The Creative Act

J.M. Coetzee. The Master of Petersburg.

J. M. Coetzee has won all the prizes and, in a style Thomas Bernhard would approve of, rarely bothers to pick them up himself. The man is known to never smile, to attend parties without uttering a word all night. Despite this seemingly cliché persona, he writes damn good books. He is one of the few living authors in my personal library, I now have four of his books, placing him in an even smaller category.

The Master of Petersburg was recently brought to my attention by a customer at the store. We were discussing Dostoevsky because he was buying a Coetzee book and I told him I find the Coetzee feels a lot like Old Dusty and Kafka. The customer, knowing more than I, laughed because those two are well-known as his influences. More to the point, Coetzee had written a book featuring Dostoevsky as the main character.

The book takes place in the late 1860s, fame but not fortune have already come to the protagonist. His stepson has died mysteriously and so Dusty has to go get his papers and see to the final details of his son’s life. The narrative itself is quite interesting, involving Nacheav a young revolutionary out to use Dostoevsky, an old one. There is love, hate and plenty of inside jokes for Dostoevsky lovers.

The book is really about the cost of writing. The torture a “real” writer must go through in order to put his/her soul on the page. The fact that they must use their every action and those of their family and friends in order to have a product. Coetzee’s Dostoevsky sees himself as selling his soul to pay his gambling debts. Importantly it is not just his soul but also the dead boy’s soul, and the poor people he encounters and everyone else’s souls that are to be sold. I suspect Dostoevsky thought along these lines more then once as he returned home from some event or other and tried to figure out how to make it into a novel or how to use so-and-so’s character in a book. This would feel dirty. I have felt this in my attempts to write poetry, inevitably other people’s stories are told, against their will. The personal internal conflict caused by this would grow with fame and fortune, at least I suspect that to be true.

I wonder if Coetzee feels this way too. Is the book really about a man living in South Africa? Is it really an explanation for his refusal to pick up those awards or to even smile? This book is a lot of fun, moves well and is a great read for those unfamiliar with Coetzee. For those familiar with both authos, mthis is a masterpiece not to be missed.

Dostoevsky. The Idiot.  Everyman’s Library Edition.

I have long been a fan of the huge-russian-novelists-of-huge-russian-novels. What could be better than sinking your teeth into the equivalent of a massive stack of pancakes smothered in butter and real Quebec maple syrup? The Russians never disappoint, we have been reading them for a long time and will continue to. Russia was blessed with a surprising long tradition of writers that fed off each other, starting with Pushkin and working its way though the years (Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Lermontov, Bulgakov and  Solzhenitsyn) overlapping each other and pushing each other. While the competition was fierce and they threw many barbs at each other, they also inspired each other and fed off each other.

A few days ago I  finished reading Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. It has long been a favorite of mine. Every time I put my feet up and make the tea and start making my way through the 600+ pages I feel frustration at how hard it is to keep track of everyone in the book. Despair enters my mind as he makes his characters flip-flop in their ideas, attempt to murder each other, or at least ruin each others’ lives. The sad ending brought on by the fact that Old Dusty always loses control of his characters as he writes. (For those unfamiliar the story follows Prince Myshkin, a christlike figure, who has just returned from a long convalescence needed by him as he was an “idiot” or invalid. He returns to society and gets confounded by constant rumors and treachery. All ends badly for the young Prince). Despite the difficulty I know I will be rewarded for my time.

There are two main allegories in the novel. Firstly, the book is a riff on what Dostoevsky thinks would happen to Christ if he appeared in 19th Century Russia. As the tale unfolds the reader gets the feeling even the narrator is disgusted by his society which could ruin such a special man. Secondly, it is about the societal changes happening in Russia at the time and Dostoevsky’s feeling that these changes would prove disastrous for society.

The Idiot is a complicated novel. The narrator is not entirely certain as to what is happening and the reader really only knows as much as the characters are willing to say. The characters however, are not trustworthy narrators as they have their own goals, dreams, and fallabilitties. They are all trying to understand what is happening in their society of intrigues which leaves the reader guessing. The fun is in trying to get to know the characters, understand their hopes, virtues, and vices, if not synthesizing Doestoevsky’s metaphore’s into a political worldview.

I love reading Old Dusty, his novels are like comfort food, and yet a sense of malaise settles in upon me when I read him. When I finish one of his works I never know what to read next. A friend I recently introduced to D read The Idiot has found the same phenomenon in his reading, the only thing that appeals is another Dusty novel, Brothers K perhaps? If you have any ideas, or follow a pattern in your post-mega-important-novel-reading let me know about it by leaving a comment to this post. For my part I always follow him up with a softball book. So I read Micheal Dirda’s Book by Book which will be the subject of my next post.