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3.34 AVERAGE
3.34 AVERAGE
Well well well, what do we have here. Some sort of abstract allegory? A parable (or series of parables)? An anti-philosophy rant? A pro-philosophy rant? What is the nature of this book?, the book itself practically begs us to ask.
What is the nature of nature, what does it mean to live in this world, how do you live in this world. At times, the book seems to be a series of abstract, conceptual, philosophical conversations [1]. But there's a story, too: a strange, inexplicable story of a man (Simón), a woman (Inés), and a young boy (David) together "by chance", just trying to live and make sense of reality [2]. We, too, are trying to make sense of the world imagined in the book, and perhaps by extension our own world.
The characters speak "Spanish" (and have Spanish names [3]), but of course it is written in English (why Spanish?). Is it an English that sounds like it could have been translated from the Spanish? No, not really. Although the dialog does tend to sound "foreign", in that it's not really contemporary idiomatic English. Deliberate (on the part of Coetzee) of course, as we are in foreign territory here, a foreign reality it seems (at one point the boy sings something in German but he and Simón call it "English"). The world is not familiar at all, and yet also familiar in a strange, it-could-be-this-way way (why couldn't it? why shouldn't it?). We are caught off-guard, we are disoriented, disturbed perhaps (sometimes the way things work in the book's world are eerily similar to the way they work in Belgium [4]). What's going on here? [5] Is it post-apocalyptic, is it post-ironic (or post-anything)? Maybe it's avant-ironic? or is it neither, maybe it's off to the side, parallel. [6] The title is our only guide.
Who is Jesus? There is no mention of him in the book. [7] But the title invites us to see "Jesus" in the boy. The boy shuns violence (turns the other cheek), tries to "save" people from harm, is called a "gentle King", wants "brothers" (to start a Brotherhood), claims to possess magical abilities and the ability to read minds, writes at one point: "I am the truth" (225) So is it an attempt to imagine what the "childhood of Jesus" might have been like?
But maybe the real clue lies in Don Quixote (the reason for the Spanish?), which the boy takes a liking to and begins to read. Simón tells David that the author of the book is Benengeli (no mention of Cervantes, perhaps because the "spine is torn off" (151)). The boy thinks that Quixote is real, and of course he is real, because literature is real, just as Benengeli is as real as Cervantes. Simón says that Benengeli gave the book to the world, and that "therefore it belongs to all of us." (166) Also, David wants to go through the pages in a hurry because otherwise a "hole will open" (there is throughout the idea of holes, gaps, cracks, and (the fear of) falling). So maybe this book is necessary to fill in a hole, a literature hole, a small gap in the narrative of the world.
The style is dry (duh, it's Coetzee), and the book is not long, and yet there's so much there and something somehow manages to come out of it: heart, some kind of magic, the desire to desire, the will to live and start a new life.
[1] aesthetics, goodwill, work, nature, history, memory, logic, language, faith, death, life, etc.
[2] Simón wants a philosophy that "shakes you", changes your life. (238)
[3] Everyone has a name that's not really theirs. It's been given to them, just as they've been "forced" to learn Spanish.
[4] *cheeky wink*
[5] The book doesn't tell us, maybe because it doesn't "suffer from memories" (58).
[6] The paintings of Neo Rauch, which I happened to see while reading the book, are almost a visual representation of the disorienting what-world-is-this? feeling that comes from the book.
[7] Who is God? There is only one mention of God, at the end of the book. "But we don't live under the eye of God" (274).
What is the nature of nature, what does it mean to live in this world, how do you live in this world. At times, the book seems to be a series of abstract, conceptual, philosophical conversations [1]. But there's a story, too: a strange, inexplicable story of a man (Simón), a woman (Inés), and a young boy (David) together "by chance", just trying to live and make sense of reality [2]. We, too, are trying to make sense of the world imagined in the book, and perhaps by extension our own world.
The characters speak "Spanish" (and have Spanish names [3]), but of course it is written in English (why Spanish?). Is it an English that sounds like it could have been translated from the Spanish? No, not really. Although the dialog does tend to sound "foreign", in that it's not really contemporary idiomatic English. Deliberate (on the part of Coetzee) of course, as we are in foreign territory here, a foreign reality it seems (at one point the boy sings something in German but he and Simón call it "English"). The world is not familiar at all, and yet also familiar in a strange, it-could-be-this-way way (why couldn't it? why shouldn't it?). We are caught off-guard, we are disoriented, disturbed perhaps (sometimes the way things work in the book's world are eerily similar to the way they work in Belgium [4]). What's going on here? [5] Is it post-apocalyptic, is it post-ironic (or post-anything)? Maybe it's avant-ironic? or is it neither, maybe it's off to the side, parallel. [6] The title is our only guide.
