Post by cjm on Apr 27, 2016 8:00:11 GMT
Oorsig: Kannemeyer en Coetzee
1. Algemeen
Die skakels, hier, hier en hier, is algemene agtergrond.
Die bladsy-verwysings is na die biografie: Kannemeyer: JM Coetzee, Jonathan Ball, 2012.
‘n Mens sien natuurlik Coetzee deur Kannemeyer se biografiese oë, wat alreeds ‘n afwatering van die onderwerp inhou. Gegewe egter die baie bronne van die verstommende klomp inliging, kan ‘n mens seker aanvaar dat hier minder fiksie is as in Coetzee se eie lewensweergawes. Kannemeyer self steun openlik by tye swaar op Coetzee se eie “fiktiewe” biografie – sien deel II van die voorwoord (pp 8-11). Nie alle inligting oor Coetzee is in die boek nie, want sommige daarvan mag eers gepubliseer word na Coetzee se dood (p 7).
Ek dink ‘n probleem met die biografie is dat dit eintlik ‘n onvoltooide werk is. Onvoltooid in drie opsigte: Coetzee se lewe gaan steeds aan en hy stoom voort met nuwe werke. Tweedens, die materiaal in die biografie is plek-plek onvolledig geïntegreer en verwerk en derdens, is dit ook nie altyd feitlik volledig nie. Die laaste kwessie eerste, want dit is werklik niks: Daar is ‘n paar eregrade wat oor die hoof gesien is en een werk waarvan nie melding gemaak word nie (sien die hersienne lys van Coetzee se werk wat later volg). Daar is ook by my ‘n algemene indruk dat die detail oor die drukkersgeskiedenis van boeke mettertyd afneem – nie noodwendig ten kwade nie.
2. Biografie van lewende persoon
Ek het nog altyd ‘n probleem gehad met biografieë wat gedurende ‘n persoon se lewe verskyn, want dit kan nie volledig wees so lank hy lewe nie. Aan die ander kant, veral hier, werp dit lig op Coetzee se werk, wat ‘n mens net kan verwelkom. Dit het my oë oopgemaak en my belangstelling geprikkel in werke wat ek in die verbygaan as vervelig beskou het. Ek bely dat hierdie inderdaad die eerste “Coetzee-boek” is wat ek ooit lees. Meer sal volg.
My nuuskierigheid oor Coetzee se verhouding met Suid-Afrika, UK, Voëlfontein, Prins Albert, Afrikaans en Afrikanerskap speel ook ‘n rol in my belangstelling. Van sy idees waai soos ‘n koel bries deur die aangeplakte, mite-gedrewe, kunsmatige wêreld waarin die stedelike mens funksioneer en in illusie leef. Graag wil ek glo dat die skerpsinnige insigte vloei uit ‘n verafrikaansde (of miskien verengelsde) kolonialis se aardsheid.
Ek wonder of onderliggend aan Kannemeyer se besluit om die biografie aan te pak, nie soortgelyke oorwegings gegeld het nie. As biograaf van ‘n magdom persone was dit ‘n natuurlike keuse. Coetzee se ongelooflike prestasies op die wêreldverhoog en sy relatief onbekendheid (ongewildheid?) in Suid-Afrika, het moontlik ook ‘n rol gespeel. Self gee Kannemeyer te kenne dat die idee om oor Coetzee te skryf van oud-uitgewer Hannes van Zyl kom. Miskien was die sneller Attridge se opmerking in 2005 oor die onontginde outobiografiese elemente in Coetzee se werk (p9).
3. Die Derde Sonde: Integrasie en verwerking van materiaal
Persoonlik kan ek nie Coetzee se totale afkeer (onder andere) van Afrikaanssprekendes, Reagan, Bush, Dan Roodt (‘n student van Kannemeyer) en sy aanhang van die kommuniste (Russe), volkome omhels nie. Ek (soos sommige stiksiende kolonialiste) het ook bedenkinge oor of die koloniale regtig so minderwaardig is. Trots in my onkunde!
Aan die skewe stereotipering van die Afrikaners (nog nooit ‘n homogene groep nie), doen Kannemeyer lustig mee en apartheid word goed en breedvoerig met die vuis en uit die vuis afgeransel. Ook word Afrikaanse literatuur en skrywers van tyd tot tyd ietwat onnodig ingesleep. So leer ons dat ons Afrikaanse mense reeds die kwessie van die sosiale betrokkenheid van skrywers herkou het; die strewe na die groot (Suid-) Afrikaanse roman is niks nuuts nie; ons eie kundiges het lankal die noodsaak verkondig om die agterlike plaaslike ( “the provincial”) te ontsnap. Was die Afrikaanse skrywers regtig hul tyd so ver vooruit?! ‘n Voetnota vertel dat Boerneef (soos Coetzee) by UK ook op eksamenboeke sy werke geskryf het. Ons word vergas op die boute en moere van die sensuurstelsel. ‘n Dik boek word nog dikker.
