AustLit

'J. M. Coetzee—winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, twice winner of the Man Booker Prize—is one of the world’s most celebrated and intriguing authors. Yet the heart of his fiction remains elusive.

'In J. M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing, David Attwell explores the extraordinary creative processes behind Coetzee’s novels, from Dusklands to The Childhood of Jesus. Through a close examination of Coetzee’s manuscripts, notebooks and research papers, Attwell reveals the strong autobiographical thread that runs through his work, convincingly demonstrating that Coetzee’s writing proceeds with never-ending self-reflection.

'A preeminent Coetzee scholar, Attwell offers fascinating insight into one of the most important and opaque literary figures of our time.' (Publication summary)

'David Attwell defends the literary and political integrity of the South African novelist J.M. Coetzee, arguing that he has absorbed the textual turn of postmodern culture while still addressing his nation's ethical crisis. As a form of "situational metafiction," Coetzee's novels are shown to reconstruct and critique some of the key discourses in the history of colonialism and apartheid from the eighteenth century to the present. While self-conscious about fiction-making, Coetzee's work takes seriously the condition of the society in which it is produced. Attwell begins by describing the intellectual and political contexts of Coetzee's fiction. He proceeds with a developmental analysis of the corpus of six novels, drawing on Coetzee's other writings in stylistics, literary criticism, translation, political journalism, and popular culture. Attwell's elegantly written analysis deals both with Coetzee's subversion of the dominant culture around him and with his ability to grasp the complexities of giving voice to the anguish of South Africa.' (Publisher's summary)

Nadine Gordimer has written of J.M. Coetzee that his “vision goes to the nerve center of being. What he finds there is more than most people will ever know about themselves, and he conveys it with a brilliant writer’s mastery of tension and elegance.” Doubling the Point takes us to the center of that vision. These essays and interviews, documenting Coetzee’s longtime engagement with his own culture, and with modern culture in general, constitute a literary autobiography of striking intellectual, moral, and political force.

Centrally concerned with the form and content of fiction, Doubling the Point provides rigorous insight into the significance of certain writers (particularly modernists such as Kafka, Musil, and Beckett), the value of intellectual movements (from structuralism and structural linguistics on through deconstruction), and the issues of political involvement and responsibility—not only for Coetzee’s own work, but for fiction writing in general. In interviews prefacing each section of the book, Coetzee reflects on the essays to follow and relates them to his life and work. In these interviews editor David Attwell, remarkably well attuned to his subject, prompts from Coetzee answers of extraordinary depth and interest (Harvard University Press).