J. Coetzee - Slow Man

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Slow Man: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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One day while cycling along the Magill road in Adelaide Paul Rayment is knocked down by a car, resulting in the amputation of his leg. Humiliated, he retreats to his flat and a succession of day-care nurses. After a series of carers who are either "unsuitable" or just temporary, he happens upon Marijana, with whom he has a European childhood in common: his in France, hers in Croatia. Marijana nurses him tactfully and efficiently, ministering to his new set of needs. His feelings for her soon become deeper and more complex. He attempts to fund her son Drago's passage through college, a move which meets the refusal of her husband, causing a family rift. Drago moves in with Paul, but not before an entirely different complication steps in, in the form of celebrated Australian novelist Elizabeth Costello, who threatens to take over the direction of Paul's life in ways he's not entirely comfortable with.
Slow Man has to get the award for "hardest novel of the year to unwrap", in that it's actually more like three novels layered variously on top of each other, and all in a mere 263 pages! It is also, without doubt, the most challenging novel of the year. Coetzee having won the thing two times already and being a Nobel laureate, it never stood a chance getting to the Booker shortlist, but that doesn't stop it being possibly the best novel of the year by miles.
The start is relatively easy to get to grips with: Paul is knocked from his bike, has his limb removed, and becomes one of those who must submit to being cared for. Just like David Lurie from his Booker-prize-winning Disgrace, Paul stubbornly refuses the aid which could make his life superficially normal, (an artificial limb,) and surrenders himself stubbornly to his incapacity. So begins a novel that seems to be concerning itself with an analysis of the spirit of care and the psychological effect any severe injury (or, symbolically, any obvious difference to others) has on a person when their life is "truncated" so. And it is a superb beginning, too. The first 100 pages are astounding, presented in Coetzee's trademark analytical prose that manages to be both spare and yet busting with riches.
It's complicated a little by the fact that Rayment is clearly a kind of semi alter-ego for Coetzee, who himself is reputed to be very keen on cycling the streets of Adelaide. Coetzee and his protagonist share a similar history, too: divorced Rayment grew up in France and now lives in a quiet lonely flat in Adelaide, where he feels out of place. He has never, he thinks, felt the sense of having a real "home" that many do. South-African born Coetzee's early fiction focused much on the White "place" in South Africa; he escaped to London in his youth, he has since lived out extended Professorships in the USA, and is now based in Adelaide. Coetzee, too, feels this sense of unbelonging that is rife in Paul. Slow Man is almost claustrophobic in its sense of lives ending and purposes coming to a close: living in Australia and with South Africa mostly stable, Coetzee is having to look elsewhere for his fiction. And he seems to be turning the focus largely onto himself. His 2003 novel was a series of vignettes concerning Coetzee's alter-ego, the famed but fictional elderly Australian novelist Elizabeth Costello.
When the woman in question knocks on Paul's door, then, it becomes clear Coetzee has far more on his mind than a mere novel about growing old and out of place and cared for. There are potential problems with what Coetzee's doing here: by self-consciously bringing Costello (himself) in, it can seem as if he doesn't really know what to do with this fiction he's making, doesn't know where to go with it, so brings her in to play some nice metafictional tricks, to talk about writing and character and their relationship to the author ("you came to me", Costello says to Paul.) instead of getting on with the real business at hand. She pushes Paul to become "more of a main character", as if she's uncertain about him but can't entirely control him herself. (Though in the end we realise that everyone can be a main character, however dull they may seem. Because they are not.) It might also seem a little heavy-handed, an obvious and self-consciously clever trick. It might seem like these things, but for Coetzee's absolute skill at weaving his narrative together seamlessly. Costello never does seem out of place, not really. There's an air of mystery to her and her presence, some things that are never quite clear in the reader's head, but Coetzee handles her appearance so smoothly it's almost dreamlike. He stitches her into the book almost flawlessly. Not only that, but she becomes an entire character herself, rich with her own frailties and concerns. He's got himself a brilliant set-up, then: like an illusion you can only fully glimpse the parts of separately, he's managed to give himself a narrative where he give us a novel about Paul, himself, and the act of creating fictions, without any one getting in the way of another, and without the doing so seeming obvious or contrived. It's a rather remarkable achievement.
Not that all this intelligent manipulation comes without problems. The fact that we have two versions (Paul and Elizabeth) of Coetzee almost set-up against one another allows him to explore lots of interesting philosophical problems, but he's doing so much here that these questions often just end up going in circles and knocking off one another. The attrition between the two characters says something vaguely itchy about Coetzee's own feelings about his acts of artistic creation, though the way the two finally seem to make peace with one another in the end is pleasingly conclusive in a novel where the other remaining aspects are resolved rather ambiguously.
Slow Man, his first book since winning the Nobel in 2003, is a novel that consists of a full internal novel and at least one full external one. Childless Paul's legacy remains uncertain (where will his meddling with Marijana's family get him? will he find an heir in Drago, if only symbolically?) but Coetzee's is not: with his beautifully stark prose he has left us unnerving and important pictures of South Africa and what it means to be an outsider, and is now – perhaps uncertainly; it may be this tremulous uncertainty of purpose that is the only slight stain on Slow Man – moving on to new terrain. His body of work is one of the most impressive of any current writer in English. Anyone who wants to know just how much of a transcendent experience fiction can be needs to read his work.