Wat verder hinder, is eindelose herhaling soos bv Coetzee se afskaling sedert die 90s, sy nederigheid, inkennigheid, ingetoënheid, sy sosiaal aangepasdheid, sy fietsry, sy politieke ingesteldheid, sy drang om die koloniale minderwaardige te ontsnap, sy verhouding met vriendinne. Alhoewel die normale tydsverloop gevolg word, is daar tog ‘n rondspring tussen datums wat die gemalike vertering van die boek belemmer. Coetzee se werke, pryse, toekennings, optredes en ere-doktorsgrade word met eentonige reëlmaat oor die biografie versprei. Baie hiervan kon bylaes of voetnotas gewees het. Die reuse omvang van Coetzee se totaliteit ( “oeuvre”, noem Kannemeyer dit) kom dramaties so na vore, maar word vervelig. Die ontstaan en ontwikkeling van die Costello-konsep roep om ‘n eenmalige tematiese behandeling; so ook die kwessie van realisme (sien die Sakeregister sv “realisme”). Die hantering van die kwessies van biografie en outobiografie in Deel II van die Voorwoord (pp8-11) is ‘n illustrasie van wat ek graag sou wou gesien het in verband met ander temas.
In die indeks soek ek tervergeefs na materiaal wat ek weet in die boek is (bv Boerneef, Lindiwe Sisulu en As woman grows older, Universiteit van Strathclyde). Waarom die persoonsname (‘n aparte lys) nie in die algemene indeks kan in nie, verstaan ek nie. Sekere aanhalings sou ‘n mens ook daar verwag (“Die dans van die pen”; “Die Labirint van my geskiedenis”). Die rykdom van bylaes van Kannemeyer se Leipoldt-biografie toon in kontras die spartaanse opset hier. Die laaste versorger van die boek (ek neem aan dis Hannes van Zyl) is ‘n spookskadu wat, behalwe die woord “myself” in die Redakteursnota, moeilik geïdentifiseer word.
Die volumes genealogiese materiaal (tot in die derde en vierde geslag!) is tipies Kannemeyer en soos gewoonlik borduur hy voort op sy (gekke-) teorie dat skryfvermoë in voorouers geneties oorgedra word na die nageslag.
‘n Interessante verskuilde aspek is Kannemeyer se ervarings by UK waar hy in 1962 gedoseer het en weer in 1973-1974. Dit het waarskynlike bygedra tot sy uiters akkurate tekening van Coetzee se tye daar en bv die Gillham sage (wat ek voel ietwat eensydig is). In die 70s was hy en Coetzee dus beide lektore by UK en in 1962 mis hulle mekaar net-net.
Die uiteensetting is oor die algemeen vlot, behalwe Coetzee se lotgevalle, na sy Buffalo-protes, tot sy aankoms in SA, en sy uiteindelike indeling, vir administratiewe doeleindes, by die UK Graduate School.
Die gebrek aan integrasie en die omissies, vermoed ek, is ‘n gevolg van Kannemeyer se onverwagte vertrek en die vererwing van ‘n half-voltooide werk - ten spyte van die bewering dat die manuskrip reeds voltooi was.
Kannemeyer wys op die gemaklike verhouding wat Coetzee met sy Nederlandse uitgewer Cossee het en waar sy boeke in Nederlands verskyn, nog voor dit in Engels uitgegee word. Hierdie verhouding duur voort soos gesien kan word in die lys van onlangse boeke hierna. Daar is inderdaad ‘n nuwe boek van Coetzee op pad waarvan reeds melding gemaak word op die Cossee webwerf.
4. Coetzee se Wikipedia-inskrywing: opmerkings
Born in Cape Town, Cape Province, Union of South Africa, on 9 February 1940 to Afrikaner parents,[5][6] his father, Zacharias Coetzee [Jack], was an occasional attorney and government employee, and his mother, Vera Coetzee (born Wehmeyer), a schoolteacher.[7][8]
Die staatsamptenaarspos waarna hier verwys word, was waarskynlik Jack se aanstelling as kontroleur van verhuring (behuising?) om terugkerende soldate na die oorlog te help hervestig. Hierdie pos is afgeskaf toe die hervestiging voltooid was en het, volgens Kannemeyer, niks met onderduimse politiek te doen soos in Coetzee se Boyhood te kenne gegee word nie (pp47-48 van Kannemeyer en p671n35).
In 2013, Richard Poplak of the Daily Maverick described Coetzee as "inarguably the most celebrated and decorated living English-language author".[4]
Die omvang van sy werk en die erkenning wat hy wêreldwyd geniet, bevestig hierdie bewering.
He holds honorary doctorates from The American University of Paris,[35] the University of Adelaide,[36] La Trobe University,[37] the University of Natal,[38] the University of Oxford,[39] Rhodes University,[40] the State University of New York at Buffalo,[32] the University of Strathclyde,[32] the University of Technology, Sydney,[41] the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań[42] and the Universidad Iberoamericana.[43]
Hierdie lys is nie volledig nie. ‘n Lys saamgestel uit Kannemeyer en Wikipedia volg later.
When he initially moved to Australia, he had cited the South African government's lax attitude to crime in that country as a reason for the move, leading to a spat with Thabo Mbeki, who, speaking of Coetzee's novel Disgrace stated that "South Africa is not only a place of rape".[45]
It has been argued that Coetzee's 1999 novel Disgrace allegorises South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.[58] Asked about his views on the TRC, Coetzee has stated: "In a state with no official religion, the TRC was somewhat anomalous: a court of a certain kind based to a large degree on Christian teaching and on a strand of Christian teaching accepted in their hearts by only a tiny proportion of the citizenry. Only the future will tell what the TRC managed to achieve".[59]
Wat ek wonder is, as jy “Christian teaching” weggooi, waarop baseer jy etiese oorwegings soos diereregte? Konsensus, Internasionale reg, rasionalisme, Islam, ‘n warm gevoel in jou maag?
