Slow Man: Slow Man: A Novel

The book hits you hard on the first pages: a sixty-year old man, Paul Rayment, is knocked off his bicycle in a road accident in Adelaide, and has to have a leg amputated. In hospital and back at home he suffers from post-operative indignities, and from depression, his reactions wincingly and bleakly described. He resents his nurses, his social worker and his physiotherapist: at their best, he feels, he is only another case for them; at their worst they talk to him as if he were a child. He becomes more acutely aware than he has ever been before of his loneliness: part of his depression is due to the fact that he has no wife (he divorced many years ago) and no children. He becomes increasingly tetchy in what he says, but even then he keeps much of what he thinks (represented in italics) to himself. Then he gets a sturdy Croatian-born home nurse, Marijana, who knows intuitively how to look after him without infantilizing him, and he comes to love her. She is a married woman with three children, the eldest, Drago, an attractive 16 year-old boy. Paul does not have, but would love to have, a sexual relationship with her; meanwhile he wants to help her by being a surrogate father to Drago and by paying his fees to go to college. And then suddenly, a third of the way through the book, this very realistic account suddenly shifts gear. Out of the blue Paul is visited by one Elizabeth Costello, who, we are told, is a well-known Australian novelist. Perhaps there really was a novelist called Elizabeth Costello - but (to me at least) it is clear from her first appearance that the Elizabeth in this story is not a real person at all, but is Paul's inner voice: clearly the italicized inner voice is no longer sufficient. She `knows' things about Paul - his very thoughts, his relationships with Marijana, even about chance encounters which no real person could possibly know. She encamps herself in Paul's house: Paul cannot get rid of her, and his efforts to do so are feeble. When he does try, she says, `I did not come to you: you came to me'. Paul thinks (pretends to himself?) that she is wanting to write a novel about him and the others, but that she is not sure how the plot will work out. Though I conceive of her as a ghostly presence, it is the genius of the book that she is presented as (or Paul imagines her as) a very solid presence indeed, with a heart condition and fleshy freckled shoulders. And as such, disconcertingly (if my interpretation is right), she seems to be a presence to Marijana and to Drago also. All the time she tells Paul that his relationship with Marijana and with Drago is an impossible one and rests on a range of misconceptions that he has both about them and about himself. But if most (though not all) of the rest of the book is an interior dialogue and a kind of auto-psychotherapy (there is a sly allusion to Freud five pages from the end), it is a sophisticated and probing one, in which Paul's views of himself are ru

When I was young, Herman Hesse showed us the path toward enlightenment. Oh, the road has often been grim and unsubstantial. We, who have searched our hearts, believed in tales told to Madmen Only. We entered alternate worlds and found ourselves, not the Magic Theater, wanting. Not since The Steppenwolf or Siddhartha have I been so absorbed in a novel as Slow Man by J.M.Coetzee. Not 'absorbed', but 'imprinted'. I feel the substance of the man, the silent communion he has with characters, the dialogues between himself and himself in different forms. The grappling of the eternal questions, the need for cohesion, for what they now call 'closure', and the realization, I think for I am not sure, that the road will go on, if not with legs, than with hands. If not to walk, then to crawl, not toward death, but toward life. There is a fusion of artist and character here. The character is real; he at last can be true to his tortoise shell. He will prevail. Perhaps not, this Elizabeth Costello, this gentle, ironic Coetzee clone. When you read this book, you can understand the irony of an 'original' Fauchery, a photograph being taken as a joke by Drago Jokic, whose name is likened to a joke by Coetzee, or was it Elizabeth Costello, o, perhaps, it was Paul Rayment? No, none of this is true because this book is mine. I will, since I am now sixty-two, sally forth in my humungous tortoise shell toward new adventure. I will not hold my breath to await the executioner's axe or the next calamitous event. Thank you, my friend, you changed my life with this work. Though it is not considered your best, it is even better because it has the subtle nuance of distance, time, and, above all else, the wisdom of an exceptional master.