Who is Jesus? There is no mention of him in the book. [7] But the title invites us to see "Jesus" in the boy. The boy shuns violence (turns the other cheek), tries to "save" people from harm, is called a "gentle King", wants "brothers" (to start a Brotherhood), claims to possess magical abilities and the ability to read minds, writes at one point: "I am the truth" (225) So is it an attempt to imagine what the "childhood of Jesus" might have been like?
But maybe the real clue lies in Don Quixote (the reason for the Spanish?), which the boy takes a liking to and begins to read. Simón tells David that the author of the book is Benengeli (no mention of Cervantes, perhaps because the "spine is torn off" (151)). The boy thinks that Quixote is real, and of course he is real, because literature is real, just as Benengeli is as real as Cervantes. Simón says that Benengeli gave the book to the world, and that "therefore it belongs to all of us." (166) Also, David wants to go through the pages in a hurry because otherwise a "hole will open" (there is throughout the idea of holes, gaps, cracks, and (the fear of) falling). So maybe this book is necessary to fill in a hole, a literature hole, a small gap in the narrative of the world.
The style is dry (duh, it's Coetzee), and the book is not long, and yet there's so much there and something somehow manages to come out of it: heart, some kind of magic, the desire to desire, the will to live and start a new life.
[1] aesthetics, goodwill, work, nature, history, memory, logic, language, faith, death, life, etc.
[2] Simón wants a philosophy that "shakes you", changes your life. (238)
[3] Everyone has a name that's not really theirs. It's been given to them, just as they've been "forced" to learn Spanish.
[4] *cheeky wink*
[5] The book doesn't tell us, maybe because it doesn't "suffer from memories" (58).
[6] The paintings of Neo Rauch, which I happened to see while reading the book, are almost a visual representation of the disorienting what-world-is-this? feeling that comes from the book.
[7] Who is God? There is only one mention of God, at the end of the book. "But we don't live under the eye of God" (274).
I won a copy of this book in a Goodreads contest. I really didn't know what to think when I first opened this book. It is about a young boy named David who arrives in Spain, having lost track of his mother on a boat and being looked after by a man named Simon. Simon takes him in and adopts him as his own son while trying to find David's mother. There are a LOT of literary references here, including Voltaire, Harry Potter, but most of all the New Testament of the Bible. There is a famous quote by someone about books being a very unique form of magic. This is one of those books, for pretty soon you start noticing all of the Bible references and you stop thinking of the child as David but more of Jesus. There are so many references to Jesus...some on nearly every page. Some people have reviewed this book and given it only one star, claiming that Bible allusions are far and few between; I say that those people were not paying attention or maybe have not read enough of the Bible. This is a very well-written book and I heartily recommend it.
The right to be different
To be absolutely clear: this is not a religious book, it isn't even about Jesus. On the contrary, this rather is a very disturbing novel, I would call it a dystopia.
For starters there’s the setting: a vague country, where people arrive by boat, as refugees, "washed clean" of their past. The main characters, the older man Simon and the little David (the boy he took care of during the boat trip), are such refugees. The order in the new country is consciously left impersonal and invisible, but there are clear laws, such as social differentiation (beautiful residential neighborhoods, poor social neighborhoods, refugee camps, etc.) and a very bureaucratic culture where the rules of what is right and what not are omnipresent (very Kafkaian). The people in this country compensate for this by a striking attitude of "benevolence" towards each other and towards the existing order: everyone behaves neatly, even to a certain extent helps others, but without warmth, without feeling, as from an obvious duty.
Simon and David expose this benevolence culture and go against the tide. In the first part of the novel Simon continually questions the fundaments of the social order. In fact, he stands for the passionate man, who wants more than formal contact, respect, and benevolence; and he always craves for more both intellectually, emotionally, sexually and even in the labour process; and he passionately pleads for the individual's right to want more. But with that he clashes with the benevolent indifference of the officials he comes in contact with, with his fellow dock workers, and with his neighbours in the barracks assigned to him.
To me, the Simon figure is the most captivating figure of this intriguing novel. He is perhaps a bit tedious and paternalistic, but he is also a kind of a Socrate, "a louse in the fur" that drives everyone around him to improbable philosophical conversations. With his fellow dock workers, for example, he talks about good and evil, progress and the meaning of labor, the idea of justice and the elusiveness of history. In these discussions the others accept the natural obviousness of the existing order as a reasonable, rational organization, but Simon doesn't agree.