Coetzee has never specified any political orientation, though has alluded to politics in his work. Writing about his past in the third person, Coetzee states in Doubling the Point that:
Politically, the raznochinets can go either way. But during his student years he, this person, this subject, my subject, steers clear of the right. As a child in Worcester he has seen enough of the Afrikaner right, enough of its rant, to last him a lifetime. In fact, even before Worcester he has perhaps seen more of cruelty and violence than should have been allowed to a child. So as a student he moves on the fringes of the left without being part of the left. Sympathetic to the human concerns of the left, he is alienated, when the crunch comes, by its language – by all political language, in fact.[62]
Asked about the latter part of this quote in an interview, Coetzee said:
There is no longer a left worth speaking of, and a language of the left. The language of politics, with its new economistic bent, is even more repellent than it was fifteen years ago.[59]
Wat Kannemeyer wel duidelik maak is dat Coetzee sedert sy jeug anti-apartheid, anti-Afrikaner was. Sy ouers was VP. Ek twyfel of hy ooit ANC was, aangesien hy die misbruik van kinders vir politieke oogmerke en geweld (terrorisme) afgekeur het – in elk geval in sy boeke. Op Universiteit was hy ook nie gelukkig met die linkses nie (p92).
In 2005, Coetzee criticised contemporary anti-terrorism laws as resembling those employed by the apartheid regime in South Africa: "I used to think that the people who created [South Africa's] laws that effectively suspended the rule of law were moral barbarians. Now I know they were just pioneers ahead of their time".[63]
Die hoogheilige twak oor die rule of law wat die weste (die metropolis) mee te koop geloop het, word hier aan die kaak gestel. Ek twyfel of Coetzee met my herformulering van sy uitspraak sal saamstem!
Coetzee wanted to be a candidate in the 2014 European Parliament election for the Dutch Party for the Animals. His candidature was however rejected by the Dutch election board, which argued that candidates had to prove legal residence in the European Union to be allowed.
Op ‘n stadium in sy lewe het Coetzee jagtogte geniet en katte met ‘n haelgeweer geskiet (!!).
Coetzee is known as reclusive and avoids publicity to such an extent that he did not collect either of his two Booker Prizes in person.[45][46] South African writer Rian Malan has said that:
Coetzee is a man of almost monkish self-discipline and dedication. He does not drink, smoke, or eat meat. He cycles vast distances to keep fit and spends at least an hour at his writing-desk each morning, seven days a week. 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.[47]
Asked about this comment in an interview by email, Coetzee said, "I have met Rian Malan only once in my life. He does not know me and is not qualified to talk about my character." [48]
As a result of his reclusive nature, signed copies of Coetzee's fiction are highly sought after.[49] Recognising this, he was a key figure in the establishment of Oak Tree Press's First Chapter Series, limited edition signed works by literary greats to raise money for the child victims and orphans of the African HIV/AIDS crisis.[50]
Kannemeyer gee baie aandag aan die sosiale sy van Coetzee se karakter. Terwyl Coetzee nie voldoen aan die karikatuur wat Malan voorhou nie, is daar tog elemente van waarheid in. Dit kom baie duidelik na vore in Kannemeyer se eie beskrywing van hom as ‘n intens private en teruggetrokke persoon, sy werkywer en dissipline, sy afkeer van (sommige) openbare optredes en joernaliste, sy stiltes, sy swygsaamheid. Hy sal nie die lewe van ‘n partytjie wees al dansend met papierhoedjie en fluitjie nie. Hy word beskryf as nederig, ingtoë -dit kan natuurlik opsigself ook ‘n sonde wees! Hy is wel deeglik “sosiaal betrokke” soos sy welsynswerk, bevordering van kuns en aandag aan jong skrywers, petisies wat hy onderteken en aanprysing van werke toon. Sy wroeging met die Suid-Afrikaanse problematiek gaan voort, soos die boek The Good Story oor waarheid en fiksie toon. Sy altruïsme kom ook na vore in die wyse waarop hy ander die kans gee om uit die industrie wat om hom onstaan het, te baat bv Kannemeyer en Cossee.
... Coetzee has penned screenplays for In the Heart of the Country and Waiting for the Barbarians. These have yet to be produced, but are published in J.M. Coetzee: Two Screenplays, ed. Hermann Wittenberg (Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 2014) ISBN 978-1-77582-080-2
‘n Nuwe rigting
‘n Komplekse, begaafde mens, som dit dalk die beste op. Ek dink egter hy was verkeerd oor die barbare wat gevlug het.
5. Blik op JM se Australiese lewe
...
There is a sense, then, in which Coetzee’s “Australianness” is deliberately and explicitly adopted and stressed, and there is a real sense in which thinking of Coetzee as an Australian writer is uncontroversial. But there are also problems with this approach, and these problems extend beyond the need to arbitrate between the competing nationalist claims of South Africa and Australia on Coetzee’s work and reputation
In a sense, the colloquium itself can be seen to participate in this struggle. A self-conscious act of nation-building, or nation-branding, it seeks to both claim and champion Coetzee as a national cultural artefact. But there is also a profound tension at the heart of projects such as this. Not only is there is a deep irony in attempting to situate Coetzee, a writer whose oeuvre relentlessly interrogates distinctions between cosmopolitan centres and provincial peripheries, and whose work strenuously resists straightforward classification (a form of “writing out of all the camps”), comfortably within a traditionally nationalist framework; but the attempt to “claim” Coetzee as an Australian also seems to belie an underlying (and wholly unjustified) sense of cultural inadequacy.
