Description
In this autobiographical novel, a young English biographer is researching a book about the late South African writer John Coetzee, focusing on Coetzee in his thirties, at a time when he was living in a rundown cottage in the Cape Town suburbs with his widowed father--a time, the biographer is convinced, when Coetzee was finding himself as a writer.
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Ccv, 2010
Media reviews
As long as one character speaks, Coetzee's masterful style is on display. But when there is dialogue between investigator and interviewee, the contrivance becomes all too evident: There is no real exchange and no discernable setting.
Now we have Summertime, the third in Coetzee's ongoing volumes of more or less fictionalised memoir that began with Boyhood, continued with Youth and are subtitled Scenes from Provincial Life.
These volumes are not to be taken as literal truth, a fact underlined by the way in Summertime one John
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Coetzee, a famous Nobel prize-winning novelist, is dead and an Englishman who never met him is attempting to write a biography of him on the basis of interviews with a number of women who had an effect on his development.
The last part of the book is made up of extracts from his journal entries focused on his ageing and ailing father, who appears intermittently in the preceding pages as a frail and constricting figure. The account of the father has, in a way nothing else in this book does, an overwhelming poignancy.
Much of this weird book is a meditation on the absurdity of the fame that is the surface noise of a hypothetical immortality. Then there's the grief that throws it all away and in doing so throws it into high relief. Show Less
Who is JM Coetzee? In one sense the answer is obvious: world-famous novelist and writer, twice winner of the Man Booker, winner of the Nobel prize for literature. But in another sense “JM Coetzee” is a persona created by the author, especially in his volumes of “fictionalised memoir”. The
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first of these, Boyhood, describes the character’s upbringing in the 1940s and 1950s on a bleak housing estate east of Cape Town. Top of his class yet fearing failure, he is gawky, unsocial and eccentric. The second, Youth, follows his glum fortunes in the early 1960s through a wet, foggy London, where, “dull and ordinary”, he nurtures dreams of artistic triumph while toiling as an IBM programmer. Literary success, he believes, will be linked with success as a lover, once he encounters the “Destined One”: the woman to inspire him. But his sexual entanglements, though surprisingly frequent, prove messy, sordid, embarrassing or boring. He is not, it seems, “built for fun”.
Now the third volume of the trilogy, Summertime, focuses on his return to South Africa, covering 1972 to 1977 when he was “finding his feet as a writer”. Like Boyhood and Youth, it refers to “Coetzee” in the third person (“He is the product of a damaged childhood”), thus distancing the autobiographical element. But it adds a startling new dimension of literary artifice: the deployment of a postmortem biographer. For Coetzee, we learn, has died in Australia. An English researcher, Vincent, who never met him, is interviewing five figures crucial to his life in the years when he started to publish. Four of them are women, including two former lovers. Supposed transcripts of their interviews make up most of the book. The rest comprises extracts, real or invented, from Coetzee’s contemporary notebooks. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member kidzdoc
Summertime is the third fictionalized memoir about the young Coetzee, after Boyhood and Youth. It describes his life in South Africa from 1972-77, when he returns to South Africa after completing graduate studies in the US.
The famous writer John Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize, has recently died
The interviewees' descriptions of the young Coetzee, who is in his mid to late thirties and lives with his ailing father outside of Cape Town, are harsh and unflattering. Most describe him as socially inept and repressed, a "soft" man who has no sexual appeal to women, one whose lovemaking is "autistic" and focused more on atmosphere and music than on the woman that he is with.
The novel ends as it begins, with fragments written by the author, as Coetzee must decide whether to remain with his dying father, whom he does not love, or pursue other opportunities. The reader is left with the impression that another memoir will pick up the story from there.
This was a very enjoyable, brave, but peculiar read. I assume that most of the accounts written about Coetzee are based on fact, though I would assume that the characters are fictional. The stories are humorous but often made me cringe, and I frequently had the impression of vultures picking over a dead carcass and complaining about how bad the meat of the dead animal tasted. I'm curious about Coetzee's motivation in writing such a harshly critical story about himself. He, of course, is very much alive, though he continues to live as a recluse in Australia. I doubt that any biographer of Coetzee could write anything more harsh about him, and perhaps he wants to be the one to definitively tell his story, in his own peculiar way.
