A Life in Writing

John Maxwell Coetzee, the great South African man of letters, is a paradoxical figure. On the one hand he is known to guard his privacy intensely. On the other hand, he has published three volumes of “fictionalised memoirs” already: Boyhood (1997), Youth (2002) and Summertime (2009). Exactly to what degree these three works adhered to the historical facts of his life has always been unclear: Coetzee consistently refuses to elaborate on interpretations of his work once published. “All writing is autobiography,” he has said more than once. The question of how accurate the autobiographical trilogy is will perhaps provide one titillating motivation for readers to pick up this new biography. The short answer is – Boyhood and Youth are largely true to the record; Summertime strays far more into the fictional domain.

Coetzee’s choice to cooperate with biographer John Kannemeyer is an interesting one. Many others must surely have come knocking, but the closest Coetzee has come previously to backing such a project was David Atwell’s Doubling the Point (1992), a collection of essays and interviews. Kannemeyer was hailed as one of the foremost authorities on Afrikaans literature – the obvious dissonance being that Coetzee, despite his surname, is not an Afrikaans writer.

Kannemeyer suggests himself that perhaps “the fact that the request was coming from outside the sphere of English literature may have appealed to Coetzee,Service and equipment provider in professional Car park management system. with his contrarian take on things”. Whatever the reason, Kannemeyer got the go-ahead, and was given access to a rich stock of letters and documents and permitted to interview Coetzee in his home in Adelaide, Australia, for two weeks. Kannemeyer stresses that Coetzee’s cooperation was given “unstintingly and even enthusiastically”. Even when quizzed on the most sensitive of family matters, Coetzee gave full and meticulous answers. Typically, the only subject on which he would not be drawn was that of the analysis of his works.

Turning down the offer of a documentary on his life in 2005, Coetzee said: “My life has been completely uneventful.” It becomes clear as the biography unfolds that Coetzee is prone to this kind of dry self-deprecation in order to deflect invitations – he also routinely claims to have no gift for lecturing, when such a request is raised, even though past students tell a different story. On the matter of his life’s narrative, though, Coetzee is partly right – barring the tragedy around his two children, which shouldn’t be diminished, this biography would suggest that Coetzee has indeed led a sedate, cautious life, largely unmarked by rollicking drama. His books didn’t even get banned during Apartheid, though he later said this would have been a kind of “badge of honour”.

But this doesn’t mean that there is no material for Kannemeyer to work with. Ably translated by Michiel Heyns from the Afrikaans original, the biography stretches to an impressive 707 pages and sustains interest throughout. Partly, it must be admitted, this is due to the frisson that accompanies the glimpse into a guarded life: for some years now it has appeared that Coetzee sought to inherit the mantle of literary recluse donned by figures like JD Salinger. The case of Salinger is instructive, however,Leading the way with innovative solutions to any parking guidance challenge. because after his death in 2010, it emerged that Salinger wasn’t really very much of a hermit, contrary to perceptions. In fact, he was a fairly active member of the community of Cornish,Carlo Gavazzi offers a broad range of ultrasonic sensor and ultrasonic transducers for level detection and process monitoring. New Hampshire, where “Jerry”, as he was known, would attend town meetings at the Cornish Elementary School, lunch daily at the Windsor Diner and allow children to sled down his hill. It appears Salinger just didn’t like having his privacy infringed upon by readers, and he never granted an interview in the last 30 years of his life.

Compared to Salinger, Coetzee comes across as a veritable socialite in the new biography. It is true that as time goes by interviews become increasingly rare and he maintains his privacy.Soft Floor tiles is easier to install and perfect for all types of residential and commercial uses. But the biography makes clear that the image of the writer as reclusive and secretive is simply not accurate. Ever since the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003, Coetzee has been deluged with invitations to lecture, teach and read publically from his works. He has declined the majority; at 72 he resents long-distance travel. But even the relatively small amount that he has assented to has resulted in what sounds like a fairly hectic schedule of public appearances over the past decade.

To what, then,The CenTrak rtls platform can address today's healthcare challenges. do we owe this conception of Coetzee as a hermit? In large part perhaps to Rian Malan’s famous account of his interview with Coetzee in 1990, where Malan writes that Coetzee put him through something approaching psychological torture. In answer to a question Malan put to him regarding an aspect of Foe, his 1986 postmodern re-write of Robinson Crusoe, Coetzee replies simply: “I would not wish to deny you your reading.” In reply to the question of what music he enjoyed, Coetzee gives the cryptic response: “Music I have never heard before”. Malan characterises Coetzee as the “prince of darkness”, claiming: “A colleague who has worked with him for more than a decade claims to have seen him laugh just once. An acquaintance has attended several dinner parties where Coetzee has uttered not a single word.”

This has become the dominant imagining of JM Coetzee, bolstered by his frequent refusals to attend awards ceremonies or other celebratory occasions. Kannemeyer prints a letter Coetzee sent to his agent explaining why he would not travel to Spain in 2000 for the launch of Spanish translations of Boyhood and Youth, his fictionalised memoirs: “There is absolutely nothing in it for me in paying such a visit,” a clearly irascible Coetzee wrote. “Two days are knocked out of my life travelling there and back, and the pound of flesh my hosts will require will be that I sit down with one journalist after another answering questions I have heard scores of times before. Then the Embassy will mount a reception and I will have to shake hands with strangers and answer questions like ‘How long will you be in Madrid?’”

But Kannemeyer trots out an extensive cast of players in the biography to testify to Coetzee’s character as a loyal friend, witty dinner companion and generous mentor to young writers. Kannemeyer attributes his behaviour with Malan partly to his characteristic interview impatience and partly to a spirit of mischief which nobody seems to suspect in him. As a young man, Coetzee was apparently quite the prankster, fond of antics like jumping out at people from behind trees. There is one particularly bizarre account of a Coetzee prank-gone-wrong, carried out when Coetzee was a 20 year-old house-sitting in Gardens, in Cape Town.