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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
Notes
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This novel reintroduces the character of Elizabeth Costello from Coetzee's 2003 novel, Elizabeth Costello : Eight Lessons.
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Included in the New York Times Book Review's 100 Notable Books of the Year list for 2005.
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Editions and translations have been updated for Slow Man by Eilish Copelin as part of a Semester 2, 2013 scholar's internship. The selection and inclusion of these editions and translations was based on their availability through Australian libraries, namely through the search facilities of Libraries Australia and Trove (National Library of Australia).
Given the international popularity of Coetzee's work, however, this record is not yet comprehensive. Editions and translations not widely available in Australia may not have been indexed. Furthermore, due to the enormous breadth of critical material on Coetzee's work, indexing of secondary sources is also not complete.
Affiliation Notes
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Writing Disability in Australia:
Type of disability Amputated leg. Type of character Primary. Point of view Third person.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Braille.
- Sound recording.
Works about this Work
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'Beauty Does Not Own Itself' : Coetzee’s Feminist Critique of Platonic and Kantian Aesthetics
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Reading Coetzee's Women 2019; (p. 87-109) -
Eurydice’s Curse : J. M. Coetzee and the Prospect of Death
2018
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , February vol. 33 no. 1 2018;'The prospect of death is one of J. M. Coetzee’s central and enduring concerns. As David Attwell observes in his biography, ‘The most trenchant of the purposes of Coetzee’s metafiction . . . is that it is a means whereby he challenges himself with sharply existential questions’. My claim in this essay is that Coetzee uses the act of writing existentially to orient himself and his readers to the prospect of death. I argue that Coetzee treats the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as a story about how to deal with the prospect of death. What seems to terrify the Coetzeean protagonist is the thought of the absolute solitariness of death. I call this the curse of Eurydice. Eurydice’s fate in the myth is to be left alone in the Underworld, dying for a second time after her impatient lover turns to gaze at her before they have safely reached the surface of the earth. To take Eurydice’s point of view in the story is to begin to glimpse the solitariness of death. One of the roles of women in Coetzee’s fiction, I suggest, is to mitigate the male character’s fear of this solitariness by conducting him to the threshold of death, but no further.' (Publication abstract)
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‘Waywardness’: J. M. Coetzee and the Ethos of Authenticity
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Anglia : Zeitschrift Fur Englische Philologie , September vol. 134 no. 3 2016; (p. 444–467) 'My paper focuses on a modern socio-cultural disposition (and personal habitus) in Coetzee’s work which hitherto has not been given much attention and which I call ‘Ethos of Authenticity’. This can be understood as a post-Romantic and humanist individualism which rejects, to use Coetzee’s words, “giving oneself to a part that is already written”, and insists on a “private”, and “untenable historical position” against “collectivity” and “moral vigilance”. This attitude holds for both the writer Coetzee (in his interviews and essays) as well as (with variations) for his major figures including the biographically fictional “J. M. Coetzee”. However, in order to become credible and of communicative and literary relevance, such a position is inexorably linked with truthfulness, sincerity or a ‘horizon of wider significance’ (Ch. Taylor). Truthfulness along with being true to him- or herself are among Coetzee’s major concerns in form and content, even though claims to ‘truth’, ‘representation’ and the reliability of textual consciousness and communication have been profoundly called into question after post-structuralism. My paper, then, will centre on Coetzee’s attempts at nonetheless simulating or producing authenticity for his writing and his characters (contradictory as this may sound). These strategies are: silence or semantic gaps, the often hyperrealistic depiction of suffering and bodies in their pre-discursive presence, the emancipation (and relative autonomy) of narrative figures, along with ‘countervoices’ and dialogicity: alter authenticating ego.' (Publication abstract) -
y
Sympathy for the Animal(ized) Other in Selected Works of J. M. Coetzee
Hong Kong
:
2015
8424922
2015
single work
thesis
'Sympathy, understood to be the capacity to suffer with the other, has long been regarded as one of the major vehicles to inspire an ethical communion. By minimizing differences through identification, sympathy helps us resonate with other beings and to exist in relation to them. This thesis examines the ethical endeavors on the vexed question of sympathy in four works by J. M. Coetzee - - The Lives of Animals (1999), Disgrace (1999), Elizabeth Costello (2003) and Slow Man (2005), all of which manifest Coetzee's notable interest in a fully-engaged sympathetic imagination into depraved and deprived human or nonhuman subjects. ' (Thesis summary)
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'A Dozy City' : Adelaide in J.M. Coetzee's Slow Man and Amy T. Matthew's End of the Night Girl
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Adelaide : A Literary City 2014; (p. 253-266)
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Cyclist Thrown By His Wounded Self
2005
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 27-28 August 2005; (p. 8-9)
— Review of Slow Man 2005 single work novel -
Identity and the Very Question of Existence
2005
single work
review
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 3 September 2005; (p. 12)
— Review of Slow Man 2005 single work novel -
Playing with Words
2005
single work
review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 3 September 2005; (p. 10)
— Review of Slow Man 2005 single work novel -
Portrait of Pain and Pity
2005
single work
review
— Appears in: The Age , 3 September 2005; (p. 5)
— Review of Slow Man 2005 single work novel -
Flawless on the Outside
2005
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 3-4 September 2005; (p. 19)
— Review of Slow Man 2005 single work novel -
Coetzee on Man Booker Longlist
2005
single work
column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 13 August 2005; (p. 16) -
J. M. Coetzee at the National Library
2005
single work
column
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , September no. 274 2005; (p. 1) -
The Babushka Doll of Narrative
2007
single work
column
— Appears in: The Age , 3 February 2007; (p. 30) -
Coetzee's Haunting of Australian Literature
2007
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , Special Issue 2007; (p. 37-51) Takolander argues that: 'Literary texts, or arguably any texts -- including genre fiction, television soaps and blockbuster films -- in making possible an experience of haunting and thus of transformation occupy an ethical space'. She discusses ways in which J. M. Coetzee's novels Elizabeth Costello and Slow Man 'manifest a deep engagement with the transformative and ethical potentialities of literature'. -
Australian Fiction 2005-2006
2006
single work
review
— Appears in: Westerly , November vol. 51 no. 2006; (p. 108-119)
Awards
- 2007 shortlisted International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
- 2006 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards — The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction
- 2006 shortlisted The Age Book of the Year Award — Fiction Prize
- 2006 shortlisted New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards — Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
- 2005 longlisted The Booker Prize
- Adelaide, South Australia,