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.

To some Coetzee is old hat and all that he has to say is old news. I recently ventured in to his works and I am torn between fascination, disgust and pure delight. This book was a wonderful little read. Coetzee was asked to speak at the Tanner lectures. It was expected he would speak on a literary topic (being a famous writer and all). Instead he created a fictional story where we find Elizabeth Costello, a famous writer asked to give lectures at a school, who then talks about animal rights rather then literature. During a rant against academic philosophy she proclaims “if you had wanted someone to come here and discriminate for you between mortal and immortal souls, or between rights and duties, you would have called a philosopher, not a person whose soul claim to your attention is to have written stories about made-up people.” We cannot but wonder hoe Coetzee delivered this line to his audience. When Costello does discuss poetry in her second lecture, she questions its ability to describe and know animals.

The version I read contained several essays by the likes of Peter Singer, who rather then essay format, writes a story about discussing the Costello lectures with his daughter over breakfast because he has to respond to Coetzee in a debate at the Tanner lectures. He is uncertain how to respond because the lecture was fiction. His daughter tells him to write in fiction, “Me? When have I ever written fiction?” is the last line of his essay leaving us wonder about the nature of the conversation we just read.

This book is very playful and discusses two very important questions. Firstly it prods at the nature of our relationship to animals. Secondly, is delves into the power of words, the importance of ideas and the ability of philosophy and poetry to offer us guidance into the ways of the world.

This is a book that can be read on many levels. I suggest you choose one.