Elizabeth Costello

by J. M. Coetzee

Hardcover, 2003

Call number

FIC COE

Collection

Fiction

Genres

General Fiction

Publication

The Viking Press (2003), Edition: 1st, 240 pages

Description

Elizabeth Costello is a distinguished and aging Australian novelist whose life is revealed through a series of eight formal addresses. From an award-acceptance speech at a New England liberal arts college to a lecture on evil in Amsterdam and a sexually charged reading by the poet Robert Duncan, the author draws the reader toward its astonishing conclusion. The novel is, on its surface, the story of a woman's life as mother, sister, lover, and writer. Yet it is also a profound and haunting meditation on the nature of storytelling.

User reviews

LibraryThing member Niecierpek

It could have been subtitled- The Tortured Soul of a Writer
The author speaks through his alter ego- a fellow writer, Elizabeth Costello, and comments in Eight Lessons on issues relevant to him and centering around writing. The tortures of a writer are all there: from feeling different, irrelevant,

ridiculous and ambiguous, through not knowing what one’s beliefs are anymore (because one has repeated them so often they have lost meaning), to being unable to express them anymore altogether. The book goes full circle from the author giving a lecture on Kafka’s Ape to the author him/herself finding him/herself in the same situation as the Ape.

It is a very interesting book, very beautifully written, full of interesting ideas and literary references. It is a real feast for anybody who likes literary meanderings with many literary references, a tortured main character, and an unusual form: fiction, non-fiction, meta-fiction- all in one. Delicious!

I felt vaguely disappointed and vaguely cheated at first when I realized that the majority of the lectures in the book had been published before as separate pieces, but then realized that by providing personal commentary to them, Coetze achieved a different level of commentary on writing. The torture of producing them is all there and feels real. The fear of ridicule and the fear that they are clichés is palpable.

Let me add that this form is also very safe- the author can always deny everything the book says and say it is a piece of fiction. Or, maybe through Costello, Coetze delivers what he is too shy to deliver himself- his thoughts out loud to live audiences. And maybe he is afraid to do it precisely because he is afraid that if he is going to speak frankly, they may be disasters, just like most Costello’s lectures were.

Show Less

20 more

LibraryThing member Eily

I read Elisabeth Costello with a great deal of attention and was swept up into some of the philosophical arguments. I saw it, finally, as a kind of argument between the author and some of the challenges of the modern literary world. Elisabeth herself seemed to be a mixture of Coetzee and someone

like Doris Lessing – at any rate a member of the literary intelligentsia. One of the other characters – a womaniser and a bit of a charlatan – must surely be based on Ben Okri – but he was probably meant to be some kind of amalgam of the black African male writer.
The end passage is all about belief. Elisabeth resides in a small town, trying to persuade a jury (of her peers?) to let her through the gate to the next world. She is in an after-life; but I don’t think Coetzee believes in an after-life at all and this is just another tease.
I feel his aim was to set up an eternal dilemma: what, finally, can we say we believe in? Elisabeth at first says, “Nothing.”, or that belief is not important – and that belief can only be a matter of personal interpretation. As a writer, she is a kind of secretary waiting to be called to write the next chapter that the world dictates to her. That’s not enough for the jury, so she has to go away and rewrite her submission. She then says she believes in the world as a natural phenomenon and cites the tiny frogs of her homeland who burrow beneath the earth each autumn and come alive again joyously each spring. But that’s not enough – she’s sent away again, another rewrite called for. There we leave her (which suggests that Coetzee thinks there’s no better answer, no greater revelation than for us to believe in our senses, in the world as it exists for us?). Is the jury waiting for Elisabeth to cite faith in God? If so, Coetzee seems to refuse this as, perhaps, the final betrayal of his humanist beliefs. Perhaps he also wants to suggest that the ‘jury’ is part of the ultimate failure of human endeavour? That there will always be judgement made at the end of life and it will always be found wanting?
Thinking about it now, nine months after reading the book, I’m inclined to think I missed the meaning of the closing epiphanical passage – that we human beings may not be equal to the blazing revalations of the world, that all our great brains have given us is the ability to know that we have lost our way. The simplicity, beauty and joy of existence is something that we no longer recognise in our overwhelming materiality. We have lost the capacity for revelation through experience and have ended up searching for it within ourselves - the very place where it cannot reside.