The book starts simply. Paul Rayment, sixtyish, a French-born Australian retired photographer, loses his leg as the result of a bicycle accident. This obvious loss forces Paul to confront other losses, subtler but more pervasive: the loss of youth, of emotional stability, of metier, of homeland, of the opportunity for parenthood, of the capacity for risk-taking. If this sounds depressing, it's not. For one thing, there is Coetzee's straightforward and lucid prose; he must be one of the easiest to read of recent Nobelists. For another, Paul rediscovers love in all its many hues; the major theme of the book is his learning to distinguish between erotic love, gratitude, compassion, and caring. The scenes describing his relationship with his caregiver Marijana Jokic (and increasingly with her family) recapture the dangerous fascination with comparative strangers which is such a strong theme in Coetzee's DISGRACE. This is also a novel about storytelling. Part-way through the book a elderly novelist arrives who seems to regard Paul as one of her characters, and who tries to propel him into a revised version of his own history. This is Elizabeth Costello, whom other reviewers describe persuasively as the author's alter ego, although I haven't myself read the novel of that name or the essays in which she first appeared. I also question whether the postmodern device was strictly necessary. Yet you soon begin to treat Elizabeth as just another character, and her presence ultimately enhances the inner warmth of this lovely book, as she becomes a very human catalyst for Paul's self-discovery.

"I am, yet what I am none cares or knows. My friends forsake me like a memory lost. I am the self-consumer of my woes" (pp. 229-30). South African Nobel-and-Booker Prize-winner Coetzee (Disgrace (Penguin Essential Editions)) once again demonstrates his talents as a writer in SLOW MAN, a flawless novel that contemplates life and love. When 60-year-old Australian photographer Paul Rayment loses his leg in a bicycle accident, his slow recovery forces him to intensely reflect upon his own mortality. He ultimately realizes he has wasted his life. While his affection for his Croatian day nurse, Marijana Jokic, reminds Paul of the love that has eluded him, Marijana's son Drago reminds him of the son he never had. Then, in a "weird," Pynchonesque stroke reminding us this is fiction, after all, enter Elizabeth Costello (an eponymous character from Coatzee's 2003 novel), who becomes the catalyst for bewildered Paul to become the narrator in his life, pushing the novel to its truly bittersweet conclusion. Some critics have objected that Coatzee's character trick strains the plot of SLOW MAN, turning it into an episode of The Twilight Zone (The Washington Post), instead of a more serious rumination on mortality. I disagree. In SLOW MAN, Coatzee brilliantly succeeds in revealing, with equally astonishing insights and prose, what it means to live a meaningful life. G. Merritt

Coetzee has quietly established himself as one of a small handful of writers whose names get tossed about under the label of "greatest living authors." His work combines all the elements necessary to deserve that honor. He is an artist, a craftsman, and a thinker. His novels are carefully written and deeply meaningful. His prose is elegant, his characters are genuine, his stories are engaging. And his writing is full of purpose. One of the things I like best about this book, and Coetzee's writing in general, is that he is not afraid to show the ugly side of human nature. He is confident enough in his writing that he can create a hero who is nowhere near perfect. In some cases, in fact, the hero is downright pathetic. Such is the case with Paul Rayment, our protagonist here. At his core we see him as a good person, yet profoundly flawed at the same time. He succumbs to serious lapses in judgment and falls deep into self-victimization, and yet we still admire him, or the very least we sympathize with him. For in many ways, he is just like all of us. This book deals magnificently with the most basic of human needs - the need to love and be loved, and the need to leave a legacy. As our main character faces the onset of old age, and as a tragic accident leaves him without a leg and forces him to contemplate his own mortality, he begins to regret the wasted opportunities of his life. He realizes, too late, that there will be little to remember him by once he is gone. He carefully preserves his collection of rare photographs which he plans to donate to the state library when he dies, but even he himself recognizes the little value this collection has if his whole life's worth is to be judged by it. With no children, no family, and no close friends, he has failed to leave a legacy in the one and only way that matters - by touching the lives of others. So when he meets Marijana, his Croatian-born nurse, he tries to make up for lost time. Partly motivated by selfishness, partly by desperation, and partly by an inchoate feeling of love, he attempts to woo her, all the while operating under a thin veil of altruism. Here we are asked to explore difficult themes: Can an act be deemed bad if it is based entirely on love? How do we reconcile the good and the evil that both live inside of us? What will we consider most important when we look back on the life we have lived? Coetzee does not make it easy on us, and for this most readers will be grateful. One of the most fascinating aspects of this book is the mysterious appearance of Elizabeth Costello, the protagonist from Coetzee's earlier book. How she appears on Rayment's doorstep is not clear, nor for what purpose. Coetzee is clearly taking liberties here, forcing the reader to suspend disbelief, in order to create a neat construct in which he can portray the conscience and alter ego of his main character. Some readers simply won't accept this technique. Personally, it worked for me