More than once at conference Coetzee’s decision to relocate to Adelaide was cited as evidence that the city (and by inference the country, the continent) is not as hostile to the writerly life, the intellectual life, as might be presumed; that Coetzee’s decision to move here is evidence, proof, of a cultural vitality that is assumed by the wider world not to exist. But given the location of the conference (at the Hawke Research Institute, one of the world’s leading humanities and social science research centres) and the abundant evidence of lively intellectual culture, highly engaged students and diverse creative performances showcased at it, this seems an odd claim. It speaks to and reveals the deep wounds that persist in postcolonial societies, which have been conditioned to conceive of their own culture, their own place, their own work, as minor, secondary, of lesser importance.
Rather than seeking to position Coetzee within a nationalistic discourse that his own work relentlessly interrogates, we might do better to meditate on what his work implies about that theme – that the concept of the “barbarian” is a function of Empire and a reflection of it, and as such it reveals more about the psychology of Empire than it does about those who are defined as lying outside or beyond it.
6. Grepe uit JM se onlangse doen en late
www.adelaide.edu.au/jmcoetzeecentre/
A place where inspiration, ideas and invention come together. The J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice is a research centre devoted to understanding creativity and a cultural hub where leading literary, musical and multimedia scholars and artists can learn from one another and collaborate.
www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/20/j-m-coetzee-and-the-truth-that-lies.html
How do you evaluate a novelist whose works are littered with scathing self-assessments? The Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee has articulated so many harsh criticisms of himself and his fiction within his own novels that it sometimes seems the only thing left for critics to do is praise him. He’s already got the negatives covered.
A therapist might argue—and Kurtz does—that ignoring or forgetting certain unsavory aspects of our individual histories is sometimes an essential component of psychic health. Coetzee is sympathetic to this, but scruples nag at him: “What happens to justice, I ask myself, if we are free to ignore aspects of the past in the name of personal growth?” As a white South African, of course, Coetzee sees both personal and political dimensions to the ethics of forgetting. How can he ignore the atrocities committed by his own ancestors?
www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/08/national-centre-for-writing-project-in-norwich-granted-900000
Backed by major writers including JM Coetzee, Margaret Atwood and Anthony Horowitz, plans to open the National Centre for Writing, in Norwich – a first in the UK – have moved closer to fruition after the project was awarded a grant of almost £1m. The project is being organised by the Writers’ Centre Norwich, a literature development agency.
www.litnet.co.za/jm-coetzee-se-summertime-2009-as-laatwerk/
...
Comparing Kannemeyer’s factual biographical account of Coetzee’s life and Coetzee’s half-fictionalised version accentuates the fact that Coetzee was not only completing Dusklands during the period in focus in Summertime, but was also finalising his translation of Marcellus Emants’s Een nagelaten bekentenis (1894), as A posthumous confession. Both books were published internationally for the first time in 1975 (Dusklands appearing at Ravan Press in South Africa a year earlier), roughly the period when Summertime ends. The Coetzee text thus also plays ironically on the idea of a “confession after death” (with the centrality of the concept of confession well established in Coetzee’s ars poetica), comprising as it does fragments, fictionalised or not, from the writer’s diaries of 1972–1975 framing the text.
The important aspect of the language motif in this semi-fictional (auto)biographical text includes tentative suggestions via the case of extinct Khoi and San languages, of language death also for Afrikaans in the future. This is tenuously linked to the poet Breyten Breytenbach as a contemporary South African Afrikaans writer of Coetzee’s generation. Seemingly throwaway references throughout the text to the Afrikaans poet, his political imprisonment and the effect of his writing in Afrikaans as a “vernacular or dialect” versus Coetzee’s choice for the “world language” of English, suggest thought-provoking links between the two writers. Firstly, for a noticeable shift in Coetzee’s thinking during this late work phase about English as his “first language” in which he writes, and which he learnt from books, versus his “mother tongue”, or rather his “father’s tongue”, which he learnt as child and on Voëlfontein in the Karoo. He states that he was reading Derrida’s book on the mother tongue issue, and since living in Australia started feeling uncomfortable with the “Anglo weltanschauung” (letter 27 May 2009 in Here and now, 2013):
[…] I started thinking about the subject of the mother tongue after reading Derrida. I began to feel my own situation more acutely after moving to Australia, which – despite the fact that within its territory there are scores of Aboriginal languages still clinging to life, and despite the fact that since 1945 it has encouraged massive immigration from southern Europe and Asia – is far more “English” than my native South Africa. In Australia public life is monolingual. More important, relations to reality are mediated in a notably uninterrogated way through a single language, English.
The effect on me of living in an environment so saturated with English has been a peculiar one: it has created more and more of a skeptical distance between myself and what I would loosely call the Anglo weltanschauung, with its inbuilt templates of how one thinks, how one feels, how one relates to other people, and so forth.
...
www.litnet.co.za/gelyke-kanse-ontvang-internasionale-steun/
...
Die Nobelpryswenner JM Coetzee en die bekende Britse oud-diplomaat lord Robin Renwick het hul steun verleen aan die veldtog om Afrikaans se gelyke status met Engels as onderrigtaal aan die Universiteit Stellenbosch te behou.
Die twee internasionaal bekende persoonlikhede gee stukrag aan die veldtog genaamd Gelyke Kanse, wat verlede week deur ’n groep besorgde Suid-Afrikaners begin is. Volgens die organiseerders van die veldtog kry hulle dwarsoor Suid-Afrika en uit die buiteland ondersteuning vir hul inisiatief, wat vanweë die relevante grondwetlike kwessies van menseregte, gelykwaardigheid en veeltaligheid groot belangstelling uitlok.
