Inner Workings Read online

  4 Quoted in Nürnberger, p. 15.

  5 Quoted in Nürnberger, p. 104.

  6 Quoted in Nürnberger, pp. 70, 74.

  7 Quoted in Nürnberger, p. 119.

  8 The Collected Stories of Joseph Roth, trans. Michael Hofmann (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001). Published in the UK as Collected Shorter Fiction of Joseph Roth (London: Granta, 2001).

  9 Quoted in David Bronsen, ed., Joseph Roth und die Tradition (Agora Verlag, 1975), p. 128.

  7 Sándor Márai

  1 Sándor Márai, Embers, English translation from the German of Christina Viragh by Carol Brown Janeway (New York: Knopf, 2001; London: Penguin, 2003), p. 42.

  2 Land, Land! . . . : Erinnerungen, German translation from the Hungarian by Hans Skirecki (Munich: Piper, 2001), p. 114.

  3 Bekenntnisse eines Bürgers: Erinnerungen, German translation from the Hungarian by Hans Skirecki (Munich: Piper, 2001), p. 310.

  4 Das Vermächtnis der Eszter, German translation from the Hungarian by Christina Viragh (Munich: Piper, 2000).

  5 Quoted in László Rónay, ‘Biographische Chronologie’, in Sándor Márai, Land, Land! . . . (Berlin: Oberbaum, 2000), vol. 2, p. 161.

  6 Der Wind kommt vom Westen: Amerikanische Reisebilder, German translation from the Hungarian by Artur Saternus (Langen Müller, 1964).

  7 Diary 1968–75, in Tagebücher: Auszüge (Berlin: Oberbaum, 2001), pp. 25–6.

  8 Bekenntnisse eines Bürgers, pp. 323, 350.

  9 English translation from the Hungarian by Albert Tezla (Budapest: Corvina / Central European University Press, 1996).

  10 Die Zeit, 14 September 2000.

  11 Conversations in Bolzano (London:Viking, 2004), Casanova in Bolzano (New York: Knopf, 2004). English translation from the Hungarian by George Szirtes.

  8 Paul Celan and his translators

  1 Paul Celan, Nelly Sachs: Correspondence, trans. Christopher Clark (Riverdale-on-Hudson: Sheep Meadow Press, 1995), p. 17.

  2 John Felstiner, Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995), pp. 253, 181.

  3 Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan, trans. John Felstiner (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), p. 329. Hereafter referred to as SPP.

  4 Hans-Georg Gadamer, ‘Epilogue’, in Gadamer on Celan, translated and edited by Richard Heinemann and Bruce Krajewski (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), p. 142.

  5 Introduction, Poems of Paul Celan (London: Anvil Press, 1988), p. 18.

  6 Hans Egon Holthusen, quoted in Felstiner, p. 79.

  7 Paul Celan, Collected Prose, trans. Rosemary Waldrop (Riverdale: Sheep Meadow Press, 1986), p. 16.

  8 Theodor Adorno, ‘Cultural Criticism and Society’, in Prisms, trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber (London: Spearman, 1967), p. 34.

  9 Felstiner, p. 161. A word of caution is called for. We have only Celan’s account of the meeting. What Celan reports does not square with what Buber had written seven years earlier: ‘They [our persecutors] have so radically removed themselves from the human sphere . . . that not even hatred, much less an overcoming of hatred, was able to arise in me. And what am I that I could presume to “forgive”!’ Quoted in Maurice Friedman, ‘Paul Celan and Martin Buber’, Religion and Literature 29/1 (1997), p. 46.

  10 SPP, p. 245; Glottal Stop: 101 Poems, trans. Nikolai Popov & Heather McHugh (Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 2000), p. 19.

  11 Quoted in Felstiner, p. 287.

  12 Poetry as Experience, trans. Andrea Tarnowski (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 38, 122. Lacoue-Labarthe’s book was first published in 1986.

