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A Common Reader: In the Year of the Book
This discursive account of a literary pilgrimage in search of J.M. Coetzee is a remarkable addition to the 'immersion memoir' genre, this time not from the American deep south, but from the even deeper south of Australia. The literature of quest arrives in Adelaide, with no rings attached.
70 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2013
19 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 17, 2013
Over here on Goodreads, we like to think we're book nerds; but every now and then, you run into someone who's a real book nerd, and you're quietly but firmly put in your place. I met Judith Crabb last year when we were visiting Adelaide, and I have to admit that, compared to her qualifications, mine pale into insignificance. I'm an amateur who likes reading. She's a professional book person, who for several decades has been a third of Pioneer Books, an Adelaide-based antiquarian book seller and independent publisher. We immediately bonded on children's literature, where Judith is an expert; when I told her that I was a lifelong fan of E. Nesbit but had never read The Story of the Amulet or Edward Eager's Nesbit homage, Half Magic, she quickly found copies of both books and insisted on giving them to me as a present. They were every bit as excellent as she said they would be.
And now, I have just read this essay, and once again feel that I've been tactfully shown the difference between the gifted dilettante and the professional. In the first few pages, Judith explains the background. Some time in 2011, she was reading J.M. Coetzee's book Youth and imagined that she had found an egregious error: referring to the Antarctic hero Captain Oates, Coetzee calls him 'Titus'. Surely a confusion? But when she wrote and complained, Coetzee politely replied to say that Oates was jocularly called 'Titus' by his friends. That English sense of humour, you know.
It's not every day you get a letter from a Nobel Prize winner, and Judith was mortified at, for once, having got it wrong. She decided to do penance by reading all of Coetzee's novels in chronological order and then writing a short book about them. This is the result, and it's utterly charming. I often think that we Goodreaders are too hasty about books; we grab them off the Internet, gulp them down quickly, and post a review before we've even had time to think about what we've read. Judith comes from a generation that did things at a more appropriate pace. She describes how she insisted on getting every book through her local library (in most cases requiring an inter-library loan), finished each one before starting on the next, and spent the better part of a year composing her leisurely memoir.
I am ashamed to say that I have never read any Coetzee, though Judith's book makes me feel I should do something about that. If you're a Coetzee fan, you really might want to consider checking her out and discovering how people used to do reviewing. In some areas, alas, progress seems to have worked in the wrong direction.
And now, I have just read this essay, and once again feel that I've been tactfully shown the difference between the gifted dilettante and the professional. In the first few pages, Judith explains the background. Some time in 2011, she was reading J.M. Coetzee's book Youth and imagined that she had found an egregious error: referring to the Antarctic hero Captain Oates, Coetzee calls him 'Titus'. Surely a confusion? But when she wrote and complained, Coetzee politely replied to say that Oates was jocularly called 'Titus' by his friends. That English sense of humour, you know.
It's not every day you get a letter from a Nobel Prize winner, and Judith was mortified at, for once, having got it wrong. She decided to do penance by reading all of Coetzee's novels in chronological order and then writing a short book about them. This is the result, and it's utterly charming. I often think that we Goodreaders are too hasty about books; we grab them off the Internet, gulp them down quickly, and post a review before we've even had time to think about what we've read. Judith comes from a generation that did things at a more appropriate pace. She describes how she insisted on getting every book through her local library (in most cases requiring an inter-library loan), finished each one before starting on the next, and spent the better part of a year composing her leisurely memoir.
I am ashamed to say that I have never read any Coetzee, though Judith's book makes me feel I should do something about that. If you're a Coetzee fan, you really might want to consider checking her out and discovering how people used to do reviewing. In some areas, alas, progress seems to have worked in the wrong direction.
August 28, 2013
I have a HUGE crush on Judith Crabb. Put me on a plane to Adelaide, right now. I want to be friends - real friends, in the real world, not in cyberspace, with her. Someone so witty and wise, so funny, who actually reads and enjoys the same books as I do, not just Coetzee, but A.L. Kennedy, or Wolf Hall. And watches Michael Hanecke's The White Ribbon. And has such a wealth of reading, such a well-furnished mind that her new reading does not fall flat to the floor but settles comfortably into the most appropriate room, completing the picture by a small adjustment, a re-arrangement, an unexpected alliance of ideas and images.
Or perhaps, since Adelaide homes do not seem to be designed for Adelaide's climate, Judith (is that presumptuous of me? I feel we must be on first name terms already) would like to spend June and July in a summer place -she'd be most welcome here: she would have a choice of three wheelie bins to trundle out at six am, although I must say that in our polite suburban cul-de-sac it is not the local youth who create modern art installations by torching, tagging or toppling them, but local members of the Corvidae family who rip open the plastic bag of recycling rubbish, tortured by the traces of yoghourt or catfood still adhering to the contents. Yes, we also have a cat, although she's no longer terribly fond of dancing, or painting (or said members of the Corvidae family), or even communicating any more, as her profound deafness makes conversation very one-sided. I could imagine myself and Judith, sorry, Ms Crabb, two human stick insects, taking brisk walks together, for I agree with her that most people dawdle. I have been lamely followed by panting daughters wailing from five paces behind me "Mum, this isn't a race, for goodness' sake!" I'd still have enough breath to talk - talk of books.
