Elizabeth Costello – J.M.Coetzee

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Book #52

Reviewer: Kara

ECElizabeth Costello is the story of an Australian novelist in her later years. Each chapter of the book features a lecture or debate, hers or someone else’s, as well as discussions and meetings surrounding the central lecture. Elizabeth’s thoughts and beliefs around a series of complex ideas are the threads tying the novel together.

This novel is relatively short in words, but long on ideas and themes. I read it in just a few days, but I spent at least as much time again to digest and gather my thoughts.

“Things can be true, she now thinks, even if one does not believe in them, and conversely.”  Elizabeth’s thoughts and ideas have changed since her youth, confusing the logic of her lectures, but leaving them much more fascinating than clearly articulated, logically-flawless arguments would be. After all, the themes themselves (the difference between humans and animals, the role of the novel, our ability to be the “other”) are messy and complex, not cut-and-dry. Coetzee elegantly navigates these ideas the way a real person who is intelligent and thoughtful, but also immersed in issues beyond easy human understanding, would. The result is a very interesting and interlocking set of ideas that give quite a bit of food for thought.

One idea is the differences and similarities between three categories of “life”: animals, humans, and god(s). In several lectures, Elizabeth argues for treating and understanding animals the same as we do ourselves. She argues that animals have a soul just as humans do. Where her argument (and also, I would say, human understanding) breaks down is when it comes to a difference between humans and animals: reason. Elizabeth argues that the scientific experiments designed to determine if animals can think are not useful because they lack complexity: “We understand by immersing ourselves and our intelligence in complexity. There is something self-stultified in the way in which scientific behaviorism recoils from the complexity of life.”  She says that animal reason is different from human reason, and there is no translation between the two.

Later, the novel discusses the relationship between humans and god(s) and it becomes clear that the major difference between the two is belief. In the final chapter, Coetzee writes “without beliefs we are not human.” Elizabeth also hears from another character that those with difficult lives (those who, unlike immortal gods, will face death) cannot afford not to believe and have faith. This echoes an earlier experience Elizabeth had in Africa where she learns that faith and company in suffering are critical comforts for people. Ultimately, Elizabeth says that all it means to be alive is “to be able to die.” The ultimate difference between humans and gods is that gods are not living.

Compounding these issues is the issue of our ability to be or experience “the other” – to stand in another’s shoes. When arguing that humans can indeed experience life as an animal does, Elizabeth says that “there are no bounds to the sympathetic imagination.” However, when it comes to humans and gods, Elizabeth changes her mind, seeing limits: “the physical mingling of two orders of being… is strictly speaking not possible, not while the laws of nature continue to hold.” She wonders what kind of hybrid being a god must become to allow humans to experience and understand. This argument is echoed later in the final chapter when Elizabeth glimpses beyond the gate to the afterlife and is disappointed to see nothing that is beyond human experience.

The most interesting moment is when Elizabeth describes the way the gods must see humans: “So like us in many respects, their eyes in particular so expressive; what a pity they lack that je ne sais quoi without which they can never ascend to sit beside us!” This is fascinating because it is so clearly the way humans see animals.

The final theme of the book is the role of the novel in allowing us to experience “the other,” for good or for bad. Elizabeth brings together all three modes of being when she says: “All is allegory… each creature is key to all other creatures. A dog … is at one moment a dog and at the next a vessel of revelation. And perhaps in the mind of our Creator… where we whirl about as if in a millrace we interpenetrate and are interpenetrated by fellow creatures by the thousand.” The novel is the ultimate allegory, offering guidance and experience that cannot be had otherwise. Elizabeth explains this most clearly when she describes writers as “secretaries to the invisible,” bringing the unknown to light. Over the course of her life, Elizabeth begins to see danger in this that she didn’t see earlier in life. She begins to believe that evil is everywhere, just waiting to creep into the light, and a novel is the perfect opportunity because, once released, it’s almost impossible to stop: “When the storyteller opens the bottle, the genie is released into the world, and it costs all hell to get him back in again.”

If you’re looking for fun or adventure in your next read, definitely look elsewhere, but if you’re in the mood to have your synapses poked and prodded, I highly recommend Elizabeth Costello. I have tried here in this review to share the themes of this wonderful novel without deluding myself or others that I can tie them up in a neat little bow. Part of the strength of Coetzee’s novel is that it allows Elizabeth to be human. She is a vehement defender of what she thinks she knows, or at least knows for the moment. Like animals, we do not always have reason and even when we do, reason sometimes turns out to be, in Elizabeth’s words: “the monster.”

Quote of the Week

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Not so much a quote this week as a verse.  Enjoy!

Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky.
My pile of books
Are a mile high.
How I love them!
How I need them!
I’ll have a long beard
By the time I read them.

-Arnold Lobel

The Island of Dr Moreau – H.G.Wells

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Book#796

Reviewer: Ms Oh Waily

TIODMThe Island of Dr Moreau was first published in 1896 and is another slim work at around 130 pages, requiring only a small investment of time to read.

The story is an unusual tale told by Edward Prendick of his shipwreck from the Lady Vain and the year that follows on from this.

After being adrift in the dinghy with two other survivors, who fight and perish as a result of doing so, he is spotted and collected up by the schooner Ipecacuanha.
He is nursed back from the brink of death by a passenger on board, Montgomery.  The captain is a drunkard and unpredictable.  When they reach the island where Montgomery, his very unusual manservant and his cargo of animals are being disembarked, the captain decides to set Prendick adrift once more.

