November 20: Threepenny Review, Fall 2021

Recently, I've made a commitment to either read the publications I get or else stop getting them.  For The Threepenny Review, I decided to read --- and I'm glad I did.  There is so much quality (even if quite various) writing throughout this issue.  Having a long short story by Wendell Berry (a regular contributor lately) helps, although this wasn't my favorite of his.  There was a terrific series of little pieces on childhood, led by the inimitable Tobias Wolff.  The last piece on travel (a recounting of a 3-year experience being a newsletter writing on a cruise ship) was a wonderful read.  I look forward to the next issue.  

November 17: "The Coddling of the American Mind Book" (Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt)

For now I'll just say that is the book I've recommended to the most people before even finishing.  It's so important for so many reasons.  Each main section and each major concern of the book is significant and compelling.  It matters little that I don't agree with every single point (what would the odds of that be?).  All of the questions and concerns are so well done.  I want to write on this book more at a later point in time. 

November 3: "Elizabeth Costello," J.M. Coetzee

A number of reviews mentioned how this "novel" wasn't quite a novel.  I'm not automatically against such a thing.  All of the "novels" of one of my new favorite authors, W.G. Sebald, were far cries from any sort of novel classification.  That said, I didn't like this text by Coetzee much.  

This book is sort of a series of essays or reflections on different topics, loosely following the tail end of the fictional novelist Elizabeth Costello's middle age to her later years.  The plot generally follows her reception of awards and the speeches involved thereof.  The topics she speaks about (or that others speak about, for a few other authors/award recipients make speeches too) are varied: on realism, animal rights, eros, and the African novel.

The bits I liked the most (and might have truly enjoyed, if they were within the larger context of a novel, with plot, character, development of both, etc.) were two of the final chapters, one on the problem of evil, and the second, the final chapter of the novel, dramatizing Costello's attempt, after her death, of crossing from a limbo type bureaucratic quasi-European village to the true "after life."  

In the former, Costello contemplates the evil as representing in a novel she recently read about the Holocaust, in which she is moved deeply by the evil re-presented.  She finds the narrative "remove" almost reveling in the evil, and she finds this repulsive.  But yet she, as a novelist, always saw her role as simply presenting life, not commenting or "teaching" about it.  She isn't sure what to do with the contradiction between her beliefs and her experience.  In general, Costello isn't religious or absolutist in any definition of the word, but she tends toward an understanding that total relativity is both shallow and contrary to our experience as humans.

In the final chapter, Costello is asked to give a statement of belief before she can enter the afterlife.  As a "secretary of life" (what she thinks of herself as a writer), she can write no statement of belief.  Meanwhile, she is a Kafkaesque nameless quiet European village, which acts as a sort of limbo or purgatory, replete with all cliches of the type (cliches Costello notes).  What does she stand for?  Or, more broadly, what does Coetzee stand for?  Must he stand for something?  The most Costello can get to is her belief in existence and life.  

All in all, what kept this novel together as a novel?  No compelling plot; no thematic unity, besides for the preoccupations of a novelist.  I suppose this could be enough, but I don't think Coetzee pulled it off here.  The random bits in the middle about animal rights fit nowhere.  They neither develop earlier parts (thematically, narratively, or character-wise), nor do they connect to the later bits.

One final point.  In one of the middle chapters, Costello's sister, a Catholic nun working in Africa, is given an honorary degree because of her humanitarian work with her order's hospital.  In her graduation  "speech" (one of many in this book), she basically outlines the history of literary criticism, beginning with Scriptural study (by extension, the need to learn Greek and Latin, and thereby reading the "classics).  It was a wonderful summation of the history, but I have no idea if it's true.  I'd love to look into it.  Either way, I've been very interested in this sort of narrative.