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Is he lying? He might be, but it does not feel that way. Despite her calves, which he has not forgotten, despite her breasts, which he would give anything to bury his face in, he loves Marijana at this moment with a pure and benevolent heart, as God must love her; it is preposterous that he should be hated in return, by this man or by anyone else.

'I and my wife are married since '82,' says Jokic. A deep voice, a bear's voice, at least he has that. 'Eighteen years. She was student in Academy Fine Arts Dubrovnik when I meet her. First I was in federal army, then I get a job in Academy, as welder. Welder and craftsman, but mostly welder. That's where we meet. Then we go to Germany, we work hard, we save our money, live poor – you know what I mean? – and apply to come to Australia. My sister too. Four together. Drago still a kid then. First we live in Melbourne, I work in welding shop. Then I go to Coober Pedy with some mates, try our luck with opals. You know Coober Pedy?'

'I know Coober Pedy.'

'Very hot place. Later on Marijana come. Three years we stay in Coober Pedy. Very hard for a woman. Opals, you got to be lucky. Me – no luck, you know what I mean? But my mates, they help me, we help each other.'

'Yes.'

'Very hard for a woman with children. So then I get a job with Holden and we come to Elizabeth. Good job, nice house.' He sets down his empty glass. Silence. End of recital. That's my story, he seems to be saying, as if laying his cards out on the table. Beat that, Mr Coniston Terrace!

'Do you happen to know a woman named Elizabeth Costello, an elderly woman, a professional writer?'

Jokic shakes his head.

'Because she seems to know you. She told me some of the same history you have just been telling me – how you and Marijana met, what the two of you did in Dubrovnik, and so forth. Nothing about Melbourne or Coober Pedy. Anyway, Elizabeth Costello is at work on a new book, and seems to be using me in it as a character, so to speak. Her interest in me has led her to an interest in Marijana and in you. Evidently she has been ferreting around in your past.'

Jokic waits for him to complete the paragraph, but he cannot as yet, it would sound too preposterous. What he hesitates to say is: This imbroglio in which you and I are caught is Elizabeth Costello's doing. If you want to blame anyone, blame her. She is behind it all. Elizabeth Costello is a mischief-maker.

'If you don't mind my saying so,' he continues instead, 'you should make your peace with Marijana. Also, for Drago's sake, please accept the loan. Drago has set his heart on Wellington College, anyone can see that. We can make the loan as formal or informal as you like. There can be papers or we can dispense with papers, it makes no difference to me.'

He ought at this point to offer Jokic another beer. He ought to make it as easy as possible for Jokic to swallow his pride, to become, however reluctantly, a chum. But he does not. He has said enough; now it is Jokic's turn – Jokic's turn to pay for drinks, Jokic's turn to have his say. After which, he hopes, this meeting, this scene, to which he has lent himself so reluctantly, will be over with. Though this man has fathered on Marijana two angelic children, perhaps even three, he can find in himself no curiosity about him. His interest is in Marijana: Marijana and whatever of Marijana has found its way into her children. Is his interest in Marijana an interested or a disinterested interest? Is the God with whose love for Marijana he compares his own an interested or a disinterested God? He does not know. The question is too abstract for his present mood. Jokic breaks into his thoughts. 'You have nice apartment.'