Or tea and cake. I can do tea and cake.
For this is how Judith Crabb has seduced me (no, not with cake, although it has been known): in 2012, the National Year of Reading, she takes home Youth, but cannot read it until she has Boyhood. (Begin at the beginning.) She finds that the latter is a kind of template for autobiographical writing, but is nevertheless disturbed to discover what she assumes can only be an egregious error: the hero of her childhood, and of Coetzee's too, both of them children of the Empire, valiant Captain Oates struggling through a blizzard to his death, is named 'Titus' Oates. This cannot be! So she writes a letter to Coetzee. Who writes back pointing out that Captain Oates was called Titus by his friends (English sense of humour). Grateful and unsurprised that Coetzee is too diffident to recommend which of his books she should read, she decides to read them all.
What follows is a memoir of that year, her journey in search of J.M.Coetzee. It is both a record of the material, of how and where she found each book, the locations of the various libraries and what each place evokes for her in recollections of the past, and also the journey of the mind as she gives a master class for each one in the art of review. Without tedious retellings of plot, she gives the taste of each one, recounts not the detail of content, but the echoes and reverberations set up in her rich interior, the gentle vibrancy as other stories and characters take up the conversation. And appealing as this journey is to another bookish lady in her later middle years, the true reason why I would so love to sit down to tea and cake and chat with Ms Crabb is her gorgeous writing. She turns a mundane walk from a tarmac car park wasteland to a mall into a thing of wonder, a passing over from one side to the other, from the realm of Hades to the Elysian fields, all light and cleanliness and toddlers in the pre-fabricated Play World "learning to become muscular, if not imaginative, little secularists. Just as well. I'd hate to think that sixty years on I might appear in a memoir that one of them is writing instead of indulging in a healthy activity like golf or travel: how he remembers visits to the shopping centre, and the old woman in the red beanie smiling at him as he performs wonders on the plastic slides." There is an ease and expansive, self-deprecatory warmth to her voice which I find irresistible. I would love to read more.
My heartfelt thanks to Pioneer Books for kindly sending me a copy for review, beautifully wrapped and packaged, and to notgettingenough for suggesting they should.
Or perhaps, since Adelaide homes do not seem to be designed for Adelaide's climate, Judith (is that presumptuous of me? I feel we must be on first name terms already) would like to spend June and July in a summer place -she'd be most welcome here: she would have a choice of three wheelie bins to trundle out at six am, although I must say that in our polite suburban cul-de-sac it is not the local youth who create modern art installations by torching, tagging or toppling them, but local members of the Corvidae family who rip open the plastic bag of recycling rubbish, tortured by the traces of yoghourt or catfood still adhering to the contents. Yes, we also have a cat, although she's no longer terribly fond of dancing, or painting (or said members of the Corvidae family), or even communicating any more, as her profound deafness makes conversation very one-sided. I could imagine myself and Judith, sorry, Ms Crabb, two human stick insects, taking brisk walks together, for I agree with her that most people dawdle. I have been lamely followed by panting daughters wailing from five paces behind me "Mum, this isn't a race, for goodness' sake!" I'd still have enough breath to talk - talk of books.
Or tea and cake. I can do tea and cake.
For this is how Judith Crabb has seduced me (no, not with cake, although it has been known): in 2012, the National Year of Reading, she takes home Youth, but cannot read it until she has Boyhood. (Begin at the beginning.) She finds that the latter is a kind of template for autobiographical writing, but is nevertheless disturbed to discover what she assumes can only be an egregious error: the hero of her childhood, and of Coetzee's too, both of them children of the Empire, valiant Captain Oates struggling through a blizzard to his death, is named 'Titus' Oates. This cannot be! So she writes a letter to Coetzee. Who writes back pointing out that Captain Oates was called Titus by his friends (English sense of humour). Grateful and unsurprised that Coetzee is too diffident to recommend which of his books she should read, she decides to read them all.
What follows is a memoir of that year, her journey in search of J.M.Coetzee. It is both a record of the material, of how and where she found each book, the locations of the various libraries and what each place evokes for her in recollections of the past, and also the journey of the mind as she gives a master class for each one in the art of review. Without tedious retellings of plot, she gives the taste of each one, recounts not the detail of content, but the echoes and reverberations set up in her rich interior, the gentle vibrancy as other stories and characters take up the conversation. And appealing as this journey is to another bookish lady in her later middle years, the true reason why I would so love to sit down to tea and cake and chat with Ms Crabb is her gorgeous writing. She turns a mundane walk from a tarmac car park wasteland to a mall into a thing of wonder, a passing over from one side to the other, from the realm of Hades to the Elysian fields, all light and cleanliness and toddlers in the pre-fabricated Play World "learning to become muscular, if not imaginative, little secularists. Just as well. I'd hate to think that sixty years on I might appear in a memoir that one of them is writing instead of indulging in a healthy activity like golf or travel: how he remembers visits to the shopping centre, and the old woman in the red beanie smiling at him as he performs wonders on the plastic slides." There is an ease and expansive, self-deprecatory warmth to her voice which I find irresistible. I would love to read more.
My heartfelt thanks to Pioneer Books for kindly sending me a copy for review, beautifully wrapped and packaged, and to notgettingenough for suggesting they should.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews