The Blow by JM Coetzee

Well, my intrepid New Yorker found its way to my doorstep last night, slightly earlier than usual. Perhaps it heard me calling it home. Anyway, I wasted no time devouring JM Coetzee's lengthy piece, "The Blow."

So, first things first. This is a novel excerpt. It comes from Coetzee's forthcoming Slow Man, about an elderly Australian photographer who loses his leg in a bicycle accident. The excerpt deals with the accident, its immediate aftermath when the unnamed protagonist's leg is amputated, and its protracted aftermath as the narrator redefines his life and falls in love with his newly acquired Croat caregiver.

This is just the Coetzee I remember from Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello. From the third person, he dips in and out of his protagonist's consciousness as necessary, narrating in quiet, almost languorous sentences. There's a somewhat misanthropic narrator, and the development of very basic, chance relationships is integral. Action moves quickly and it's only when you pick up on Coetzee's subtext or key in on certain sentences or pieces of dialog that you begin to notice the piece's depth.

I like that Coetzee has chosen to go with a few very telling details than to try and recreate the whole experience of the accident and its aftermath. This is a risky strategy in that there is much less room for error, but this is Coetzee's style and he doesn't mess it up. He tells us how the narrator can hear his head smal against the concrete, but doesn't feel the impact, how he slides for meters and meters until it almost becomes relaxing. Coetzee hints at his narrator's suicidal thoughts without dwelling on them, tells how he divides the world into those who have seen his stump and those who will never will.

Although I am a fan of Coetzee (so take this with a grain of salt), the excerpt makes me very excited to read the novel. The book appears to be about a man who is trying to make up for his life's regrets (thrown to the fore by the accident), but, as is typical of Coetzee, there's much more to it than that. He integrates the idea of Australia as a place without history, where everyone "starts at zero" as the Croat caregiver says. There's some intimation that the narrator redeems history in some way, given that he's a photographer and has a priceless collection of photographs of early Australia (to be bequeathed to a museum upon his death) that prove that the country really does have a history.

There's also the caregiver's 16-year-old son, whom the narrator sees himself as a Godfather to, and whom the narrator believes is his last shot at having an heir. I imagine that as the novel unfolds this relationship will be exploited and integrated into the above mentioned themes.

So in sum, definitely worth your time. Check out the excerpt and, perhaps, the novel as well.

Comments

[patricia]

Read the excerpt and loved it. I will definitely read the novel, but I sense that it will be heartbreaking and difficult to bear at times, much like Disgrace. All the more reason to read it, of course.

[Ron]

Hi---Here in South Africa it is very hard to find the New Yorker. I would appreciate it if anyone knew where to find an online version of the story or if they could scan and send it on Adobe. I am rirwin@commerce.uct.ac.za