I haven’t read any of Coetzee’s books since Elizabeth Costello, but a friend of mine posted to facebook that she was going to be on a panel about The Pole at a conference, and then another friend chimed in and said that she had read it and was excited to discuss, and I love homework, so I got myself a copy and set to work.
Funnily enough, it turned out that there was another panel at the same conference where Lily Saint talked about what she called Coetzee’s “jerk poetics” — an intentional distancing effect; a refusal to structure novels around empathy and identification. She argued that this is an ethical project — that it is intended to produce moral scrutiny, but crucially, without the benefits of a moral ‘high ground;’ rather, from a shifting and uncertain terrain that includes moments of identification and even culpability. This was very persuasive, and a really interesting way to think about what is happening in The Pole, especially in relation to (what I found extremely interesting about it) the use of free indirect discourse. We are sometimes in the mind of the character, and sometimes observing it with some degree of ironic distance. I gather that this is a feature of many of Coetzee’s more recent novels, so readers who have been keeping up will perhaps be less impressed by it than I was (Jeanne-Marie Jackson also has a great piece on why ‘late’ Coetzee is disappointing more broadly).
I made another friend of mine read The Pole after I got back from the conference, because I wanted to know what she thought about it, and she very rightly observed that it’s a fairly obnoxious version of a male author imagining a woman’s mind, where, surprise surprise, the woman turns out to mostly be thinking about…a man. It reminds me of how I felt about the movie The Worst Person in the World, which is that I loved it when I watched it, and then had some nagging questions after (why doesn’t she have any friends?), and then read a very smart review that absolutely obliterated it and was like, oh, right, yeah. So, yes, this is absolutely true of The Pole, and is very annoying, but I only semi-noticed it when reading. Whether this is because I am somewhat inured to the ways men imagine women’s minds, or because I was too busy contemplating the narrative voice, is an open question.
What I was utterly surprised, and delighted, by, was the novel’s depiction of Polishness. I had rather expected a romanticization — the cliché soulful, deeply philosophical melancholic, generally represented by the poets Czesław Miłosz and Adam Zagajewski.* The world-weary exile who has seen the terrors of World War II and Soviet totalitarianism but also the bland emptiness of life under American capitalism. Who remains an ardent patriot, but in a spiritual sense, and has a kind of wounded-bird injured pride, aware that the world is indifferent to his suffering. He is like a character from an earlier era, slightly out of synch with modern life. And of course has a charming accent.
And to be sure, Witold, the titular Pole, is all of those things. But he is also an actual person. The novel, I think, is brilliant in that it understands that there are people in this world — especially, but not only, Polish men of a certain age — who, at least publicly, embody certain ideals. More crudely: they are walking clichés. At the conference panel I attended, several speakers were very caught up in the idea that The Pole is a novel where a muse tells her own story, but I think this is not quite right. For one, what with the FID, she doesn’t. But also: the title of the book is The Pole. She may be his muse, but he is also hers, and, like a muse, he is almost more idea than he is person — except that, to my great pleasure, he was also very much a person!
Anyhow, I’ve been chipping away at this post for days, and meanwhile I’ve got five others I’ve been meaning to write, so that’s all I will say about The Pole for now. I’d love an excuse to delve into it more though.
* Actually, I hadn’t expected some garbled version of it. For some reason the promotional materials for the book — the publisher’s description! and numerous reviews — completely butcher Witold’s name, spelling it “Wittold Walccyzkiecz.” It’s so weird. So I thought Coetzee had either parodied a Polish name, or really was clueless enough to spell it that way. I just submitted a correction online, maybe they’ll fix it…
Kasia Reads 