The famous writer John Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize, has recently died
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in Australia. Vincent, a British historian, reads Coetzee's papers and memoirs, and interviews several people that were friends and lovers of Coetzee from 1972-77.The interviewees' descriptions of the young Coetzee, who is in his mid to late thirties and lives with his ailing father outside of Cape Town, are harsh and unflattering. Most describe him as socially inept and repressed, a "soft" man who has no sexual appeal to women, one whose lovemaking is "autistic" and focused more on atmosphere and music than on the woman that he is with.
The novel ends as it begins, with fragments written by the author, as Coetzee must decide whether to remain with his dying father, whom he does not love, or pursue other opportunities. The reader is left with the impression that another memoir will pick up the story from there.
This was a very enjoyable, brave, but peculiar read. I assume that most of the accounts written about Coetzee are based on fact, though I would assume that the characters are fictional. The stories are humorous but often made me cringe, and I frequently had the impression of vultures picking over a dead carcass and complaining about how bad the meat of the dead animal tasted. I'm curious about Coetzee's motivation in writing such a harshly critical story about himself. He, of course, is very much alive, though he continues to live as a recluse in Australia. I doubt that any biographer of Coetzee could write anything more harsh about him, and perhaps he wants to be the one to definitively tell his story, in his own peculiar way.
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LibraryThing member browner56
The celebrated novelist John Coetzee is dead and a non-descript journalist named Vincent endeavors to write a biography of a brief, but pivotal, period of his life. To this end, Vincent scours the writer’s diaries and travels the world to interview the few people still alive who knew Coetzee well
A lot of people, I suspect, have engaged in the occasional conceit of constructing—or at least imagining—their own obituary. What better way to control and influence how others perceive the record of your life’s achievements and shortcomings? Few of us, though, actually take the chance to do that, which is one of the things that makes this work so fascinating.
What I found to be particularly compelling about the book—which is the third volume of what is probably best described as the author’s fictionalized autobiography—is the unflattering way in which the protagonist is portrayed. Throughout the interviews with his relatives, past lovers, and professional colleagues, John Coetzee comes off as being both aloof and uncomfortable with normal human interactions and emotions. He was not a bad man, but rather one who found it almost impossible to bring his rigid and sometimes naïve views of society, politics, and relationships down to a level where he was able to empathize with the immediate emotional needs of another real person.
The most interesting question posed by the book is how a man so incapable of developing affecting connections with the most important people in his life came to understand humanity well enough to become a great novelist, winning, in fact, a Nobel Prize for Literature? If the biographer Vincent actually existed, this would be a central dilemma that would undoubtedly demand some sort of resolution. However, J.M. Coetzee seems content to leave this crucial aspect of his dead hero’s life unexplained, save the occasional hints from past events. Indeed, as one of John Coetzee’s former lovers reminisces: “I know he had many admirers…[b]ut in all the time I was with him I never had the feeling I was with an exceptional person, a truly exceptional human being. It is a harsh thing to say, I know, but regrettably it is true.”
It is hard to say what the real author’s motivation was in creating this work—e.g.,Does he truly view himself in such a negative light or was he trying to beat his critics to the eventual punch and have a laugh at their expense? Is this just another creative exercise in historical fiction?—but ultimately his reasons do not matter. This is ingenious and engaging story-telling that rewards the reader from beginning to end.
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in the mid-1970s, a time when he had returned home to South Africa following a turbulent stay in the United States to live with his aged father. That is the premise of this remarkably inventive book by the very much alive J.M. Coetzee.A lot of people, I suspect, have engaged in the occasional conceit of constructing—or at least imagining—their own obituary. What better way to control and influence how others perceive the record of your life’s achievements and shortcomings? Few of us, though, actually take the chance to do that, which is one of the things that makes this work so fascinating.
What I found to be particularly compelling about the book—which is the third volume of what is probably best described as the author’s fictionalized autobiography—is the unflattering way in which the protagonist is portrayed. Throughout the interviews with his relatives, past lovers, and professional colleagues, John Coetzee comes off as being both aloof and uncomfortable with normal human interactions and emotions. He was not a bad man, but rather one who found it almost impossible to bring his rigid and sometimes naïve views of society, politics, and relationships down to a level where he was able to empathize with the immediate emotional needs of another real person.
