Diary of a Bad Year by J. M. Coetzee Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Diary of a Bad Year
Book Review: Rambling, uninvolving
Summary: 2 Stars
While I liked some of Coetzee's previous novels (Youth, for instance), I find Diary of a Lost Year, his latest work, rambling and somewhat uninvolving. The protagonist is an alter ego of Coetzee - an old South African writer living in exile in Australia. Most of the book is a rambling tirade about how out of place he feels in the modern western world. There are lots of themes he writes about - politics(there are the standard denunciations of Bush, Blair and company), the decline of South Africa after the end of the apartheid regime, the decline of general knowledge and high european culture, arts, literature, old age. Sometimes his critiques are spot on, sometimes they are insightful but other times they feel tiresome and the product of a reactionary mind. If you don't like anything about the society you live in, the problem is problably more with you than in said society. And as to the love story between the author and a much younger filipino woman he has hired as typist, I found it uninvolving and somewhat pathetic, as it clearly is much more of a fantasy of the author that he could attract a woman half a century younger than is reality. Still, I think if this book had been written in a form of a collection of essays it would probably had more been more succesful (whether you agree with him or not) than in this semifictionalized form.Book Review: Stretching It
Summary: 3 Stars
Reading this story page-by-page distracted me so I read the two bottom sections through from beginning to end, then returned to the essays. This made it easier for me to relate them to the narrative.
The structure is unique, but it was also distracting and weakening. I also found the essays dull and the story line weak. The essays lacked theme and the story did not compel. The essays lacked theme...unless it was on dying. There were too many of them to be cohesive. It was laborious to read this short book, but I'm glad I read it because it broadened my literary perspective and introducted me to a whole new way of thinking about some of these subjects. I found myself concentrating on what he had to say, especially on the arts and politics, and asking how my own thinking has changed on these particular subjects from early adulthood to now. Learning of his own personal history, it made me think about the influences in my life that have created my own personal perceptions. We know that Coetze aka Senor C is ageing, weakening, from South Africa, tolerating Australia, and highly critical of many aspects of the USA. It is good to be open to these perceptions regardless of our own beliefs. I found myself cheering for the underdog in spite of his philosophies. Alan gave me the creeps, especially as he grew in strength Anya, as she grew and developed, gave me hope. The ending...like life...has no conclusion, except for death. This book pushed me out instead of drawing me in...which would have been the easier path, but it compelled me to look more closely
Book Review: political handbook, novel, or both?
Summary: 3 Stars
Coetzee continues his late-career theme of writing about his own thinly veiled self. The small book has an odd format, with three pieces to each page. The top piece is a mini-essay, presumably written by the aging protagonist, Senor C. (Or are these actually Coetzee's views?) The middle pieces are Senor C's ideas about his taunting lust-object, Anya, whom he has hired as a typist, all the better to ogle and fantasize. The bottom pieces are Anya's ideas.
How should we read this format? Sometimes the top essays break mid-sentence and continue on the following page, implying that one should read across pages, rather than down them. But that makes hash of the story, because the second and third pieces of a page occasionally refer to the essay on the top. Sometimes the second and third pieces are only a sentence or two, and for continuity, I often jumped across pages. But the up/down, backward/forward readings got tiresome and I was glad the book was short.
Coetzee has fine rhetorical skills, and I found myself engaged in the mini-essays, even though I did not agree with the political or philosophical tilt of some of them. Even so, the collection of essays are pretty much a hodgepodge, with no obvious theme binding them. The conceit of using essays is that it is background for the sexual tensions among Senor C, Anya, and her shyster boyfriend Alan. However, the content of the essays might have involved nearly any topic to serve the same function.
Occasionally I would think, "Hey, Coetzee! Why don't you present your collection from a fascist (or libertarian, or fill-in-the-blank) viewpoint? Then we might learn how Anya or Alan respond to that ideology" Well, sure. Coetzee, like his reader, is not required to be consistent. But a thematic collection of essays might have more clearly linked essay contents to Senor C's imagined romance.