The Mumpsimus

This piece first appeared in the Winter 2015 print edition of Rain Taxi Review of Books . J.M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing: Face-to-face with Time by David Attwell Viking ($27.95) The Good Story: Exchanges on Truth, Fiction, and Psychotherapy by J.M. Coetzee and Arabella Kurtz Viking ($27.95) In 1977, J.M. Coetzee struggled while beginning the novel Waiting for the Barbarians , because, he wrote in his notebook, he had failed in “the creation of a credible beloved you .” David Attwell explains this mysterious statement as a manifestation of Coetzee’s disaffection with illusionary realism, the kind of writing that pretends textual figures are real. A week later, Coetzee wrote: “I have no interest in telling stories; it is the process of storytelling that interests me. This man MM, as a ‘he’ living in the world, bores me. ‘Creating’ an illusionistic reality in which he moves depresses me. Hence the exhausted quality of the writing.” Any fiction writer ...

I create myself in the words that create me. — In the Heart of the Country I've recently completed a draft of a paper on J.M. Coetzee's second novel, In the Heart of the Country , writing about the book and its contexts (with regard to trauma theory and Afrikaner Nationalism), but as I read various scholarly analyses of it, as well as reviews of the novel when it was first published, what struck me was the book's relative neglect compared to Coetzee's other novels, and the general lack of enthusiasm for it. When I first read it some years ago, I found it befuddling and often tedious. But it stuck with me, even haunted me, and that's why I decided to take some time digging into it. Older now, more experienced in reading Coetzee, I found it immensely rich and a powerful reading experience. Though I've spent a few months reading and re-reading it closely, I still feel like I'm only beginning to get a grasp of all it's up to. It is impossible to s...

A Dangerous Method Dartmouth College has a long-standing relationship with the Telluride Film Festival, and every year a group of films that premiered at Telluride are shown as part of the Telluride at Dartmouth  program, a highlight of any northern New England cinephile's year. (It was at Telluride at Dartmouth last year that I saw Never Let Me Go .) This year, I've decided to try to see as many of the films as I can, and unless exhaustion wears me down, I expect to see five of the six. (Unfortunately, The Kid with the Bike , the new movie from the Dardenne brothers , is playing on a day when I have a prior commitment.) I won't do in depth reports on the films here, I don't think, because of a lack of time, but I do want to record initial impressions. The first film shown was  A Dangerous Method , David Cronenberg's best comedy since Crash . Most people probably wouldn't classify A Dangerous Method  as a comedy, and it's certainly not being sold...

CNN has a report on a study of 78 families where lesbian parents raised children over more than 24 years, with the results being that those children's scores on a standard test of behavior and psychological health are better than the average for children in "nonlesbian families". Wanting to offer a skeptic's view as well as that of researchers, CNN get a few quotes from Wendy Wright, whom they identify as "president of the Concerned Women for America, a group that supports biblical values" (presumably they don't pick and choose the "biblical values" they support, since that would be nothing more than using your favorite Bible quotes to support what you'd believe anyway, with or without the Bible, so they're probably similar to A.J. Jacobs , except they actually believe it all). It's good journalism to have scientific studies commented on by crackpots.  Very fair and balanced, that. CNN notes that "Funding for the resear...