Abstract
The permutations of sentence elements in Beckett's Watt have the impersonality (almost) of mathematics. The variations of combinations of the same elements in certain sections of the book could have been performed by a computer. It is noteworthy that J.M. Coetzee indeed subjects Beckett’s work to computer analysis, as if he responds to aspects of it by mirroring in his approach to it the essence of its automatism/autism/insularity. Coetzee’s own insularity, though, takes its bearing primarily from the socio-political state; Beckett’s, if linked to this, primarily from the individual estranged by the contemporary world. But Beckett shares with Coetzee the informing thrift necessary for the establishment of an aesthetics of insularity.
Highlights
In an autobiographical sketch at the conclusion of Doubling the point: Essays and interviews (1992), Coetzee^ tells of his early work on Beckett: “He writes a formalistic analysis o f Beckett, concentrating on texts from a period in Beckett’s life when Beckett too was Literator 17(1) April 1996:143-152Beckett and Coetzee; The aesthetics o f insularity obsessed with form, with language as self-enclosed game” (Coetzee, 1992:393)
The context would have it that his work on Beckett is an extension of his own “alienness”. He feels “alien” at the University o f Texas, Austin, where he conducts his “formalistic analysis o f Beckett” - perhaps not a surprising fact concerning a young man in a foreign country - but he traces “this feeling (o f alienness, not alienation) further back in time”
A type o f tribal separatism informs Coetzee’s alienness, a type o f separatism apparent in G rand Apartheid, where the effectiveness o f state control is dependent upon the sublimation o f self to the tribe
Summary
In an autobiographical sketch at the conclusion of Doubling the point: Essays and interviews (1992), Coetzee (from what he terms the vantage point o f the “island” created by the dialogue with David Attwell, his interviewer, and from which he views him self symptomatically in the insulated third person)^ tells of his early work on Beckett: “He writes a formalistic analysis o f Beckett, concentrating on texts from a period in Beckett’s life when Beckett too was. The context would have it that his work on Beckett is an extension of his own “alienness” He feels “alien” at the University o f Texas, Austin, where he conducts his “formalistic analysis o f Beckett” - perhaps not a surprising fact concerning a young man in a foreign country - but he traces (in his terms) “this feeling (o f alienness, not alienation) further back in time”. He tells o f his early years in South Africa, where the sense o f alienness is reinforced by the socio-political situation o f an Afrikaner attending English-speaking schools. Amongst other matters to do with art and insularity, I want to distinguish, in what follows, between this sense o f alienness (of the lone individual being socially outside a dominant culture), and the alienation (a more general sense o f pervasive psychological estrangement) underlying Beckett’s work
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