Reading Coetzee

Elizabeth MacFarlane is a writer and researcher in the Creative Writing department at the University of Melbourne.

”My impression is that this is a significant and daring work. It is a rare and refreshing pleasure to read an academic book where the writer is willing to put herself on the line, not only through her assessment of someone else, but by writing stories and creative non-fiction that relate to her main line of investigation. (It turns out that some of those who teach also can do). This makes everything matter to the reader because it all clearly matters to and affects Elizabeth MacFarlane. Her enterprise is not a pursuit of status but a pursuit of understanding and fuller living.” – Per K. Brask, University of Winnipeg, Canada

• IntroductionThis Book is Irregular: On the critical-creative nexusThe middle voice‘I have beliefs but I do not believe in them’The voice of the literary criticThe critical landscapeCoetzee’s recurring blank pageThe written is always a compromiseMetaphor as Contagion: On the Postscript of Elizabeth CostelloElizabeth Costello as Postscript to Coetzee’s oeuvreLord Chandos’s total renunciation of literary activityLady Chandos and the problem of metaphorThe Author Divided in Coetzee’s NovelsA moment of rupture: The white-haired womanTime, tense, and aspectSinging birdsDivided and divined‘A going against’: Coetzee, postmodernism, and late styleWhere is Coetzee? Authors and charactersHer man and sheThe Ethics of EmbodimentThe ethics of embodiment: Philosophy and literatureCostello’s progress, human to apeThe dark chamber: Ethics and ambiguityTwo suspended elements: sentence, narrative, textThe metaphor of the realShort fictionThe Nature of ItMuseumThe ScarTriptychConclusionsForeground and backgroundLate styleThe wrong questionPostscript: A Bad YearReferencesIndex