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Rating: 
Summary: Novelist and literary observer
Review: Coetzee writes that T.S. Eliot was invested in his English identity by 1944. Eliot wrote an essay about Virgil, about the Aeneid, about the classics at that time. He sensed the war would bring about change. The classics are what survives. The music of Bach, for example, has survived. The author disliked watching the TV version of Richardson's CLARISSA. He writes that in 1740 there was an idea of beauty. Lovelace is a rake. Richardson is a Christian, but not a religious writer. Clarissa is trapped in a certain mythic dualism. She suffers ontological damage. Clarissa's self-interpretation carries conviction. Lovelace is a thoroughly debased version of the lover worshipper of female beauty. The principal subject of the Dutch writer, Marcellus Emants, is love and marriage. He is pessimistic and is interested in psychological processes. The Dutch writer Harry Mulisch wrote a fictional account of the story of his own parents. A theme of his has been the failure of the imagination in the face of the atrocious evil of, say, Auschwitz. Mulisch has an intensely felt personal preoccupation with the historical trauma of European facism. Cees Nooteboom, another Dutch novelist, is too intelligent to commit himself to constructing the grand illusions of realism. Nooteboom has a version of Andersen's "The Snow Queen." Nooteboom's initial reputation was gained as a travel writer. One of the constants of his life has been his love of Spain. Religious tourism makes up a large part of the tourism industry in Europe. Coetzee notes that Rainer Maria Rilke was attracted to a non-German identity. Rilke visited Russia and after Word War I visited Switzerland. He was attacked as a cultural renegade but claimed he was merely being a good European. Rilke had a gift for languages. Edwin and Willa Muir became professional translators. They produced translations of Kafka. Edwin Muir was also a poet of some note. At any rate, the Muir's conception of Kafka was that he was a religious writer. Coetzee claims that the Muir monopoly has assumed a scandalous air in that it has produced numerous misreadings. Their knowledge of German terms pertaining to law and the legal bureaucracy was sketchy. The Muirs are uncertain guides to the everyday material culture of middle Europe. Max Brod, who delivered Kafka to the world, was, of course, no ordinary editor. He saved Kafka's manuscripts from destruction. Coetzee describes Kafka's language as clear, specific, and neutral. His language may have been influenced by the precision of good legal prose. Robert Musil served the Hapsburg Empire in World War I and died during World War II. THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES was left unfinished. In 1938 Musil and his wife became trapped in Switzerland. Musil thought German culture was retrogressive in compartmentalizing intellect from feeling. Nietzsche's influence on Musil was decisive. 1865-1871 were the years of Dostoevsky's greatest achievement. Dostoevsky's biographer calls him a literary proletarian. His second wife was able to divorce his gambling mania from his personality. In Dostoevsky's novels there are competing voices and discourses. Dostevsky's historical intuitions were usually right. Joseph Brodsky criticizes Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn for refusing to accept that humankind is radically bad. The author writes of A.S. Byatt, Aharon Appelfeld, Naguib Mahfouz, Nadine Gordimer and Doris Lessing in addition to the literary figures covered above at greater length. The essays by this Nobel Prize winner are useful guides to various writers and works without being overly scholarly.