The most interesting question posed by the book is how a man so incapable of developing affecting connections with the most important people in his life came to understand humanity well enough to become a great novelist, winning, in fact, a Nobel Prize for Literature? If the biographer Vincent actually existed, this would be a central dilemma that would undoubtedly demand some sort of resolution. However, J.M. Coetzee seems content to leave this crucial aspect of his dead hero’s life unexplained, save the occasional hints from past events. Indeed, as one of John Coetzee’s former lovers reminisces: “I know he had many admirers…[b]ut in all the time I was with him I never had the feeling I was with an exceptional person, a truly exceptional human being. It is a harsh thing to say, I know, but regrettably it is true.”
It is hard to say what the real author’s motivation was in creating this work—e.g.,Does he truly view himself in such a negative light or was he trying to beat his critics to the eventual punch and have a laugh at their expense? Is this just another creative exercise in historical fiction?—but ultimately his reasons do not matter. This is ingenious and engaging story-telling that rewards the reader from beginning to end.
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LibraryThing member gefox
In this his third fictional autobiography, Coetzee portrays the early adulthood of a man very much like himself — with even the same name, "John Coetzee" — with similar origins and history (born into an English-speaking Afrikaner family near Capetown, returned to South Africa after some years
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abroad including the US, later to become a well-known writer). However this fictional John Coetzee is now dead, and what we learn about this period of his life, in his 30s and before he achieved fame as a writer, comes from journal notes and interviews by an English academic of people who were somehow involved with him then: a suburban housewife in an adulterous affair, an Afrikaans-speaking cousin with whom he had as a child fantasized marriage, a younger French woman and college-teaching colleague who saw her affair with him as a way to overcome a bad marriage, a Brazilian woman he ineffectually pursued, and a male teaching colleague with whom he had a cordial but rather distant friendship. The Coetzee portrayed here is a man very sensitive to injustice, hopelessly incompetent socially, who has left his acquaintances somewhat puzzled that he ever amounted to anything. Certainly, to some extent this is an effort by the author to see himself as others see him (as the Burns poem has it), but the novel is not so much about a real John Coetzee as about South Africa in the 1970s, the limitations and hypocrisies in Afrikaner culture, the indifference of most of the world (at least in that setting) to the literature that so much matters to the fictional and to the real John Coetzee. Besides the self-deprecating and often very amusing tone of the central protrait, the book offers clear-eyed, unsentimental perceptions of Afrikaner self-isolation (with a language spoken nowhere else in the world, as the fictitious Coetzee has jotted in his journal), the mind-dulling routines of college ritual, and the sharply contrasting concepts of manliness as between the protagonist himself and, most sharply, the Brazilian widow who remembers her big, bold husband. Show Less
LibraryThing member bcquinnsmom
The premise of Summertime is that award-winning writer John Coetzee is dead, and someone named Vincent is writing a book about his life in the 1970s. Vincent has decided to interview several women purportedly close to Coetzee, wanting to know what he was like, if there were any sordid details to be
It seems to me (and I'm not a professional critic, just a reader) that the nature of truth is often elusive and more importantly, it's often subjective, especially in the case of a biography. If there's any real way to know the truth about Coetzee, it's through his writing and everything else is really secondary. Writers of his caliber should be remembered for their art rather than for any of their foibles or follies, and not through the eyes of others who quite possibly really didn't understand them. Since we don't know where the truth ends and begins in this book, it's the real Coetzee's overall talent and his art that we have to come back to in the long run.
Summertime is a wonderful book that will leave you thinking about it long after you've put it down. I can most highly recommend it as a very well-written and thought provoking novel.
