Summertime (24 page)

In his way – what do you mean by that?

I mean within the confines of a certain rectitude, a certain rationality. Without being a Dionysian himself, he approved in principle of Dionysianism. Approved in principle of letting oneself go, though I don't think he ever let himself go – would probably not have known how to. He had a need to believe in the resources of the unconscious, in the creative force of unconscious processes. Hence his inclination toward the more vatic poets.

You must have noted how rarely he discussed the sources of his own creativity. In part that came out of the native secretiveness I mentioned. But in part it also suggests a reluctance to probe the sources of his inspiration, as if being too self-aware might cripple him.

Was the course a success – the course you and he taught together?

I certainly learned from it – learned about the history of surrealism in Latin America, for instance. As I said, John knew a little about a lot of things. What our students came away with I don't know. Students, in my experience, soon work out whether what you are teaching matters to you. If it does, then they are prepared to consider letting it matter to them too. But if they conclude, rightly or wrongly, that it doesn't, then, curtains, you may as well go home.

And Neruda didn't matter to him?

No, I'm not saying that. Neruda may have mattered a great deal to him. Neruda may even have been a model – an unattainable model – of how a poet can respond to injustice and repression. But – and this is my point – if you treat your connection with the poet as a personal secret to be closely guarded, and if moreover your classroom manner is somewhat stiff and formal, you are never going to acquire a following.

You are saying he never acquired a following?

Not as far as I am aware. Perhaps he smartened up his act in his later years. I just don't know.

At the time when you met him, in 1972, he had a rather precarious position teaching at a high school. It wasn't until some time later that he was actually offered a position at the University. Even so, for almost all of his working life, from his mid-twenties until his mid-sixties, he was employed as a teacher of one kind or another. I come back to my earlier question: Doesn't it seem strange to you that a man who had no talent as a teacher should have made teaching his career?

Yes and no. The ranks of the teaching profession are, as you must know, full of refugees and misfits.

And which was he: a refugee or a misfit?

He was a misfit. He was also a cautious soul. He liked the security of a monthly salary cheque.

You sound critical.

I am only pointing to the obvious. If he hadn't wasted so much of his life correcting students' grammar and sitting through boring meetings, he might have written more, perhaps even written better. But he was not a child. He knew what he was doing. He made his choice.

On the other hand, being a teacher allowed him contact with a younger generation. Which he might not have had, had he withdrawn from the world and devoted himself solely to writing.

True.

Did he have any special friendships that you know of among students?

Now you sound as if you are angling. What do you mean, special friendships? Do you mean, did he overstep the mark? Even if I knew, which I don't, I would not comment.

Yet the theme of the older man and the younger woman keeps coming back in his fiction.

It would be very, very naive to conclude that because the theme was present in his writing it had to be present in his life.

In his inner life, then.

His inner life. Who can say what goes on in people's inner lives?

Is there any other aspect of him that you would like to bring forward? Any stories worth recounting?

Stories? I don't think so. John and I were colleagues. We were friends. We got on well together. But I can't say I knew him intimately. Why do you ask if I have stories?

Because in biography one has to strike a balance between narrative and opinion. I have no shortage of opinion – people are more than ready to tell me what they think or thought of Coetzee – but one needs more than that to bring a life-story to life.

Sorry, I can't help you. Perhaps your other sources will be more forthcoming. How many people will you be speaking to?

Five. I have cut the list down to five.

Only five? Don't you think that is risky? Who are the lucky five? How did you choose us?

From here I'll be making another trip to South Africa to speak to Coetzee's cousin Margot, with whom he was close. From there to Brazil to see a woman named Adriana Nascimento who lived in Cape Town for some years during the 1970s. And then – the date isn't fixed yet – I will go to Canada to see someone named Julia Frankl, who in the 1970s would have gone under the name Julia Smith. And I also plan to see Sophie Denoël in Paris. Do you or did you know any of them?

Sophie I knew, but not the others. How did you choose us?

Basically I let Coetzee himself do the choosing. I simply followed up on clues he dropped in his notebooks – clues as to who was important to him at the time. The other criterion you had to meet was to be alive. Most of the people who knew him well are, as you must know, dead by now.

It sounds a peculiar way of selecting biographical sources, if you don't mind my saying so.

Perhaps. But I am not interested in coming to a final judgment on Coetzee. I leave that to history. What I am doing is telling the story of a stage in his life, or if we can't have a single story then several stories from several perspectives.

And the sources you have selected have no axes to grind, no ambitions of their own to pronounce final judgment on Coetzee?

[Silence.]

Leaving aside Sophie, leaving aside his cousin, was either of the women you mentioned emotionally involved with Coetzee?

Yes. Both.