Show Less

LibraryThing member stillatim

I read this just after it came out, and was pretty disappointed. Having just given it another go... I'm still disappointed. The blurbs are surely ironic: "One of Coetzee's best... an important book, extraordinary... every word counts. Every sentence lives... bracing." It is self-evidently Coetzee's

worst, dull, unimportant, pointless. Only a psychologiser of authors could care about this quaquaquaqua novel, though if you're a philosopher you may get something out of the new Coetzee industry, see Mulhall's 'The Wounded Animal' etc...

I would call it an experiment, and you know what? Sometimes, in fact, usually, experiments fail. As essays or short stories the chapters 'Realism' and 'The Humanities in Africa' are pretty decent, and worth reading. It's probably no coincidence that they're the chapters with the most interesting characters and the better arguments (none of the arguments being much good, which I'm sure is the point and so on...) Putting them in with the other stuff is a disservice to those two chapters.

No, not even pretty disappointed. In fact, I'm infuriated that this got printed and put on the Booker long list. Oh well.

Show Less

LibraryThing member thorold

J M Coetzee doesn't really do "normal" novels, but even by his standards this was a rather odd one, with its narrative almost entirely built up out of lectures, debates, seminars, award and honorary degree ceremonies, as seen from the point of view of his fictional alter ego, the distinguished

elderly Australian novelist Elizabeth Costello. There's no story as such, this is purely a platform for tossing around ideas about topics like the role of the writer, animal rights, the "African novel" (with or without quotation marks), realism, vegetarianism, the depiction of violence, and Kafka. It's deliberately frustrating: if you try to read it like a novel it will fight you all the way, and you won't fare any better if you try to pretend it's a collection of philosophical essays. But I found it the perfect book to read on a lengthy train journey: it's short enough to get through in a single sitting, it's intellectually challenging enough to keep you engaged in its detail and language, but you don't have to worry about losing track of the large-scale texture of a complicated story.

Show Less

LibraryThing member corinneblackmer

Elizabeth Costello is a novelist who has won renown for her inventive re-writing of James Joyce's "Ulysses." In this original, disturbing, and moving novel, Costello travels around the world, giving a series of lectures from her perspective as a "famous artist." One principal concern is evil;

another how we can know what we know; another, our presumptive "right," which Costello denies, to use animals for our own purposes. The portion of the book's argument was so powerfully rendered (Coetzee himself is a noted animal rights activist) as to be deeply compelling and convincing. A must read for anyone who likes challenging writing that confronts us with new and uncomfortable ideas.

Show Less

LibraryThing member ifjuly

this book completely knocked me on my ass and shocked me, frankly. i wasn't coming to it expecting anything--never read coetzee, this book "just happened to be there" used, etc etc...i guess it was too weird and therefore "self-indulgent" for critics and readers, but i love stuff like this. and the

ending treatment was great.

Show Less

LibraryThing member Mdshrk1

While some of the stories are compelling, others just kind of lie there. I like his exploration of the nature of reality in fiction.

LibraryThing member bobbieharv

The biography of a fictional writer/academic portrayed by her lectures throughout her life. An interesting technique, but I found it too gimmicky and made me feel too removed from the character, which seemed to really be Coetzee himself.

LibraryThing member zasmine

What a wonderful book!
I think "Realism" was the best lesson easily! And "The Lives of Animals" was very compulsive too.
The dilemna Elizabeth Costello's life is with her tastes, her regrets and her surroundings is very compelling. The literary criticism offered is also engaging though I wish

he(/she)'d touch more on AS Byatt and Chinua Achebe.
For most of the part, I can't seem to distinguish between Coetzee himself and Costello, though I understand that Coetzee is much more "upright" and "uptight" in his personal life. This book has definitely been amongst the best books I've ever read.
And I love the "Venus de Milo" cover!