  13 Paul Celan, Breathturn (Los Angeles:Sun & Moon Press, 1995), Threadsuns (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 2000), both trans. Pierre Joris.

  9 Günter Grass and theWilhelm Gustloff

  1 Günter Grass, Crabwalk, trans. Krishna Winston (New York: Harcourt, 2003), p. 25.

  2 Cat and Mouse and Other Writings, ed. A. Leslie Willson, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: Continuum, 1994), p. 23.

  3 The Rat, trans. Ralph Manheim (London: Secker, 1987), p. 63.

  4 The Call of the Toad, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1992).

  10 W. G. Sebald,After Nature

  1 The Emigrants, trans. Michael Hulse (New York: New Directions, 1996; London:Vintage, 2002).

  2 Vertigo, trans. Michael Hulse (New York: New Directions, 2000; London:Vintage, 2002).

  3 Unheimliche Heimat: Essays zur österreichischen Literatur (Salzburg & Wien: Residenz, 1991).

  4 The Rings of Saturn, trans. Michael Hulse (New York: New Directions, 1998; London: Vintage, 2002), p. 5.

  5 Austerlitz, trans. Anthea Bell (New York: Random House, 2001; London: Penguin, 2002).

  6 For Years Now (London: Short Books, 2001).

  7 After Nature, trans. Michael Hamburger (New York: Random House, 2002; London: Penguin, 2004).

  8 On the Natural History of Destruction, trans. Anthea Bell (New York: Random House, 2003).

  11 Hugo Claus, poet

  1 ‘Interview’, in Hugo Claus, Gedichten 1948–2004 (Amsterdam: Besige Bij, 2004), vol. 2, pp. 501-3.

  2 ‘Chicago’, in Gedichten 1948–2004, vol. 1, p. 269.

  12 Graham Greene,Brighton Rock

  1 Brighton Rock (New York: Penguin, 2004; London: Vintage, 2004), p. 261.

  2 Marie-Françoise Allain, The Other Man: Conversations with Graham Greene (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), p. 125.

  3 ‘Henry James: The Private Universe’ (1936), in Collected Essays (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), p. 34.

  4 ‘François Mauriac’ (1945), in Collected Essays, p. 91.

  5 In 1926 ‘I became convinced of the probable existence of something we call God,’ wrote Greene. A Sort of Life (London: Bodley Head, 1971), p. 165.

  6 Review of The Heart of the Matter, in Collected Essays, vol. 4 (London: Secker and Warburg, 1968), p. 441.

  13 Samuel Beckett, the short fiction

  1 I pass over the early short fiction: the stories making up More Pricks than Kicks, written between 1931 and 1933, and the handful of other pieces of short fiction from the same period. Of these one can fairly say that they would not be worth preserving had they not been written by Beckett. Their interest lies in the hints they give or fail to give of the work that is to follow.

  2 Quoted in James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996; London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p. 601.

  14 Walt Whitman

  1 Walt Whitman, Memoranda During the War, ed. Peter Coviello (Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 167–8.

  2 Quoted in Paul Zweig, Walt Whitman:The Making of the Poet (New York: Basic Books, 1984), p. 339.

  3 Memoranda, p. xxxviii.

  4 Leaves of Grass: Reader’s Edition, ed. Harold W. Blodgett and Sculley Bradley (NewYork: NewYork University Press, 1965), p. 751. Hereafter referred to as LoG.

  5 Justin Kaplan, Walt Whitman: A Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980), pp. 313, 316.

  6 Quoted in Kaplan, p. 47.

  7 Leaves of Grass: 150th Anniversary Edition, ed. and with an afterword by David S. Reynolds (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 101.

  8 David S. Reynolds, Walt Whitman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 118.

  9 Jerome Loving, Walt Whitman:The Song of Himself (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 1999), pp. 297, 299, 376.

