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May 10, 2005

COETZEE GLIMPSE

Many thanks to Andie Miller, who sent along this short item by Maureen Isaacson from the registration-required Sunday Independent.

"Slow Man, JM Coetzee's new novel , is set in Adelaide, Australia, where Coetzee now resides and where accidents happen. Protagonist Paul Rayment is flung off his bicycle into the world of amputees. The first chapter of Slow Man has a light touch, surprising for the author of Waiting for the Barbarians and Disgrace.

The aloneness of Rayment becomes a pressing existential question, for which he has to answer to a quizzy nurse. "I have all the friends I could wish for. I am not Robinson Crusoe. I just do not want to see any of them." Now this is the Coetzee we know and for whom Crusoe has become a trademark symbol.

Not usually iracible, Rayment submits to rage, amid the indignity of being prodded by young doctors and nurses and encouraged to look forward. He knows that a door to the future has closed but he also knows that losing a limb is just the beginning of the total loss we will all face one day, "in the end"."

Posted by TEV at 12:09 AM |

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25 days! Quickness...

Posted by: clinton john sosna | May 21, 2005 at 01:28 PM

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