🦋 The problem of the opening
Let us assume that, however it may have been done, it is done. Let us take it that the bridge is built and crossed, that we can put it out of our mind.
I started reading Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello today (I went to the library looking for Disgrace, but it has been misfiled -- they put my name in the computer and will let me know when/if it turns up...) and found myself just immediately struck by the spare, elegant beauty of the author's constructions. A few notes at the outset.This novel puts me strongly in mind of In Hovering Flight, there are several points of detail that the two books have in common; I have no idea yet how strong a parallel actually exists though. I talked to Joyce this morning and she said she read Elizabeth Costello last year -- so not a formative influence certainly -- and that she could see where I was coming from with the comparison. I want to call this "a novel of ideas" and to use that as a way of contrasting it with some other books I've been reading lately; every page is sending me off into reveries of reflection from which I need to pull myself back to what I was reading. I think this would be a lousy book to hear read aloud. This book is making me more interested than I've ever been before in reading Ulysses, just so I can have more of a context for understanding The House on Eccles Street.
 Oh and also: I was put in mind a bit of Peter Cole's statement that the translator of a mediæval text is "creating a fictional character" for the author of the text -- I'm not sure how much of a linkage there is to Coetzee's project here since Coetzee is not "translating" Costello's book or indeed showing it to us at all; he is imagining it like Borges does in his fictions. But obviously Coetzee is "creating a fictional character" who's an author -- so, interesting, I'll keep Cole's statement in mind.
posted morning of Saturday, February 7th, 2009
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Glad you are enjoying Elizabeth Costello! I always recommend it, but positive responses to it go around 50/50. For me it's just such a wonderful book, dealing with so many interesting issues in each "lesson".
You made me want to read In Hovering Flight, but I think there's no spanish translation available..
posted afternoon of February 7th, 2009 by Jorge López
Thanks for the recommendation! It's a strange book but definitely good and thought-provoking.
posted morning of February 8th, 2009 by Jeremy
(The parallel with In Hovering Flight is not -- not at all -- in the structure of the two books, which are quite different, but rather in the characters of Elizabeth and Addy, who are cranky in similar ways, and maybe a bit in the portrayal of family dynamics.)
posted morning of February 8th, 2009 by Jeremy
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