...
1. Algemeen
Die skakels, hier, hier en hier, is algemene agtergrond.
Die bladsy-verwysings is na die biografie: Kannemeyer: JM Coetzee, Jonathan Ball, 2012.
‘n Mens sien natuurlik Coetzee deur Kannemeyer se biografiese oë, wat alreeds ‘n afwatering van die onderwerp inhou. Gegewe egter die baie bronne van die verstommende klomp inliging, kan ‘n mens seker aanvaar dat hier minder fiksie is as in Coetzee se eie lewensweergawes. Kannemeyer self steun openlik by tye swaar op Coetzee se eie “fiktiewe” biografie – sien deel II van die voorwoord (pp 8-11). Nie alle inligting oor Coetzee is in die boek nie, want sommige daarvan mag eers gepubliseer word na Coetzee se dood (p 7).
Ek dink ‘n probleem met die biografie is dat dit eintlik ‘n onvoltooide werk is. Onvoltooid in drie opsigte: Coetzee se lewe gaan steeds aan en hy stoom voort met nuwe werke. Tweedens, die materiaal in die biografie is plek-plek onvolledig geïntegreer en verwerk en derdens, is dit ook nie altyd feitlik volledig nie. Die laaste kwessie eerste, want dit is werklik niks: Daar is ‘n paar eregrade wat oor die hoof gesien is en een werk waarvan nie melding gemaak word nie (sien die hersienne lys van Coetzee se werk wat later volg). Daar is ook by my ‘n algemene indruk dat die detail oor die drukkersgeskiedenis van boeke mettertyd afneem – nie noodwendig ten kwade nie.
2. Biografie van lewende persoon
Ek het nog altyd ‘n probleem gehad met biografieë wat gedurende ‘n persoon se lewe verskyn, want dit kan nie volledig wees so lank hy lewe nie. Aan die ander kant, veral hier, werp dit lig op Coetzee se werk, wat ‘n mens net kan verwelkom. Dit het my oë oopgemaak en my belangstelling geprikkel in werke wat ek in die verbygaan as vervelig beskou het. Ek bely dat hierdie inderdaad die eerste “Coetzee-boek” is wat ek ooit lees. Meer sal volg.
My nuuskierigheid oor Coetzee se verhouding met Suid-Afrika, UK, Voëlfontein, Prins Albert, Afrikaans en Afrikanerskap speel ook ‘n rol in my belangstelling. Van sy idees waai soos ‘n koel bries deur die aangeplakte, mite-gedrewe, kunsmatige wêreld waarin die stedelike mens funksioneer en in illusie leef. Graag wil ek glo dat die skerpsinnige insigte vloei uit ‘n verafrikaansde (of miskien verengelsde) kolonialis se aardsheid.
Ek wonder of onderliggend aan Kannemeyer se besluit om die biografie aan te pak, nie soortgelyke oorwegings gegeld het nie. As biograaf van ‘n magdom persone was dit ‘n natuurlike keuse. Coetzee se ongelooflike prestasies op die wêreldverhoog en sy relatief onbekendheid (ongewildheid?) in Suid-Afrika, het moontlik ook ‘n rol gespeel. Self gee Kannemeyer te kenne dat die idee om oor Coetzee te skryf van oud-uitgewer Hannes van Zyl kom. Miskien was die sneller Attridge se opmerking in 2005 oor die onontginde outobiografiese elemente in Coetzee se werk (p9).
3. Die Derde Sonde: Integrasie en verwerking van materiaal
Persoonlik kan ek nie Coetzee se totale afkeer (onder andere) van Afrikaanssprekendes, Reagan, Bush, Dan Roodt (‘n student van Kannemeyer) en sy aanhang van die kommuniste (Russe), volkome omhels nie. Ek (soos sommige stiksiende kolonialiste) het ook bedenkinge oor of die koloniale regtig so minderwaardig is. Trots in my onkunde!
Aan die skewe stereotipering van die Afrikaners (nog nooit ‘n homogene groep nie), doen Kannemeyer lustig mee en apartheid word goed en breedvoerig met die vuis en uit die vuis afgeransel. Ook word Afrikaanse literatuur en skrywers van tyd tot tyd ietwat onnodig ingesleep. So leer ons dat ons Afrikaanse mense reeds die kwessie van die sosiale betrokkenheid van skrywers herkou het; die strewe na die groot (Suid-) Afrikaanse roman is niks nuuts nie; ons eie kundiges het lankal die noodsaak verkondig om die agterlike plaaslike ( “the provincial”) te ontsnap. Was die Afrikaanse skrywers regtig hul tyd so ver vooruit?! ‘n Voetnota vertel dat Boerneef (soos Coetzee) by UK ook op eksamenboeke sy werke geskryf het. Ons word vergas op die boute en moere van die sensuurstelsel. ‘n Dik boek word nog dikker.
Wat verder hinder, is eindelose herhaling soos bv Coetzee se afskaling sedert die 90s, sy nederigheid, inkennigheid, ingetoënheid, sy sosiaal aangepasdheid, sy fietsry, sy politieke ingesteldheid, sy drang om die koloniale minderwaardige te ontsnap, sy verhouding met vriendinne. Alhoewel die normale tydsverloop gevolg word, is daar tog ‘n rondspring tussen datums wat die gemalike vertering van die boek belemmer. Coetzee se werke, pryse, toekennings, optredes en ere-doktorsgrade word met eentonige reëlmaat oor die biografie versprei. Baie hiervan kon bylaes of voetnotas gewees het. Die reuse omvang van Coetzee se totaliteit ( “oeuvre”, noem Kannemeyer dit) kom dramaties so na vore, maar word vervelig. Die ontstaan en ontwikkeling van die Costello-konsep roep om ‘n eenmalige tematiese behandeling; so ook die kwessie van realisme (sien die Sakeregister sv “realisme”). Die hantering van die kwessies van biografie en outobiografie in Deel II van die Voorwoord (pp8-11) is ‘n illustrasie van wat ek graag sou wou gesien het in verband met ander temas.
