Free Indirect Discourse
Nov. 14th, 2008 03:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
niriniaI'm spamming friends pages as procrastination. Does it help if I'm slightly sorry?
I finished Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year a week or so ago. It is primarily interesting for its somewhat experimental qualities: the three-way narrative. A collection of essays, or "opinions", the writer of these and his secretary. The story is not particularly well-written, and gets no better towards the end. If anything it takes a turn for the worse. But I think it safe to argue that in this particular case ("in this particular ..." is stolen directly from the lecturer of Am. Lit.), the story itself is not the focal point. The effects this split narrative creates, is.
The opinions are the most interesting part. My favourite brand of old, eccentric man with a pen. The relationship between the three characters is flat, predictable and static. The way the three are put up against each other is immensely fun. I experience Alan, the secretary's boyfriend, as an uneducated idiot that does not grasp a word of what he has read. Alan, and his secretary to a degree, think the same of the writer (which may be a personification of Coetzee). And I imagine that a lot of readers must agree with them. An old, feeble man with a miserable life, typing up his worthless opinions for a publisher in Germany. So, unless you enjoy opinionated old men, postmodernism and juxtapositional narratives, this is absolutely not for you.
I finished Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year a week or so ago. It is primarily interesting for its somewhat experimental qualities: the three-way narrative. A collection of essays, or "opinions", the writer of these and his secretary. The story is not particularly well-written, and gets no better towards the end. If anything it takes a turn for the worse. But I think it safe to argue that in this particular case ("in this particular ..." is stolen directly from the lecturer of Am. Lit.), the story itself is not the focal point. The effects this split narrative creates, is.
The opinions are the most interesting part. My favourite brand of old, eccentric man with a pen. The relationship between the three characters is flat, predictable and static. The way the three are put up against each other is immensely fun. I experience Alan, the secretary's boyfriend, as an uneducated idiot that does not grasp a word of what he has read. Alan, and his secretary to a degree, think the same of the writer (which may be a personification of Coetzee). And I imagine that a lot of readers must agree with them. An old, feeble man with a miserable life, typing up his worthless opinions for a publisher in Germany. So, unless you enjoy opinionated old men, postmodernism and juxtapositional narratives, this is absolutely not for you.