  10 Reynolds, Walt Whitman, p. 101.

  11 Introduction to Memoranda, pp. xxxvi–xxxvii.

  12 Jonathan Ned Katz, The Invention of Heterosexuality (New York: Dutton, 1995), pp. 43–47.

  13 Quoted in Kaplan, p. 133.

  14 Memoranda, p. 126.

  15 Whitman, quoted in Kaplan, p. 337.

  16 Loving, p. 259; Kaplan, p. 329.

  17 Zweig, p. 343.

  18 Reynolds, ed., p. 17; LoG, p. 52.

  19 Reynolds, Walt Whitman, p. 117.

  15 William Faulkner and his biographers

  1 Quoted in Joseph Blotner, Faulkner:A B
iography, one-volume edition (New York: Random House, 1984), p. 570.

  2 Frederick R. Karl, William Faulkner: American Writer (London: Faber, 1989), p. 523.

  3 Jay Parini, One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), pp. 20, 79, 141, 145. See also Karl, p. 213.

  4 Quoted in Blotner, p. 106.

  5 Quoted in Karl, p. 757.

  6 Quinn quoted in Parini, p. 271; Brooks quoted in Parini, p. 292.

  7 Quoted in Blotner, p. 611.

  8 Quoted in Blotner, p. 599.

  9 Go Down, Moses (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960), p. 227.

  10 Quoted in Blotner, p. 501.

  11 John Steinbeck: A Biography (London: Heinemann, 1994); Robert Frost: A Life (New York: Holt, 1999); The Last Station: A Novel of Tolstoy’s Last Year (New York: Holt, 1990); Benjamin’s Crossing: A Novel (New York: Holt, 1997).

  12 Mosquitoes (London: Chatto & Windus, 1964), p. 209.

  13 Commins quoted in Karl, p. 844; June Faulkner quoted in Parini, p. 251.

  16 Saul Bellow, the early novels

  1 Saul Bellow, Novels 1944–53 (New York: Library of America, 2003).

  2 The Education of Henry Adams (New York: Modern Library, 1931), p. 343.

  3 1979 interview, in Conversations with Saul Bellow, ed. Gloria L. Cronin and Ben Siegel (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1994), p. 161.

  18 Philip Roth,The Plot Against America

  1 Philip Roth, Operation Shylock: A Confession (London: Cape, 1993), p. 399.

  2 Philip Roth, The Plot Against America (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), p. 365.

  3 Issue dated September 19, 2004, p. 11.

  4 Philip Roth, American Pastoral (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), p. 287.

  5 Philip Roth, The Facts: A Novelist’s Autobiography (1988) (London: Cape, 1989), p. 169.

  6 Philip Roth, The Human Stain (2000) (New York: Vintage, 2001), p. 132.

  7 Operation Shylock, p. 113.

  19 Nadine Gordimer

  1 ‘Some are Born to Sweet Delight’, in Jump and Other Stories (London: Bloomsbury, 1991), pp. 67–88.

  2 The Pickup (New York: Penguin, 2001).

  3 Albert Camus, ‘The Adulterous Woman’, in Exile and the Kingdom (1957), trans. Justin O’Brien (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1962), pp. 9–29.

  4 Loot and Other Stories (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2003), p. 32.

  5 What is Literature?, trans. Bernard Frechtman (London: Methuen, 1967), p.14.

  6 Cf. ‘A Writer’s Freedom’ (1975), ‘Living in the Interregnum’ (1982), and ‘The Essential Gesture’ (1984) in The Essential Gesture, ed. Stephen Clingman (Cape Town: David Philip, 1988); ‘References: The Codes of Culture’ (1989) in Living in Hope and History: Notes from Our Century (London: Bloomsbury, 1999).

  20 Gabriel García Márquez,Memories of My Melancholy Whores

  1 Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera, translated Edith Grossman (New York: Penguin, 1988), p. 295.

  2 Gabriel García Márquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores, trans. Edith Grossman (New York: Knopf, 2005).

  3 Roman Jakobson, ‘Linguistics and Poetics’, in Essays on the Language of Literature, ed. Seymour Chatman and Samuel R. Levin (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967), p. 316.

