Dusklands

These two short novels, one about a writer going through a messy divorce and the other about an 18th century frontiersman and the Hottentots he has to deal with, are tied together by the single act of violence on which their stories turn. Both stories involve the power their protagonists understand they wield, and their shaky hold on that power, over themselves, their dependents and the world they inhabit, and their ultimate succumbing to that power serves as both stories' climax. The second story, "The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee," is paced better than "Vietnam Project," but both stories are a little stilted and detached from themselves in places, which runs a little counter to the thrust of the stories themselves. Yes, that's nitpicking -- I recommend this short volume otherwise without reservation -- but having read his utterly amazing and fully realized novel "Disgrace," these two stories, his first published works, show a writer not yet at the height of his powers. Just know that, unlike the main characters in these two stories, J.M. Coetzee eventually gets there.

This book is very inspiring, very deep and very complex. I lked more "In the heart of the country". By the way, the guy down here (writesbooksforfood) that rated it one star and barks against J L Borges (you can imagine) also rated another book: "How to improve your racquetball". You can imagine a guy that reads that kind of books, and later he goes and tries to enjoy Borges or Coetzee? My god.

DUSKLANDS is Coetzee's first book, and it is in some significant ways different from some of his other works, though alike in others. It is a meditation on power, colonialism, the brutal meeting of cultures that occurs when imperialist goals are served and also a study of language, language's conveyance of power and propaganda as well as "self-propaganda" or delusion. It is more oblique in its themes and points, though, than even "In the Heart of the Country," I think. The book is broken into two distinct sections. The first is a first-person narrative by an Amercian propagandist for a (government?) project about Vietnam and how the native people there can be influenced in favor of the invading army, the United States. The propagandist is an unhappy and an unappealing narrator. He has problems with his marriage, and the artfulness of his work is not respected by his superior, a fictional "Coetzee," who tells him that he needs to be plainer in language and subtler in idea for the military personnel who will read his assessment. The report is included in the narrative, and one can read the narrator's (who works in the field of "mythography") focus on cultural myth as a motivator and shaper of a people's beliefs and the outcomes of those beliefs (behaviors). And so we must ask ourselves what is the mythology of the man who is writing this report? We see his eventual break with his routine and society by the end of this section, and his own mythology in his trying to heal that break in his own mind. Coetzee, the author, begs the question here of what the narrator's break has to do with the subject of his report, colonialism and its attendant propaganda, both public and "self," in Vietnam. The second section of this slim book (125 pages), "The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee," is the story of a Boer frontiersman in the 1700s who means to take revenge on the native people because they have slighted his superiority as a white man. This section has more of narrative plot line as we follow the journey and its outcome, but deals, again, with the themes of colonialism, power, cultural identity and communication. Given the insertion of the Coetzee character again in this section, I was left to wonder what this means? Is Coetzee saying he is heir to the imperialism of his ancestors? Is he saying we are indistinguishable as individuals if we inherit the benefits of the sin of colonialism? I don't know... This was a more challenging read for me than I have found with other books by Coetzee, but it was very rewarding, especially now as our nation copes with the consequences of the means through which imperialism asserts itself in a globalizing world. I recommend this book, but not as a first look at Coetzee.

"Dusklands" consists of two very different parts. In "The Vietnam Project", Mr Coetzee tells the story of Eugene Dawn, a specialist in psychological warfare whose task it is to establish a document called the Vietnam Project dealing with the so-called Phase IV of the Vietnam conflict in the years 1973-1974. To give his imagination a helpful impulse, Dawn carries with him photographs that will illustrate the report. They show gruesome scenes of the war like for example sergeant Clifford Houston copulating with a Vietnamese woman or two other sergeants, Berry and Wilson, posing with several severed Vietnamese heads as trophies. But soon Dawn is driven to breakdown and madness by the stress of this macabre project to win the war in Vietnam. After having been driven to a nearly fatal assault on his child Martin, Dawn is placed in an institution. The text closes with Dawn reflecting as follows: "I have high hopes of finding whose fault I am." "The narrative of Jacobus Coetzee" is actually a translation from Afrikaans by J.M. Coetzee of a text published in 1762. It is the account of a hideous vengeance of a frontiersman on a tribe of Hottentots in South Africa. Both Eugene Dawn in the 1970s and Jacobus Coetzee in the 1760s are dealers in death who claim their humanity and impressively express their feelings of guilt.

This slim volume contains two superficially discreet narratives. Coetzee is once again brilliant. His form here is slightly experimental, and the prose does not display quite the crystalline exactitude found in "Disgrace", "Waiting for the Barbarians", "Age of Iron", or "The Life and Times of Michael K". Here he works in a softer vein, more like "Foe" or "In the Heart of the Country".The content is classic Coetzee. Unflinching. Sometimes his clarity and realism lead me towards existential despair. But to emerge from any of his works is to emerge stronger, emboldened by the power of the brutally honest and righteous. This book might be about passion and compassion. It is definitely an examination of human psychology, specifically how it is formed, informed, reformed, and deformed by fascistic social/political structures. "Dusklands" is a fascinating read. It illuminates another facet (or two) of the human condition. It is deceptively quick light reading. Subtly profound while intellectually massive, it is a delicate jackhammer. It is so good, and so right, that it is out of print. Do what it takes to find a copy.