J.M. Coetzee and the Power of Narrative By Gillian Dooley

uses narrative form and how the reader experiences the text, rather than regarding it as “an object whose significance has to be divined” (Attridge, “Against Allegory” 67). One is caught by something unique and valuable in art, and one feels the urge to explain its effects. It is all too easy to become caught up in explication of what the artist means to say, though this often misses the point and fails to account for one's experience of the work. As Attridge points out in his discussion of Waiting for the Barbarians,

Coetzee's novels are often described as “novels of ideas” because of their undeniable intellectual force. However, the ideas in his novels are, significantly, always embodied and tested up to and beyond their limits in a suffering, mortal being, and the language and narrative forms in which they are expressed are constantly interrogated.

So, I am not interested in examining the “what” or even the “why” of Coetzee's work in any detail, although such questions inevitably arise from time to time in the following pages. I want to discover the “how”: whence does Coetzee's work derive its power? A discussion of themes, influences, and allegorical meanings, it seems to me, tends to bleach out the experience of reading, and this experience is surely the reason for choosing to read Coetzee. An allegorical or thematic reading often ignores style, language, point of view, and narrative structure. Sometimes linguistic analysis can be brought to the service of such a reading. John Douthwaite's articles on Disgrace, for example, provide some interesting insights into Coetzee's use of language, choice of names, and so on, although this approach can lead to some dubious interpretations when taken too literally.

I am also not concerned to any great degree in this book with questions of influence, either generally or in specific cases where books are