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had, etc. etc. The book, he says, will be written in the women's own words and they will have the final say in what he actually publishes. But this is not the case; for example, we know that the John Coetzee's cousin Margot's story has been embellished because Vincent lets us know that at the beginning. He makes additions and omissions, going with what he thinks the public wants to know about the subject of his biography. In reality, of course, Vincent is really only an invented character in a novel, interviewing other invented characters in a novel, so what we're really looking at here is Coetzee telling a story, ostensibly about himself, through several fictional intermediaries. And considering that in the book John Coetzee is dead, well,you certainly don't know which details are true and which are not. He is presented as being a rather cold fish, hopeless with women, misunderstood, a failure, and someone with his head in the past. And then there is his gloomy outlook on life -- dark enough that he actually spent some writing a list of 'Ways of Doing Away with Oneself'. With this background, truly, it seems that all Coetzee has left with which to redeem himself and his life is his writing. But it's the writing itself that is not discussed in Vincent's book in any great detail, even though Coetzee is the recipient of a Nobel Prize for Literature. It seems to me (and I'm not a professional critic, just a reader) that the nature of truth is often elusive and more importantly, it's often subjective, especially in the case of a biography. If there's any real way to know the truth about Coetzee, it's through his writing and everything else is really secondary. Writers of his caliber should be remembered for their art rather than for any of their foibles or follies, and not through the eyes of others who quite possibly really didn't understand them. Since we don't know where the truth ends and begins in this book, it's the real Coetzee's overall talent and his art that we have to come back to in the long run.
Summertime is a wonderful book that will leave you thinking about it long after you've put it down. I can most highly recommend it as a very well-written and thought provoking novel.
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LibraryThing member Doondeck
Well written and a clever device to bring this story to life. But what a depressing characterization Coetzee paints of himself, whether real or fictional.
LibraryThing member alexdaw
This is my first Coetzee book. I saw the movie adaptation of his book Disgrace recently which I found fascinating. It really made me think. And I guess this book does the same thing. I didn't want to read it at first because it is the third in a trilogy and I thought I might not do it credit not
The line between fact and fiction therefore is at once challenged. I confess to not knowing much about Coetzee's life so it probably would be a bit of fun and a detective chase to determine what bits might be real and what bits might be fiction. But in the end is that important? The reader is constantly questioning why the author is going down this path? Is he really revealing stuff about himself? In which case it's not necessarily very complimentary. But then if it was complimentary, wouldn't we as readers think less of the author because he was not quite humble enough?
As an amateur family historian this really is a fascinating read. What do we leave behind for others to determine about who we really were when we lived? Our work colleagues will have one view of us. Our lovers will have another view. Our relations will have another view again. And ultimately what do we choose to reveal of ourselves? In our diaries or jottings? An important passage, I think, from the book is when the biographer and Sophie Denoel talk about sources and their veracity. First the biographer says: "What Coetzee writes there cannot be trusted, not as a factual record - not because he was a liar but because he was a fictioneer. In his letters he is making up a fiction of himself for his correspondents; in his diaries he is doing much the same for his own eyes, or perhaps for posterity....." Sophie responds: "But what if we are all fictioneers, as you call Coetzee? What if we all continually make up the stories of our lives? Why should what I tell you about Coetzee be any worthier of credence than what he tells you himself?"
Interesting stuff indeed!
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having read the other two first. So please, take all my observations with this in mind. Having avoided reading it for quite a while - the library reminder notice got me motivated - I was pleasantly surprised to find it quite an easy read. And it is a slim volume at 266 pages. It's a bit disconcerting because the author sets it in the future - after his death - as if it were the notebooks of a biographer. There are some extracts from notebooks and a series of interviews with significant people in the author's life. Well the ones that are still alive that is.The line between fact and fiction therefore is at once challenged. I confess to not knowing much about Coetzee's life so it probably would be a bit of fun and a detective chase to determine what bits might be real and what bits might be fiction. But in the end is that important? The reader is constantly questioning why the author is going down this path? Is he really revealing stuff about himself? In which case it's not necessarily very complimentary. But then if it was complimentary, wouldn't we as readers think less of the author because he was not quite humble enough?
As an amateur family historian this really is a fascinating read. What do we leave behind for others to determine about who we really were when we lived? Our work colleagues will have one view of us. Our lovers will have another view. Our relations will have another view again. And ultimately what do we choose to reveal of ourselves? In our diaries or jottings? An important passage, I think, from the book is when the biographer and Sophie Denoel talk about sources and their veracity. First the biographer says: "What Coetzee writes there cannot be trusted, not as a factual record - not because he was a liar but because he was a fictioneer. In his letters he is making up a fiction of himself for his correspondents; in his diaries he is doing much the same for his own eyes, or perhaps for posterity....." Sophie responds: "But what if we are all fictioneers, as you call Coetzee? What if we all continually make up the stories of our lives? Why should what I tell you about Coetzee be any worthier of credence than what he tells you himself?"
