J.M. Coetzee and the failures of reason

Abstract

In a speech delivered in Stockholm in acceptance of the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature, J.M. Coetzee told the story of Robinson Crusoe's life as a wealthy but haunted writer following his return to English society. Entitled "He and his Man," this brief narrative focuses on the absolute gap between the purportedly self-aware individual and the linguistic subject that stands behind the works of fiction set down on paper by this individual's hand; the imaginary figure - perhaps corresponding to Daniel Defoe himself, creator of the original Robinson Crusoe - who travels about the countryside collecting fantastical stories even as the writer sits at his desk waiting for inspiration to come. Crusoe himself lives a quiet life that for the most part involves walking the seashore and writing, and wonders what relation he, a man with an eventful but narrow past, can have to this shadow self that is the source of his stories: