1. Teacher of Slow Reading – An Introduction 2. I do not normally write in a rushed manner – Coetzee as a Slow Writer 3. A goblin: why? – Coetzee’s Questions 4. The sentence he will recognize at once – Coetzee’s Slowing Syntax 5. Meerlust – Coetzee and Literalness 6. We make a leap – Coetzee’s Gaps 7. The legacy of Socrates – Dialogue in and with Coetzee 8. A strange ending to a strange talk – Coetzee’s Open-Ended Endings 9. An empty cube – Coetzee’s Irreal Worlds 10. When all else fails, philosophize – A Philosophizing Conclusion Bibliography Index
A critical examination of 'slowness' in J.M Coetzee's entire oeuvre drawing on new archival material.
Jan Wilm is a Lecturer in English Literature at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. He is co-editor, with Mark Nixon, of Samuel Beckett und die deutsche Literatur (2013).
[An] excellent new book ... Wilm shows that [Coetzee's] books "go
beyond the mere provision of philosophical topics" and reveal their
import through an act of "slow reading".
*Times Literary Supplement*
By elaborating an approach that is at once both intriguingly
conventional (slow reading) and excitingly innovative (slow
philosophising), Wilm’s work constitutes a nuanced addition to the
burgeoning field of Coetzee Studies, making the monograph exemplary
of the work of that which Coetzee terms the ‘truly creative
critic’.
*Brief Encounters*
“Slowness is Beauty”: Pound’s Cantos echo Binyon’s dictum and turn
it into a modernist motto. Jan Wilm’s alert and thoughtful book
energizes the motto by joining fictional syntax and philosophical
meditation in patient analyses of the manuscripts. The craft of
slowness is shown to underpin the work of Coetzee as he rethinks
high modernism. The point is to frustrate a naïve wish to rush to
conclusions or reach simple ideas about life, ethics and
aesthetics. By learning to read more slowly, we read up on a
dauntingly complex world, letting its beauty shine while
discriminating between equivocal values.
*Jean-Michel Rabaté, University of Pennsylvania, USA*
Since the publication of Elizabeth Costello (2003), a lively
conversation has developed around Coetzee in philosophy, and
philosophy in Coetzee. Jan Wilm brings a new dimension to this
debate in The Slow Philosophy of J.M. Coetzee, showing in a series
of refreshing readings how the philosophical and the literary come
together in a single experience of slow reading. Both erudite and
accessible, and drawing fresh insights from Coetzee’s archive, Wilm
provides an original account of the Nobel laureate’s distinctively
meditative fiction.
*David Attwell, University of York, UK*
Joining advocates for slow food and slow cinema, Wilm (Goethe Univ.
Frankfurt, Germany) offers a challenging proposal for “slow
philosophy” as seen in the work of South African Nobel Prize
novelist J. M. Coetzee. In critiquing Coetzee’s work, Wilm provides
a slow-reading methodology that can be adapted to reading in
general. The author sets out his goals in his lively introduction:
to explore "how Coetzee’s oeuvre probes the functions and effects
of slowness" and how it "bears on the characters’ and ... the
readers’ reflections.” To accomplish this, Wilm delves into
Coetzee’s prose style, examining the ways in which Coetzee deploys
syntax, dialogue, rhetorical questions, gaps in the narrative,
metafiction, and ambiguous endings to slow the reader's progress
through the text and to engender meditation and meaning making. The
novels that receive particular attention are Disgrace, Foe, Life
and Times of Michael K, Slow Man, and Coetzee’s fictionalized
memoir trilogy (Boyhood, Youth, and Summertime). The persuasiveness
of Wilm’s arguments is bolstered by his extensive use of Coetzee’s
own notebooks and drafts, housed in the archives of the University
of Texas. These documents enable Wilm to trace the deliberations
and revisions Coetzee makes as a writer, his slowness of method.
Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates
through faculty.
*CHOICE*
[Wilm] presents his insightful thoughts in a style that is elegant,
very accessible, and most refreshing in shunning any academic
jargon. The implications of his study certainly go far beyond the
works of J.M. Coetzee only; the introduction in particular provides
a guide to a careful good reading that is of universal significance
and reminds us of literature's value.
*Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies*
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