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State of Discontent
J.M. Coetzee's anti-political fiction
(Page 2 of 2)
In an effort to steal C’s financial assets, Alan has used the unwitting Anya to plant spyware on C’s computer. He reads both of C’s diaries in manuscript without his prior consent. Though Anya objects to and Alan abandons his scheme to defraud Señor C, he nonetheless humiliates the septuagenarian author, informing him in savage fashion that he is not only a hopeless political relic but also an over-the-hill Don Juan whose sexual interest in Anya will never be reciprocated. By the end of the novel, C is left to confront his loneliness, his inexorable physical decline, and his inevitable death with only his stories, memories, and fantasies of Anya as potential sources of solace.
In Coetzee’s fiction, the story of domestic life can be nearly as cruel and merciless as the political world. But at least the misdeeds and missteps of private existence have the virtue of being freely chosen. For Coetzee’s characters, the difference between involuntary subjection to the state and a freely chosen individual path, however harsh and barren, may be the only difference that matters.
Contributing Editor Michael Valdez Moses is associate professor of English at Duke, author of The Novel and the Globalization of Culture (Oxford University Press), and co-editor of Modernism and Colonialism: British and Irish Literature, 1899-1939 (Duke University Press).
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|6.21.08 @ 4:13PM|#
With fear in your eyes....
It's night, the
tepid tincture of
the valley invites
me to escape
near the sound
of a woody recall,
and this in your
delicate sign, the
second degree
of a beautiful kiss...
Francesco Sinibaldi
|6.22.08 @ 12:56AM|#
Who's this Italian
With snippets of poetry
With romantic themes?
Eden|6.23.08 @ 12:28PM|#
I read this book a few months ago. I found his opinions on the origin of the state, democracy, terrorism and viruses to be especially thought provoking.
definately worth reading!
nfl jerseys|11.5.10 @ 10:13PM|#
nedf