After having read through nearly all of J.M. Coetzee’s body of work, I thought I would offer some rather disjointed observations:

– My favorite novel was Waiting for the Barbarians, I think firstly because it’s beautifully written and I feel like this is the point where his prose style shifted, matured, I suppose. I also find Coetzee’s portrayal of the Magistrate as moving as it is disturbing, which is to say, quite a lot. None of Coetzee’s characters are “heroes” in the classic sense. Coetzee, apparently, does not do heroes. But the Magistrate is a sympathetic character and the way he grapples with his collusion with evil was more human to me than, say, David Lurie’s rather esoteric musings on his place in the new South Africa.

– I also really enjoyed Foe. My inner lit nerd delights in its re-writing of the canon text Robinson Crusoe, and I appreciate its play on the autobiographical form. And once again, I enjoyed the lyrical quality of the writing, especially in the more dream-like sequences. It’s also one of the few novels where female silence can be read as empowering without too much critical backbending. It’s the one novel that poses a serious challenge to my own problems with Coetzee’s other portrayals of feminine silence. It’s also the novel that made me start seriously questioning Coetzee’s portrayal of black men.

– I didn’t like Disgrace. Disregarding its complex, confusing, and ambivalent portrayal of post-apartheid South Africa, I just didn’t feel any sort of connection to any of the characters. None of them were human to me; their actions seemed constantly disconnected from context. And as much as David’s compassion toward animals helps add depth to his otherwise dispassionate and very unsympathetic character, it’s hard to read a novel that follows a character that you feel so little for. As a scholar, I can appreciate the nuance and complexity of Disgrace, but I didn’t enjoy it.

– Coetzee’s novels have been some of the most difficult for me to read. They are, with very few exceptions, very dark. And those few that aren’t, certainly aren’t happy-ending types either. I continue to be puzzled by Elizabeth Costello’s critique of the portrayal of evil in “The Problem of Evil” in Elizabeth Costello. Whether or not you consider Costello to be Coetzee’s fictional doppelganger (and I don’t, not really), it’s hard not to wonder what his intentions are, particularly with Costello who he literally performs during his lectures that made up Elizabeth Costello. I was puzzled by this critique of the portrayal of evil because Coetzee’s treatment of violence, torture, and rape has been some of the most difficult literature for me to read. Is he commenting on his own writing via Costello? Or perhaps there is some essential difference between what Coetzee does and what Costello is criticizing that I am not perceiving? Is he talking about realism rather than evil then?

– On that note, I come away from Coetzee’s body of work with many more questions than I had when I first opened Dusklands. I still have so many questions, but that is certainly not a bad thing.