First I will clarify that I read for pleasure.

My first impression was that it was “literary snobbery” i.e. if you don’t ‘get-it’ then you are intellectually deficient. The format of the book written in three views initially was very difficult particularly as they did not conclude at the same place in time. However with a bit of practice it actually worked. After all different individuals have different perspectives and sense of beginning and ending of life’s “moments” so what initially was frustrating became novel which in term became relevant.

The title is what initially induced me to pick it up however I didn’t feel it reflected the book’s content. After my initial trepidation, with persistence I actually enjoyed the book although I wouldn’t cite it as a “great read”. ( )

i liked the idea of the title - a diary of a bad year - and that was why i bought the book. yet it seems that the content of the novel spans a few weeks; 5 weeks at the most is my feeling. coetzee's narrator is himself - j.m. coetzee from south africa, a very celebrated author. reading the book was a strange experience; i was constantly confusing the two perspectives - those of coetzee-in-the-book and coetzee-writing-the-book. ultimately, i wasn't satisfied. both are such great writers. and there is a great deal of commentary on the writing process; obviously something that preoccupies authors all the time, but it was so self-conscious, that i felt i *had* to think about how the novel was written to get to a conclusion about the book. so, i wasn't very convinced by the character of alan, he seemed too easy to pin down and too easy to dislike. unless of course, coetzee is trying to point how biased a narrator can be, how untrustworthy, and how in this post-modern world it's really all up to the reader to figure out. far-fetched? i think not.
i enjoyed the simultaneity of the three perspectives, but was a little irritated by how deliberately they were physically separated.
still, i think this book will stay with me for sometime. sometimes all it takes is an evening, a dinner..everything is fragile. everything can unravel at any moment. it's coincidence when it doesn't happen. ( )

What effect does a Nobel Prize have on a novelist? I have no idea. But it has a pernicious, pervasive, clinging effect on a reader. I try to forget it, but it seeps into my thinking. A number of times Coetzee goes on too long -- he lets his alter-ego in the book pontificate, partly for novelistic effect, and partly because he can't help it -- and then I think: does the Nobel, and everything that goes with it, create an atmosphere in which he feels justified in taking any liberties? Other times the clever pagination of the book doesn't quite work out -- a dozen or so instances, the sentences don't end on the page, but flow on to the next, compelling the reader to read across pages instead of down the page -- and then I wonder: does the Nobel, and everything that goes with it, give Coetzee the sense that things like that need not matter, that they will be eclipsed and forgotten by the force of the concept? The Nobel (by which I mean the steady warmth of adulation and writers' appearances and awards) has this effect: it cushions the writer, so it seems, and it makes it that much harder for a reader trying to gauge what is measured and intended and what is simply permitted.

But that is not my principal objection to this book. Its crucial problem, to my mind, is the quality of the disquisitions that the narrator permits himself. As the other reviews point out, the narrator goes on at length about his opinions. In the logic of the novel, those opinions are being prepared for publication, so that is their immediate excuse for being in the novel. And Coetzee himself criticizes his own opinions, both in the voice of the principal female character and in the voice of that character's partner. At one point, he even uses his own voice -- the voice of the person who writes the opinions -- to criticize the opinions. But none of those criticisms is enough.

The problem with many of the opinions is not that they are harsh and inhuman (as the female character says), or that they are ineffective (as the male character says). It is that they are ill-informed and ill-argued. Coetzee is just not as interesting a thinker as, say, Musil, or Rochefoucauld, or Chamfort, or Lichtenberg, or Badelaire, or Brecht, or Broch, or any number of others. His opinions, mostly, are not interesting. And they are frequently ill-informed. Coetzee needs to read more about numbers and statistics (one of his topics), and more about theories of capitalism and democracy. He comes across as the kind of person who writes in to a newspaper of magazine, and doesn't know the subject as well as he should. I am not criticizing his ideas because they are radical: I am criticizing them because they are not radical enough. In "Disgrace," he had one absolutely stunning idea -- that animals could be as important as people, or more important. Here there are few such interesting ideas.

