🦋 Spoiler?
...Not really, I think... But if you want to read Coetzee's Summertime with no foreknowledge, skip this post. Otherwise, look below the fold.
 Every single article I have seen about Summertime contains right up front -- and this was on the blurb on the book jacket, too -- a note about the nature of the book: that it is a young writer's research for a biography of the recently deceased South African author John Coetzee. As I was reading the first section, Coetzee's notebooks from 1972, I kept thinking, "Well, it might be nice to be reading this without foreknowledge of how it fits into the book as a whole..." Since there is no indication in this section that (a) Coetzee has since died or (b) someone else is researching his life, my reaction to the notebooks is different, possibly distorted, given this knowledge. But as I finish the notebooks -- which function in a way as a preface to the story being told -- and start reading section two, an interview with Julia about her relationship with John, I find that I don't mind the "spoiler." Not sure how I'm justifying this, but my sense is that being given that information up front did not at all diminish the pleasure of reading this book.
posted morning of Sunday, February 21st, 2010
➳ More posts about Summertime
➳ More posts about J.M. Coetzee
➳ More posts about Readings
|
