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jolles's review against another edition
5.0
The thing about Coetzee, at least for me, is that his ability to inhabit other worlds, other times, other beings, and construct a narrative around them that is, for the most part, compelling and powerfully wrought, overwhelms (in the best possible way that one might use this word) me as a reader. This was my third read through of E.C. and I think my experience of the text is deepened with each time I read it. I was particularly interested in the way in which Coetzee provides a sort of treatise on the humanities throughout the text. Sure there are some meta-discursive moments that were a little on the nose, but it always seems to be the case that stronger writers (or, I guess more honestly, writers I like) can get away with these things that I would ordinarily find incredibly kitsch.
evamargaret's review against another edition
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
jordbord's review against another edition
5.0
This is one of the best pieces of fiction I've read. Dizzying, disturbing, and yet somehow life-affirming and - there's really no other word - almost spiritual as a reading experience, this story forcefully shook my ideas and brought up a welling of compassion, not only for the characters (and animals), but for living things outside its pages.
Its chapters are titled 'lessons', but the book does not read like a sermon so much as an extended Socratic-dialogue embedded into fiction. Each so-called lesson is in reality a set-piece in the life of the protagonist, Elizabeth Costello, an elderly novelist, highly celebrated for work she did long before but feels she can't reproduce. There is too much prolonged argumentation about ideas for this to be a novel in the tradition of Tolstoy and Dickens and Austen and Proust and Joyce, and in fact, the book is always sacrificing a touch of immersion to deal with its subject-matter; but this I do not find a problem at all. David Foster Wallace, in his essay on Dostoevsky lamented the dwindling of real philosophical fiction, attributing the fact to irony-culture and corrosive postmodernism shticks in vogue in writing. I wonder if he read this book before he died. The novel is subtle and understated in its principles, but it is certainly not ironic - though it has flashes of wit - and, while Coetzee bows to Barthes, and unveils himself as writer in the first chapter, deprecating his own story-telling, the emotional and moral import that follows does not lose out from self-awareness, and thankfully Coetzee stops interrupting after the first time.
That Coetzee puts himself voluntarily on the chopping-block of the capital 'a' author (authority, what terrible etymology!), and that this does not limit him from working his subsequent magic, is just proof how good he is. The prose oozes style - lyrical Coetzee has been called, with which I agree (as with any good writer he presses his habits on you irresistibly, like he's yawning and you then yawn back). Here's a snippet of nice little descriptive imagery conjuring up ancient Greece (cliched on-purpose, but pretty), 'Hellas: half-naked men, their breasts gleaming with olive oil, sitting on the temple steps discoursing about the good and the true, while in the background lithe-limbed boys wrestle and a herd of goats contentedly grazes.' The dialogue is snappy, though I say again, improbable in its length because of the book's emphasis on teasing complex, profound truths out of contemporary life. But to detractors of this I would say, what's good enough for Dostoevsky, Oscar Wilde, and Aldous Huxley, is good enough for us. The narrative-style is silky and, finally, quite beautiful to observe, so smoothly does it bound forward between scenes, like a rabbit taking running leaps along a forest path. Some writers are demanding on their readers, but to his great credit, Coetzee wants you to keep up with him all the time.
Each discussion (lesson) takes place with Elizabeth as a focal point, with her presenting a thesis to an audience at a literary conference, meanwhile as forcefully arguing with herself whether she is correct. Elizabeth doesn't trust herself. She doesn't trust reason anymore, and the great irony of the narrative is that she still uses reason to try to understand her mind nonetheless, and to pry apart the difficult questions - have I lived a moral life? Should I have had more fun? Should I have written about other people more often, not myself? Agitated for causes? And what about my family? and so forth. Elizabeth, on the death-knell of her short life, instead of savoring every remaining moment, drifts into sink-holes of rumination and agonizes over things she isn't able to grasp until entering the grave.
I don't want to interpret the 'message' like so many reviewers will do when they read something, first of all because I think this is an incredibly smart book and that that is no straightforward task, but more importantly because 'Elizabeth Costello' is not, in my opinion, a book for consensus. I don't think this book comes to a great, fanfare conclusion about, for instance, whether the Hellenic or Judeo-Christian philosophic vision is superior for achieving the good-life (or for the good-enough-life), or whether poetry can offer us a better approach to animal rights than the cutting-edge of modern philosophy. What it does do is, like its prose, whittle all the excesses and superfluities away till you feel like what is essentially important is laid bare, like you have been shown where the fault-lines, the embattled trenches of these debates are located.
If I were to venture, my personal opinion, which needs to be revised by a second, and third, and fourth reading, is that this novel does not offer us any bandaging to the void of meaning that engulfed us when Nietzche and Darwin pronounced God dead, it really reminds us of something located in the heart, not intellect: compassion. Compassion for ourselves, and 'others' - all the beings we vehemently disagree with or personally dislike or fail to understand, around us. Argumentation, violence is getting old-fashioned. Somewhere in this book it says something like, 'Discussion can only be had where there is shared ground,' and I cannot think what better ground there is to share between living creatures than good-will. Love is an inarguable thing, it cannot be stitched together from fragments, or 'unpacked' into various ideas: you either choose to nurture it and to feel it or you don't. You cannot demonstrate love with a mathematical proof, or a set of premises in a treatise, though zealous philosophers or materialist scientists may urge you to believe otherwise.
