling it a day. They wrote to me yesterday saying:

Penguin have bought 38 titles from us and once we have completed our autumn program we will concentrate solely on the remainder of the backlist whilst operations wind down. Whilst Cathy has enjoyed the challenges faced here since she took over from Marion and is pleased to have achieved success with many new titles, she feels that in the current climate the time is right to sell.

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: publishing news

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Wednesday 09 September 2009

Back in the room

Well, I'm back! I should have been back last week, but BT have introduced me to new levels of pain and frustration having taken over a month to sort out a broadband connection... Useless would be a kind way of putting it.

Anyway, letting the blogging begin!

Posted by Mark Thwaite
Tags: personal, rsb

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