Novels with writers as
protagonists invite autobiographical readings, but J.M. Coetzee—the Nobel-winning
author of Disgrace
and Waiting For The Barbarians—practically challenges readers not to read his latest as
autobiography. Set almost entirely in an Australian apartment tower, it focuses
on a writer with the initials "J.C.", an aging, unsocial fellow of South
African birth who spends most of his time writing. As Diary Of A Bad Year opens, he's working on a
collection of essays under the rubric "Strong Opinions" for a German publisher.
Covering an almost random series of topics, they contain just what the title
promises: strong opinions on everything from Tolstoy to meat-eating. But as
usual with Coetzee's novels, theories and opinions only stretch so far.
Here, they literally
aren't enough to fill the page. J.C.'s opinions have to share space with J.C.'s
personal thoughts, most concerning Anya, a young, attractive apartment resident
with whom he strikes up an infatuated acquaintance. Wanting to keep her in his
orbit, he hires her to take dictation, but finds her opinions shaping his
writing. After a few chapters, her voice joins J.C.'s writings and inner
musings; all three monologues run on every page, to sometimes-disorienting
effect.
There's no way to read Diary gracefully, but that's
seemingly by design, which connects thematically to a novel that's at least
partly about the way ideas interrupt and change each other, and the competition
between private thoughts and public statements. The structure only becomes
problematic when the novel starts to look more engaging as a formal exercise
than as a literary experience. Most of J.C.'s essays are challenging,
particularly a long riff on the birth of the state as dramatized by The
Seven Samurai,
but J.C. and Anya's relationship never really gels, and much of the novel's
back half is given over to a confrontation with Anya's lover, a straw man who
shares none of J.C.'s strong opinions.
But even as a
between-major-works experiment, Diary Of A Bad Year remains intriguing. As
the old man keeps trying to set his thoughts on the world in order while he
still has the chance, he watches the goal elude him. While elements of the
novel get away from him, Coetzee's dialogic approach shows he's smart enough
not to even try such a task. That's one point, at least, where the
autobiographical connection ends.