Elizabeth Costello: Fiction

This is such a tricky book that short reviews can't really capture it, even if the premise is simple: Elizabeth Costello goes around the world on the celebrity-writer circuit delivering lectures. Poorly. Those lectures are not cryptic but they are challenging and frequently original; the stories around the lectures are well-observed and clever; and it ends with a series of surprises. It is not a coincidence that Ulysses is evoked on the first page. Give it a chance: Elizabeth Costello will actually become more and more interesting, and the puzzles, the tricks, the insinuations of the novel build up around those lectures - however poorly they are delivered.

I find the writing curiouser and curiouser as I make my way through "Elizabeth Costello". About writers and writing, about critics and criticism, about fiction and philosophy, sex and religion, about the encounter between the objective and the relative and most curious of all about a Lady Chandos writing to Francis Bacon in 1603??? And all of it woven around lectures?? What's it all about? It's all fascinating, written with a diamond like rhetoric -hard and brilliantly controlled; filled with arcane literary fact and wisdom, bold enough to bring even a living writer into its debate (Paul West and his novel about the failed assassination of Hitler while leaving West as a character to sit as a silent shade in the background while the elderly Elizabeth chatters at him like a school girl). What is it all about this story of a once sexy now wilting old lady who'd written one famous book based on another famous book and how she goes about the planet provoking academics and religionists who wish only to praise and honor her? Is this about a fictional writer or is it about the author or what? Perhaps it is poetry. With my curiosity at the highest pitch on having read the Lady Chandos letter - is this another invention [Elizabeth Chandos, Elizabeth Costello???] ???? - I Googled Chandos and found: "LETTER OF ELIZABETH, LADY CHANDOS, TO FRANCIS BACON, a brief new work by J.M. COETZEE The Letter is a plea from Elizabeth Chandos written not long after a similar letter from her husband, also addressed to Francis Bacon. In her letter, she too tries to convey some idea of their growing estrangement from words and language. "The Letter of Lord Chandos", by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, is a remarkable work, not only in the career of the author, but in the history of literature. While Hofmannsthal did not, like his character Philip Chandos, forsake writing altogether, his publication of this piece coincided with a significant change of his focus as a writer. Now, J.M. Coetzee adds a new voice to the correspondence, speaking through Philip's wife Elizabeth appending same to "Elizabeth Costello". This of course required that I google Hugo Von Hofmannsthal and Chandos where I found the following from the New York Review of Books site: "The most influential of all of Hofmannsthal's writings is the title story, a fictional letter to the English philosopher Francis Bacon in which Lord Chandos explains why he is no longer able to write. The "Letter" not only symbolized Hofmannsthal's own turn away from poetry, it captured the psychological crisis of faith and language which was to define the twentieth century." (...) So what is the purpose of all my compulsive searching? Well, the best way I can plumb Coetzee's objective in writing Elizabeth Costello is to work backward. Von Hofmannsthal's letter is about no longer being able to write poetry. In the letter, Von Hoffmanstahl has Chandos say, "My case, in short, is this: I have lost completely the ability to think or to sp

A brilliant and sometimes challenging work of fiction that shows there is life in the idea of the novel yet, and also that the Nobel people aren't so hung up on manifesto writing as I thought. Coetzee has some fun in this book, but it is well worth the ride. I find some of the other reviews here incomprehensible in their response: the size of the author's name compared to the title is a decision usually made by the publisher, not the author, and should be considered, particularly in this case, irrelevent - Coetzee has won many awards so of course the publisher is going to want his name up there to attract attention; if you need to define a 'reading pedigree' to justify a negative view, then you are probably bluffing on a pair of deuces; the price of the book on the second hand market only proves something that Wilde once wrote, that many people know the price of everything but the value of nothing; the book is NOT a manifesto on ethical vegatarianism - while Elizabth Costello herself maintains many things, ethical vegetarianism being one of those, there are many responses to her positions in the book, and some of her rejoinders to their responses are quite weak to say the least. What about her breakdown in the car with her son after the university debate? Sometimes, it seems as though people have only read a readers digest version...

Elizabeth Costello is a 66 year old Australian author who has written 9 novels as well as poetry, a book on bird life and journal articles. She is the recipient of several literary awards and on each occasion she is invited to give a lecture in which she expresses not only her ideas in her books but her view of religion, the lives of animals, the mission of a novel writer or various aesthetic issues. Thus the reader is confronted in Mr Coetzee's novel with a wide range of essential thoughts: how to define the function of the novel in our lives, the specificity of native African literature, "The humanities teach us humanity", the way people treat animals compared to the way the Nazis treated the Jews - a questionable comparison? - or the fact that fiction takes us out of ourselves into other lives. Elizabeth Costello also discusses poets like Rilke or Ted Hughes or the relevance of imposing Christian faith in many African countries. How should the writers deal with the question of evil and Eros in their writings? Does a writer need to have beliefs, is he allowed to change his beliefs? It is not easy to say how much Mr Coetzee wishes to tell about himself through the main character of his novel. In any case, Elizabeth Costello is a better writer than lecturer/talker: "Her strategy with interviews is to take control of the exchange" by using blocks of dialogue rehearsed in advance. "Even as a reader of her own stories she lacks animation". "Not her métier, argumentation. She shouldn't be there". Henceforth, her lectures often lack a structure and the audience are puzzled by her changes of topic - or sometimes lack of topic - due to the fact that she is "full of doubt, and desperate too". She feels that it is not her duty to teach or preach anything through her books but merely to show how people lived in a certain place and time. An accomplished work which deals with a wide range of philosophical, ethic, religious and moral issues that are so essential in our lives.

Elizabeth Costello isn't really a novel. It is a thought-provoking collection of essays disguised as a novel. In that same way, this novel isn't really 'about' a fictional character named Elizabeth Costello, it's about J.M. Coetzee himself. Coetzee uses the fictional construct of the Costello character to convey these essays--and in some instances uses other characters to criticize these essays. It's a very interesting approach and it works--which I think says a lot for Coetzee's talents. My favorite chapter is the last one, where Costello thinks she has died, and death becomes almost Kafkaesque. Costello is annoyed. She dislikes Kafka--her experiences in this 'afterlife' are at once brilliant and very funny. If you are in the mood for an intellectual challenge, and don't feel the need for a plot, Elizabeth Costello will suit your needs.