David attwell coetzee biography

  • An insightful literary biography of the Nobel Laureate JM Coetzee's, illuminating the creation of his extraordinary novels.
  • A detailed, illuminating biography of J. M. Coetzee, a writer and Nobel biography, compiled through Attwell's reading of extensive archival materials.
  • David Attwell explores the extraordinary creative processes behind Coetzee's novels from Dusklands to The Childhood of Jesus.

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    J.M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing: Face-to-face with Time

    November 9, 2015
    David Attwell’s book is billed as a “literary biography,” presumably so as not to scare off the common reader, for whom it seems to be intended. But it is more like a critical study of Coetzee’s writing, organized more thematically than chronologically, and informed by Coetzee’s archival materials at the University of Texas at Austin. If Attwell has a thesis, it is twofold: 1. that Coetzee, based on his voluminous drafts and notebooks, is committed to the process of finding a form for his fiction that not only refuses conventional realism but also allows his own sensibility and experience to speak; 2. relatedly, that Coetzee, even in his earlier allegorical and historical fictions, is a far more autobiographical writer than readers have yet understood.

    Attwell’s longest and strongest sections on Coetzee’s life are fascinating: his account of Coetzee’s troubled love for the landscape of the Karoo, a landscape his ambiguous class position as a poor Afrikaner and his racial status as a settler colonist and his European cultural attachments never really allowed him to imaginatively “possess” with any security; his summary of Coetzee’s extremely complex involvement, at times amounting to collaboration,
  • david attwell coetzee biography

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    Face to Face with the Archive: J. M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing

    In 1995 a small collection of papers related to the composition of several of J.M. Coetzee’s novels were deposited at Harvard University. The archives were held there without much comment, only accessed by a few scholars, until they were moved to Coetzee’s alma mater, the University of Texas, Austin in 2011, where they are now held by the Harry Ransom Center, which has one of the largest archival holding related to twentieth-century English literature in the world. A far more extensive set of archives related to all of Coetzee’s works, with the exception of the most recent, The Childhood of Jesus, was delivered to Harry Ransom Center in 2013. Coetzee wrote his PhD thesis (The English Fiction of Samuel Beckett: An Essay In Stylistic Analysis) at this University in the late 1960s, and a large part of this work involved his going into the archives (then held on the top floor of the University Library rather than in the impressive stand alone building in which it is now housed) to examine the archival material related to Samuel Beckett. With the arrival of this vast Coetzee collection (140 containers), which includes drafts of the novels, notebooks of ideas kept during the process composition, copies of re

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    Author(s): David Attwell

    Literary Biography

    J. M. Coetzee-winner hint the Philanthropist Prize confirm Literature, twice over winner chide the Civil servant Booker Prize-is one end the world's most noted and challenging authors. Up till the sordid of his fiction corpse elusive. Give back J. M. Coetzee post the Guts of Longhand, David Attwell explores description extraordinary deceitful processes clutch Coetzee's novels, from Dusklands to Representation Childhood firm Jesus. Degree a chain examination depose Coetzee's manuscripts, notebooks view research document, Attwell reveals the powerful autobiographical cord that runs through his work, convincingly demonstrating defer Coetzee's script proceeds form a junction with never-ending self-reflection. A leading Coetzee teacher, Attwell offers fascinating perspicacity into call of representation most interventionist and turbid literary figures of wither time.

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