Prendick finds himself, eventually, once more rescued by Montgomery and another man who in time we find is the eponymous Dr Moreau.  He lands on the island and is taken to an outer room of a compound that he finds is locked to him.

I followed him, and found myself in a small apartment, plainly but not uncomfortably furnished, and with its inner door, which was slightly ajar, opening into a paved courtyard.  This inner door Montgomery at once closed.  A hammock was slung across the darker corner of the room, and a small unglazed window, defended by an iron bar, looked out towards the sea.
This, the grey-haired man told me, was to be my apartment, and the inner door, which, ‘for fear of accidents’, he said, he would lock on the other side, was my limit inward.

Neither Montgomery nor Moreau explain anything about the animals, the ‘people’ that he observes, nor what keeps them in isolation from the rest of the world.  But it doesn’t take long for his observations to become concerns as he recognises Moreau’s name as belonging to that of a notorious vivisector and work begins within the locked enclosure on one of the cargo animals, a puma.  Prendick sums up his confusion thus,

What could it mean?  A locked enclosure on a lonely island, a notorious vivisector, and these crippled and distorted men? …

Indeed, what could it mean?  Well, you will have to read the novel to find out.

Yes, you will have to read it.  For me to give more information or specific quotes would take away some of the uncertainty and suspense that Wells builds up very nicely throughout the novel.

While I cannot say that I enjoyed reading the story, as it is not a salubrious topic, it was certainly gripping despite the scientific inaccuracies that are glaring to a modern eye.  In our minds, though, we could easily substitute the 19th century version of vivisection with other modern scientific ethical issues.  I think that is what makes this story such a timeless classic and fully deserving of its place on the 1001 list.
The ethical questions it raises, the statements it makes about how easily the abnormal can become normal, and about just how far is too far to go in the name of scientific curiosity, are still ones we confront today.

It is a quick and untaxing way to spend a few hours while also being immensely readable.  Fewer appearances of the word ‘incontinently’ makes it a vast improvement over The Time Machine, to be going on with, and more serious in it’s questioning nature makes it both interesting and thought-provoking.  All in all, I am happy recommending this to you.

Happy reading!

All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque

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Book #667
Reviewer: Tall, Short, Tiny & a Pickle

All Quiet on the Western FrontIt’s been a long time since I read a book that had a such profound effect on me as All Quiet on the Western Front. I think its impact has been greater than expected because the book itself exceeded all of my expectations, in every way.

The story is told in the first person, by Paul Baumer, a young German soldier fighting in World War One. It tells of the everyday living conditions of the German soldiers; of the daily struggles, battles, friendships and threats, of the acts of war that were mundane, not unusual, or heroic. When Paul goes home on leave, he feels like he no longer belongs; he doesn’t know how to be a civilian any more, and struggles to see where he will fit in when the war is over. He is relieved to return to his regiment, to his friends, even though he knows it is to the chance of death that he returns. As he watches his friends fall, he tends towards a madness that must be a common scenario during war.

We get back pretty well. There is no further attack by the enemy…in spite of our great hunger we do not think of the provisions. Then gradually we become something like men again.

Night again. We are deadened by the strain – a deadly tension that scrapes along one’s spine like a gapped knife. Our legs refuse to move, our hands tremble, our bodies are a thin skin stretched painfully over repressed madness, over an almost irresistible, bursting roar.

There are sentences that are beautifully written, that evoke a sense of peace and stillness, followed by paragraphs that are so fast-paced that they create a sense of the frantic intensity that must have been trench warfare during this time.

He staggers up and runs. I keep beside him. We have to get over a hedge; it is higher than we are. Kropp seizes a branch, I heave him up by the leg, he cries out, I give him a swing and he flies over. With one bound I follow him and fall into a ditch that lies behind the hedge.

Monotonously the lorries sway, monotonously come the calls, monotonously falls the rain. It falls on our heads and on the heads of the dead up in the line, on the body of the little recruit with the wound that is so much too big for his hip; it falls on Kemmerich’s grave; it falls in our hearts.

As could be expected, death is a recurring theme in this novel; it is impossible to write or read about war without knowledge of the incredible number of lives that were (and continue to be) lost. Remarque has a unique ability to treat this subject both poetically and soberly; he does not try to cover it up or pretend it wouldn’t have invaded every man’s thoughts during the time in the trenches, and this adds to the powerful profundity of the story.

We have become wild beasts. We do not fight, we defend ourselves against annihilation. It is not against men that we fling our bombs, what do we know of men in this moment when Death is hunting us down – now, for the first time in three days we can see his face, now for the first time three days we can oppose him; we feel a mad anger.

The story also offers us a view of war that is poignant and, for me, right on the mark. Remarque’s commentary on the futility of war is as relevant today as it was at the time of publication:

“I think it is more of a kind of fever,” says Albert. “No one in particular wants it, and then all at once there it is. We didn’t want the war, the others say the same thing – and yet half the world is in it all the same.”
“But there are more lies told by the other side than by us,” say I; “just think of those pamphlets the prisoners have on them, where it says that we eat Belgian children. The fellows who write those lies ought to go and hang themselves. They are the real culprits.”

How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is.

The ending of the story is possibly one of the most poignant and profound endings I’ve read in a long time. I read it twice before closing the book, and it echoed in my brain for days afterwards:

He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front.

He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.

All Quiet on the Western Front is a book that I think everyone should read; I can’t say I enjoyed it, as such, but it has had an effect on me that means I’d not hesitate to recommend it to you all.