Foe. There are so many layers to Foe. As I was musing about it, I became more and more intrigued by the ingenuity of Coetzee. Here are some of my observations:
Firstly, right from the beginning of Foe, we are made conscious of the teller of the tale--the novel begins with quotation marks, signifying the speech, the tale, the story and the presence of its speaker. The speaker is not the invisible narrator nor the trustworthy narrator which we are apt to find in most other novels. It is Susan Barton, recounting her tale to us, and to DeFoe. Reminders of this are interjected throughout the novel, as well, as if to emphasise the self-reflexivity of the text. Such reminders are often found in parentheses:
Pg 8 “(Let me give my description of him all together)”
Pg 9 “(…I have told you of)”
“I have told you how Cruso was dressed; now let me tell you of his habitation”
“…as you shall hear”
Pg 12 “ ‘But let me return to my relation.”
Pg 14 “(I have not yet told you of Cruso’s stove, which was built very neatly of stone)”
Pg 15 “(I shall have more to say of the terraces later)”
Pg 26 “There is more, much more, I could tell you about the life we lived...”
Pg 33 “ ‘Let me tell you of Cruso’s terraces.”
Pg 38 “I must tell you of the death of Cruso, and of our rescue."
Secondly, there are many different levels of story-telling in Foe. This, I believe, reinforces the self-reflexivity of the text. Apart from the most overt level--that of hypertextuality, i.e. Coetzee's re-invention of the 18th century novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel DeFoe; there are other levels. I list them down to show the multiplicity of stories embedded within Foe:
1. We, the readers, reading this narrative (truth or fiction?) written by Coetzee
2. Susan Barton's story of how she came to be a castaway
3. Cruso's story of how he came to be a castaway (which was, as Susan found, full of confused, incoherent narratives)
4. Friday's story (forever unknown?)
5. Susan Barton's story of Cruso, Friday and her experiences on the island
6. Susan's daughter's (or at least she claims) story
7. DeFoe's story (his "silence", the reason behind the bailiffs' occupation of his premises)
8. DeFoe's story about Susan Barton, Cruso and Friday
9. The narrator in Part IV (who seems to be seeking the verity of stories presented earlier on)
Indeed, it makes us keenly aware of the self-reflexivity of the text, and invites us to ponder on the idea of writing and story-telling; ultimately the issue of the art of writing fiction itself. As Captain Smith remarks, "their (writers') trade is in books, not in truth." Susan also remarks on her lack of the gift of writing such as writers like DeFoe have: "A liveliness is lost in the writing down which must be supplied by art, and I have no art." That made me think of the art of writing, and to what extent is this art an artifice.
This issue is central to Foe. Susan expresses adamance against untruthfulness of any sort in the telling of her tale--"I will not have any lies told...I would rather be the author of my own story than have lies told about me...If I cannot come forward, as author, and swear to the truth of my tale, what will be the worth of it? I might as well have dreamed it in a snug bed in Chichester."
This brings me to Diderot, in the Terdiman reading we did. Some memorably striking comments: "...what happens when real people are treated like characters in a fiction?" (Pg 33, Chap 1) and "These narratives may lie, but they lie about the real, not about the non-existent." (Pg 43, Chap 2).
Does Susan's insistence on truth apply only to autobiography and biography for instance, and not to fiction? After all the definition of fiction is that it is imagined, it is not real; it is fictive. But what I think Coetzee does in Foe and Terdiman does is to highlight the fact that all fiction is a construct, it is a deception, at its most basic level, and when real people are written about in fiction, the level of deception and reconstruction is amplified. Thus the simple dichotomy between object and referent is problematized--language is based on the materiality of bodies ("Language requires bodies" -Terdiman) but in fiction like DeFoe's and Diderot's, the relationship is thwarted.
posted by sarah @ 11:33 PM
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