Rating:
Summary: Novelist and literary observer
Review: Coetzee writes that T.S. Eliot was invested in his English identity by 1944. Eliot wrote an essay about Virgil, about the Aeneid, about the classics at that time. He sensed the war would bring about change. The classics are what survives. The music of Bach, for example, has survived. The author disliked watching the TV version of Richardson's CLARISSA. He writes that in 1740 there was an idea of beauty. Lovelace is a rake. Richardson is a Christian, but not a religious writer. Clarissa is trapped in a certain mythic dualism. She suffers ontological damage. Clarissa's self-interpretation carries conviction. Lovelace is a thoroughly debased version of the lover worshipper of female beauty. The principal subject of the Dutch writer, Marcellus Emants, is love and marriage. He is pessimistic and is interested in psychological processes. The Dutch writer Harry Mulisch wrote a fictional account of the story of his own parents. A theme of his has been the failure of the imagination in the face of the atrocious evil of, say, Auschwitz. Mulisch has an intensely felt personal preoccupation with the historical trauma of European facism. Cees Nooteboom, another Dutch novelist, is too intelligent to commit himself to constructing the grand illusions of realism. Nooteboom has a version of Andersen's "The Snow Queen." Nooteboom's initial reputation was gained as a travel writer. One of the constants of his life has been his love of Spain. Religious tourism makes up a large part of the tourism industry in Europe. Coetzee notes that Rainer Maria Rilke was attracted to a non-German identity. Rilke visited Russia and after Word War I visited Switzerland. He was attacked as a cultural renegade but claimed he was merely being a good European. Rilke had a gift for languages. Edwin and Willa Muir became professional translators. They produced translations of Kafka. Edwin Muir was also a poet of some note. At any rate, the Muir's conception of Kafka was that he was a religious writer. Coetzee claims that the Muir monopoly has assumed a scandalous air in that it has produced numerous misreadings. Their knowledge of German terms pertaining to law and the legal bureaucracy was sketchy. The Muirs are uncertain guides to the everyday material culture of middle Europe. Max Brod, who delivered Kafka to the world, was, of course, no ordinary editor. He saved Kafka's manuscripts from destruction. Coetzee describes Kafka's language as clear, specific, and neutral. His language may have been influenced by the precision of good legal prose. Robert Musil served the Hapsburg Empire in World War I and died during World War II. THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES was left unfinished. In 1938 Musil and his wife became trapped in Switzerland. Musil thought German culture was retrogressive in compartmentalizing intellect from feeling. Nietzsche's influence on Musil was decisive. 1865-1871 were the years of Dostoevsky's greatest achievement. Dostoevsky's biographer calls him a literary proletarian. His second wife was able to divorce his gambling mania from his personality. In Dostoevsky's novels there are competing voices and discourses. Dostevsky's historical intuitions were usually right. Joseph Brodsky criticizes Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn for refusing to accept that humankind is radically bad. The author writes of A.S. Byatt, Aharon Appelfeld, Naguib Mahfouz, Nadine Gordimer and Doris Lessing in addition to the literary figures covered above at greater length. The essays by this Nobel Prize winner are useful guides to various writers and works without being overly scholarly.
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Resource
Review: This is, overall, an excellent book, and provides exemplary models of both the literary essay and sympathetic criticism. Coetzee also sets the bar at fluency in (at least) five languages.
The standout pieces are those focusing on T.S. Eliot, Gass's Rilke, Dostoevsky, and Turgenev. Overall, his treatments of German, South African, and Russian literatures are the strongest, and essays are grouped more or less by subject nationalities. There are also thematic threads running between pieces that give the book a sense of organization by chapter, rather than of separate works grouped together. Coetzee is careful to balance the strengths and weaknesses of each author, referring to collective works to find explanations when they are not readily available in the individual pieces. He is highly sympathetic with the process of writing a novel, and treats most of his subjects in light of this recognition.
Given all this, I was a little baffled when I came to his essay on Brodsky. Though he does acknowledge Brodsky's genius in the final paragraph, the piece as a whole feels like the expulsion of a long-held grudge against the writer. He thoroughly undermines Brodsky's philosophies and politics (whose identical characteristics he supports wholeheartedly when they appear in Borges' and Dostoevsky's works); and does so to the exclusion of an actual discussion of Brodsky's writing.
As a whole, however, this is an excellent collection. For those new to literary criticism, it brings a clear and unique insight to the evaluation of (and creation of) a novel's structure; and for those who are much more well-read in criticism, a clear respect for the author and a unique manipulation of a reader's curiosity and intelligence. I think that's enough caveats for one review:) I definitely recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: he can do better
Review: Well, I was somewhat disappointed. I have read most o Coetzee's work, and i found this book rather weak in comparison to others. Though it covers a large variety of writers and different thougths (ranging from translation ones to ones about apartheid and South African politics) I found it that only the first essay "What is a Classic" can stand for grandiousness of thought that I expect from nobel prize writer. Others range from good ones to ones that look like they have been written by High school student. Essays does not offer provoking thoughts, after reading them you will not feel smarter, you'll not thirst for knowledge, and in the world that I inhabit, I value only those kind of essays. I must say that I don't recommend this book, though I reccomended most of them in these pages...
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