For me this is exemplified by a passage on page 203, where the narrator, in the course of writing one of his "opinions," one titled "On having thoughts," says: "But do I really qualify as a thinker at all, someone who has what can properly be called thoughts, about politics or about anything else?" And he answers: "I have never been easy with abstractions or good at abstract thought." Let me suggest that Coetzee is fooling himself here. The shortcomings of his "opinions" are not related to a skill at abstract thinking: that's a red herring. His "opinions" are limited by what he knows, and by a lack of original thinking. "Elizabeth Costello" was translarently a mouthpiece for Coetzee's opinions, and it was the kind of book that someone who is not feted, who is not a Nobel laureate, would not have been allowed to write; his editor would have stopped him, and said something like this:

"Coetzee, you need to realize that your characters' opinions need to be allowed to become truly monomaniacal, really nuts, dangerously obsessive, intentionally boring -- otherwise they will appear to be what they really are, the very serious opinions of the author, whose only thought is to broadcast them to the world. It is your lack of understanding of the uninteresting nature of those opinions -- bolstered, I know, by the many people who continuously take them seriously, and praise you for them -- that makes them intractable as materials for a fully imagined fictional setting. A reader knows that they are not under your control: you think of them too highly, too primly, to seriously. Let them risk dying a natural death: put them at the mercy of the fiction, not the other way around."

I do not know if I will read another Coetzee novel. ( )

An old writer is commissioned to write a series of opinions for a German publication. He hires a hot little typist, hot being a young, sexy, female from the same apartment building. This young typist, though living with a loser Australian 'Warren Buffet' wannabe, is not dumb. And this is where the story, or stories, take off.

Each page is divided into three sections and the story is told from the perspective of each character. I started by reading each page from top to bottom then switched to reading the opinion or essay piece of each chapter, then flipping back to catch up on the typist and writer's relationship, and then flipping back yet again to read about the relationship between the typist and her lover idiot. Sounds tedious and frustrating, but it's really not. The sections are generally only 2 to 3 pages long. The connections of the three separate narratives are sometimes subtle, follow slightly different time lines, and weave together beautifully to create a new way of telling a story.

What I found interesting is how the old writer's opinions were slowly influenced by the opinions of the young typist. The interactions between these two became an enriching influence to each live. The Australian 'Warren Buffet' wannabe remained a loser throughout the book.

Thanks to the final opinion, I now feel compelled to read Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, and soon. ( )

Certainly not Coetzee's best! ( )

Very interesting style. Pretty good overall. ( )

Fascinating novel to read with its three-concurrent-strand structure. I enjoyed the essays and the way they are counterpointed in the two narratives that run below the essays. While the essays may be a little uneven and dry to some, they offer a lot to think about. A brief review can't really do justice to the complexity of the book which gives up its meaning not only through the words but through the structure and through the interplay between words and structure, words and characters, characters and characters. The overall theme seems to be how do we live in a world full of paradoxes/contradictions, a world that seems to be pervaded by dishonour and shame (the things he explores in the essays). He suggests that one way people do it is through "inner emigration". The two other characters, Anya and Alan, offer through their comments and actions different ways of viewing the same world. There is no easy conclusion ... ( )

I've been trying hard to like his books, since he's such a distinguished author, but I didn't really like Disgrace, and Elizabeth Costello (which I see I forgot to review, so I'll add it) even less. But this book is a little gem. Three different stories are interwoven: the narrator/author's opinions on various interesting subjects like politics, aging, probability, eroticism; his relationship with his typist, a beautiful young woman he meets in his laundry room and becomes instantly attracted to; and her relationship with him and with her boyfriend. The three tracks appear on each page, so it's an interesting puzzle to figure out how to read them. I felt like I should read it all over again to figure out the warp and woof of it. ( )

Part V of a longer review...

