{"id":77,"date":"2025-10-17T14:57:51","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T13:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/?p=77"},"modified":"2025-10-17T16:06:54","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T15:06:54","slug":"coetzee-is-waiting-for-meaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/?p=77","title":{"rendered":"Coetzee is waiting for meaning \u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!drqK!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe6eb0b8f-dbc4-448f-aea4-6e22fd7e709e_341x522.jpeg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I didn\u2019t read J. M. Coetzee\u2019s fiction until about five years ago. I had read his half of an&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3IHKSqo\">exchange of letters<\/a>&nbsp;with Paul Auster, a Christmas present from my son, who knew about&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/donnordbergwriting.substack.com\/p\/austers-baumgartner\">my interest Auster\u2019s writing<\/a>. My son thought I might be interested in what Auster wrote when he wasn\u2019t consciously concocting something a step or two&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/donnordbergwriting.substack.com\/p\/how-paul-auster-helps-me-cope-with\">outside normal human existence<\/a>, but close enough that it felt, well,&nbsp;<em>right<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The fiction of Coetzee \u2013 who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003 \u2013 came into my purview in 2019. The accidental combinati on of a chat with a scholar of English literature and mentions in newspaper articles about his fiction alerted me to Coetzee\u2019s link to philosophical inquiry. I then read three of his books \u2013\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/46pcbh4\">The Life and Times of Michael K.<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(1983),\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/46wFkag\">Diary of a Bad Year<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(2007), and\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4ndngsO\">Elisabeth Costello<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(2001). Now this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4n2NKx0\">Waiting for the Barbarians<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(1980) is even more unsettling than the others &#8230; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read the rest of <a href=\"https:\/\/donnordbergwriting.substack.com\/p\/coetzee-is-waiting-for-meaning\">Coetzee is waiting for meaning \u2026<\/a> on Substack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"179\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/DNwriting-banner-large-1024x179.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-60\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/DNwriting-banner-large-1024x179.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/DNwriting-banner-large-300x53.png 300w, https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/DNwriting-banner-large-768x135.png 768w, https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/DNwriting-banner-large.png 1204w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I didn\u2019t read J. M. Coetzee\u2019s fiction until about five years ago. I had read his half of an&nbsp;exchange of letters&nbsp;with Paul Auster, a Christmas present from my son, who knew about&nbsp;my interest Auster\u2019s writing. My son thought I might be interested in what Auster wrote when he wasn\u2019t consciously concocting something a step or &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/?p=77\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Coetzee is waiting for meaning \u2026<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criticism","category-don-nordberg-is-on-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78,"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions\/78"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stourbend.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}