And then there is the little David, who - in his own way - also challenges the existing order; but he's a character that we, as the reader, barely get a grip on. Sometimes he is an angelic boy who charmes people, but he can also be a son of bitch who stubbornly locks into his own imagination and always wants to be right. For instance, he has his own system of reading, writing and arithmetic, which of course causes him to clash with the school where he is going.
I do not know what to think of this guy, and I think this is intended by Coetzee. Of course, because of that title, you constantly ask yourself: is David an alternative Jesus? And Coetzee cunningly gives small indications to justify that identification: the name of foster father Simon, is a clear reference to Simon-Peter (the most important disciple of Jesus), David’s foster mother Ines is a virgin who always wears blue, and together they form a kind of saint family who flees at the end of the novel. And also the dead horse that, according to David, can become alive again after 3 days is a clear reference to the Christ story, etc. But on many occasions, in the novel, David is just presented as an insatiable spoiled child.
Some (see the review by Vincent Blok on Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/819979441) propose a way of reading this novel in which David stands for the singularity that opposes the universal, the individual that opposes the rational organization of society, and demands the right to its own perspective and experience. In this sense he is in line with the portrait I sketched of the older Simon. And there is something to be said for that. With this novel Coetzee would thus offer us a critical view on our culture, which suggests that in our overordered and hyper-rationalist society there apparently is no place for deviant opinions and other ways of living. And that is certainly a relevant message.
I must say that I am not fully convinced. The thesis certainly stands for the first half of the novel, especially because of the stubborn, often very philosophically charged questions that Simon continually asks. But with the whole fuss about the little David in the second half of the novel, Coetzee goes a step further. It seems as if we are going from a Kafkaian atmosphere into a more surreal, beckettian environment. Because of this transition even the stubborn Simon is forced into a defensive role, when he tries to teach David the basic principles of interaction between people, and demonstrates the need for transparent rules for reading, writing and arithmetic. David continues to stubbornly reject it, and that makes it hard to follow his logic.
At the end of the novel, old Simon seems to offer us a key by moving into David's mind, "But what if we are wrong and he is right?" He says to his colleague Eugenio. "Suppose this boy is the only one who really sees through it?" It is clear that Coetzee wants to get us out of our comfort zone with this contradiction. And he certainly succeeded in that. It makes me very curious about the next part [b:The Schooldays of Jesus|29959887|The Schooldays of Jesus|J.M. Coetzee|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1469636680l/29959887._SY75_.jpg|50353087].
To be absolutely clear: this is not a religious book, it isn't even about Jesus. On the contrary, this rather is a very disturbing novel, I would call it a dystopia.
For starters there’s the setting: a vague country, where people arrive by boat, as refugees, "washed clean" of their past. The main characters, the older man Simon and the little David (the boy he took care of during the boat trip), are such refugees. The order in the new country is consciously left impersonal and invisible, but there are clear laws, such as social differentiation (beautiful residential neighborhoods, poor social neighborhoods, refugee camps, etc.) and a very bureaucratic culture where the rules of what is right and what not are omnipresent (very Kafkaian). The people in this country compensate for this by a striking attitude of "benevolence" towards each other and towards the existing order: everyone behaves neatly, even to a certain extent helps others, but without warmth, without feeling, as from an obvious duty.
Simon and David expose this benevolence culture and go against the tide. In the first part of the novel Simon continually questions the fundaments of the social order. In fact, he stands for the passionate man, who wants more than formal contact, respect, and benevolence; and he always craves for more both intellectually, emotionally, sexually and even in the labour process; and he passionately pleads for the individual's right to want more. But with that he clashes with the benevolent indifference of the officials he comes in contact with, with his fellow dock workers, and with his neighbours in the barracks assigned to him.
To me, the Simon figure is the most captivating figure of this intriguing novel. He is perhaps a bit tedious and paternalistic, but he is also a kind of a Socrate, "a louse in the fur" that drives everyone around him to improbable philosophical conversations. With his fellow dock workers, for example, he talks about good and evil, progress and the meaning of labor, the idea of justice and the elusiveness of history. In these discussions the others accept the natural obviousness of the existing order as a reasonable, rational organization, but Simon doesn't agree.
And then there is the little David, who - in his own way - also challenges the existing order; but he's a character that we, as the reader, barely get a grip on. Sometimes he is an angelic boy who charmes people, but he can also be a son of bitch who stubbornly locks into his own imagination and always wants to be right. For instance, he has his own system of reading, writing and arithmetic, which of course causes him to clash with the school where he is going.
