Book Report: Foe

Foe: Torgo disapproves

I gave up on "Seeing" by Saramago. It just couldn't compare in any way to "Blindness," and was too much drudgery to be worthwhile.

While researching some topic, I stumbled through Wikipedia and found out about "Foe," by J.M. Coetzee. Wikipedia calls it the 'archetypal post-modern novel.' Basically, it centers on a woman who ends up cast away on an island off the coast off Brazil. As it turns out, it's Robinson Crusoe's island, and he and Friday take her in. She hangs out with them for a bit, then they all get rescued. Crusoe (here, it's Cruso) dies on the way back to England. So the woman takes Friday and finds Foe, a writer, and implores him to write their tale. (Foe, wikipedia notes, was Daniel Dafoe's--Robinson Crusoe's author--real name.)

In what seems to be a trend with Coetzee, what seems a simple conceit is, actually, a simple conceit, but people get all stubborn and weird and not a heckuva lot happens.

I enjoy some post-modernism (Dean Young, for example). I love cast-away stories (Robinson Crusoe, Life of Pi, etc.). I like the notion of there having been a woman involved in the story who was ultimately excised from Dafoe's text.

But Coetzee just doesn't take the premise anywhere interesting enough to make the novel worth recommending. It's short, sure, and that's great; I read it in two sittings (including a good chunk in the middle aloud to the boy). But for such an engaging concept, the book is very moody and elusive.

There's a big focus on Friday. Here, he's an African (in Dafoe's book, he's Caribbean), his tongue has been cut out (which I believe is inconsistent w/Dafoe), so he's mute. There's supposedly great symbolism in Friday. But I didn't go for it. Everything in "Foe" read like a trope. Not just a trope, but a flashing light of a trope.

Maybe this is how post-modern was done in the 80's by the greats. Maybe it just got more subtle and crafted in the 90's and 00's. I don't buy that, either. I think Coetzee lacks depth as a writer. I think he takes on big topics, writes around the issue, and some critics bring their own interpretation to it, giving it weight it doesn't deserve.

That's how I feel about some film directors (e.g., David Lynch, particularly with Mulholland Dr.). Be obtuse, appear profound, create mystery around things that should be decipherable like plot, character and what the hell it all means.

I'll probably still read Waiting for the Barbarians, b/c Coetzee's such a quick read and Blake says that's the one to read. Maybe I should've started with it.