After some weighty posts on JM Coetzee and Paul Auster’s recently published collection of letters, Here and Now, we thought it might be time for something lighter, such as John Crace’s humorous Digested Read column on the esteemed novelists’ collection.
Crace, whose Digested Read of Coetzee’s Man Booker Prize winning Disgrace can be found in his collection Brideshead Abbreviated, covers Coetzee and Auster’s correspondence on friendship, the banking crisis, sporting heroism and the lamentable state of modern literary criticism in his most recent spoof. Naturally, there’s also much talk of Aristotle, Plato, Borges, signifiers and the signified and Beckett.
On the topic of critics confusing the authors’ own identities with that of their characters, Crace sums up Coetzee’s sentiments with, “It is not as if either you or I have ever written books in which the characters have been named after ourselves or are in any way autobiographical. Ah well, such is the lot of genius, I suppose”.
Dear Paul, I have been thinking about how so many novelists have been cashing in by writing letters to one another which are then later published in book form. I wondered whether you might agree to be my correspondent for such a venture. We could start by discussing the nature of friendship as I note that Aristotle had something to say on the subject.
Dear John, I can’t say I have hitherto given the semiotics of friendship much thought, though for the purposes of publication I am prepared to do so now. My feeling is this: a friendship should always be of a non-sexual nature.
Book details
- Here and Now: Letters (2008 – 2011) by JM Coetzee, Paul Auster
EAN: 9780670026661
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- Brideshead Abbreviated: The Digested Read of the Twentieth Century by John Crace
EAN: 9780099505457
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