I do not know what to think of this guy, and I think this is intended by Coetzee. Of course, because of that title, you constantly ask yourself: is David an alternative Jesus? And Coetzee cunningly gives small indications to justify that identification: the name of foster father Simon, is a clear reference to Simon-Peter (the most important disciple of Jesus), David’s foster mother Ines is a virgin who always wears blue, and together they form a kind of saint family who flees at the end of the novel. And also the dead horse that, according to David, can become alive again after 3 days is a clear reference to the Christ story, etc. But on many occasions, in the novel, David is just presented as an insatiable spoiled child.
Some (see the review by Vincent Blok on Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/819979441) propose a way of reading this novel in which David stands for the singularity that opposes the universal, the individual that opposes the rational organization of society, and demands the right to its own perspective and experience. In this sense he is in line with the portrait I sketched of the older Simon. And there is something to be said for that. With this novel Coetzee would thus offer us a critical view on our culture, which suggests that in our overordered and hyper-rationalist society there apparently is no place for deviant opinions and other ways of living. And that is certainly a relevant message.
I must say that I am not fully convinced. The thesis certainly stands for the first half of the novel, especially because of the stubborn, often very philosophically charged questions that Simon continually asks. But with the whole fuss about the little David in the second half of the novel, Coetzee goes a step further. It seems as if we are going from a Kafkaian atmosphere into a more surreal, beckettian environment. Because of this transition even the stubborn Simon is forced into a defensive role, when he tries to teach David the basic principles of interaction between people, and demonstrates the need for transparent rules for reading, writing and arithmetic. David continues to stubbornly reject it, and that makes it hard to follow his logic.
At the end of the novel, old Simon seems to offer us a key by moving into David's mind, "But what if we are wrong and he is right?" He says to his colleague Eugenio. "Suppose this boy is the only one who really sees through it?" It is clear that Coetzee wants to get us out of our comfort zone with this contradiction. And he certainly succeeded in that. It makes me very curious about the next part [b:The Schooldays of Jesus|29959887|The Schooldays of Jesus|J.M. Coetzee|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1469636680l/29959887._SY75_.jpg|50353087].
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
more or less what it says on the wrapper - coetzee reworking the life of christ in the unadorned style I'm used to from "Life & Times of Michael K." i haven't looked at Michael K for a decade but i recall being quite smitten with the blank style. this has less atrocity than Michael K., and it doesn't track that neatly with the gospels - we see 6 year old christ (here named David) astounding with his teachings, the census of herod refigured variously, the flight narrative from matthew. but also 0th century palestine becomes vaguely present-day unnamed industrial nation where everyone speaks beginner's spanish and there is a solid welfare state (the idea of a government that uses its resources to help people might qualify this as sci-fi). there's also a few thinky exchanges between Simon (the combo Peter-Joseph figure) and his fellow adults that get too close to half-heard philosophy 102 lectures for me. but when you are JM coetzee you have the right to keep in the shitty bits of the draft. I am very certain that some philosophical writing approaches literature but I would rather just stick with literature that occasionally wanders into and then away from philosophy, thank you.
this is extremely not for everyone, though i dont think you need to believe or even have more than the faintest knowledge of the gospels to pick up almost all of what is being put down. looking forward to rest of coetzee's jesus trilogy.
also: this book is funny! like, not always funny but often enough!
this is extremely not for everyone, though i dont think you need to believe or even have more than the faintest knowledge of the gospels to pick up almost all of what is being put down. looking forward to rest of coetzee's jesus trilogy.
also: this book is funny! like, not always funny but often enough!
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I think the last time I was this baffled by a novel was reading Gerald Murnane. The novel this most resembles is probably Murnane's [b]The Plains[/b], and amongst Coetzee's own works (the ones that I've read) it's closest to [b]Waiting for the Barbarians[/b] in its seemingly allegorical approach. The allegory is not so obvious in this work, though, and although it touches on the religious aspects suggested by the title that doesn't feel like the main thrust of the novel. The child David does have some Christlike aspects, and the setting could be a kind of afterlife, but it's unclear what point Coetzee is trying to make, exactly. I think it's also informed by Australia's experience with asylum seekers, but again the message is an obscure one. I think this is a book that will warrant rereading and puzzling over. I certainly wouldn't dismiss it.
De los pocos libros de Coetzee que no me han gustado.
The book seem to part of a really long series (of which only two parts are published so far) that will allegorise life of Jesus and which Coetzee is still working on - and that might perhaps explain why it seems to unsatisfying as a story - or rather as a part of a story. Coetzee's books are often as strong as ideas discussed in them but, in this case, the ideas didn't hit me with the force I have gotten used to be expecting.
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced