Product Description

In addition to being one of the most acclaimed and accomplished fiction writers in the world, Nobel Prize winner J. M. Coetzee is also a literary critic of the highest caliber. In this collection of twenty essays, Coetzee examines the work of some of the twentieth-century’s greatest writers—from Samuel Beckett and Günter Grass to Gabriel García Márquez and Philip Roth. Brilliantly insightful, challenging yet accessible, these pieces demonstrate Coetzee’s sharp eye and unwavering critical acumen. Written with great clarity and precision, they offer a window into twenty immortal texts that will be of major interest to all readers of international literature, as well as to Coetzee’s many fans.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #365513 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780143113782
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Booklist
In his second volume of literary essays, following Stranger Shores (2001), Nobel laureate Coetzee conducts deep readings primarily of major twentieth-century European and American writers. Cosmopolitan in range and erudite in texture, Coetzee's biocritical explications delve into the art, times, and humanity of, among others, Italo Svevo, Robert Musil, Paul Celan, Gunter Grass, Graham Greene, and W. G. Sebald. As a South African expat, Coetzee is attuned to literature under pressure as writers write in lands other than home, contending with language gaps and facing a world in violent upheaval. In his American essays, Coetzee brings an unusual perspective to Walt Whitman's eroticism, Faulkner's vision of the South, Philip Roth's Plot against America, and Arthur Miller's screenplay for The Misfits. In each case, Coetzee tells a story as much as he interprets the work, riding in the slipstream of his subject's life and writings as he parses matters personal, technical, aesthetic, moral, and political with both subtlety and vigor. Coetzee's profound fascination with the clarity and mystery of literature reaffirms its significance. Seaman, Donna

Review
“ Inner Workings is Coetzee’s master class, and he honors us, too, by letting us sit in on it.”
—Walter Kirn, The New York Times Book Review

“ Coetzee describes his subjects using a variety of approaches, in a highly readable style.”
—Los Angeles Times

About the Author
J. M. Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003. He has won numerous other literary awards, including the Booker Prize and the CNA Prize, South Africa’s premier literary award. He is the author of eighteen books, including Disgrace and Slow Man. A native of South Africa, he now lives in Adelaide, Australia. Derek At tridge is a Coetzee scholar and professor of English at the University of York in England.

Customer Reviews

Occasional Thoughts on Literature
"Inner Workings" represents a collection of J.M. Coetzee's literary essays from 2000-2005. The majority, even those on important figures, are little more than book reviews or occasional work; they are almost never "critical" in either sense of the term. Coetzee's usual approach is to provide a general summary of the book under consideration, an overview of the author's life story, and a brief concluding remark that is more often than not laudatory or so gnomic as to hardly provide any literary perspective. That being said there is a great deal to be learned from this volume, especially in regard to the Central European authors who either influenced Kafka or were influenced by him. A majority of these authors were Jewish and Coetzee comprehensively discusses the manner in which their lives were compromised either through surrender to the majoritarian culture or through outright physical annihilation. The roster of middle European authors includes Italo Svevo, Robert Walser, Robert Musil, Walter Benjamin (a fine essay), Bruno Schulz, Joseph Roth, and (by extension)Paul Celan; an essay on Franz Kafka would have been a logical inclusion. Coetzee is very good on the hazards of translation, especially in regard to German-speaking writers. The second area of emphasis is on post-World War II American and English authors like Graham Greene, Beckett, Faulkner, Bellow, Arthur Miller and Philip Roth. He takes Roth's measure accurately and his love of Bellow as perhaps the greatest writer of his generation is evident. As a poet I especially enjoyed his explications of Celan and Whitman. His essay on Gabriel Garcia Marquez is somewhat dismissive, critiquing "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" as an updating and apologia for "Love in The Time of Cholera", the brilliance of which he severely underestimates. Of most of his opinions there is little to argue with; whether we read these writers with more intelligence because of what he himself has written is subject to dispute. At times it seems as if he writes only to acknowledge his fellow Nobel Laureates but he does manage to humanize them, and for that we can be grateful.

Essays on W.G. Sebald, Joseph Roth, Sandor Marai, Gunter Grass, Bruno Schulz, Robert Walser, et al.
INNER WORKINGS is a collection of 21 essays by J.M. Coetzee, 16 of which first appeared (in an earlier form) in the "New York Review of Books." With the sole exception of Walt Whitman, all of the subjects are authors of the 20th century (several are still alive and productive, though years from now they surely will be thought of as 20th-century writers). For the most part the essays follow the format common to the "New York Review of Books": some biographical information about the author; relatively brief discussion of his (or, in the case of Nadine Gordimer, her) place or significance in 20th-century literature; more detailed discussion of one or more works of the author; and, where applicable, some mention of the merits of the translation into English.

I was prompted to buy the book when, picking it up in the bookstore last week and skimming its table of contents, I saw that a number of the essays deal with authors I have been reading in the past two or three years -- specifically, the ones listed in the title to this review. I have now read the essays on those authors, as well as ones on Italo Svevo, Robert Musil, and Graham Greene. If and when I have time to read (or re-read) several other authors covered in the book (e.g., Samuel Beckett, Saul Bellow, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Philip Roth), I will make a point of going back and reading what Coetzee has to say about them.

The essays are intelligent and informative, well-written and easily comprehensible. There is no in-depth analysis or exegesis, but neither are the essays superficial. Only in some of the essays does Coetzee express strong critical judgments. A few of those are negative. (For instance, he concludes that Sandor Marai's novelistic achievements are "slight.") I don't think INNER WORKINGS constitutes literary criticism or analysis of the first order, but that's alright by me. In each essay I read there was enough new information or fresh perspectives on the author and work(s) at issue to make my reading the essay worth my time.

I will end by quoting two sentences from Coetzee's essay on W.G. Sebald: "Sebald did not call himself a novelist -- prose writer was the term he preferred -- but his enterprise nevertheless depends for its success on attaining lift-off from the biographical or the essayistic -- the prosaic in the everyday sense of the word -- into the realm of the imaginative. The mysterious ease with which he is able to achieve such lift-off is the clearest proof of his genius."

That German Influence
Coetzee, whose background is Dutch, lives in Australia. He is known, of course, as a South African, but his roots belong to Europe. He has an affinity for the hard, dense German authors and writes about them well. As in his other collected essays, he likes to talk about translators and their work. Clearly, he has the expertise to do so. His close readings of Celan's poetry and of Kafka's prose give one an insight into his mental processes, which are exacting. Unlike Sontag, for example, one doesn't always come away excited to read further; instead one feels duty-bound to do so. I especially appreciated his essay on Arthur Miller's "The Misfits," which is an often ignored masterpiece of John Huston. He offers appraisals of Robert Walser, Robert Musil, Walter Benjamin, and other modern masters of the German-speaking world. These, too, are Sontag's favorites. On Americans such as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, he covers familiar territory, but seems to have no feeling for their humor. He faults Bellow for not doing more with philosophy, which may be fair, but doesn't touch sufficiently on the development of his comic genius. In my view, Sontag writes a better essay, while Coetzee writes far superior fiction.