In die indeks soek ek tervergeefs na materiaal wat ek weet in die boek is (bv Boerneef, Lindiwe Sisulu en As woman grows older, Universiteit van Strathclyde). Waarom die persoonsname (‘n aparte lys) nie in die algemene indeks kan in nie, verstaan ek nie. Sekere aanhalings sou ‘n mens ook daar verwag (“Die dans van die pen”; “Die Labirint van my geskiedenis”). Die rykdom van bylaes van Kannemeyer se Leipoldt-biografie toon in kontras die spartaanse opset hier. Die laaste versorger van die boek (ek neem aan dis Hannes van Zyl) is ‘n spookskadu wat, behalwe die woord “myself” in die Redakteursnota, moeilik geïdentifiseer word.
Die volumes genealogiese materiaal (tot in die derde en vierde geslag!) is tipies Kannemeyer en soos gewoonlik borduur hy voort op sy (gekke-) teorie dat skryfvermoë in voorouers geneties oorgedra word na die nageslag.
‘n Interessante verskuilde aspek is Kannemeyer se ervarings by UK waar hy in 1962 gedoseer het en weer in 1973-1974. Dit het waarskynlike bygedra tot sy uiters akkurate tekening van Coetzee se tye daar en bv die Gillham sage (wat ek voel ietwat eensydig is). In die 70s was hy en Coetzee dus beide lektore by UK en in 1962 mis hulle mekaar net-net.
Die uiteensetting is oor die algemeen vlot, behalwe Coetzee se lotgevalle, na sy Buffalo-protes, tot sy aankoms in SA, en sy uiteindelike indeling, vir administratiewe doeleindes, by die UK Graduate School.
Die gebrek aan integrasie en die omissies, vermoed ek, is ‘n gevolg van Kannemeyer se onverwagte vertrek en die vererwing van ‘n half-voltooide werk - ten spyte van die bewering dat die manuskrip reeds voltooi was.
Kannemeyer wys op die gemaklike verhouding wat Coetzee met sy Nederlandse uitgewer Cossee het en waar sy boeke in Nederlands verskyn, nog voor dit in Engels uitgegee word. Hierdie verhouding duur voort soos gesien kan word in die lys van onlangse boeke hierna. Daar is inderdaad ‘n nuwe boek van Coetzee op pad waarvan reeds melding gemaak word op die Cossee webwerf.
4. Coetzee se Wikipedia-inskrywing: opmerkings
Born in Cape Town, Cape Province, Union of South Africa, on 9 February 1940 to Afrikaner parents,[5][6] his father, Zacharias Coetzee [Jack], was an occasional attorney and government employee, and his mother, Vera Coetzee (born Wehmeyer), a schoolteacher.[7][8]
Die staatsamptenaarspos waarna hier verwys word, was waarskynlik Jack se aanstelling as kontroleur van verhuring (behuising?) om terugkerende soldate na die oorlog te help hervestig. Hierdie pos is afgeskaf toe die hervestiging voltooid was en het, volgens Kannemeyer, niks met onderduimse politiek te doen soos in Coetzee se Boyhood te kenne gegee word nie (pp47-48 van Kannemeyer en p671n35).
In 2013, Richard Poplak of the Daily Maverick described Coetzee as "inarguably the most celebrated and decorated living English-language author".[4]
Die omvang van sy werk en die erkenning wat hy wêreldwyd geniet, bevestig hierdie bewering.
He holds honorary doctorates from The American University of Paris,[35] the University of Adelaide,[36] La Trobe University,[37] the University of Natal,[38] the University of Oxford,[39] Rhodes University,[40] the State University of New York at Buffalo,[32] the University of Strathclyde,[32] the University of Technology, Sydney,[41] the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań[42] and the Universidad Iberoamericana.[43]
Hierdie lys is nie volledig nie. ‘n Lys saamgestel uit Kannemeyer en Wikipedia volg later.
When he initially moved to Australia, he had cited the South African government's lax attitude to crime in that country as a reason for the move, leading to a spat with Thabo Mbeki, who, speaking of Coetzee's novel Disgrace stated that "South Africa is not only a place of rape".[45]
It has been argued that Coetzee's 1999 novel Disgrace allegorises South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.[58] Asked about his views on the TRC, Coetzee has stated: "In a state with no official religion, the TRC was somewhat anomalous: a court of a certain kind based to a large degree on Christian teaching and on a strand of Christian teaching accepted in their hearts by only a tiny proportion of the citizenry. Only the future will tell what the TRC managed to achieve".[59]
Wat ek wonder is, as jy “Christian teaching” weggooi, waarop baseer jy etiese oorwegings soos diereregte? Konsensus, Internasionale reg, rasionalisme, Islam, ‘n warm gevoel in jou maag?
