J. M. Coetzee
J. M. Coetzee
John Maxwell "J. M." Coetzeeis a South African novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He relocated to Australia in 2002 and lives in Adelaide. He became an Australian citizen in 2006...
NationalitySouth African
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth9 February 1940
african exactly people south
South African literature is a literature in bondage. It is a less-than-fully-human literature. It is exactly the kind of literature you would expect people to write from prison.
activist bad force general history islamic religious south
Islamic fundamentalism in its activist manifestation is bad news. Religious fundamentalism in general is bad news. We know about religious fundamentalism in South Africa. Calvinist fundamentalism has been an unmitigated force of benightedness in our history.
womens-beauty world doe
Because a women's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is a part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it.
falling-in-love sight firsts
In my experience poetry speaks to you either at first sight or not at all. A flash of revelation and a flash of response. Like lightning. Like falling in love.
night cities pyramids
One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation.
strong mind literature
There are works of literature whose influence is strong but indirect because it is mediated through the whole of the culture rather than immediately through imitation. Wordsworth is the case that comes to mind.
influence impressionable early-life
The writers who have the deepest influence on one are those one reads in ones more impressionable, early life, and often it is the more youthful works of those writers that leave the deepest imprint.
shells creation let-me
If I, this mortal shell, am going to die, let me at least live on through my creations.
night barbarians
The barbarians come out at night.
reason tautology
Reason is simply a vast tautology.
unimaginable
Unimaginable perhaps; but the unimaginable is there to be imagined.
humility home world
He continues to teach because it provides him with a livelihood; also because it teaches him humility, brings it home to him who he is in the world. The irony does not escape him: that the one who comes to teach learns the keenest of lessons, while those who come to learn learn nothing.
time one-day machines
One day some as yet unborn scholar will recognize in the clock the machine that has tamed the wilds.
time drinking breathing
Once I lived in time as a fish in water, breathing it, drinking it, sustained by it. Now I kill time and time kills me.