Shouldn't that give you pause? Are you not inevitably going to come out with an account that is slanted toward the personal and the intimate at the expense of the man's actual achievements as a writer? Will it amount to anything more than – forgive me for putting it this way – anything more than women's gossip?

Because my informants are women?

Because it is not in the nature of love affairs for the lovers to see each other whole and steady.

[Silence.]

I repeat, it seems to me strange to be doing the biography of a writer while ignoring his writing. But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps I am out of date. I must go. One final thing: if you are planning to quote me, would you make sure I have a chance to check the text first?

Of course.

Interview conducted in Sheffield, England,
in September 2007.

M
ME
D
ENOËL, TELL
me how you came to know John Coetzee.

He and I were for years colleagues at the University of Cape Town. He was in the Department of English, I was in French. We collaborated to offer a course in African literature. This was in 1976. He taught the Anglophone writers, I the Francophone. That was how our acquaintance began.

And how did you yourself come to be in Cape Town?

My husband was sent there to run the Alliance Française. Before that we had been living in Madagascar. During our time in Cape Town our marriage broke up. My husband returned to France, I stayed on. I took a position at the University, a junior position teaching French language.

And in addition you taught this joint course that you mention, in African literature.

Yes. It may seem odd, two whites offering a course in black African literature, but that is how it was in those days. If we had not offered it, no one would have.

Because blacks were excluded from the University?

No, no, by then the system had started to crack. There were black students, though not many; some black lecturers too. But very few specialists in Africa, the wider Africa. That was one of the surprising things I discovered about South Africa: how insular it was. I went back on a visit last year, and it was the same: little or no interest in the rest of Africa. Africa was a dark continent to the north, best left unexplored.

And you? Where did your interest in Africa come from?

From my education. From France. Remember, France had been a major colonial power. Even after the colonial era officially ended, France had other means at its disposal to maintain its influence – economic means, cultural means.
La Francophonie
was the new name we invented for the old empire. Writers from
Francophonie
were promoted, fêted, studied. For my
agrégation
I worked on Aimé Césaire.

And the course you taught in collaboration with Coetzee – was that a success, would you say?

Yes, I believe so. It was just an introductory course, but students found it, as you say in English, an eye-opener.

White students?

White students plus a few black. We did not attract the more radical black students. Our approach would have been too academic for them, not
engagé
enough. We thought it sufficient to give students a glimpse of the riches of the rest of Africa.

And you and Coetzee saw eye to eye on this approach?

I believe so. Yes.

You were a specialist in African literature, he was not. His training was in the literature of the metropolis. How did he come to be teaching African literature?

It is true, he had no formal training in the field. But he had a good general knowledge of Africa, admittedly just book knowledge, not practical knowledge, he had not travelled in Africa, but book knowledge is not worthless – right? He knew the anthropological literature better than I did, including the francophone materials. He had a grasp of the history, the politics. He had read the important writers working in English and in French (of course in those days the body of African literature was not large – things are different now). There were gaps in his knowledge – the Maghreb, Egypt, and so forth. And he didn't know the diaspora, particularly the Caribbean, which I did.

What did you think of him as a teacher?

He was good. Not spectacular but competent. Always well prepared.

Did he get on well with students?

That I can't say. Perhaps if you track down old students of his they will be able to help you.

And yourself? Compared with him, did you get on well with students?

[Laughs.] What is it you want me to say? Yes, I suppose I was the more popular one, the more enthusiastic. I was young, remember, and it was a pleasure for me to be talking about books for a change, after all the language classes. We made a good pair, I thought, he more serious, more reserved, I more open, more flamboyant.

He was considerably older than you.

Ten years. He was ten years older than me.

[Silence]

Is there anything you would like to add on the subject? Other aspects of him you would like to comment on?

We had a liaison. I presume you are aware of that. It did not endure.

Why not?

It was not sustainable.

Would you like to say more?

Would I like to say more for your book? Not before you tell me what kind of book it is. Is it a book of gossip or a serious book? Do you have authorization? Who else are you speaking to besides me?

Does one need authorization to write a book? From whom would one seek it? I certainly don't know. But I can give you my assurance, it is a serious book, a seriously intended biography. I concentrate on the years from Coetzee's return to South Africa in 1971/72 until his first public recognition in 1977. That seems to me an important period of his life, important yet neglected, a period when he was still finding his feet as a writer.

As for whom I have chosen to interview, the answer is not straightforward. I made two trips to South Africa, last year and the year before, to speak to people who had known Coetzee. Those trips were not, on the whole, successful. My informants had less to offer than I had hoped for. In one or two cases people claimed to have known him, but after a little scratching it turned out they had the wrong Coetzee (Coetzee is a not uncommon name there). Of the people he had been closest to, many had left the country or died or both. His whole generation was in fact on the point of dying out. The upshot is, the core of the biography will come from a handful of friends and colleagues who are prepared to share their memories. Including, I would hope, yourself. Is that enough to reassure you?

