College Record 2014
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College Record 2014

WolfsonCollege
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J M Coetzee Reads At Wolfson On 12 June 2014 the 2003 Nobel Laureate for Literature and two-times Booker winner, J M Coetzee, paid a welcome return visit to the College to give a reading from his work. Since the millennium, Oxford has been fortunate in having a visit from him every five years or so. In 2002 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University, and in June 2009 he gave memorable readings in the Sheldonian Theatre and at Wolfson alongside the writers Zoe Wicomb, Helen Simpson and Elleke Boehmer. If ticket sales and queues seeking signatures this time round were anything to go by, the number of his readers and admirers here in Oxford only continues to grow, both within the University and more widely across the city. The College hosted the reading with assistance from the English Faculty’s Postcolonial Writing and Theory seminar. The organisers, Professor Elleke Boehmer and the President, Professor Dame Hermione Lee, were ably assisted by Wolfson’s hospitality team, headed by Louise Gordon, as well as by Rachael Sanders and the English Faculty office, and the English DPhil students Eleni Philippou and Erica Lombard. Welcoming J M Coetzee, Elleke Boehmer expressed her gratitude and delight on behalf of the whole audience, at his having coming all the way from Australia that very day, ‘a taxing trip across half the world’, as his novel Elizabeth Costello describes it, in order to read at Wolfson. She also drew attention to the fine concentration on the complexities of human embodiment that in different ways marks each one of Coetzee’s novels, from the early Dusklands (1974) and In the Heart of the Country (1977), through Age of Iron (1990) to The Childhood of Jesus (2013). These remarks resonated intriguingly in the passages which the author then shared with his audience. In spite of the prevailing heat, Coetzee delivered his readings with customary cool self-containment, beginning with a warm thankyou to Wolfson for inviting him. His first reading was from a piquant and even light-hearted section of his most recently published novel, The Childhood of Jesus (2013), on ‘the poo-ness of poo’, a characteristic investigation of the closeness of life to death and decomposition. He concluded with two letters from his new work in progress, the epistolary exchange about psychoanalysis he has been conducting with the Leicester analyst Arabella Kurtz. This was Coetzee’s first public airing of this new work, due to be published next year. The letters were fascinating for the light they shed on his understanding 92

of the human belief that is invested in the ‘as if ’ of story, and on the relationship between reality and representation. As a writer he does not seek to reflect reality, Coetzee observed; rather, he uses it. After the reading Coetzee signed copies of his novels in the foyer of the Leonard Wolfson Auditorium. The queue lasted for more than an hour. Eager readers stood in the sunshine and discussed their favourite Coetzee novels, before each experienced individually the humanity of this great literary figure. Next day the Oxford Centre for Life Writing held a colloquium at Wolfson entitled ‘Coetzee’s Lives’, which offered further opportunities for critical reflection on questions of representation, realism and the value of ‘life’ in his work. Elleke Boehmer J M Coetzee at Wolfson, 12 June 2014 93

of the human belief that is invested in the ‘as if ’ of story, and on the relationship<br />

between reality and representation. As a writer he does not seek to reflect reality,<br />

Coetzee observed; rather, he uses it.<br />

After the reading Coetzee signed copies of his novels in the foyer of the Leonard<br />

Wolfson Auditorium. The queue lasted for more than an hour. Eager readers<br />

stood in the sunshine and discussed their favourite Coetzee novels, before each<br />

experienced individually the humanity of this great literary figure. Next day the<br />

Oxford Centre for Life Writing held a colloquium at Wolfson entitled ‘Coetzee’s<br />

Lives’, which offered further opportunities for critical reflection on questions of<br />

representation, realism and the value of ‘life’ in his work.<br />

Elleke Boehmer<br />

J M Coetzee at Wolfson, 12 June <strong>2014</strong><br />

93

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