J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading: Literature in the Event by Derek Attridge
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"The argument I am making has two levels. First, I want to suggest that all engagements with literary works [...] benefit from what I have been calling a literal reading: a reading that defers the many interpretive moves that we are accustomed to making in our dealings with literature, whether historical, biographical, psychological, moral, or political."

Besides Cees Nooteboom, J. M. Coetzee is my most favorite writer. I have already reviewed 20 of his works here on Goodreads and rated six of them with five stars, among them incontrovertible masterpieces such as Disgrace , Waiting for the Barbarians , or Boyhood . No wonder then that I have been quite eager to read a monograph on Coetzee's opus. Derek Attridge, the author of J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading (2004), is a renowned literary scholar; the book is an advanced-level study in the theory of literature, a scholarly work rather than a biography or an analysis of literary themes or techniques. The difficult text requires total focus and concentration from the reader: it has taken me almost 20 hours to read the 200-page volume.

It would take me probably 40 hours to write a full-fledged review of this extremely demanding work so I will only refer to a few of the topics examined in the book. The epigraph points to one of the main emphases: the author defends literal reading of a literary work of art. Literal as opposed to allegorical that takes "the literal meaning of the text to be a pathway to some other, more important meaning." I found Chapter Two, titled Against Allegory, particularly fascinating, with its discussion of allegory, allegorization, and the experience of allegoricity. Dr. Attridge mentions Susan Sontag's essay Against Interpretation which, according to Attridge, is

"a protest against all commentary implying that the point of an art-work is to say something.

The topic interests me a lot - also, I am probably biased in favor of the author's argument - as I read literature mainly to experience it as an art form. I read books to enjoy the writing and be awed by magnificent prose. I am not that interested in the stories conveyed in books and I am certainly not interested in literature as a vehicle for social advocacy. For me the form trumps (excuse me!) the message.

Another major topic of Dr. Attridge's study, in fact related to allegoricity in literature, is the criticism that J.M. Coetzee frequently faces for avoiding immediate references to political situation in his country, South Africa. (Without the politically correct Newspeak one could rephrase the previous sentence: Mr. Coetzee has been criticized for supposedly not being a forceful enough opponent of apartheid in his country.) Dr. Attridge points out that Coetzee's novels are about human condition in general, that they deal with universal moral and aesthetic values as opposed to contingent propaganda about particular political situation.

Chapter Four focuses on Coetzee's Age of Iron - in my view a much underappreciated novel - and Mr. Attridge points out Coetzee's understanding of the dichotomy between the "ethical" and "the political" and his alignment with the former. The fascinating relationship between Mrs. Curren and Vercueil from that novel is deeply immersed in the "universal humanness."

The Epilogue titled A Writer's Life focuses on the fictional character of Elizabeth Costello and her lectures. In the 2000s J.M. Coetzee tended to challenge his audiences during his speeches and public lectures with self-referential presentations that completely mixed the so-called "fact" and so-called "fiction." For instance, at a Nexus Conference on "Evil" that was held in Holland, he offered a fictional account of Elizabeth Costello's participation in a conference held in Holland on the question of evil.

Many more enthralling topics in this monograph await the reader; despite the advanced level of this work I strongly recommend it to anybody interested in Mr. Coetzee's opus.

Four stars.


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