No. What of his diaries? What of his letters? What of his notebooks? Why so much emphasis on interviews?

Mme Denoël, I have been through the letters and diaries. What Coetzee writes there cannot be trusted, not as a factual record – not because he was a liar but because he was a fictioneer. In his letters he is making up a fiction of himself for his correspondents; in his diaries he is doing much the same for his own eyes, or perhaps for posterity. As documents they are valuable, of course; but if you want the truth you have to go behind the fictions they elaborate and hear from people who knew him directly, in the flesh.

But what if we are all fictioneers, as you call Coetzee? What if we all continually make up the stories of our lives? Why should what I tell you about Coetzee be any worthier of credence than what he tells you himself?

Of course we are all fictioneers. I do not deny that. But which would you rather have: a set of independent reports from a range of independent perspectives, from which you can then try to synthesize a whole; or the massive, unitary self-projection comprised by his oeuvre? I know which I would prefer.

Yes, I can see that. There remains the question of discretion. I am not one of those who believe that once a person is dead all restraint falls away. What existed between him and me I am not necessarily prepared to share with the world.

I accept that. It is your privilege, your right. But I ask you to pause and consider. A great writer becomes the property of all of us. You knew Coetzee closely. One of these days you too will no longer be with us. Do you think it good that your memories should pass away with you?

A great writer? How John would laugh if he could hear you! The day of the great writer is gone for ever, he would say.

The day of the writer as oracle – yes, I would agree, that day is past. But would you not accept that a well-known writer – let us call him that instead – a well-known figure in our common cultural life, is to some extent public property?

On that subject my opinion is irrelevant. What is relevant is what he himself believed. And there the answer is clear. He believed our life-stories are ours to construct as we wish, within or even against the constraints imposed by the real world – as you yourself acknowledged a moment ago. That is why I asked about authorization, a question which you brushed aside. It was not the authorization of his family or his executors that I had in mind, it was his own authorization. If you were not authorized by him to expose the private side of his life, then I certainly won't assist you.

He cannot have authorized me for the simple reason that he and I never had any contact. So let us abandon that line of inquiry and return instead to the course you mentioned, the course you and he taught together. One remark that you made intrigues me. You said you and he did not attract the more radical African students. Why do you think that was so?

Because we were not radicals ourselves, not by their standards. We had both, of course, been affected by 1968. In 1968 I was a student at the Sorbonne, and took part in the manifestations, the days in May. John was in the United States at the time, and fell foul of the authorities there, I don't remember the details, but I know it was a turning-point in his life. Yet I stress we were not Marxists, either of us, and certainly not Maoists. I was probably to the left of him, but I could afford that because I was shielded by my status in the French diplomatic enclave. If I had gotten into trouble with the South African police I would have been discreetly put on a plane to Paris, and that would have been the end of the matter. I would not have ended up in a prison cell.

Whereas Coetzee . . .

Coetzee would not have ended up in a prison cell either. He was not a militant. His politics were too idealistic, too Utopian for that. In fact he was not political at all. He looked down on politics. He didn't like political writers, writers who espoused a political programme.

Yet he published some quite left-leaning commentary in the 1970s. I think of his essays on Alex La Guma, for example. He was sympathetic to La Guma, and La Guma was a communist.

La Guma was a special case. He was sympathetic to La Guma because La Guma was from Cape Town, not because he was a communist.

You say he was not political. Do you mean that he was apolitical? Because some people would say that the apolitical is just one variety of the political.

No, not apolitical, I would rather say anti-political. He thought that politics brought out the worst in people. It brought out the worst in people and also brought to the surface the worst types in society. He preferred to have nothing to do with it.

Did he preach this anti-political politics in his classes?

Of course not. He was very scrupulous about not preaching. His political beliefs you discovered only when you got to know him better.

You say his politics were Utopian. Are you implying they were unrealistic?

He looked forward to the day when politics and the state would wither away. I would call that Utopian. On the other hand, he did not invest a great deal of himself in these Utopian longings.

He was too much of a Calvinist for that.

Please explain.

You want me to say what lay behind Coetzee's politics? You can best get that from his books. But let me try anyway.

In Coetzee's eyes, we human beings will never abandon politics because politics is too convenient and too attractive as a theatre in which to give play to our baser emotions. Baser emotions meaning hatred and rancour and spite and jealousy and bloodlust and so forth. In other words, politics is a symptom of our fallen state and expresses that fallen state.