In Stranger Shores, which collects essays from 1986 to 1999, Coetzee shows his command of huge range of subject matter just as he did with his more recent book of essays, Inner Workings. If anything, the range is even greater than the later collection, although it doesn’t sustain the interest as consistently.
The earlier volume is also markedly more (South) African in focus, featuring several essays on African writers who will be unfamiliar to most readers.
The highlights here are a comprehensive dismantling of A.S. Byatt’s fiction, notes on Robert Musil’s Diaries and a wonderful essay on Kafka translations.
This last is the best essay in the book, and achieves the double feat of increasing one’s already very profound respect for both Kafka’s writing and Coetzee’s criticism. He concentrates on Mark Harman’s translation of The Castle from the restored text – i.e. not the one prepared and adulterated by Kafka’s friend and literary executor Max Brod – and praises it highly. There are quibbles over details, and Coetzee’s command of German allows him to be genuinely authoritative in his criticisms. I have Harman’s translation on my shelves waiting to be read, and Coetzee’s essay has only increased my desire to dig in.
There are also superb essays on Josef Skvorecky, Borges, Richardson’s Clarissa and Dostoevsky’s “Wonder Years”.
While these essays were brilliant and compelling, I was, frankly, bored by those on Nadine Gordimer, Doris Lessing and Breyten Breytenbach in particular. These and the other African-centred essays are mostly located towards the end of the book, which meant it was a bit of an effort ploughing thorough the last hundred pages or so.
But don’t let that put you off: Coetzee’s criticism is some of the finest I’ve read, and one or two essays aside, he’s consistently penetrating, interesting and challenging.
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