Tämä sivusto käyttää evästeitä palvelujen toimittamiseen, toiminnan parantamiseen, analytiikkaan ja (jos et ole kirjautunut sisään) mainostamiseen. Käyttämällä LibraryThingiä ilmaiset, että olet lukenut ja ymmärtänyt käyttöehdot ja yksityisyydensuojakäytännöt. Sivujen ja palveluiden käytön tulee olla näiden ehtojen ja käytäntöjen mukaista.
Elizabeth Costello is a distinguished and aging Australian novelist whose life is revealed through a series of eight formal addresses. From an award-acceptance speech at a New England liberal arts college to a lecture on evil in Amsterdam and a sexually charged reading by the poet Robert Duncan, the author draws the reader toward its astonishing conclusion. The novel is, on its surface, the story of a woman's life as mother, sister, lover, and writer. Yet it is also a profound and haunting meditation on the nature of storytelling.… (lisätietoja)
66. Elizabeth Costello by J. M. Coetzee OPD: 2003 format: 231-page paperback acquired: May 2005 (from now-defunct Borders) read: Nov 24-29 time reading: 8:32, 2.2 mpp rating: 4 genre/style: almost contemporary fiction theme: TBR locations: it perambulates about the author: A South African and Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in 1940 in Cape Town, South Africa to Afrikaner parents.
hmm. This is a collection of lectures and essays, many of which Coetzee had actually given or published, made into a novel. He even included (very thoughtful) critical responses to his work. I didn't know that. Blind, I opened with a very interesting chapter on Realism. It's terrific. But the heart of the essays seems to revolve around veganism from a moral perspective, which I tried very hard to care about. Nothing was concluded, in any essay. And some are odd and sometimes very slow. The last essay is like a bio-fictional confrontation with a writing legacy.
I think it's important and admirable that the essays were all intelligent. All the thought processes on all sides were well put, argument and criticism. And that I did appreciate. But does it make a good book, or a bore? I haven't decided yet. And if you asked me to read it again, I imagine I could be convinced. So, it works in its way. It still might be a bore.
Interesting interlinked essays (more or less) exploring Being and mortality, the role of art and the inadequacies of language. Very sort of turn-of-the-century German; it's worth reading Hofmannsthal first. ( )
Seems more a philosophical debate than a novel. At times that debate was seemed more a matter os semantics, although especially when grappling with death it was engaging. ( )
Elisabeth Costello es una reconocida novelista australiana cuya dilatada vida se nos revela a través de un ingeniosa serie de ocho conferencias. Desde el discurso de aceptación de un premio en una facultad de letras de Nueva Inglaterra, una conferencia sobre ella celebrada en Amsterdam hasta una lectura del poeta Robert Duncan plena de alusiones sexuales. Coetzee conduce al lector inexorablemente hacia un final que, como es habitual en este autor, nos impulsa a la reflexión más profunda.
J M Coetzee doesn't really do "normal" novels, but even by his standards this was a rather odd one, with its narrative almost entirely built up out of lectures, debates, seminars, award and honorary degree ceremonies, as seen from the point of view of his fictional alter ego, the distinguished elderly Australian novelist Elizabeth Costello. There's no story as such, this is purely a platform for tossing around ideas about topics like the role of the writer, animal rights, the "African novel" (with or without quotation marks), realism, vegetarianism, the depiction of violence, and Kafka. It's deliberately frustrating: if you try to read it like a novel it will fight you all the way, and you won't fare any better if you try to pretend it's a collection of philosophical essays. But I found it the perfect book to read on a lengthy train journey: it's short enough to get through in a single sitting, it's intellectually challenging enough to keep you engaged in its detail and language, but you don't have to worry about losing track of the large-scale texture of a complicated story. ( )
Tiedot englanninkielisestä Yhteisestä tiedosta.Muokkaa kotoistaaksesi se omalle kielellesi.
Il y a tout d'abord le problème de l'ouverture, c'est-à-dire comment nous faire passer d'où nous sommes, c'est-à-dire en ce moment nulle part, jusqu'à l'autre rive.
In de eerste plaats staan we voor de vraag hoe te beginnen, namelijk hoe ons te verplaatsen van de plek waar we ons bevinden en die vooralsnog nergens is, naar de andere oever.
There is first of all the problem of the opening, namely, how to get us from where we are, which is, as yet, nowhere, to the far bank.
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Tiedot englanninkielisestä Yhteisestä tiedosta.Muokkaa kotoistaaksesi se omalle kielellesi.
Elizabeth Costello is a distinguished and aging Australian novelist whose life is revealed through a series of eight formal addresses. From an award-acceptance speech at a New England liberal arts college to a lecture on evil in Amsterdam and a sexually charged reading by the poet Robert Duncan, the author draws the reader toward its astonishing conclusion. The novel is, on its surface, the story of a woman's life as mother, sister, lover, and writer. Yet it is also a profound and haunting meditation on the nature of storytelling.
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1
OPD: 2003
format: 231-page paperback
acquired: May 2005 (from now-defunct Borders) read: Nov 24-29 time reading: 8:32, 2.2 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: almost contemporary fiction theme: TBR
locations: it perambulates
about the author: A South African and Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in 1940 in Cape Town, South Africa to Afrikaner parents.
hmm. This is a collection of lectures and essays, many of which Coetzee had actually given or published, made into a novel. He even included (very thoughtful) critical responses to his work. I didn't know that. Blind, I opened with a very interesting chapter on Realism. It's terrific. But the heart of the essays seems to revolve around veganism from a moral perspective, which I tried very hard to care about. Nothing was concluded, in any essay. And some are odd and sometimes very slow. The last essay is like a bio-fictional confrontation with a writing legacy.
I think it's important and admirable that the essays were all intelligent. All the thought processes on all sides were well put, argument and criticism. And that I did appreciate. But does it make a good book, or a bore? I haven't decided yet. And if you asked me to read it again, I imagine I could be convinced. So, it works in its way. It still might be a bore.
2023
https://www.librarything.com/topic/354226#8300143 (