Coetzee has never specified any political orientation, though has alluded to politics in his work. Writing about his past in the third person, Coetzee states in Doubling the Point that:
Politically, the raznochinets can go either way. But during his student years he, this person, this subject, my subject, steers clear of the right. As a child in Worcester he has seen enough of the Afrikaner right, enough of its rant, to last him a lifetime. In fact, even before Worcester he has perhaps seen more of cruelty and violence than should have been allowed to a child. So as a student he moves on the fringes of the left without being part of the left. Sympathetic to the human concerns of the left, he is alienated, when the crunch comes, by its language – by all political language, in fact.[62]
Asked about the latter part of this quote in an interview, Coetzee said:
There is no longer a left worth speaking of, and a language of the left. The language of politics, with its new economistic bent, is even more repellent than it was fifteen years ago.[59]
Wat Kannemeyer wel duidelik maak is dat Coetzee sedert sy jeug anti-apartheid, anti-Afrikaner was. Sy ouers was VP. Ek twyfel of hy ooit ANC was, aangesien hy die misbruik van kinders vir politieke oogmerke en geweld (terrorisme) afgekeur het – in elk geval in sy boeke. Op Universiteit was hy ook nie gelukkig met die linkses nie (p92).
In 2005, Coetzee criticised contemporary anti-terrorism laws as resembling those employed by the apartheid regime in South Africa: "I used to think that the people who created [South Africa's] laws that effectively suspended the rule of law were moral barbarians. Now I know they were just pioneers ahead of their time".[63]
Die hoogheilige twak oor die rule of law wat die weste (die metropolis) mee te koop geloop het, word hier aan die kaak gestel. Ek twyfel of Coetzee met my herformulering van sy uitspraak sal saamstem!
Coetzee wanted to be a candidate in the 2014 European Parliament election for the Dutch Party for the Animals. His candidature was however rejected by the Dutch election board, which argued that candidates had to prove legal residence in the European Union to be allowed.
Op ‘n stadium in sy lewe het Coetzee jagtogte geniet en katte met ‘n haelgeweer geskiet (!!).
Coetzee is known as reclusive and avoids publicity to such an extent that he did not collect either of his two Booker Prizes in person.[45][46] South African writer Rian Malan has said that:
Coetzee is a man of almost monkish self-discipline and dedication. He does not drink, smoke, or eat meat. He cycles vast distances to keep fit and spends at least an hour at his writing-desk each morning, seven days a week. 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.[47]
Asked about this comment in an interview by email, Coetzee said, "I have met Rian Malan only once in my life. He does not know me and is not qualified to talk about my character." [48]
As a result of his reclusive nature, signed copies of Coetzee's fiction are highly sought after.[49] Recognising this, he was a key figure in the establishment of Oak Tree Press's First Chapter Series, limited edition signed works by literary greats to raise money for the child victims and orphans of the African HIV/AIDS crisis.[50]
Kannemeyer gee baie aandag aan die sosiale sy van Coetzee se karakter. Terwyl Coetzee nie voldoen aan die karikatuur wat Malan voorhou nie, is daar tog elemente van waarheid in. Dit kom baie duidelik na vore in Kannemeyer se eie beskrywing van hom as ‘n intens private en teruggetrokke persoon, sy werkywer en dissipline, sy afkeer van (sommige) openbare optredes en joernaliste, sy stiltes, sy swygsaamheid. Hy sal nie die lewe van ‘n partytjie wees al dansend met papierhoedjie en fluitjie nie. Hy word beskryf as nederig, ingtoë -dit kan natuurlik opsigself ook ‘n sonde wees! Hy is wel deeglik “sosiaal betrokke” soos sy welsynswerk, bevordering van kuns en aandag aan jong skrywers, petisies wat hy onderteken en aanprysing van werke toon. Sy wroeging met die Suid-Afrikaanse problematiek gaan voort, soos die boek The Good Story oor waarheid en fiksie toon. Sy altruïsme kom ook na vore in die wyse waarop hy ander die kans gee om uit die industrie wat om hom onstaan het, te baat bv Kannemeyer en Cossee.
... Coetzee has penned screenplays for In the Heart of the Country and Waiting for the Barbarians. These have yet to be produced, but are published in J.M. Coetzee: Two Screenplays, ed. Hermann Wittenberg (Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 2014) ISBN 978-1-77582-080-2
‘n Nuwe rigting
‘n Komplekse, begaafde mens, som dit dalk die beste op. Ek dink egter hy was verkeerd oor die barbare wat gevlug het.
5. Blik op JM se Australiese lewe
...
There is a sense, then, in which Coetzee’s “Australianness” is deliberately and explicitly adopted and stressed, and there is a real sense in which thinking of Coetzee as an Australian writer is uncontroversial. But there are also problems with this approach, and these problems extend beyond the need to arbitrate between the competing nationalist claims of South Africa and Australia on Coetzee’s work and reputation
In a sense, the colloquium itself can be seen to participate in this struggle. A self-conscious act of nation-building, or nation-branding, it seeks to both claim and champion Coetzee as a national cultural artefact. But there is also a profound tension at the heart of projects such as this. Not only is there is a deep irony in attempting to situate Coetzee, a writer whose oeuvre relentlessly interrogates distinctions between cosmopolitan centres and provincial peripheries, and whose work strenuously resists straightforward classification (a form of “writing out of all the camps”), comfortably within a traditionally nationalist framework; but the attempt to “claim” Coetzee as an Australian also seems to belie an underlying (and wholly unjustified) sense of cultural inadequacy.
More than once at conference Coetzee’s decision to relocate to Adelaide was cited as evidence that the city (and by inference the country, the continent) is not as hostile to the writerly life, the intellectual life, as might be presumed; that Coetzee’s decision to move here is evidence, proof, of a cultural vitality that is assumed by the wider world not to exist. But given the location of the conference (at the Hawke Research Institute, one of the world’s leading humanities and social science research centres) and the abundant evidence of lively intellectual culture, highly engaged students and diverse creative performances showcased at it, this seems an odd claim. It speaks to and reveals the deep wounds that persist in postcolonial societies, which have been conditioned to conceive of their own culture, their own place, their own work, as minor, secondary, of lesser importance.
Rather than seeking to position Coetzee within a nationalistic discourse that his own work relentlessly interrogates, we might do better to meditate on what his work implies about that theme – that the concept of the “barbarian” is a function of Empire and a reflection of it, and as such it reveals more about the psychology of Empire than it does about those who are defined as lying outside or beyond it.
6. Grepe uit JM se onlangse doen en late
www.adelaide.edu.au/jmcoetzeecentre/
A place where inspiration, ideas and invention come together. The J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice is a research centre devoted to understanding creativity and a cultural hub where leading literary, musical and multimedia scholars and artists can learn from one another and collaborate.
www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/20/j-m-coetzee-and-the-truth-that-lies.html
How do you evaluate a novelist whose works are littered with scathing self-assessments? The Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee has articulated so many harsh criticisms of himself and his fiction within his own novels that it sometimes seems the only thing left for critics to do is praise him. He’s already got the negatives covered.
A therapist might argue—and Kurtz does—that ignoring or forgetting certain unsavory aspects of our individual histories is sometimes an essential component of psychic health. Coetzee is sympathetic to this, but scruples nag at him: “What happens to justice, I ask myself, if we are free to ignore aspects of the past in the name of personal growth?” As a white South African, of course, Coetzee sees both personal and political dimensions to the ethics of forgetting. How can he ignore the atrocities committed by his own ancestors?
www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/08/national-centre-for-writing-project-in-norwich-granted-900000
Backed by major writers including JM Coetzee, Margaret Atwood and Anthony Horowitz, plans to open the National Centre for Writing, in Norwich – a first in the UK – have moved closer to fruition after the project was awarded a grant of almost £1m. The project is being organised by the Writers’ Centre Norwich, a literature development agency.
www.litnet.co.za/jm-coetzee-se-summertime-2009-as-laatwerk/
...
Comparing Kannemeyer’s factual biographical account of Coetzee’s life and Coetzee’s half-fictionalised version accentuates the fact that Coetzee was not only completing Dusklands during the period in focus in Summertime, but was also finalising his translation of Marcellus Emants’s Een nagelaten bekentenis (1894), as A posthumous confession. Both books were published internationally for the first time in 1975 (Dusklands appearing at Ravan Press in South Africa a year earlier), roughly the period when Summertime ends. The Coetzee text thus also plays ironically on the idea of a “confession after death” (with the centrality of the concept of confession well established in Coetzee’s ars poetica), comprising as it does fragments, fictionalised or not, from the writer’s diaries of 1972–1975 framing the text.
The important aspect of the language motif in this semi-fictional (auto)biographical text includes tentative suggestions via the case of extinct Khoi and San languages, of language death also for Afrikaans in the future. This is tenuously linked to the poet Breyten Breytenbach as a contemporary South African Afrikaans writer of Coetzee’s generation. Seemingly throwaway references throughout the text to the Afrikaans poet, his political imprisonment and the effect of his writing in Afrikaans as a “vernacular or dialect” versus Coetzee’s choice for the “world language” of English, suggest thought-provoking links between the two writers. Firstly, for a noticeable shift in Coetzee’s thinking during this late work phase about English as his “first language” in which he writes, and which he learnt from books, versus his “mother tongue”, or rather his “father’s tongue”, which he learnt as child and on Voëlfontein in the Karoo. He states that he was reading Derrida’s book on the mother tongue issue, and since living in Australia started feeling uncomfortable with the “Anglo weltanschauung” (letter 27 May 2009 in Here and now, 2013):
[…] I started thinking about the subject of the mother tongue after reading Derrida. I began to feel my own situation more acutely after moving to Australia, which – despite the fact that within its territory there are scores of Aboriginal languages still clinging to life, and despite the fact that since 1945 it has encouraged massive immigration from southern Europe and Asia – is far more “English” than my native South Africa. In Australia public life is monolingual. More important, relations to reality are mediated in a notably uninterrogated way through a single language, English.
The effect on me of living in an environment so saturated with English has been a peculiar one: it has created more and more of a skeptical distance between myself and what I would loosely call the Anglo weltanschauung, with its inbuilt templates of how one thinks, how one feels, how one relates to other people, and so forth.
...
www.litnet.co.za/gelyke-kanse-ontvang-internasionale-steun/
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Die Nobelpryswenner JM Coetzee en die bekende Britse oud-diplomaat lord Robin Renwick het hul steun verleen aan die veldtog om Afrikaans se gelyke status met Engels as onderrigtaal aan die Universiteit Stellenbosch te behou.
Die twee internasionaal bekende persoonlikhede gee stukrag aan die veldtog genaamd Gelyke Kanse, wat verlede week deur ’n groep besorgde Suid-Afrikaners begin is. Volgens die organiseerders van die veldtog kry hulle dwarsoor Suid-Afrika en uit die buiteland ondersteuning vir hul inisiatief, wat vanweë die relevante grondwetlike kwessies van menseregte, gelykwaardigheid en veeltaligheid groot belangstelling uitlok.
...