  4 Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. Edith Grossman (London: Secker & Warburg, 2004), p. 430.

  5 Gabriel García Márquez, Living to Tell the Tale, trans. Edith Grossman (New York: Knopf, 2003), p. 395.

  6 Gabriel García Márquez, Strange Pilgrims: Twelve Stories, trans. Edith Grossman (London: Cape, 1993), pp. 54–61.

  7 Yasunari Kawabata, The House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories, translated Edward G. Seidensticker (London: Quadriga Press, 1969), p. 39.

  21 V. S. Naipaul,Half a Life

  1 W. Somerset Maugham, Points of View (London: Heinemann, 1958), p. 58.

  2 The Razor’s Edge (London: Heinemann, 1944), pp. 267, 271, 272.

  3 Half a Life:A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2001; London: Picador, 2002).

  4 An Area of Darkness (London: Deutsch, 1964), p. 77.

  5 Naipaul, The Enigma of Arrival (New York: Vintage, 1987; London: Picador, 2002), p. 135.

  6 Quoted in Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 74.

  7 The remarkably frank interviews collected in Conversations with V. S. Naipaul, edited by Feroza Jussawalla (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1997), suggest that the story of Willie Chandran in London has a strong autobiographical component. See particularly the 1994 interview with Stephen Schiff.

  8 Anita Desai, Fasting, Feasting (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000; London:Vintage, 2000).

  9 Nandy, The Intimate Enemy, p. 47.

  Acknowledgements

  The essay on Arthur Miller first appeared in Writers at the Movies, ed. Jim Shepard (New York: HarperCollins, 2000).

  The essay on Robert Musil first appeared as an introduction to The Confusions of Young Törless, trans. Shaun Whiteside (London: Penguin, 2001).

  The essay on Graham Greene first appeared as an introduction to Brighton Rock (New York: Penguin, 200).

  The essay on Samuel Beckett is excerpted from the introduction to volume 4 of Samuel Beckett: The Grove Centenary Edition (New York: Grove, 2006).

  The essay on Hugo Claus first appeared as an introduction to the paperbound edition of Hugo Claus, Greetings: Selected Poems, trans. John Irons (New York: Harcourt, 2006).

  All other essays first appeared, in earlier form, in the New York Review of Books.

  ALSO BY J. M. COETZEE

  Dusklands

  In the Heart of the Country

  Waiting for the Barbarians

  Life & Times of Michael K

  Foe

  White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa

  Age of Iron

  Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews

  The Master of Petersburg

  Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship

  The Lives of Animals

  Disgrace

  Stranger Shores

  Elizabeth Costello

  Slow Man

  Boyhood

  Youth

  Diary of a BadYear

  Summertime

  Here and Now: Letters

  The Childhood of Jesus

  Three Stories

  The Schooldays of Jesus

  Late Essays

  The Death of Jesus

  J. M. COETZEE was born into a middle-class family in Cape Town in 1940.

  He attended school in Cape Town and began his studies at the University of Cape Town in 1957, graduating with degrees in mathematics and English.

  Between 1965 and 1968 Coetzee studied at the University of Texas, then for three years taught at the State University of New York in Buffalo, returning to South Africa after his application for residence in the United States was denied. It was at this time that he began writing fiction.

  In 1974 his first novel, Dusklands, was published.

  Since 1972 Coetzee has held a number of academic positions, principally at the University of Cape Town, the University of Chicago and, most recently, the University of Adelaide. He was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice, for his novels Life & Times of Michael K and Disgrace, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. In 2002 he immigrated to Australia.

  J. M. Coetzee lives in Adelaide.

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ission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  First published in the UK by Harvill Secker, 2007

  This edition published in Australia and New Zealand by The Text Publishing Company, 2021

  Cover by Chong W.H.

  ISBN: 9781922330413 (paperback)

  ISBN: 9781925923827 (ebook)

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.