Diary of a Good Book
Categories: Award Winners , Staff Picks , Fiction
Despite J.M. Coetzee's reputation and numerous awards, I only discovered him a few weeks ago. "Diary of a Bad Year," published in 2008, is a lovely book.
The main character is an aging writer, with many biographical similarities to Coetzee himself, who has been asked to write "Strong Opinions" about the state of the world to contribute to a larger collection. The top half of each page are his "strong opinions," written in very broad, formal language about everything from torture and war to religion and democracy. At the bottom of each page is a personal, first-person narration from the main character. We discover that he is a lonely and even frail man. He asks a young woman to transcribe his "strong opinions" and, page after page, we read his public, intellectual voice while simultaneously following his day-to-day life, told in a private and almost intimate voice. We get to know Anya, his typist, as well as the man she lives with, a loud and unthoughtful man who is quite the opposite of the narrator.
I'm drawn to books about writing, both as a craft and an art, as well as books about writers - what inspires them? How do they go about creating stories? I especially like Annie Dillard's "The Writing Life" and Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. In "Diary of a Bad Year," the main character is examining what it means to be a writer, especially of fiction, today. What is the purpose of storytelling? Why is fiction still important? It's quite striking how the different parts of the page influence each other, provide more layers and voices.
Light on plot and heavy on philosophical musings, "Diary of a Bad Year" packs quite an emotional punch. I've just started reading Coetzee's "Disgrace," for which he won the Man Booker Prize in 1999. A friend had recommended it, saying, "It knocked my socks off." While so far it's a more conventional novel (no divisions in the page between different voices), the fine characterization and writing style are the same. I look forward to finishing it. If you haven't read anything by J.M. Coetzee, now is a great time to start.