Show Less

LibraryThing member siliconeye

Instead a full-sized review of this rather literary novel, I’ll post some thoughts about the aspects of its themes. I found the book as nourishing food for thought, but not necessary very hooking reading.

Can we mate with Gods? Is it possible to understand animals? How to bridge the gap between

self & other? 'Elizabeth Costello' is very modernist in its take on the limits of language, and our human capacities to comprehend our existence.

The opening of the book is easily read as a reference to the role of the discourse itself, like in postmodern fiction: "There is first of all the problem of the opening, namely, how to get us from where we are, which is, as yet, nowhere, to the far bank."

Yet, that has deep philosophical roots to the modernist thoughts of Hofmannsthaler, Wittgenstein, and Joyce.

The core question of 'Elizabeth Costello' is whether it is possible to bridge the gap between ‘self’ and ‘other’. Elizabeth, the protagonist-author, tries to achieve that mentally with words, wanting to get a glimpse of the world according to animals, and according to Gods. Emmanuel, the fictitious "oral poet", tries to get connected bodily, but settles for a more modest aim: to be connected with other people.

It seems that we can’t reach any creature outside the human species. Any attempt to reach beyond the human reason, "our" point of view is futile. We can neither mate with Gods, nor talk with animals. Sister Bridget (sic!) cannot promise the heavenly life after death, only help for the poor Africans to bear their cross. The primate researcher Wolfgang Köhler sets his experiments in a way that forces any chimpanzee to the simplest mechanic thinking, no matter what that animal might have pondered otherwise.

Elizabeth is an interesting liminal character: as Saint Mary she is god/woman, virgin/birth-giver; as Molly Bloom she is negotiating with the extra-lingual, experiential spheres of life.

There are lots of nice intertextual clues for a comparative literature, or cultural / feminist studies student to dig up. So English teachers might welcome this novel as his/her course reading.

Show Less

LibraryThing member williecostello

As many other reviewers have pointed out, this is an intellectually stimulating and deeply philosophical book, offering lots to chew on for the reflective reader. However, what I really enjoyed in this novel was the way Coetzee brought out the isolation inherent in Elizabeth Costello's character,

as someone who has meditated at length on several issues and now finds herself at odds with many of those around her, yet unable to give up her convictions. The reader is made to feel the tension and confusion in this position, and I think this is an aspect of argument that is not highlighted enough. "Elizabeth Costello" may not offer any final answers in its 'Lectures', but it is worthwhile for its artful and human treatment of its questions.

Show Less

LibraryThing member martensgirl

Dear oh dear, my first encounter with Coetzee's work has not been a good one. This book can only very loosely be described as a novel- it is the only book I have read which has even less of a plot than The Finkler Question. Instead, it is series of disconnected philosophical musings. They are

beautifully written, but completely pointless.

Show Less

LibraryThing member Petroglyph

Interesting. The narrative here functions as a framing device for several lectures / monologues that, if I understand correctly, were written and/or presented before the story came together. And so we get a series of spirited discussions on meat-eating, censorship, the African novel and so on. All

of it knee-deep in literary allusions and informed by a literature-heavy views on beauty, truth and the meaning of life. Much of the pleasure of this book is to read a talented professional's musings on novels, novel-writing and literature in general.

Unfortunately, Elizabeth Costello is very much a writer's book, a novel written for writers or lit-crit majors. I suppose that there's plenty here for non-specialists to enjoy, but I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who isn't at least mildly interested in an academic or theoretical approach to writing. Coetzee lost me towards the end, I must admit. While I do have some background in literary studies (limited though that may be), and I was able to hang in there for the most part, the final chapter and the post-script letter I just didn't get. I had to look those up to understand what Coetzee was trying to get at. Which might not be a bad thing in and of itself, but it did make this a non-self-contained reading experience for me. But perhaps that was the point.

