Yesterday, at an informal fund-raiser, I bumped into a former student who had taken a seminar on Coetzee that I had co-taught with the Dutch novelist, Arnon Grunberg, half a decade ago. (Grunberg was the star attraction of the fund-raiser, so I wouldn't suggest a role for chance here.) I am bad with names, but decent with faces, so even though I couldn't recall his name, I recognized him -- a tall man now -- at once (despite the beard he has fashionably allowed to be grown); we re-introduced and I was reminded his name is 'Bram Esser.' We talked a bit about the poor sales of the book, Snelwegverhalen, (that is, 'highway stories,' but it can also mean: 'quickly-gone-stories') about Dutch highways that Bram has published since I saw him last. I was surprised by this lack of good fortune because the book had gotten considerable local media attention.
At one point I wasn't sure what to say, so I mentioned that a few years after the Coetzee class he had attended, I gave a public lecture about Coetzee's "What is a Classic?" and related it to magnanimity in Middlemarch, Grunberg's Huid en Haar (which has not been translated yet), and some of Ruskin's musings. I had put a lot of effort into the lecture, which I delivered as a keynote at an interdisciplinary conference (in Dutch). It fell flat. And when I offered it for publication a few years later, one of my departmental colleagues rejected it (with very kind words) for a collection he was editing. Bram reminded me that we had not, in fact, read "What is a Classic?" in the Coetzee seminar. I mumbled something that I may have read it in preparation of or during the seminar. After an awkward silence (well, I thought it was awkward), I added that I had used a paragraph or two of that ill-fated lecture in a forthcoming preface to a volume on Neglected Philosophical Classics I edited.
I was about to launch into explaining how I used Coetzee's essay to help characterize in some sense, the nature of a philosophical classic, when Bram asked me, if since our class, I had read Paul West's The Very Rich Hours of Count Von Stauffenberg--a book that plays a considerable role in Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello and also in our seminar discussion (even though it had not been assigned) [I have mentioned it a few times, see especially here and here].
'Have you?'
'No, except for some of the strangulation-with-a-wire scenes.'
'Me neither..I am afraid to do so.'
I paused. I wondered if I should ask him more about his, rather partial interest in West's novel.
Instead, I added that 'afraid' was the wrong word. I said that I would read West's novel when I have less good fortune.
I surprised myself, why would I say that?
It's not that I am afraid to be contaminated by the malice of West's novel. The malice is visible all around us if you allow yourself to think about it: every day I bike along the beautiful Prinsengracht and see the long line of visitors to Anne Frank's house--kitty-corner from where I live. (These days the city is covered with posters advertising the musical based on her diaries.) She was betrayed by somebody who may still be alive among our neighbors. One of my favorite places to write philosophy, Vinnies, is itself kitty-corner with the West-Indisch Huis (West Indian House), the former head-quarters of the Dutch West India company--built with money earned on the slave-trade and sugar plantations. It's a charming place for weddings as well as meetings by Dutch academic bureaucracies with money to burn. My son and I played voetbal in the playground alongside it yesterday in the sun that could not make much of a dent in the very late-fall-frost.
I have long stored up a list of works for that broadening-my-mind-sabbatical I keep promising myself (careful re-reading or first reading of all of George Eliot's novels, Montaigne's Essays, D'Alembert's Encyclopedia, all of Plato, etc). Evidently, I am also storing up some works for when my fortune has run out: upon reflection, listed on my 'nadir-reading list' is not just that West novel, but also Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, The Triple Mirror Of The Self (which I have already read once, but am terrified to read again), and a few others.
Bram helpfully suggested West's work would be a final shot in the neck. On the contrary, I said, I expect West's novel to cheer me up then.
After I came home, I ordered Bram's book; maybe it will reach me before the Winter family holiday.
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