Matt
6/13/2014 12:41:10 am
Thanks for sharing the link. I read The Childhood of Jesus some time ago and, like others, was fully drawn into the story but not sure by the end what it means. Gaita's point about trusting Coetzee, and the idea that, whatever it means, the characters will stick with you, both seem right and important here. If you've read the book, I'd be interested to hear your own impressions.
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Reshef
6/13/2014 03:49:39 am
Thanks Matt.
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Matt
6/15/2014 02:54:05 pm
It's been awhile since I read the book, but I don't recall sharing the thought that the setting of the book is a "divine a-historical no-place." It seems a little too much like something from Kafka, but maybe I'm seeing things too much through the man's eyes in the story? (But would there be rats eating the grain in the storehouse, etc? And would the boy be so much trouble if he were, as it were, "home"?) The place seemed a little bit like the place where Elizabeth Costello had arrived--at the gate--at the end of the novel Elizabeth Costello, like an airport terminal on the way, perhaps, to heaven. (If that makes sense.) At some point, I think I just gave up trying to put all the pieces together, and just focused (as Gaita nearly suggests) on the story of the boy and the man and the woman. The backdrop is very disorienting, and they are all thrown into this strange world and have to find themselves. The boy is special, and by the end we are left with the sense that he will somehow help them find themselves, establishing a new kingdom, as it were, beyond the land of the story. And that is Christlike. But that's about as far as I can get with it myself (and without returning to the book).
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Reshef
6/15/2014 11:25:46 pm
Perhaps this is the point—that we are looking at a transcendental place through human eyes. I don’t know. There is something strange about those places, and I think you are right about what you say about the end of Elizabeth Costello.
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Matt
6/16/2014 12:33:12 am
"I get the sense that he is rather testing our ideals, his own ideals."
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Reshef
6/16/2014 01:56:40 am
Thanks for the reference. I didn’t know of this book.
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Matt
6/16/2014 02:45:17 am
The interview in Salmagundi is worth checking out if you can track it down. I think this point about unsettledness is spot on, and it is perhaps that Coetzee finds ways of probing this unsettledness which is what draws me to his work. (There is something in it that speaks to a feeling that I often have, too.) Maybe the something missing has something to do with the wonder and innocence of the boy. Jesus had something to say about the kingdom of heaven belonging to those who are like innocent children. And that the boy leads them away from this place suggests that his kingdom is elsewhere. I could speculate further, but I think I'll leave it there for now.
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Reshef
6/19/2014 02:54:38 am
Thanks Matt. The Salmagundi interview is fascinating. Thanks for the reference.
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