If anyone has gotten this far into a very un-substantive review, thank you, but I urge you to glean substance yourself by going and reading this excellent and thoughtful book, which will endure a long time if it stirs other readers as much as it did me. Now I'm going to go cry on my bed next to a tissue-box, and watch a film...
Its chapters are titled 'lessons', but the book does not read like a sermon so much as an extended Socratic-dialogue embedded into fiction. Each so-called lesson is in reality a set-piece in the life of the protagonist, Elizabeth Costello, an elderly novelist, highly celebrated for work she did long before but feels she can't reproduce. There is too much prolonged argumentation about ideas for this to be a novel in the tradition of Tolstoy and Dickens and Austen and Proust and Joyce, and in fact, the book is always sacrificing a touch of immersion to deal with its subject-matter; but this I do not find a problem at all. David Foster Wallace, in his essay on Dostoevsky lamented the dwindling of real philosophical fiction, attributing the fact to irony-culture and corrosive postmodernism shticks in vogue in writing. I wonder if he read this book before he died. The novel is subtle and understated in its principles, but it is certainly not ironic - though it has flashes of wit - and, while Coetzee bows to Barthes, and unveils himself as writer in the first chapter, deprecating his own story-telling, the emotional and moral import that follows does not lose out from self-awareness, and thankfully Coetzee stops interrupting after the first time.
That Coetzee puts himself voluntarily on the chopping-block of the capital 'a' author (authority, what terrible etymology!), and that this does not limit him from working his subsequent magic, is just proof how good he is. The prose oozes style - lyrical Coetzee has been called, with which I agree (as with any good writer he presses his habits on you irresistibly, like he's yawning and you then yawn back). Here's a snippet of nice little descriptive imagery conjuring up ancient Greece (cliched on-purpose, but pretty), 'Hellas: half-naked men, their breasts gleaming with olive oil, sitting on the temple steps discoursing about the good and the true, while in the background lithe-limbed boys wrestle and a herd of goats contentedly grazes.' The dialogue is snappy, though I say again, improbable in its length because of the book's emphasis on teasing complex, profound truths out of contemporary life. But to detractors of this I would say, what's good enough for Dostoevsky, Oscar Wilde, and Aldous Huxley, is good enough for us. The narrative-style is silky and, finally, quite beautiful to observe, so smoothly does it bound forward between scenes, like a rabbit taking running leaps along a forest path. Some writers are demanding on their readers, but to his great credit, Coetzee wants you to keep up with him all the time.
Each discussion (lesson) takes place with Elizabeth as a focal point, with her presenting a thesis to an audience at a literary conference, meanwhile as forcefully arguing with herself whether she is correct. Elizabeth doesn't trust herself. She doesn't trust reason anymore, and the great irony of the narrative is that she still uses reason to try to understand her mind nonetheless, and to pry apart the difficult questions - have I lived a moral life? Should I have had more fun? Should I have written about other people more often, not myself? Agitated for causes? And what about my family? and so forth. Elizabeth, on the death-knell of her short life, instead of savoring every remaining moment, drifts into sink-holes of rumination and agonizes over things she isn't able to grasp until entering the grave.
I don't want to interpret the 'message' like so many reviewers will do when they read something, first of all because I think this is an incredibly smart book and that that is no straightforward task, but more importantly because 'Elizabeth Costello' is not, in my opinion, a book for consensus. I don't think this book comes to a great, fanfare conclusion about, for instance, whether the Hellenic or Judeo-Christian philosophic vision is superior for achieving the good-life (or for the good-enough-life), or whether poetry can offer us a better approach to animal rights than the cutting-edge of modern philosophy. What it does do is, like its prose, whittle all the excesses and superfluities away till you feel like what is essentially important is laid bare, like you have been shown where the fault-lines, the embattled trenches of these debates are located.
If I were to venture, my personal opinion, which needs to be revised by a second, and third, and fourth reading, is that this novel does not offer us any bandaging to the void of meaning that engulfed us when Nietzche and Darwin pronounced God dead, it really reminds us of something located in the heart, not intellect: compassion. Compassion for ourselves, and 'others' - all the beings we vehemently disagree with or personally dislike or fail to understand, around us. Argumentation, violence is getting old-fashioned. Somewhere in this book it says something like, 'Discussion can only be had where there is shared ground,' and I cannot think what better ground there is to share between living creatures than good-will. Love is an inarguable thing, it cannot be stitched together from fragments, or 'unpacked' into various ideas: you either choose to nurture it and to feel it or you don't. You cannot demonstrate love with a mathematical proof, or a set of premises in a treatise, though zealous philosophers or materialist scientists may urge you to believe otherwise.
