Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1704706 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-31
• Original language: Spanish
• Binding: Paperback
• 153 pages

Customer Reviews

'I am not a story', but a formidable masterpiece
This remarkable short novel has two interlinked levels: the relation fiction (art / writing) - reality and the `meaning / message' of a particular work of art, in our case `Foe'.

J.M. Coetzee uses the Robinson Crusoe story as well as the name of the author (Daniel Defoe, originally Foe) to delve deeply into the real nature of art and the real (hi)story of man (`the heart of man is a dark forest').
A work of fiction is part of reality. It is reality: `We [the novel and its characters] are all alive, part of the world.' But, if fiction (art) is part of the world, what is its function? `By art we have a means of giving voice', for instance to the speechless, who cannot tell the `real' story.
What is the truth in `Foe'? `Since we speak in figures', the truth is that slavers (the North) cut Friday's (the South's) tongue to make him speechless. The slavers continue, however, `to use words to subject their slaves to their will.' Friday underwent also a more atrocious mutilation: he is `unmanned'.
`Foe' states that `there are not two kinds of man, Englishman [pars pro toto] and savage.' Like for anyone else, Friday's desire is freedom: `How unnatural a lot is for any creature to be kept from its kind. Love perishes outside one's kind.' But, `as he is dumb we can tell ourselves his desires are dark to us.'
However, we must speak the unspoken, `we must give reckoning of ourselves to the world to hold our place.'
At the end, Friday's mouth is forced open and his message, `a slow stream, flows up to the end of the earth, like the roar of a seashell held to the ear.'

In `Foe', J.M. Coetzee dresses a sharp and clear mirror for artists and for the South.
He has written a work of genius, a formidable masterpiece.