Discuss this article at First Drafts, Prospect’s blog
Novelists, Martin Amis once wrote, are at their best in middle age. “They come good at 30, they peak at 50… at 70, novelists are ready to be kicked upstairs.” But the creative arc is less predictable than this. Some novelists—Amis is an example—produce their best work before the bloom of youth has quite faded; others retain their powers until late in life. Two novelists who have been ageing well recently are Philip Roth (born 1933) and JM Coetzee (born 1940), both of whom have new books out this autumn. Aside from similarly well-stuffed prize cabinets, the two aren’t often seen as having much in common. Partly, this is a matter of geography. When Roth gets compared with other writers, it is with his American contemporaries: Bellow, DeLillo, Mailer, Updike. When Coetzee gets compared with anyone (other than Beckett and Kafka), it tends to be with Nadine Gordimer, and the comparison isn’t always favourable: she is seen as the white South African novelist who confronted apartheid, he as the one who avoided it. But Roth and Coetzee have more in common than is often realised. They are equally stubborn and intolerant of fools. Both have hard visions of life and, though liberal in outlook, are sceptical about the possibility of social or political progress. Moreover, the paths of their fiction seem to be converging. Their latest novels, certainly, are strikingly alike.
We should start, though, with the differences. The most obvious is style. To put it crudely: Roth writes in very long sentences, and Coetzee writes in very short ones. Words pour out of Roth. Reading him, one senses that he has almost too much to say. The frantic, frenzied quality of his prose results, in part, from the feeling that sentences are inadequate to the task of accommodating all that is in his head. And so, in much of his writing, he stretches them to their limit by layering closely related thought upon closely related thought, sub-clause upon sub-clause. The unusual thing about Roth’s writing—perhaps its defining feature—is that while his sentences are extremely long, they are also extremely taut. As James Wood once put it, his prose is “fibrous.” Not a word gets wasted.
If you are a subscriber, please log in »
This article is available to subscribers only
Subscribing to Prospect is the most reliable and convenient way to receive the magazine every month, and offers the best value.Subscription Types:
Online
An online subscription offers you complete and unlimited access to the entire website, including our searchable archive of every back issue of Prospect, and a PDF edition of each new issue: all this for just £20 per year. Purchase an online subscription »Renewal
Renew an existing subscription »Institutional access
If you are a library, business organisation or any other large institution that needs a multi-user licence, you can obtain institutional access.
Share
Subscribe to post comments
Print