Interesting stuff indeed!
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LibraryThing member 20thomas09
The real deal with this book ; - a single man's dignity, whilst in and out of relationships, and in the South Africa of that time.
I found this book interesting in that what the protagonists say about the subject of the book - a white south african writer - , says as much about themselves as it does
He is portrayed as madman fool, by a brazilan, who seems bullish in that portrayal.
Or as a useful pass time, by an unhappily married woman.
In that way the writer has a kind of revenge on the voices within the book. Of course it is not all about that; - he is not portrayed as anything special himself; - especially as a writer.
The stark choice at the end of the book, shows an emotional depth, which was lacking elsewhere and is perhaps the chance for reprieve from one the most potent accusations against the writer's character, running throughout the various narratives; - an emotional distance , that even dogs can sniff out.
I found this book interesting in that what the protagonists say about the subject of the book - a white south african writer - , says as much about themselves as it does
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about the writer himself. Relationships, then, seem to come into focus ; and it's predominantly the male/female relationships.He is portrayed as madman fool, by a brazilan, who seems bullish in that portrayal.
Or as a useful pass time, by an unhappily married woman.
In that way the writer has a kind of revenge on the voices within the book. Of course it is not all about that; - he is not portrayed as anything special himself; - especially as a writer.
The stark choice at the end of the book, shows an emotional depth, which was lacking elsewhere and is perhaps the chance for reprieve from one the most potent accusations against the writer's character, running throughout the various narratives; - an emotional distance , that even dogs can sniff out.
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LibraryThing member blackhornet
This book grew on me as it went on and narrator after narrator presented John Coetzee, deceased South African writer, in a terrible light. It didn't occur to me, as suggested by a previous reviewer, that Coetzee, the one who is alive, might be drawing on his own experiences of failed relationships
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to provide material for the book, but in presenting them through interviews with a fictionalised biographer is turning pathos into comedy. Instead, I read the book as an attempt to frustrate those who seek meaning in the autobiographies of writers, and also an attempt to undermine writers who present their own live in flattering terms. Whatever its relation to truth and Coetzee's intentions, it makes for unusual reading In some ways an anti-book. Show Less
LibraryThing member readyreader
This was my first experience reading Coetzee and I am not sure what I think of it. I certainly was carried along with the story, but felt so sad for "John" and his pathetic life episodes. I find it hard to understand a talented writer presenting himself in such unflattering light; he can't be all
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that worthless. The talent and the personality presented in the story don't jive. However, I am intrigued enough to want to read more of his work, especially his other two autobiographical type fictions. Perhaps I will understand him and what he is saying better after that. Show Less
LibraryThing member siafl
To me Coetzee is fascinating and endearing. He takes self-deprecation to a new level. An art form. In this book he writes about himself from both the first person and the third person. Allowing himself to be scrutinized, by himself, with bias, preconception, and sympathy, perhaps a little
I love this book. I find a lot of things I can relate to the author. Coetzee's style is getting easier to read as time passes. Comparing this to Life and Times of Michael K, this is much more of a page turner. Even though the former is not a thick book, and the writing is beautiful in there, it almost feels like he made too much effort to work excessively on each sentence, which is just speculation. This one reads like Disgrace, and only took me two days.
Recommended.
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self-pity, alike, giving himself the chance to reveal, without confronting others, what it is that has led to his remarkable career. Remarkable in other people's eyes, but probably just about one of the many writers out there as he sees himself.I love this book. I find a lot of things I can relate to the author. Coetzee's style is getting easier to read as time passes. Comparing this to Life and Times of Michael K, this is much more of a page turner. Even though the former is not a thick book, and the writing is beautiful in there, it almost feels like he made too much effort to work excessively on each sentence, which is just speculation. This one reads like Disgrace, and only took me two days.
Recommended.
