MASLAND: How do you find Chicago? Do its literary traditions appeal to you? COETZEE: I admire the self-confidence of Chicagoans. Its literary traditions [Dreiser-Farrell-Sandburg-Algren on the one hand, Bellow on the other] do appeal to me, even though they are not traditions I can learn much from. Chicago is a seriously literary city and a city that takes literature seriously.
Inevitably your new book has been read as a parable of the new South Africa. Rape is the most highly visible social issue of the day among whites, seeming to crystallize fears about where the country is headed. In “Disgrace,” a character is raped and chooses to keep the baby. Are you optimistic about your country’s future? Are whites in general, and Afrikaners in particular, in shock over losing power? I don’t like the pigeonholing effect of the optimistic/pessimistic dichotomy. The past is anyhow more interesting than the future, which is by definition unknowable. Yes, as a generalization it may be useful to think of whites in South Africa as in a state of shock. At the deepest level, many still haven’t understood or accepted that life cannot go on as it did before.
Have you observed a big split between generations in South Africa over how to adjust to the new political reality? Certainly there is one in the book. I have too little close contact with young people (people under the age of 21) to be a reliable commentator on the scene. But, simply by definition, a child has less historical adjusting to do than an older person.
I heard a radio interview with you here that was almost entirely about South African politics. Do you wish you could escape that? Yes.
In your preliminary admonition to me by e-mail, you said: “Disgrace” is a novel. Should we take that to mean you resist the demand that a prize winner act like a universal expert? Or is this a response to those who would pry into how much of the fictional narrative you actually experienced? It means that people should read “Disgrace” on its own terms, as a work of fiction, rather than as a message in disguise. It is irritating to face questions from people who have skimmed the book looking for the message, even more irritating to face questions from people who think it isn’t necessary to read the book if you can get the message straight from the author.
Does public recognition make it more difficult for you to write to your standards? Not in the slightest.
Are you more comfortable from that perspective in England or the United States? I spend virtually no time in England. I do spend time in France, where (blessedly) no one knows or cares who I am.
I’d be interested in your reflections on life in America, how much you miss the ozone-laden air of Cape Town, the taste of hake and chips on the pier at Kalk Bay… Hake and chips isn’t what I miss about Cape Town. Most of what I miss about Cape Town is gone forever.
For example? Salt River market. The Alhambra Cinema. Horse-drawn refuse carts.
Of the realist novelist Elizabeth Costello, you wrote in 1996 that “she shakes” her readers. Is that effect something you seek? It is an effect every writer hopes to achieve, every now and again.
In the same essay, you observed: “Realism has never been comfortable with ideas… Realism is premised on the idea that ideas have no separate existence, can only exist in things.” Does this explain why you resist extracting a political message from your books? The trail of argument that leads from philosophical realism to everyday politics is too long to trace in an interview of this kind.
In “Disgrace”… the fallen professor also observes that “English is the wrong language for Africa.” Does writing about Africa in English, in the European tradition, frustrate you? Can an English-speaker feel at home in Africa? I am not sure that English is at home in Africa–not yet.
