Summertime [Hardcover]

Ostensibly, J.M. Coetzee's Summertime is a third instalment of autobiography, succeeding Boyhood (1998) and Youth (2002) (both of which, incidentally, are excellent). But this description belies the book's true nature in two ways. First, Summertime is so far from being a conventional autobiography it's essentially a work of fiction. Second, it's a terrific book in its own right, and can be enjoyed without any prior knowledge of its forerunners.

The book begins in a style resembling Boyhood and Youth. Brief scenes from the life of Coetzee, now a thirtysomething in 1970s apartheid South Africa, are narrated in crisp third-person prose. Coetzee, we learn, is a down-and-out, unemployed and living with his elderly father, disgusted by apartheid but stuck in a rut of inaction verging on paralysis. But each scene stops abruptly, clearly unfinished, and after 15 pages the narrative stops altogether. What's going on? Here emerges the book's central conceit: Coetzee has died, leaving behind notebooks of assorted scraps. A would-be biographer, seeking to reconstruct "the story" of Coetzee's life, interviews a number of people who knew Coetzee at that time, and transcripts of these (fictional) interviews occupy most of the book's remainder.

The interviewees give us little vignettes in which Coetzee is a ghostly figure, a barely-there anonynimity, content to be manipulated and exploited by stronger characters: a man defined by his fleeting and unsatisfying connections to others. He is a supporting character. "I am perfectly aware it is John you want to hear about, not me," says Julia, Coetzee's one-time lover. "But the only story involving John that I can tell, or the only one I am prepared to tell, is this one, namely the story of my life and his part in it, which is quite different, quite another matter, from the story of his life and my part in it."

What a wonderful antidote to most autobiographies, in which the author is the protagonist in "My Story", steering a course through life like a Greek hero at the helm of a ship. Lives aren't like that. And what a remarkable fictional achievement, since, after all, the "interviews" are pure fiction. Coetzee imagines himself as he must have been viewed by others (scruffy, shy, maladroit, and not a bestselling-author-in-waiting), and does so with great perceptiveness and self-effacement, through a skilfully crafted range of utterly convincing other-voices.

John Berger famously wrote that "never again will a single story be told as though it were the only one". In this rich and intelligent work, Coetzee emphasizes that this goes for life stories too.

The tour de force that is 'Disgrace' was my first foray into Coetzee's work and I am yet to be as impressed by anything of his I've read since then. It had a restraint and subtlety that I have found missing from Coetzee's other work, `Summertime' included. There's something I find a bit too smug and self-indulgent about JMC as an author that manifests itself somehow in everything of his I've read bar `Disgrace'.
As has been noted `Summertime' is a fictionalised biography of Coetzee's namesake which might or might not be a thinly veiled replica of his own life during his `wilderness' years as a 30-something aspiring writer. Eventually I cared less about whether it was genuinely about him than how brazenly Coetzee was manipulating his reader. Some of the accounts of the `fictional' JM Coetzee are so unsympathetic and riddled with self-interest (for instance that of Julia a former lover and Adriana, the Brazilian refugee for which he harbours an obsession) that they lack credibility. I was left wondering if Coetzee wished to convey that his alter ego was misunderstood. Perhaps he was not the impersonal, machine-like pseudo-misanthrope that these women portrayed and tried to achieve this by making their accounts so devoid of balance as to turn him into a one-dimensional character in which no intelligent person could believe. Some consider this a clever literary device but for me this was more unwelcome naval-gazing by Coetzee...the recurring theme of interest in a younger woman, his alleged froideur towards the opposite sex, critique of his writing style etc. Some of these themes are present in `Disgrace' but they never threaten to eclipse the more outward looking nature of the narrative which sought to get to grips with a newly post-Apartheid South Africa.
A lot of the dialogue in Coetzee's books particularly that of the more intellectual protagonists, has a grandiosity about it that I doubt even the most pompous character is capable of spouting in real life. This is embodied in Julia- the ludicrously obnoxious and self-important married woman with whom `fictional' Coetzee has an affair. Much like in `Slow Man' and `Elizabeth Costello' I object to the harridan default mode to which Coetzee often reverts in his depiction of women. If they are not these impressionable waif-like young things they are often arrogant, unreasonably demanding and self-centred which to me says a lot more about the author's binary perception of women than anything else.
Apart from the two chapters written by the alter-ego Coetzee the most enlightening passages of the book were the accounts given by two of his colleagues one of which is a Frenchwoman with whom he had a relationship. The narrators differ quite a bit in how they believe Coetzee perceived his nationality but even in this the reader is able to get a clearer a picture by perhaps the way the two accounts meet in the middle. Apart from that the narrators seem more aware of the limitations of their own perspective acknowledging that they cannot give a comprehensive view of a man that they only knew in a certain context. In turn these sections of `Summertime' are a bit more fair and charitable to the subject although there is this lingering (and tiresome) idea of his emotional detachment even in his writing.
Coetzee no doubt has a gift for language and when he does employ an understated, slightly poetic tone then he's at his best - as in the first and last chapter of `Summertime'. Coetzee has been known to suffer from `novel fatigue' and I believe in his attempt to re-invent the wheel he sacrifices too much of the story and doesn't always do himself justice. It's a shame I stumbled on `Disgrace', Coetzee's best work so early on; as far as my quest goes to read something of his to equal it, it's been downhill all the way.

Book Review

Summertime by J M Coetzee

Summertime (2009) is the third of South African John Coetzee's fictionalised autobiographies following Boyhood (1997) and youth (2002). The inspired novel centres around a young English biographer who is working on a book about the late writer, John Coetzee, focusing on the years 1972-1977 when Coetzee was in his thirties.
Following the premature end to his six years in America, John returned to South Africa to live in the outskirts of Cape Town with his widowed father. This period is emphasised by the biographer as an era when Coetzee was `finding his feet as a writer'.
Never having met Coetzee, he embarks on an exciting journey of interviewing a number of characters who were physically and emotionally involved with him.

The Coetzee that we are introduced to, through a series of interviews, is lonely and uncomfortable with almost every aspect of his life. Further on in the novel, a more humuorous side is developed as Coetzee becomes sexually involved with a number of female characters. He takes up dancing in attempt to woo a woman, only to make a fool of himself. Coetzee continues to place himself in awkward situations throughout the novel creating an ongoing theme of comedy for the reader to enjoy.

Within the novel, he is regarded with mistrust by his family as he engages in manual labour in penitence for his country's long history of `making other people do our work for us as we sit in the shade and watch'. His love for the Coetzee family estate in the Karoo remains as passionate as ever it was in Boyhood but everywhere else he is lost. South Africa has become a `loud angry place'.

Summertime is a captivating portrait of life, and like most lives it is full of dichotomy and everyday moral struggles. It is biographical in most of its elegant content, yet largely fictional in the manner of its telling. It is meant to be about one man, however it spends most of the time exploring the lives of the characters John was involved with. This unpredictable period of John's life is presented by women who John believed he had a significant relationship with. Unfortunately, it was unrequited love, and from the female side of the story, their relationships held no passion.

Dominating the Man Booker Prize Summertime is said to be his most popular work since Youth was published seven years ago, also another enticing read.
In style and character, one gets the feeling that this portrayal is true to the man Coetzee feels himself to be. It is an exercise in self awareness and honesty which makes his autobiographies such a joy to read, exploring the life of one of our greatest esteemed writers.

By Amanda Bennett

Bournemouth University