vanityclear 's review for:

The Childhood of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee

3.0

---

Man Booker Challenge #4. This is a weird one--I didn't realize until a few dozen pages in that this wasn't set in our world, in the present refugee crisis, though it alludes to it (and Simón makes a few pointedly political comments). I'm really conflicted here, and feel that I should probably reread it later before passing judgment on the soundness of its philosophical arguments. As one of the stevedores says in a debate with Simón, "That is like saying, What if the mad are really sane and the sane are really mad? It is, if you don't mind my saying so, Simón, schoolboy philosophizing." (The rest of his speech undermines the truth of this verdict; for all that Eugenio attends philosophy classes he is very bad at constructing an argument.) Simón's--and Coetzee's?--argument here seems to be, What if laws are just laws because we call them laws? Isn't the matter of our upbringing and our wealth and our occupation largely a matter of chance? If that's all that's here, I want to take away Coetzee's Nobel Prize. But my doubts linger because I still have faith in these things (hence this entire Man Booker endeavor), despite the fact that genius scientists can also believe that megadoses of vitamins cure all ills.

What I am saying, really, is that the arguments were too facile. The apparent analogies too close to the surface. I was reminded of Death With Interruptions, only inferior in every way.