Still, despite the obscure allusions, I found myself looking forward to reading this book. Approached as a set of essays or lectures, this book worked for me. As a novel, much less.

Show Less

LibraryThing member KateWa20

interesting and quirky

LibraryThing member Kristelh

I enjoyed this one. It is the second Coetzee for me. In this book, the author writes about an aging woman author. He covers topics of realism, African literature, animal rights, humanities, religion (Gods, God). These could be essays rather than a complete story but they are connected by the

protagonist, Elizabeth, who is telling or thinking the essays. I found it interesting that this male author chose a woman to write about writing. I also learned that Coetzee, considered to be an author of South Africa, lives in Australia. Elizabeth Costello lives in Australia. This book examines African literature and whether African literature is different because the African tells the story from oral traditions. The animal rights section wasn't so good and as those that heard the essay were offended, it was offensive. The argument of humanity verses religion was most interesting. The author examines Catholic religion and humanity through a visit to African by Elizabeth as the guest of her sister, who is a Sister (nun). Mostly this book is about writing. It names many authors and works and Elizabeth is most famous for a book that she wrote about Marion Bloom, wife of Leopold Bloom, principal character of Ulysses by James Joyce.

Show Less

LibraryThing member Rascalstar

Literary and well written, except that I found the rambling thoughts hard to read. This isn't an easy book but neither is it difficult. There are some heavy subjects. Elizabeth Costello is a nonfiction writer, an elderly intellect sometimes asked to speak at events around the world. Her married son

sometimes accompanies her on these missions to take care of her. Elizabeth looks inward, reflects on events in her life, rambles during her speeches such that it embarrasses her son and leaves the audience scratching their heads at times. She has taken up the cause of animal rights in her advancing age, in a philosophical way. She wants audiences to understand her various philosophies but they generally don't always. So the issue of a sharp mind in old age, the son as protector, and reflections on the past come clear in the story.

The writing is stunning, but I felt I would get more from the book on a second reading. That's highly personal. The philosophical rambling can be hard to follow or read. I always feel as though this author's writing is just over my head and I need to work harder to grasp it well. The latter bits of the book are easier and more interesting, and this is a good story with plenty of tender moments and sadness too. End of life issues.

What happens to a sharp mind as it ages? Younger people never really understand and even if they could, it isn't easy. The last part of this book is utterly unforgettable. This author seems extremely good at that sort of writing. The author is a Nobel Prize winner in Literature -- brilliant but a bit hard to read.

Show Less

LibraryThing member brakketh

Not really to my taste. Didn't like Elizabeth and found the musings mostly uninteresting.

LibraryThing member booklove2

My first Coetzee - I enjoyed it. I had Lindsay Stern's 'The Study of Animal Languages' in my hand to read, but the acknowledgments mention the book was inspired by 'Elizabeth Costello' so I had to run to read it first. 'Elizabeth Costello' had been on my very...very... very huge TBR "pile" anyway.

The format is interesting - many formal addresses mostly given by Elizabeth Costello and then sometimes dinner party settings for discussions of those speeches. I feel like this book had much nuance that I probably wasn't catching, so it is tough for me to talk about this book. It's definitely a better book to read in one sitting, though I can never do that. I did like it very much though.

Show Less

LibraryThing member jmoncton

Short stories about an Australian author, Elizabeth Costello. Most of the stories were ok - except for the last one - very good story examining at the end of the day, what is it that we really believe. Does it matter?

LibraryThing member kenicholls

an unusual, but intriguing novel. a challenging delight. i look forward to more of Elizabeth's character in Slow Man.

LibraryThing member snash

Seems more a philosophical debate than a novel. At times that debate was seemed more a matter os semantics, although especially when grappling with death it was engaging.

Fewer