| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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clearly based on the works of earlier writers—Defoe, Dostoevsky, Kafka, and so on. I tend to agree with Nadine Gordimer when she writes, “I would…raise an eyebrow at, if not take issue with, critical contention that the difficulties of Coetzee's novels require that the reader shall have read the same books the author has” (Preface x–xi). Once again, a catalogue of intertexts says nothing about Coetzee's power and value as a writer.
Writing about a writer with Coetzee's ferocious intellect and breadth of reference is daunting. When novelist Paul Auster, speaking at Writers' Week in Adelaide in 2008, remarked that he is stimulated to write about things he does not understand, I felt this explained my wish to write about Coetzee. His books are endlessly fascinating because they are not finally explicable: a residue of mystery remains. It is for this reason that much of my criticism is tentative and open-ended. Dominic Head notes how Coetzee's novels
I read this passage just as I was preparing my final draft of this book and found it heartening. As Attridge says, “If Coetzee's novels and memoirs exemplify anything, it is the value (but also the risk) of openness to the moment and to the future, of the perhaps and the wherever” (“Against Allegory” 79). The kind of reading both Attridge and Head recommend brings the focus back to the text and cannot be separated from it.
The power of narrative to grip the reader's attention and wrench one away from the demands of everyday life has little to do with political messages or literary influences. This question of the power of the writer is one that Coetzee revisits often and has perhaps not entirely resolved in his own mind. He has consistently resisted requests to interpret his