We may not want aging writers to turn their attention to their own decline, physical as well as artistic - but how can we expect anything less? Why should it surprise us that this becomes a primary concern? Coetzee is no different than say, Roth, in this respect. Sure, he goes about it in quite his own unique way, but still…

It’s clear that J. M.Coetzee has - not only with Slow Man, but now with Diary of a Bad Year - addressed the question of his future as a novelist on a number of levels.

In 13.On the writing life (as Senor C), he quotes the critics

At heart he is not a novelist after all…but a pedant who dabbles in fiction. And I have reached a stage in my life when I begin to wonder whether they are not right - whether, all the time I thought I was going about in disguise, I was in fact naked.

Senor C marvels at the “flight of the soul” that marks the best of a writer like Gabriel Garcia Marquez - and admits to himself that he was never that kind of writer anyway.

I was never much good at evocation of the real, and have even less stomach for the task now. The truth is, I have never taken much pleasure in the visible world, don’t feel with much conviction the urge to recreate it in words.

An astonishing admission for a writer. But take this quote out of context and say it belonged to one of the premier writers of the 20th Century. You may very well guess his name was J. M. Coetzee. JMC’s writing has always tended toward the minimalist. Now even more so.

Growing detachment from the world is of course the experience of many writers as they grow older, grow cooler or colder. The texture of their prose becomes thinner, their treatment of character and action more schematic. The syndrome is usually ascribed to a waning of creative power; it is no doubt connected with the attenuation of physical powers, above all the power of desire. Yet from the inside the same development may bear a quite different interpolation: as a liberation, a clearing of the mind to take on more important tasks.

Left unsaid, is that this “attenuation of…the power of desire” is accompanied in the later fiction by the very personification of that desire. Sort of as as reminder…or a muse.

So, Anya, in the end, has aided Senor C in his work, has been more than a mere typist, more than editor - she’s been his muse - hearkening all the way back to Foe.

But maybe, in another life, if our ages were more compatible, you and I could set up house together and I could be your inspiration. Your resident inspiration. How would you like that? You could sit at your desk and write and I could take care of the rest.

I can’t help but wonder if we’ve not but seen another transition in JMC’s artistic arc. If the little typist hasn’t convinced him to write more of his ’soft opinions’ in the future. ( )

This "novel" runs on three parallel tracks. The first track is a series of "strong opinions" written for an anthology by an aging South African writer living in Australia (Senor C). The second track records Senor C's internal thoughts, particularly regarding his interactions with his typist, Anya. The final track, which begins about a third of the way into the book, records Anya's thought (and sometimes those of her partner/pseudo-husband). All three tracks share the page, and while this sounds like a confusing structure, I had no problem following the three tracks.

I enjoyed the first track--Senor C's strong opinions. Many of them would have been interesting reading even outside the context of the novel (e.g., in a book of essays). However, the truly brilliant thing about this book is how the reader can trace Anya's subtle influence in Senor C's opinions, which become more personal and humanitarian over time. Once again, Coetzee delivers an enlightening glimpse into the process of writing and the formulation of a writer's ideas. Brilliant.

This review also appears on my blog Literary License (short reviews, real opinions): litlicense.blogspot.com ( )

This a story with three parallels. The book centers around opinion essays written by an aging author, JC, and his relationship with his typist Anya and her live-in boyfriend Alan.

Although the essays are interesting & scathing critiques of the west, literature and the establishment, among others, the real story lies in the tension between the young couple and the self aware author. Interesting relationship story. ( )

J.M. Coetzee should have titled this one "Diary of a Very Bad Book" if he wanted to give readers a true indication of what is in store for anyone who reads it because it is nothing more than Coetzee's very thinly veiled excuse to proclaim his hatred and contempt for the likes of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Tony Blair, and American society, in general. In a time when little more is required to win a Nobel Prize than to express contempt for each of those subjects, it is not surprising that Coetzee would write a book like this one for those who feel as he does. But anyone expecting a novel of quality from J.M. Coetzee is probably a few books too late and should not waste time with Diary of a Bad Year.

