Summertime

Summertime: Scenes from provincial life by J.M. Coetzee

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


What do I know about J.M. Coetzee? I'm not even sure I know how to pronounce his name correctly. He's one of those big award-winning authors I had (up till now) never read and admit to feeling slightly intimidated by. He's won some prizes, eh?

Reading Summertime was a pleasantly perplexing introduction to Coetzee. For me, it was venturing into unknown territory. As the third in a series of 'fictionalised memoirs' perhaps this was an odd place to start. Yet I found it very accessible, enjoyable and -- most significantly -- curiosity-arousing.

I've never read a book quite like it. It seems deceptively simple. It takes the form of interviews between a biographer and various people who were close to the biographer's subject, the (fictionally dead) author John Coetzee. As if we are reading the direct transcripts of the interviews, the voices of the interviewer and interviewees alternate, as if in real time.

And the things they say! John Coetzee is writing his own epitaph, so to speak. But it's not complimentary.

The interviews focus on a specific period in Coetzee's life, from 1972 to 1977. We hear from a cousin he was close to, a former lover, a colleague, and others. They have few good things to say about Coetzee; none of them express much interest in his writing, and of him as a person their words are gently but firmly dismissive.

He was not a man of substance... a talent for words is not enough if you want to be a great writer. You have also to be a great man. And he was not a great man. He was a little man, an unimportant little man. (195)

It just begs so many questions! Why would Coetzee write these things about himself -- admittedly himself in a different era, in a much earlier stage of his life and career? Is this what people who know him actually think? Is this what he thinks they think? Or is it a big joke and he doesn't think they think that way of him at all, but is inventing an interesting conversation?

We don't know. It's all very believable, nonetheless. I kept turning to the back flap of the book jacket and squinting critically at the photo of Coetzee. There he is, in the flesh! The man himself! You pitiful jackass, I thought as I stared at the shifty, bearded face half in shadow.

But how do we know that any of these people 'interviewed' even exist, or if they do, that they would ever say any of these things about Coetzee? None of it may be real. He's playing with us.

But what if we are all fictioneers, as you call Coetzee? What if we all continually make up the stories of our lives? Why should what I tell you about Coetzee be any worthier of credence than what he tells you himself? (226)

It all led me to the question, Why did he write this? I know absolutely nothing about Coetzee, who he is. I can't believe anything he says, either, but I thought I detected a tone of absolution, of atonement, confession.

Above all he wanted his father to forgive him. Forgive me! he wanted to say to his father... For countless acts of meanness. For the meanness of heart in which those acts originated. In sum, for all I have done since the day I was born, and with such success, to make your life a misery. (250)

But there is also humor. The fictional biographer seems to have an agenda and gets things wrong quite often, asks questions badly, makes too many assumptions. We are allowed to see the flaws in his approach, and wonder what his agenda is.

The fragmented structure of the book encourages us to question the authority of the various speakers. At the same time, these speakers seem much more real than the fading-fast subject of the biography, Coetzee himself. He inhabits the book like an inconsequential half-forgotten memory.

The joke's on us, I think. Is it a memoir? Is it a novel? It doesn't matter -- it's brilliant. It makes me want to go out and read the previous two books that accompany Summertime: Boyhood and Youth.

If you've read other books by Coetzee, do you think this book is improved if you've read other work by him first?



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