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LibraryThing member Kellyannbrown
Coetzee writes a book about himself from the perspective of women surround him. This book, although written by a man, is fraught with all the misconceptions that women perpetuate upon their men. I would say that Coetzee has managed to create a subtle and yet approachable work. It can be read on
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many levels, speaking to the modern reader with its commentary on our modern lives. Show Less
LibraryThing member bobbieharv
I'm so pleased that I'm finally enjoying Coetzee's writing. This is written in the same inventive style as Elizabeth Costello, i.e. each chapter is a portrayal of the main character by a different person; but in this case the main character is Coetzee himself. Since it's fiction, we don't know how
I almost gave it a 5, but, as he says he himself is, it was just very slightly dry and not totally a page-turner.
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much is fiction and how much is autobiography, but you'd have to think much of it is what he actually thinks of himself and, given that, this is an immensely courageous and insightful book. Plus, of course, it's beautifully written. I almost gave it a 5, but, as he says he himself is, it was just very slightly dry and not totally a page-turner.
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LibraryThing member DubaiReader
Readable but repetetive.
I have never read any Coetzee but I do enjoy books from South Africa. This was a disappointment, however; it was very repetetive and taught me little about the country, or even the author.
Coetzee highlights a period of his life in the '70s by fictionally interviewing several
The asides designed to give the interview process more authenticity, eg [laughs] and [silence] are extremely irritating.
So, what can I say in the book's favour? Well, it was an easy read - apart from the chapter on 'the struggle', which seemed to go round in circles. I enjoyed the contribution made by his cousin Margot and was amused by Coetzee's stuborn determination to repair his own car - ending is a night in the bush.
Straight onto the swap list with this one I'm afraid.
I have never read any Coetzee but I do enjoy books from South Africa. This was a disappointment, however; it was very repetetive and taught me little about the country, or even the author.
Coetzee highlights a period of his life in the '70s by fictionally interviewing several
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characters who would have known him at that time. They all painted the same picture - that of a long haired, dishevelled young man, uncomfortable with himself socially. He is repeatingly self-efacing, almost ad nauseum and gives very little insight into the process of 'finding his feet as a writer' that we are led to expect from the dust jacket.The asides designed to give the interview process more authenticity, eg [laughs] and [silence] are extremely irritating.
So, what can I say in the book's favour? Well, it was an easy read - apart from the chapter on 'the struggle', which seemed to go round in circles. I enjoyed the contribution made by his cousin Margot and was amused by Coetzee's stuborn determination to repair his own car - ending is a night in the bush.
Straight onto the swap list with this one I'm afraid.
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LibraryThing member KateWa20
The best of the triology
LibraryThing member EpicTale
Good, but not great -- though this is the first of Coetzee's books I have read, and I didn't know it was the third installment of a trilogy. I greatly enjoyed the book's structure, which presented concurrent biographical (or, maybe, autobiographical) sketches of the protagonist's life in 1970s
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South Africa. In these sketches, I was intrigued by explorations of how women proved so alluring to the protagonist -- the reasons for which went well beyond their physical or sexual dimensions -- and the author's self-critique of himself as a sensitive 30-something transplant back to his country of origin. Unfortunately, the discussion of Afrikaans politics near the end lost me, and took away from my enjoyment of the book. Moreover, the final "story fragments" at the end of the book greatly slowed it down. I don't think they helped at all to define the protagonist or complete the story. Overall, Summertime was good enough to make me want to read more of the author's books. Show Less
LibraryThing member Davidgnp
A quirky and interesting conceit: Coetzee imagines himself as dead, with a researcher interviewing associates from a specific period of his life (1972-1975) for a biography of the writer. The book (not so much novel as third person auto-fiction) is structured mainly around these 'interviews' and
If I have a problem with the book, it is the nagging doubt about the way he places himself as the subject, not only in 'Summertime' but in his earlier quasi-autobiographical 'Boyhood' and 'Youth'. Even though he distorts the mirror with self-effacement, there is still something almost creepily egotistical about the image in the glass.