The premise of the book finds a German publisher seeking strong opinions from a group of literature's elder statesmen, all of which are to be published in a single volume. Coetzee creates a stand-in for himself, a South African author now living in Australia, and calls him "Senor C." Each page of the book is rather neatly divided into three sections. The upper one-third of each page in the book contains one of Coetzee-C's "strong opinions," usually on politics and usually a rant against something American. The middle third of each page is written from "C's" point-of-view and involves his relationship with the young lady he has become smitten with as she types up his rants. The bottom third of each page is written from the point-of-view of the young woman and often describes the exact scene just seen earlier from "C's" vantage point.

Coetzee had the makings of a dull little novel going with the second two-thirds of each page but even that was ruined by his childish rants on the upper part of each page. Never offering alternatives to any of the things he so despises, and actually doing little more than name-calling, ends up making Coetzee look like a simpleton who is filled more with hate than writing talent. Whatever he was aiming for, if it was more than an excuse to ridicule those he despises, he missed by a wide margin. This one is so bad that I suspect it will be the worst book I read in 2008.

Do yourself a favor and avoid Diary of a Bad Year.

Rated at 0.5 ( )

Recently read my first Coetzee novel, Diary of a Bad Year. It's a morality play of aggressors and victims that brings to mind a Vollmann quote from The Atlas:

"Which is worse, to be too often protected, and thereby forget the suffering of others, or to suffer them oneself? There is, perhaps, a middle course: to be out in the world enough to be toughened, but to have a shelter sufficient to stave off callousness and wretchedness."

i was somewhat disappointed, given Coetzee's reputation as one of our Great Authors; i expected a freshness of vision that wasn't there. While the logic of conquest is laid bare relentlessly, the victims aren't given a reality that surpasses their victimhood (lab animals, Gitmo prisoners, etc.). Indeed, some of the primary narrator's strong opinions aren't particularly well informed. For example, the narrator thinks suicide bombers are all male, simplifies the causes and logic of terrorists, etc.

Instead, Coetzee's focus is on morality and honor ~ how can a person living under a corrupt or menacing political order either retain some measure of moral cleanliness (in the case of the primary narrator, an elderly male writer living alone among crumbs and cockroaches in the basement) or indulge a taste for monstrous acts (a middle-aged man living in the penthouse)?

The young woman between them, written as a siren, bases her understanding on experience and uses encounters to provide the grounding for her ethics. She types the elderly writer's 'strong opinions' for him and discusses her reactions. When describing her personal experience of rape, shares with him her scorn for judgments based on moral abstractions without corroborating experience. The writer slowly becomes more receptive to some of her views, 'soft opinions', but is consumed by the inescapable regrets of a decent person who did what little he could to uphold the good while living as the citizen of a conquering nation. Death hovers over everything, sometimes in the most basic physical sense (senescence, surviving a kidnapping/rape, etc.), but more often as a category of morality (the death of beloved literary & musical art forms).

It's not all gloom ~ there is some witty word and idea play that skips between narrators and pages. The playfulness is entertaining and i'm sure i'd have been more impressed overall if i hadn't seen so much imaginative intensity recently from other authors. ( )

A collection of essays running in parallel with a story about the young woman he hires as a typist from upstairs,done in the novel form. Fascinating opinions this man expresses on democracy, music, language, the race and immigration policies of different countries etc.
Highly recommended. ( )

Simply brilliant. One can only believe that the opinions presented are the thinly veiled thoughts of the author himself, presented in the guise of an old man's book of essays. In parallel is his point of view and the point of view of his typist, their journey through the book matches their journey in understanding each other and coming to a comfortable friendship. The opinions themselves range from thoughts on Guantanamo Bay to Australian refugee policy to how we learn to count. Moving and touching until the end. ( )

Coetzee continues his extraordinary wrenching of the concept of the novel. What he does with form alone, a dazzling display of technical skills, would make this essential reading. But of course there is more.

Perhaps not quite making the impact of Elizabeth Costello, it is nevertheless arguably the most striking Booker eligible novel published this year.

So why...? Suspect in truth one knows the answer! ( )