Wow. The best author nobody knows has just won the Nobel Prize for Literature. And I couldn't be happier.
Coetzee has written some of the most powerful novels I have ever read. That sounds hackneyed, but there's no other way to express it. Waiting for the Barbarians literally made me shutter, both because of its shocking realism and because of how close out society has come to matching the book's bitter cruelty.
I think, at 63, the man will finally begin to garner some of the literary attention that he has long since earned, though I doubt he'll want it. Even so, the world will be a slightly better place because of his soon to come recognition.
The Times had a nice paragraph, quoting from one of the author's colleagues:
Jonathan Lear, a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago who is teaching a course with Mr. Coetzee this semester, said: "One of the things he looks at, which other people including myself lack the courage to look at, is human cruelty and insensitivity as it occurs in all sort of contexts. If you read his work, it's really a surgical, clinical diagnosis of what's going on here, and it's not pretty. On the other hand, he has an amazing human passion that is very clear even when he's describing the worst things people do to one another. He's asking what are the conditions of our salvation and damnation."
That last sentence plagues me every day, and I admire an author brave enough to try and wrestle for the answer.
Posted by mike at October 3, 2003 12:20 AM