In today’s Herald Tribune Jonathan Dee reviews Coetzee’s Novel “Summertime”.
Dee writes: ‘It is a truism, of course, that even the most faithful and exacting memoir contains an element of invention; but jadedness does little to cushion one’s surprise upon learning — not from the book itself — that much of Coetzee’s self-portrait in “Summertime” is substantially falsified. In 1972, far from withering away in the grim suburb of Tokai with his decrepit father, he was already married, with two young children. And his mother, whose loss hangs over the book, did not in fact die until 1985.
Why obfuscate such things? What is the purpose of supposing readers’ interest in one’s own early life only to subvert that interest via manufactured, undergraduate-level coyness about Truth and Self? For all its self-deprecations, there is no contesting that the “Scenes From Provincial Life” trilogy is a fundamentally narcissistic project. But the vandalism Coetzee commits upon the easily checked facts of his own life ultimately serves to sharpen a question that does seem genuine, and genuinely self-indicting: Doesn’t being a great artist demand, or at least imply, a certain greatness of spirit as well?’
Isn’t the reviewer confusing fiction with non-fiction? “Summertime” is clearly presented as a novel -- even if the main character is named Coetzee it’s a bit pedestrian to speak about “vandalism” committed “upon the easily checked facts of his own life” in the case of a novel.
I’m afraid that history taught us that great artists don't necessarily demand a certain greatness of spirit as well.