A question? A statement? It must be a question, since Jokic has never been into the flat. He nods.

'Comfortable. You say you are comfortable. You are comfortable in your apartment.'

'Comfortably off, that's what I said. It has nothing to do with my apartment. "Comfortably off" is an expression used by people who find money embarrassing to talk about. In my case it means that I have a comfortable income. It means that I have sufficient for my needs and some left over. I can give to charity if I choose, or I can do a good deed like sending your son to college.'

'My son go to a fancy college, he get fancy friends, he want all kind of fancy things, you know what I mean?'

'Yes. A fancy college might teach him to look down on his origins. I cannot deny that. Do not mistake me, Mr Jokic, I am not an enthusiast of fancy colleges. It was not I who came up with the name of Wellington. But if that is where Drago wants to go, I will back him. My guess is that Wellington is not as fancy as it pretends to be. A truly fancy college does not need to advertise.'

Jokic ponders. 'Maybe,' he says, 'maybe we can make a trust fund for Drago. Then it is not so, you know, personal like.'

A trust fund? Not a bad idea, though an expensive solution to a simple problem. But what does this refugee from state socialism know about trust funds?

'We could think about that,' he says. 'If you wanted to be very legal, very legally watertight. We could speak to a solicitor.'

'Or the bank,' says Jokic. 'We can make an account for Drago, trust account. You can put money in a trust account. Then it is safe. In case… you know.'

In case of what? In case he, Paul Rayment, should change his mind, leaving Drago in the lurch? In case he should die? In case he should fall out of love with Miroslav Jokic's wife?

'Yes, we can do that,' he says, though with growing misgiving. Is the fiction of a trust fund all that will be needed to salve Jokic's pride?

'And Marijana.'

'Yes, Marijana. What do you want to say about Marijana?'

'Marijana is tired all the time, from the nursing. Two jobs she's got, two assignments, you and this other old lady, Mrs Aiello. Not proper nursing, professional like, more housework. You add it up, fifty hours a week, sixty hours, and the driving, every day driving. A cultured person. It's not good, this housework, for a cultured person. She come home tired all the time. So we think, maybe she give up nursing, find another kind of work.'

'I am sorry. I didn't realise Marijana had two jobs. She didn't mention a second job to me.'

Jokic is gazing at him pointedly. Is there something he is failing to grasp?

'I will miss her if she moves on,' he says. 'She is a very capable woman.'

'Yes,' says Jokic. 'Me, I'm just mechanic, you know. Mechanic is nothing, not in Croatia, not in Australia. But Marijana is cultured person. Diploma in restoration – she tell you that? No restoration work in Australia, but still. In Munno Para, who she can talk to? OK, Drago is interested in lot of things, she can talk to him. Then she meet Mr Rayment.'

'My own conversations with Marijana have been limited,' he replies cautiously. 'Like the rest of my relationship with her. Very limited. I found out about her background in art only recently, from Mrs Costello, the woman I mentioned.'

Slowly it is beginning to dawn on him why Jokic, having thrashed his wife and driven her from their home, is prepared to take a day off from work and spend it sitting in a car on Coniston Terrace. Jokic must believe that his wife, whether or not she has fallen in the absolute sense, is in the process of being lured from hearth and home by a client with plenty of money and an easy familiarity with the world of art and artists; also that the elegant environment of Coniston Terrace is teaching her to look down on working-class Munno. Jokic is making an appeal, an appeal to his better nature. And if that appeal fails – what? Is Jokic planning to thrash him too?

Look at me, your hated rival! he would like to protest. You still have the limbs that God gave you, while I have this obscene monstrosity to drag around with me! Half the time I pee, I pee on the floor! I could not seduce your wife away from you if I tried, not in any sense of the word!

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