Sunday, October 23, 2011

J. M. Coetzee's "Summertime": Afrikaners and Mormons

The book is a fictionalized and fragmentary biography. The biographer presents the Nobel Prize winner's notebooks 1972-75, interviews with five people who knew the author, and undated fragments from his notebooks. The accounts are largely unflattering.


This morning as I finished the novel (the genre designation on the title page is "Fiction"), I was left wondering about my own deficiencies, awkwardness, guarded personality, loyalties, and relationships with my parents.


And about my rejections of and identifications with the religion I was raised in and whose tenets I practiced for 40 years.


Here's a passage from Summertime that seems to get at complexities I recognize:


So we have the case of a man who spoke the language only imperfectly, who stood outside the state religion, whose outlook was cosmopolitan, whose politics was -- what shall we say? -- dissident, yet who was ready to embrace an Afrikaner identity. Why do you think that was so?


My opinion is that under the gaze of history he felt there was no way in which he could separate himself off from the Afrikaners while retaining his self-respect, even if that meant being associated with all that the Afrikaners were responsible for, politically.


Was there nothing that drew him more positively to embrace an Afrikaner identity -- nothing at a personal level, for example?


Perhaps there was, I can't say. . . . He had been rebuffed by the Afrikaners too often, rebuffed and humiliated -- you have only to read his book of childhood memories to see that. He was not going to take the risk of being rejected again.


So he preferred to remain an outsider.


I think he was happiest in the role of outsider. He was not a joiner.





4 comments:

michael morrow said...

pphheeww....wow...heavy dust

michael morrow said...

somehow the following information plays into this post.....

My son, Lucas... the one your generosity afforded me the opportunity to go visit in a Honolulu halfway house about 5-6 years ago....the one who was in route to prison for self-medication/growing very beautifully fragrant cannabis.... the one who rode in the car for 30 miles to the hospital at about 12 years old while his mother suffocated to death from an asthma attack,..... the one I worked my ass off with to lovingly jam my religion down his throat..obviously, as his divorced father, responsible to displace his beautiful Hawaiian/Filipino heritage... the one I hadnt spoken to in 25 years...yeh,,you remember the one....hes out of prison, living and working quite successfully in Honolulu...and at least somewhat thanks to the time I was able to spend with him at your behest,,,,I talk to him several times per week....we have grown very close....healing hearts...and I thank you ...for you....

Scott Abbott said...

Michael, what great news about your son. And, as you know, I didn't do anything but spend a bit of the governor's money to which I accidentally had access. You did the work. And you're enjoying a sweet reward.

michael morrow said...

bull shit scott.....the idea that you didnt do anything for me and my son is bull shit...and the same is true for every class I have ever had the pleasure to share with you..your ability to afford people their space is so natural,,,never pushy or ball busting...at the same time you provide serious challenge and safe opportunity for others to step outside their walled little personal half-acre and consider,,,just consider.....

..here's the man I'm thankful for...."This morning as I finished the novel (the genre designation on the title page is "Fiction"), I was left wondering about my own deficiencies, awkwardness, guarded personality, loyalties, and relationships with my parents.


And about my rejections of and identifications with the religion I was raised in and whose tenets I practiced for 40 years."

This is the man I'm speaking to...the one with this sort of courageous self-evaluation,,,who goes back to the classroom...in spite of religiously-politically numbed students whose reason for enrolling in college (and spending their spare time in church) is largely designed to insure their place on grandma's, grown to over inflated, will......

keep up the great work scott...UVU is a monumentally important institution and part of this community thanks to the likes of you....

I am only one of your countless students who is deeply thankful for time spent in your classroom....