Name: John Maxwell Coetzee
Year Won: 2003
Read: The Pole
Original Language: English
Reason: "who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider"
About: The Pole is a short (very short) novel about the seduction of a beautiful young woman by an elderly pianist. That's pretty much it.
What I liked: It was beautifully descriptive and did a great job of merging the world of art with the history of Poland while also telling the story of a romance. It was the kind of thing that read well on a superficial level (a romance), but also on a deeper, more allegorical level.
What I Disliked: The story was all very distant. Like, "the woman is sitting" etc. Which made it feel a bit contrived to me? Like, "hey, let's play with some weird narrative formats just because we can."
The story also had a lot of the issues I see when men write women. They don't seem to inherently get them. Like, the pianist is absolutely *floored* that a woman half his age isn't leaping into bed with him. But, of course, she does anyway, because I guess his art and debonair charm overcomes him, y'know, being twice her age. *eye roll*
Should it have won a Nobel: Coetzee is a good writer, I will give him that. I also doubt he won for this, so it's probably immaterial. From this alone, I'd probably say no, but I can see how him writing on another subject (particularly one pertaining to his home country of South Africa) would check all the right boxes.
Next Up: "Greed" by Elfriede Jelinek
