Book Review

SHERIDAN GRISWOLD | Friday September 10, 2010 00:00

J. M. Coetzee (2009) Summertime: Scenes from Provincial Life. London, Harvell Secker, Random House, Hardcover edition, 266 pages, P271. ISBN 9-781846-553189.  Available at Exclusive Books.

Nobel (2003) and twice Booker Prize (1983 and 1999) winning author J. M. Coetzee's fictionalised memoirs about his 'Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life' (1997), 'Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life' (2002) and now young adulthood have been well received. His approach to his life is unique and continues in Summertime. It might also have been subtitled 'Scenes from a Provincial Life: 1971-1977'. Summertimea collection of stories by Alice Munro.

In Summertime John Coetzee has died. Mr Vincent, a dedicated biographer from London, to underpin his study of the late author, traces people who knew John well. He says, 'What I am doing is telling the story of a stage in his life, or if we can't have a single story then several stories from several perspectives' (page 217). Instead of a prologue and epilogue, the book opens with 'Notebooks, 1972-1975' and begins on August 22, 1972 with news of an incursion in Francistown.

Vincent travels to South Africa in his pursuit of the real John Coetzee. To Brasil, to interview Adriana Nascimento - in the 1970s John had taught her daughter Maria Regina English and became attracted to the mother. Adriana invited him to their house because she wanted a tutor for her other daughter Joana - she was concerned that Maria Regina, through John, had developed a love of poetry and an inappropriate passion for her teacher. 'Was Maria Regina besotted with this foolish man? What does she see in him?' (page 161). Or was it Adriana that John Coetzee was in love with? John wrote her letters that she destroyed [her husband had died and she returned to Brazil] but she remembers clearly what he wrote to her. One was about how 'listening to Schubert had taught him one of the greatest secrets of love  ... it was from Schubert that he had learned to sublime love. Not until he met me did he understand why in music movements are called movements. Movement in stillness, stillness in movement' (page 175).

Vincent in Paris found Sophie Denšel, who had taught a course in African Literature with John at the University of Cape Town and they briefly had a liaison. She found John a utopian.  'The closing down of the mines. The ploughing under the vineyards. The disbanding of the armed forces. The abolition of the automobile. Universal vegetarianism. Poetry in the streets. That sort of thing' (page 230). In Sheffield, England, he found a colleague, Martin, who also had taught courses with John at UCT - the only male he interviews out of the five - he claims most other people who knew John had already died or were unavailable.

The first, and longest interview is with Dr Julia Frankl in Kingston, Ontario. She is now a practising analyst, but when younger and married to another man, she fell in love with John Coetzee, and presumably he did with her - or was it simply that they were neighbours in Tokai, not far from Pollsmoor, and in need of each other?  In 1972 John was living with and caring for his elderly father.

Dr Frankl remembers them as being alike, 'They were both loners. Socially inept. Repressed in the wider sense of the word' (page 20). 'He was scrawny, he had a beard, he wore horn-rimmed glasses and sandals. He looked out of place, like a bird, one of those flightless birds; or like an abstracted scientist who had wandered by mistake out of his laboratory' (page 21). 'John was not easy to talk to, his whole stance toward the world was too wary, too defensive for that. I presume his mother must have taken to him when he was little, and loved him, because that is what mothers are there for. But it would be hard to imagine anyone else doing so' (page 25).

Julia's husband was a businessman. 'The men both liked and disliked it that their wives were coveted by other men'. They wanted their wives to look and be desirable, but to remain faithful to them; while they could have other women when and where they wanted. 'That is why I say the system of the licit illicit in which they all participated was darker than they were prepared to admit ... as a social microsystem it was unsustainable' (page 27). Julia spent a lot of time in Pick n Pay and met John first there. He thought she came there for the music. He told her, 'No wife, no children. I am back to being a son'.

Julia remembered thinking, 'He and his father together in that mean little cottage on Tokai Road, a widower and his celibate son, two incompetents, two of life's failures, supping on polony sausage and biscuits and tea' (page 37). His first novel 'Dusklands' was due to come out soon. He gave Julia a proof copy. It had just arrived and he was in 'a gay mood'. 'I was surprised that this intermittent lover of mine, this amateur handyman and part-time school teacher, had it in him to writer a book-length book and what is more, find a publisher for it, albeit only in Johannesburg' (page 57).

Julia had studied German literature. Only after she moved to Canada did she become a medical doctor and a therapist. She remembers that 'Dusklands' was full of killings, people and animals, yet John had told her he was becoming a vegetarian. He also was doing all the work alone of cementing a skirting around their small house, 'to overthrow the taboo on manual labour'. He told her, 'I get depressed if I am not writing'. She told him, 'A book should be an axe to chop open the frozen sea inside us' (page 61).

Julia remembered how much she enjoyed talking with John. 'In fact our conversations were probably what I missed the most. He was the only man I knew who would let me beat him in an honest argument, who wouldn't buster or obfuscate or go off in a huff when he was losing' (page 62). Was he capable of feelings? Was he in Love? 'I was the one who did the courting. I was the one who did the seducing. I was the one who managed the terms of the affair. I was even the one who decided when it was over. Was he in love? ... He was in gratitude' (page 65). He was never her Prince Charming. Instead he was 'The man who mistook his mistress for a violin' (page 83).

The interviews include the first person John was deeply in love with when he was only six years old, Margot Jonker, his cousin, also six. Her memories of John are both fascinating and moving. The extended family gathered at Christmas at Vo‘lfontein to eat, drink, ruminate and criticise. Her sister Carol was concerned not to be known as a relative of John, 'He is technically a criminal, has in some way fallen foul of the American law [JMC earned a doctorate in Texas, 1968, on the early writings of Samuel Beckett, but was denied residence in the US] ... Carol's hostility to John goes deeper than that. She finds him affected and supercilious. From the heights of his engelse education John looks down on the Coetzees, one and all' (page 90).

Carol and John discuss their past. He reveals an intense sense of his mortality and that of other creatures. He says the Karoo 'fills me with melancholy. It spoils me for life' (page 97). Their trip to Merweville in his old Datsun utility to see a house he wants to buy for his father will become a classic in literature. On their return the vehicle collapses and they spend a cold night trying to stay cool in head and heart while keeping each other warm. He has told her 'you set the pattern of my love for other women'. In this and other chapters we actually end up learning more about the person Vincent is interviewing than about John. That is part of the delight of this book. e-mail sheridangriswold@yahoo.com