‘The generation of white South Africans to which I belong, and the next generation, and perhaps the generaton after that too, will go bowed under the shame of the crimes that were committed in their name. Those among them who endeavor to salvage personal pride by pointedly refusing to bow before the judgment of the world sugger from a burning resentment, a bristling anger at being condenmed without adequate hearing, that in psychic terms may turn out to be an equally heavy burden. Such people might learn a trick or two from the British about managing collective guilt. The British have simply declared their independence from their imperial forebears. The Empire was long ago abolished, they say, so what is there for us to feel responsible about? And anyway, the people who ran the Empire were Victorians, dour stiff folk in dark clothes, nothing like us.’
– Señor C, a writer and main character of J M Coetzee’s Diary of a Mad Year (p44), which I just finished. While reading the novel, it was not always clear where Senor C begins and Coetzee ends. Good read, with flashes of Coetzee’s brilliance as a writer, but I still maintain Coetzee will never write The Life and Times of Michael K again (maybe moving to Australia has something to do with it?).
Mmm, the old internal debate of which is one’s favourite Coetzee novel. I only discovered Coetzee in 1990, when he had already published Age of Iron. Michael K used to be my favourite too – just for that single-mindedness of the protagonist, despite the setbacks. I mean, his mother dies in Stellenbosch! A long way from her birthplace.
But now, still, the Master of Petersburg is my favourite and I feel, if one had to be introduced to his later period, that is the place to start, and not Disgrace, which is where I went off Coetzee. Not because of politics – the politics and the political in his novels have always been for those of steely hearts and stomachs. I went off Coetzee because Disgrace was too much like Coetzee, the lines so perfect and tense, as if they would snap any moment.
Master of Petersburg, though, is tender – a father ruminating about his possible failures as a parent; and clever for its ventriloquist attack on the SA critics of socialist realist bent.
I grew tired of Costello, but I’m interested in this latest. My bank manager indicates, however, that I must wait for the paperback edition.