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supposed snippets from Coetzee's own notebooks of the period. It sounds very clumsy as a structure, doesn't it, yet it works surprisingly well, and there is a real zing in some of the interviews, especially with ex-lovers and those he wanted to be lovers, who are all disparaging to a degree of the 'great writer'. In his deliberately unflattering self-portrait Coetzee seems to be giving the lie to assumptions that charisma exudes from every pore of those who produce great work. If I have a problem with the book, it is the nagging doubt about the way he places himself as the subject, not only in 'Summertime' but in his earlier quasi-autobiographical 'Boyhood' and 'Youth'. Even though he distorts the mirror with self-effacement, there is still something almost creepily egotistical about the image in the glass.
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LibraryThing member Steve38
An attempt at autobiography in a writerly style that betrays Coetzee as a writer lacking a nuanced voice. The structure is a fictionalised biographer interviewing a tight, idiosyncratic selection of Coetzee's aquaintances who, it seems, have a particular insight into his life at specific stages of
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its development. But each character speaks in the thinly disguised voice of Coetzee himself. Each betrays aspects that Coetzee himself could easily relate but who prefers to put them into the mouths of others. An exercise in modest immodesty. Show Less
LibraryThing member tvgrl
I guess I'm supposed to know who this writer is since he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2003 but really I don't know, I just happened to pick up the book for some reason and decided to read it on vacation. I wish I could say that I'm up on contemporary fiction but actually I'm not. I
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remember thinking I should probably be paying attention to small press fiction instead of wasting my time on stuff like this. It wasn't that memorable, other than that the main character is named after the author. This was kind of pretentious/narcissistic or whatever but also what I liked most about reading the book. It sort of inverts the narrative structure of The Sorrows of Young Werther, in that it tells the story of a man's life from the point of view of three women who are remembering him in terms of their relationship to him. This is what the story is about really. In Werther, Goethe never lets Charlotte act on her own, the reader only knows her through Werther's eyes, but that is not a part of the storytelling I don't think, it just sort of is. Man = actor Women = object that is acted upon, Etc. Using the device Doris Lessing made famous in The Golden Notebook, the reader also reads Coetze's notebook entries. The reader ends up having to piece together different perspectives to complete the picture. Show Less
LibraryThing member SigmundFraud
Not Coetzee at his best but no Coetzee is bad. I enjoyed this book. He chose an unusual structure and it works. We are still in Coetzeeland, that is South Africa and the Afrikaners.
LibraryThing member stillatim
I officially don't get what Coetzee's doing anymore. This book is compulsively, beautifully readable, while also being almost completely uninteresting. It seems to be not much more than a congeries of portraits, all but one of women who all - even the Brazilian woman - talk like the narrator of any
All the old themes are here, it's true: appearance vs essence, the romantic 'inner flame,' desire and art etc... but much less powerfully (either emotionally or intellectually) than in Boyhood or Youth, and far, far, less powerfully than in The Master of Petersburg. Too bad.
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given Coetzee novel. They're individualized, no doubt, and quite impressive each in their own way. And the obvious point, that this is a kind of autobiography which recognizes the importance of other people to any given life, is a decent enough one in its way. But what's really happened is that Coetzee has given up. He's no longer willing to say "this I wrote, I made it true." Now we need multiple perspectives. There are no more of those moments which strike the character of Boyhood and Youth, when an objectivity is granted to him. Now objectivity is apparently impossible. The strength it must take for a man to dissect himself, as Coetzee did in the earlier 'memoirs' is left behind; now we just have other peoples' opinions on him. All the old themes are here, it's true: appearance vs essence, the romantic 'inner flame,' desire and art etc... but much less powerfully (either emotionally or intellectually) than in Boyhood or Youth, and far, far, less powerfully than in The Master of Petersburg. Too bad.
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LibraryThing member objectplace
the author becomes the interviewer reconstructing the life of the author by interviewing lovers, acquaintances and family. An odd twist to memoir. Writing from the vantage point of his lovers who berate his style and intimacy and question his realness as a poet and writer.
LibraryThing member whitewavedarling
What a strange and wandering story, amounting to something both pedestrian and fascinating, and somewhat unnerving. Coetzee's picture of (himself? a fictional version of himself? a writer who only shares his name?) as told through interviews and snippets of events is a balancing act of art and
All told, this isn't as compelling as some of Coetzee's other novels, but it is strangely engaging, and more and more disturbing as it moves forward, amounting to a more and more jarring picture of the disconnect between a writer, a person, and the world that views him up close.
