If Pavese was right, if every true writer is splendidly
monotonous, each splendor asks to inquire into what lies the monotony of it.
John Coetzee, a writer of unrestricted imagination, is
lavish in resources, in treatments, and discreet in using them. It
splendidly monotonous on these three diverse plots,
written at very different times, is the acuity of perception,
the sufficiency of descriptions, attention to subject matter, and
its mechanisms, the phlegmatic writing that only sometimes transpires
irony and abhors persuasive bragging, sarcasm, and false
pity, but not from the outburst of love or anger. The language of
Coetzee is an unfailing eye for doom, feedback
misery, the damaging ridiculousness of the desire for domination (of the
others, of himself) the inventiveness of some humans for the
conquest, ...read more
