Surprised by Coetzee
Like Mark at RSB, I really did “wonder if anyone will bother to concern themselves” with Norman Mailer’s new book. Imagine my surprise, then, to discover Coetzee’s long review of the book in the February 15 New York Review of Books. Well, I thought, Mailer’s book is about Hitler, and Coetzee has a well established interest in the subject of evil in our world, so why not. Then I read the last line here:
The much-maligned domestic tyrant Alois comes across sympathetically as a canny customs officer, a husband proud of his virility despite advancing years, a devoted but luckless amateur beekeeper, a man of little school-learning anxiously climbing the social ladder. The scenes in which Alois struggles not to make a fool of himself during gatherings with fellow small-town notables are worthy of the Flaubert of Bouvard and Pécuchet.
Granted, B&P is not considered Flaubert’s greatest novel, but still I was surprised to see any Mailer work, in whole or in part, described as “worthy of Flaubert.”
Let Mailer alone – there are other surprises in Coetzee’s piece too. Check out the last line here:
All in all, the adventures of Adolf Hitler in the realm of ideas provide a cautionary tale against letting an impressionable young person loose to pursue his or her education in a state of total freedom. For seven years Hitler lived in a great European city in a time of ferment from which emerged some of the most exciting, most revolutionary thought of the new century. With an unerring eye he picked out not the best but the worst of the ideas around him. Because he was never a student, with lectures to attend and reading lists to follow and fellow students to argue with and assignments to complete and examinations to sit, the half-baked ideas he made his own were never properly challenged. The people he associated with were as ill-educated, volatile, and undisciplined as himself. No one in his circle had the intellectual command to put his chosen authorities in their place as what they were: disreputable and even comical mountebanks.
Normally a society can tolerate, even look benignly upon, a layer of autodidacts and cranks on the fringes of its intellectual institutions.
This is new to me: ”autodidact” as a term of derogation. But I think there’s something missing. Editorial error, no doubt. Surely the line originally read, “autodidacts, cranks, and artists.”
February 13th, 2007 08:51
Indeed, this review was rather unsteady. I haven’t read any Mailer, but I have read some Coetzee and lots of NYBooks reviews, and this one was unique. It seemed to me that Coetzee was trying to get down the very heart of the text, which was refreshing since so many reviews of The Castle in the Forest concentrated on Mailer and Mailer being old and Mailer being this and that etc etc.
February 13th, 2007 15:55
Excellent point. As usual, no halfway measures for Coetzee. And, in fairness, he does end up in a more reasonable place re Mailer when he concludes that CITF is a “very considerable contribution to historical fiction.” Read: it’s a very good genre piece.
February 15th, 2007 15:38
“Normally a society can tolerate, even look benignly upon, a layer of autodidacts and cranks on the fringes of its intellectual institutions”.
I have to agree that, at least in isolation, these lines are quite peculiar. It sounds as if society should be a kind of Platonic dictatorship, with the grace to permit some of its members to educate themselves.
February 15th, 2007 15:44
To clarify, I should probably have stressed that this grace allowed its citizens sounds as if it is an indulgent whim on behalf of the state. It could quite comfortably be the kind of statement made from Hitler’s Reich itself. Goebbells could say, “Normally a society can tolerate, even look benignly upon, a layer of autodidacts and cranks on the fringes of its intellectual institutionsâ€, but then add the crucial, “But sometimes our citizens must be protected against themselves, and so we are burning such and such degenerative art.” Though perhaps I’m getting carried away. I do actually think a society should have the courage to say no to certain things, and not necessarily bow down before certain supposedly divine truths, such as Free Speech.
February 15th, 2007 21:38
Not far from my own reactions, Mr. Kenneally. But something else occurred to me too: Coetzee’s remark suggests a rather threatening (or threatened) view of the present age, when – thanks to the Internet – there’s more opportunity than ever to educate oneself.
Coetzee’s line doesn’t occur in isolation – you really have to read the whole passage, the whole article – but I don’t think the context makes the line any less provocative:
February 16th, 2007 08:33
And the issues so broad that reducing it to the esoterical education of Hitler quite misleading. There are questions such as who funded Hitler, and how this party and subsequently this government were allowed to rise to such a level of potential and active threat in Europe. Reducing the issue to the education of Hitler on the fringes of society is, intentionally or not, avoiding very serious and much ignored questions. Not a book I’ve read yet but seeing him in interview has led me to order Professor Anthony Sutton’s book, Wall St and the Rise of Hitler. The rise of Germany from the ashes of WW1 in such a short time all a bit fairy-tale like.
February 16th, 2007 10:01
Oh, I’d stay away from self-directed reading, my friend. You know what a little curiosity did to Hitler.
But seriously, I’m surprised (again!) to find myself in this debate more inclined toward Mailer (born evil) than toward Coetzee (learned evil).
February 16th, 2007 12:31
You’re right, Sam. I think I’m gonna hand myself in before who knows what might happen.
Also seriously, currently reading Burgess’ Earthly Powers, which led me to listening to an interview with him, and his view of evil matches my own. That is, that evil is a force extrinsic to man, that one enters. In the interests of brevity that’s probably a bit simplifying, but I think these are age-old epic religious(hopefully that doesn’t offend) issues, and if one looks at footage of Hitler delivering one of his speeches, he certainly does give a good impression of one possessed. Which isn’t an argument against free will; he has placed himself willingly in that position. If one examines the nature of his and the Nazis integral ties to the occult, in the form of societies as Thule, this not an unnatural conclusion.