When I read James Wood's review of Disgrace last August, his contemptuous tone left a bad taste in my mouth, and I said so in the post I wrote that day. Today, with some curiosity, I picked up Mr. Wood's write-up of Elizabeth Costello and was somewhat surprised by the near-reverent language with which the critic assesses the novel.

Wood, of course, is one of the world's better English-language literary critics and, when a novel piques his interest or evokes his passion for literature, he tends to pen some of the most insightful and assessable reviews you'll ever come across. Happily, his review of Elizabeth Costello falls into this category. After dismissing the understandable aversion some readers have to the author's curious framing of the novel and positing that Coetzee is not simply "protecting himself by pre-empting criticism" or shying away from taking ownership of often unreasonable ideas, Wood insists, rather lyrically, that the then newly-minted Nobel Laureate has crafted a supreme defense of literature and emotion against the unfeeling onslaughts of some of the modern world's more disarmingly rational approaches to existence. Ultimately, Wood argues, Elizabeth Costello "inclines towards death" while celebrating the beauty of the sympathetic possibilities of the human imagination.

Labels: Adrienne Miller, Disgrace, Dissertation, DJ Taylor, Elizabeth Costello, Esquire, EW, J.M. Coetzee, James Wood, literary criticism, London Review of Books, Rebecca Ascher-Walsh, The Independent

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I just finished reading the brief essay I'd set out for myself today, Elizabeth Lowry's duel review of Disgrace and The Lives of Animals. Like most pieces from the London Review of Books, Lowry's "Like a Dog" is written in language highly influenced by literary-critical writing but does not get bogged down by the often super-specialized argot one typically associates with such prose. I think Lowry's understanding of both Disgrace and the two fictionalized lectures in The Lives of Animals that would later form the center of Coetzee's excellent Elizabeth Costello is far superior to that of many fellow critics. She is both attuned to the novel's relationship to the author's well-established (and oft-criticized) oblique engagement with South African power dynamics, colonizer-colonized relationships, and postmodern undermining of narrative authority as well as some of the less-discussed developments in Coetzee's later work, which translates to an exceptionally insightful review that any budding Coetzee scholar would do well to read.

Labels: Disgrace, Dissertation, Elizabeth Costello, Elizabeth Lowry, J.M. Coetzee, literary criticism, literature, London Review of Books

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