Altogether, I do have to recommend this, especially for fans of Coetzee and for artists or writers.
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memory and defense.All told, this isn't as compelling as some of Coetzee's other novels, but it is strangely engaging, and more and more disturbing as it moves forward, amounting to a more and more jarring picture of the disconnect between a writer, a person, and the world that views him up close.
Altogether, I do have to recommend this, especially for fans of Coetzee and for artists or writers.
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LibraryThing member stef7sa
It takes a great author to make you read a book which' subject (the author's life) you do not like form the outset, let alone the form (interviews)from start to finish with interest ... It is well written and interesting and you would like to know more about his relationship with his father and the
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love for his territory, so Boyhood will be on the to read list. Show Less
LibraryThing member books4micks
A great author, but book seems fragmented and self-indulgent.
LibraryThing member edwinbcn
I am always drawn to interview books, either collections of interviews previously published in newspapers or magazines and books that consist on a long or collected essays with an author. In Summertime Coetzee uses interviews together with notebooks as the main narrative mode, which I think
The materials in the book consist of notebooks by Coetzee, Notebooks 1972-1975, some undated fragments and five interviews with people deemed important in the life of Coetzee. In some sense this is an autobiographical novel, but in true post-modern fashion hardly anything is reliable.
Firstly, the Coetzee of the novel resembles the author J.M. Coetzee but is not the 'real man' or not 'the same man'. Then, too, to what extent can we say that writing about anyone in their past are the same man?
The interviewer, who is supposedly collecting material to write an autobiography on Coetzee, does no appear to be a reliable narrator. At times, he seems hostile, and intrusive. He seems to be obsessed by Coetzee, but not necessarily in the most sympathetic way. The interviewees wonder why they are selected. It seems the biographer is biased in some peculiar way.
We never read the finished biography. It isn't even clear if the purported biography was ever written. Given the biographer's bias we must probably be thanful for that. On the other hand, one must wonder what image the reader can make of Coetzee from reading the raw materials. Is it possible to create a positive image based on these interviews? Which questions are asked, which are not? And which or how are questions answered.
The novel raises many questions about the literary process as well as history itself. It is probably one of Coetzee's best novels.
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constitutes and interesting innovation in writing a novel.The materials in the book consist of notebooks by Coetzee, Notebooks 1972-1975, some undated fragments and five interviews with people deemed important in the life of Coetzee. In some sense this is an autobiographical novel, but in true post-modern fashion hardly anything is reliable.
Firstly, the Coetzee of the novel resembles the author J.M. Coetzee but is not the 'real man' or not 'the same man'. Then, too, to what extent can we say that writing about anyone in their past are the same man?
The interviewer, who is supposedly collecting material to write an autobiography on Coetzee, does no appear to be a reliable narrator. At times, he seems hostile, and intrusive. He seems to be obsessed by Coetzee, but not necessarily in the most sympathetic way. The interviewees wonder why they are selected. It seems the biographer is biased in some peculiar way.
We never read the finished biography. It isn't even clear if the purported biography was ever written. Given the biographer's bias we must probably be thanful for that. On the other hand, one must wonder what image the reader can make of Coetzee from reading the raw materials. Is it possible to create a positive image based on these interviews? Which questions are asked, which are not? And which or how are questions answered.
The novel raises many questions about the literary process as well as history itself. It is probably one of Coetzee's best novels.
Show Less
Awards
Booker Prize (Longlist — 2009)
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2011)
Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Shortlist — 2010)
Queensland Premier's Literary Award (Winner — Fiction — 2010)
New South Wales Premier's Literary Award (Winner — 2010)
The Sunday Times Fiction Prize (Shortlist — 2010)
M-Net Book Prize (Shortlist — 2010)
Victorian Premier's Literary Award (Shortlist — Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction — 2010)
Western Australian Premier's Book Awards (Fiction — 2009)
The Age Book of the Year Award (Shortlist — Fiction — 2010)
Prime Minister's Literary Award (Shortlist — Fiction — 2010)
Original publication date
2009-08-13