Abstract
Coetzee’s scholarly interest in Beckett, and his aesthetic interest in the same (which carries a strong measure of readily acknowledged influence), diverge in the case Coetzee presents in a recent mini-biography cum autobiography, “Samuel Beckett in Cape Town – an imaginary history” (Coetzee, 2006:74-77), where both he and Beckett are imagined as having experienced alternative pasts in South Africa. Considering this acknowledged influence, which Coetzee (1992b) mentions in an interview with David Attwell in “Doubling the point”, one might assume that it followed an initial scholarly interest in Beckett(Coetzee’s Ph.D. was on Beckett, and was completed years before he himself became a creative writer). However, in the case at hand this causal sequence is broken, because the doubled Coetzee, though under the spell of Beckett’s prose, does not wish to do scholarly work on the doubled Beckett. What is it about Coetzee’s imagined Beckett that has this effect on him? And why is it that Coetzee engages in such metafictional blurred doubling when it comes to himself and Beckett? This article attempts to shed light on the problems that surround Coetzee’s crafted interaction between authors who are also (in this rather odd context) characters.
Highlights
Coetzee (2006:74), in Samuel Beckett in Cape Town: an imaginary history, makes reference to Beckett’s following letter, in which the Irish writer applies for a lectureship in Italian at the University of Cape Town
I beg to apply for the post of lecturer in Italian in the University of Cape Town
By the time the alternative South African Beckett started to work at the University of Cape Town in 1938, he had published a book on Proust, More pricks than kicks, and a volume of poems
Summary
This is a suspension which amounts to an example of fictioneering written from the standpoint of the actual, public Coetzee’s framing narrative Perhaps, given this condition, the writing subject will briefly emerge from the text long enough to shed light on why fictioneered Coetzee would not have written a Ph.D. thesis on fictioneered Beckett. By the time the alternative South African Beckett started to work at the University of Cape Town in 1938, he had published a book on Proust, More pricks than kicks, and a volume of poems His prose style at this stage, if not exactly established, was securely Beckettian, as Pilling (1994:17) notes, and was well on the way to becoming what the young Coetzee would want to imbibe. Coetzee has ever known himself remarkably well, despite certain qualified protestations to the contrary – which prove the point all the more clearly. What is it about Coetzee’s alternative Beckett that he should have this effect?
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