There are some writers who can justifiably be subjects of legends true and false. J.M Coetzee is one such. It is said that he never laughs, and his Nobel Prize winning work, Disgrace confirms it. Disgrace had shaken me out of the comfort zone of politically correct and somewhat idealistic views on the much celebrated end of apartheid in South Africa. There were parallel stories, imagery, comment on history, violence, society etc…and all captured with a kind of precision that seems impossible. I feel ridiculous building up a book so much, but it really was the perfect novel. With this baggage it is only too easy to guess what I expected from Slow Man, Coetzee’s next novel. And I have to say that I was a little disappointed.
Paul Rayment’s life changes when he is hit by a speeding car. His leg is amputated and he is maimed for life. He hires a nurse, Marijana, who he is attracted to. There is no evident future with Marijana because she is married with a large family of three children, all of whom Paul tries to win over. In an unexpected turn of events, Australian novelist Elizabeth Costello comes into their lives, into Paul’s home, uninvited, with no promise of leaving.
In Slow Man, J.M. Coetzee moves out of South Africa, into Australia, and in the process seems to lose some of his grip. Perhaps because he belongs, in more ways than one, to South Africa. He hasn’t completely acclimatized to this new literary locale. One would think that this physical move is a mere detail since his position remains essentially the same, that of the settler, one who has been assimilated into the culture and lifestyle he inhabits, even though his origins lie elsewhere, in white Europe to be specific. Like a lot of Australian literature, in this novel, Coetzee dabbles with ideas of identity, of language, of origins and ultimately of history.
In classic Coetzee style, there is careful deliberation on each sentence, on the very use of language, which the writer often discusses with the reader. The novel opens with these lines, “The blow catches him from the right, sharp and surprising and painful, like a bolt of electricity, lifting him up off the bicycle. Relax! he tells himself as he flies through the air (flies though the air with the greatest of ease!), and indeed he can feel his limbs go obediently slack. Like a cat he tells himself: roll, then spring to your feet, ready for what comes next. The unusual word limber or limbre is on the horizon too.”
He does something similar in his comparison of the two women of almost identical names, Marianna, a call-girl of sorts who Elizabeth Costello arranges for, and Marijana, who Paul loves. “He says Marianna, she says Marianna, but it is not the same name. His Marianna is still coloured by Marijana…not the French Marianne? (he asks)…Not French. A pity. France would be something in common, like a blanket to deploy over the pair of them.”
The question of identity is central to this novel. Why does Paul fall in love with Marijana, is he really in love or is it just desire, fulfillment of which will provide him with a sense of superiority? Paul talks of being in love and in the same breath he says he wants to look after Marijana and her family, including her husband. In this attempt he offers to fund her son’s college education, and pays a considerable amount to bail out her daughter of a petty theft accusation. Coetzee invites his reader to join him in observing his protagonist, no doubt with a knowing smile. For instance, Paul writes a letter to Marijana’s husband clarifying his position, “It is not just money I offer. I offer certain other tangibles too, human tangibles…I employ(ed) the word godfather. I do not know whether in Catholic Croatia you have the institution of the godfather. But you must be familiar with the concept…the godfather is the personification of the Holy Ghost.”
At the same time, Paul doesn’t find it in him to be condescending to Elizabeth Costello of white European descent like him. He isn’t in love with her, but she forces him to treat her like an equal, in her mystical way she insists that she didn’t come to him, rather he came to her. There is no explanation as to why she came, from where and when she will go back, and in the way the story develops, she becomes a counterfoil to Paul. She offers him a better life, away from the present, she offers her company and support, a bit like Paul’s Holy Ghost analogy, only more subtle, more humble! She seems to know everything Paul knows or has been through and even those things that he suspects, but doesn’t speak of.
But what is identity without history, arguably Coetzee’s favourite topic. In each of his novels, Coetzee designs different ways of representing history. At times it is through people, some times through spaces, through language. Slow Man uses a metaphor more predictable, photographs. Paul is ready to go miles to help Drago or any member of Marijana’s family, but when Drago steals an original photograph from his collection, we see, for the first time, a stern Paul. In a sequence of events not out of the ordinary, Drago steals the original and makes a copy in which he has superimposed his grandfather’s image. The idea of rewriting history is only too obvious, especially since Paul has made it abundantly clear that it is through his collection of photographs that he wants to immortalize himself. The pictures aren’t his, neither are they taken by him, but they belong to him. To add to it there is the usual conversation about how he has left France far away and is a mere speck in his memory, it isn’t a culture he can blend with any more. It’s too direct, it’s lacking the usual craft that one associates with Coetzee’s writing. The gamut of emotions, conflicting, tearing the reader apart that are signature Coetzee in so many of his novels, The Master of Petersburgh, Youth, Waiting for the Barbarians, Disgrace etc, are compromised in favour of the discourse of identity. A limiting of thought that is disappointing.
Slow Man still has some features of a classic Coetzee novel. The central protagonist is a middle-aged, single, lonely man, who is very difficult to identify with, and sometimes impossible to sympathise with. There is desire that appears almost perverse, but also very real. There are the women that come out looking stronger than the men in spite of being secondary characters.
Slow Man took its time coming, but it hasn’t been able to match the standard Coetzee had set with Disgrace. Not by a mile.
