J. M. Coetzee has constructed a slippery novel of ideas around an alter ego character, Elizabeth Costello. Elizabeth is a novelist in her twilight years (perhaps "old enough to be beyond embarrassment"), and her story takes the form of eight chapters plus a coda. In each chapter she confronts some aspect of man's fate, often personified after a fashion by an intimate relation: her son, her sister, a former lover.

Each chapter has very little story to convey. Rather, in various episodes, Elizabeth tries to clarify her thoughts by means of various lectures, say, to a graduating class or as an award acceptance. (Indeed, the chapters are designated "lessons" in the table of contents.) This turns out to be more difficult for her than one might think, because

Elizabeth is concerned about cruelty to animals, especially the consumption of their flesh as food; she is concerned about the horrors of the Holocaust; and she makes some uncomfortable comparisons between the two issues. She is concerned about what it means to be a writer in Africa; she is concerned about salvation. Her path through the book, humanity's path, is an ellipse, with its two foci being suffering and the exercise of reason.

She alludes to a story by Franz Kakfa about an ape that is trained to give a speech before a learned society. Though she denies the similarity to herself, Kafka's "Red Peter" provides the spine of her novel. Later, we identify Red Peter with Joseph, an African craftsman (who carves exclusively crucifixes) whom Elizabeth meets when she visits her sister.

Another theme that the book is concerned with is giving a novel's voice to someone who had none before. Elizabeth's early success as a novelist was gained by The House on Eccles Street, the Ulysses story from the viewpoint of Molly Bloom.

Coetzee's novel employs a mixture of styles, and I'm not sure that it's the better for it. While most chapters are straightforwardly realistic (albeit talky), the first chapter self-consciously skips over sections of the narrative, while the last chapter enters a supernatural realm.

The book can be read as valedictory for Coetzee, who has published more than a dozen titles. It rewards attention.

posted: 11:42:05 PM  

Things are moving along slowly for Anything Goes. I've only been able to make rehearsals once a week (and I'm not the only one), so I foresee a very busy last ten days in the run-up to the opening on the 30th.

Tonight we staged "Blow, Gabriel, Blow," and I found out what "spirit fingers" means.

posted: 11:36:50 PM  

Leta chats up Chris Slattery for one of the local suburban shoppers for her H.M.S. Pinafore.

posted: 11:26:00 PM  

Uncommon words from Robert Herrick. I particularly like perpolite, "highly polished." This word makes use of the prefix per-, which can mean "all over" (as in perforate, "to pierce all over"), "very" (as in perturb, "disturb very much"), or "to the bad" (as in pervert, "to turn bad"). The prefix also has applications in chemical nomenclature, with the meaning of "compounded of the maximum of the element in question," as in permanganate and peroxide.

We need more words with that prefix.

(Thanks to Leta and Andy.)

posted: 11:10:20 PM