If anyone has gotten this far into a very un-substantive review, thank you, but I urge you to glean substance yourself by going and reading this excellent and thoughtful book, which will endure a long time if it stirs other readers as much as it did me. Now I'm going to go cry on my bed next to a tissue-box, and watch a film...
nahanarts's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.5
dajana88's review against another edition
4.0
Uh, kakva knjiga! I namučila me, i uživala sam u njoj.
Elizabeth Costello australska je spisateljica koja putuje svijetom (SAD, Južna Afrika, Nizozemska) i drži govore. Dugo već nije ništa napisala, no i kada ju predstavljaju, nitko ne navodi romane novijeg datuma, već jedan od njenih prvih, kojim se i proslavila. Riječ je o romanu Kuća u Eccles Streetu o Marion Bloom, supruzi Leopolda Blooma iz Uliksa Jamesa Joycea.
Ovo je roman bez konkretne radnje. U poglavljima su nam uglavnom predstavljeni kratki isječci iz života spisateljice, i to najčešće oni koji se događaju prije, tijekom i poslije njezinih javnih govora. Često sam se našla u situaciji da se nikako ne slažem s njezinim razmišljanjima, idejama, govorima i došlo mi je da ju prodrmam da se spusti na zemlju. Pripisat ću uspjeu piscu da stvori jedan takav lik.
Ono što me je još očaralo, bilo je nenametljivo, a opet značajno ubacivanje detalja iz klasične literature. Osim već spomenutog Uliksa, tu su grčka mitologija, Biblija, Kafka, Rilke, Swift...
Ne mogu reći da mi je knjiga bila savršena - dio koji me namučio jest poglavlje koje je, bar prema mom osjećaju, trebalo biti kafkijansko, ali u tome nije uspjelo. Tu je naznaka atmosfere iz njegovih romana Proces i Dvorac, tu je blagi osjećaj nemoći, neizvjesnost, nejasnoća, no sve mi je to bilo mlako realizirano. Ostatak romana bio je odličan i drago mi je što sam ga pročitala. Coetzee se svakako čita i dalje!
Elizabeth Costello australska je spisateljica koja putuje svijetom (SAD, Južna Afrika, Nizozemska) i drži govore. Dugo već nije ništa napisala, no i kada ju predstavljaju, nitko ne navodi romane novijeg datuma, već jedan od njenih prvih, kojim se i proslavila. Riječ je o romanu Kuća u Eccles Streetu o Marion Bloom, supruzi Leopolda Blooma iz Uliksa Jamesa Joycea.
Ovo je roman bez konkretne radnje. U poglavljima su nam uglavnom predstavljeni kratki isječci iz života spisateljice, i to najčešće oni koji se događaju prije, tijekom i poslije njezinih javnih govora. Često sam se našla u situaciji da se nikako ne slažem s njezinim razmišljanjima, idejama, govorima i došlo mi je da ju prodrmam da se spusti na zemlju. Pripisat ću uspjeu piscu da stvori jedan takav lik.
Ono što me je još očaralo, bilo je nenametljivo, a opet značajno ubacivanje detalja iz klasične literature. Osim već spomenutog Uliksa, tu su grčka mitologija, Biblija, Kafka, Rilke, Swift...
Ne mogu reći da mi je knjiga bila savršena - dio koji me namučio jest poglavlje koje je, bar prema mom osjećaju, trebalo biti kafkijansko, ali u tome nije uspjelo. Tu je naznaka atmosfere iz njegovih romana Proces i Dvorac, tu je blagi osjećaj nemoći, neizvjesnost, nejasnoća, no sve mi je to bilo mlako realizirano. Ostatak romana bio je odličan i drago mi je što sam ga pročitala. Coetzee se svakako čita i dalje!
juanluisgarciaa's review against another edition
2.0
I really struggled with this book, mostly because I really wanted to like it but I couldn't. The 'Lessons' or lectures rambled a lot, and were oftentimes unclear, which I am assuming was the intention but I still didn't enjoy reading 230 pages of that.
I only really enjoyed one lesson - 'The Novel in Africa' - and it wasn't even given by Elizabeth Costello herself, maybe that's why I liked it. I don't know... I disliked her character, I disliked her son, and I disliked her son's wife. I would've much preferred if this was about some of the surrounding characters, such as Emmanuel or Costello's sister Blanche, instead of her.
I only really enjoyed one lesson - 'The Novel in Africa' - and it wasn't even given by Elizabeth Costello herself, maybe that's why I liked it. I don't know... I disliked her character, I disliked her son, and I disliked her son's wife. I would've much preferred if this was about some of the surrounding characters, such as Emmanuel or Costello's sister Blanche, instead of her.
jenrkeeling's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
miamollekin's review against another edition
I enjoying but also was not connecting to writing
kelseysveen's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
2.0