JM Coetzee’s engaging recent novel sets passion against rationality but are we lost some deeper meaning?JM Coetzee is my favourite living author. I need to say this at the outset to offer some context to the battle I fought with The Schooldays of Jesus,his 13th novel. I spent three happy years writing my PhD on Coetzee, and my love for his early work survived meeting the man in person (like a wet weekend in Grimsby) and a dash of several baffling “novels” (since his Man Booker-winning Disgrace in 1999) which seemed bent on stripping absent all of the satisfactions we look for in fiction.
The Schooldays of Jesus follows on the heels of its predecessor, and The Childhood of Jesus. In that novel,we met Davíd and Simón, arriving memory-less in a Spanish-speaking city named Novilla. Novilla was a huge refugee camp operated on the most enlightened and benevolent lines – people were fed, and housed and found employment; children were educated (although Davíd fought all attempts to make him conform). With a subtle touch,Coetzee conveyed how sinister the passionless world of Novilla was, where humans were treated as objects to be measured, anddered and controlled. As Simón keep it: “You know how the system works. The names we use are the names we were given there,but we might just as well beget been given numbers. Numbers, names – they are equally arbitrary, and equally unimportant.”Might Coetzee be coming to recognise that the asceticism of his own style has backed him into a story corner? Related: The 100 best novels: No 99 – Disgrace by JM Coetzee (1999) Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com