Elizabeth Costello and the Passage that Shook My Bones
The first boat leaves after breakfast. The approach to the landing is difficult, through thick beds of kelp and across shelving rock. In the end, one of the sailors has to half help her ashore, half carry her, as if she were an old woman. The sailor has blue eyes, blonde hair. Through his waterproofs she feels his youthful strength. In his arms she rides as safe as a baby. ‘Thank you!’ she says gratefully when he sets her down; but to him it is nothing, just a service he is paid dollars to do, no more personal than the service of a hospital nurse. (pg 55)
After reading this passage, with the context of the previous material, this passage made me stop reading. I was not confused, not driven to decipher this prose, nothing of the sort; it serves as a microcosm for human relations in post modern world.
Elizabeth Costello asks, not with grace, but while being stuck in a metaphorical subway of ideas, what is the role of reason in the 21st Century. The text challenges the status quo, its importance and why we have it in the first place, metanarratives, or stories that use as histories of the world in order to make sense of it, and the space that exists inside groups of people and towards others, such as between race, gender, and educational background. While this quote does not necessarily address these issues, what struck me was how, in such a short moment, two people can be introduced to each other in such an intimate way, learn about each other, than, as both readers and in the way characters do, the situation is dismissed without consideration of the situation. My question is this: What does this say about us?
As Coetzee addresses how literature and literary studies fit in our present time, mentioning canonical writers such as Kafka and Faulkner, there is also the question of where what those writers tried to represent in their time and its relevance today. What does literature look like in the 21st Century? Are ideals and values like chivalry and universal truths authors wrote about centuries ago really dead, or did we choose to do away from them. The situation between Elizabeth and the sailor presents an opportunity where values like compassion and goodwill can be present, but instead. it becomes a transaction instead of an act of kindness. Is that what post-modernity has brought us?
I think about this, and contrast it to Coetzee’s other works, like the ambivalence of Magda in In the Heart of the County, and the destructive environment that tries to empower Michael K. What kind of world is Coetzee trying to paint? If this is what he thinks is left of us?
In regards to nurses, nursing is one of the top ten careers where people are the happiest, according to the most recent Forbes list of The 10 Happiest Jobs in America. Does Coetzee think that nursing is also very much a career where people just do their job and is absent of any type of interpersonal value, and/or is it simply like any other job that people do solely to make a living? Donna Cardillo, a Registered Nurse (RN) and keynote speaker for nurses, coined the phrase, “Nurses are the heart of healthcare”. I remember trips to the doctor- nurses play a vital role when it comes to consoling a patient or trying to get them at ease. Is that non-existent?
A lot of this is based on how we., essentially, view ourselves and how we treat others. That’s really where change or signs of humanity exist in the first place. Of course there will be nurses who aren’t as good as others, but does that mean we must accept it for what the worst shows us? If there needs to be change, in a post-modern world, where it affects us the most is not in books, but in the way we treat each other, because, really that’s all we got. We live in a world of the “written word”, meaning summation and history has permeated in every opinion that exists; the new is simply a product of the referenced world. What we are left with are the simplest of human interactions. This, ultimately, leaves us with the ability to change how things operate through our daily actions.
Did I go off on a tangent? Maybe, but then again, in a postmodern world, pattern is solely a construct that we made; what we can effectively change lies with that thing that defines humanity.
Where is it? I don’t know yet, but, then again, I haven’t finished reading all of Coetzee’s novels either.
Coetzee/Rubalcava 
Hi Rolando,
I have to say I agree with a lot of what you are saying, but I cannot help but think that it also has to do with Elizabeth Costello’s vanity especially in that chapter. What I mean by this is that Elizabeth Costello throughout the novel brings about the idea of old age, and death, and in several chapters she touches upon the things that we lose as we become old. One of the things she touches on in this chapter and in Lecture 5, “The Humanities in Africa,” is the way in which Blanche and her have changed into old women, and although Costello does not right out say it I feel that her obsession with the fact that Blanche is now a nun has to do with the fact that she sees Blanche as having forgone her sexuality. It is true she admits to having never been close to her, but it seems to be that this for Costello at once distances them and brings them together. What I mean by this is that in a sense Blanche has given up her sex, what makes her a full woman, and now she is simply old, but is not being old in some sense leaving behind one’s sexuality? Some would say that sexuality does not have to be given up when one has reached old age, but Coetzee through Costello suggests that one of the first things to leave us in old age is this sexuality. This is how they are at once connected and apart, because Costello had left sexuality behind as well, but not by choice, and at times still longs for it like in the chapter you mention, “The Novel in Africa.” For me the passage you bring up was also striking, but rather because I saw her as an old woman reminiscing a time when the nurse could have been persuaded to perhaps go to her room. I think it is no mistake that this encounter with a young male occurs after she sees the young woman come out of Egudu’s room. I also think it is no mistake she says “no more personal than the service of a hospital nurse,” because it brings up the picture of a woman in a nursing home, and old woman, something Costello does not want to particularly think about. One example of this is when she is conversing with the young singer and Costello ponders, “Is she jealous? How could she be? Still, hard to accept, being excluded from the game. Like being a child again, with a child’s bedtime.” (pg.58) Here in this phrase we can see that Costello feels she is being excluded from “playing the game,” which is typically a euphemism for having sex promiscuously. Costello also states that she is like a child, a child typically needs a nurse to take care of them, and many times these nurses are paid, but even beyond that it refers to the way in which as we grow old we are turned into children once again, but not of our choosing, rather it is our society who determines that our bedtimes have changed. I’m not saying that your suggestion that we in modernity aren’t as humane as we should be is wrong, because I agree. A big part of the novel deals with the way in which we have lost our humanity towards human beings, but at the same time I feel the novel is exploring old age, and the things that are lost, the way people change once they have grown old, and the way people change their attitude towards them.
November 2, 2011 at 6:50 pm
I didn’t post this at 6:50 pm I will take a screen cap of my computer to prove it, please Professor Barnard talk to me if you would like to see the screen cap as proof.
November 2, 2011 at 6:52 pm
Hi Rolando,
The questioning of ideas you pose is very interesting and thought-provoking. What stood out to me in particular was when you stated, “in such a short moment, two people can be introduced to each other in such an intimate way, learn about each other, than, as both readers and in the way characters do, the situation is dismissed without consideration of the situation.” To elaborate on this idea and in attempt to answer your question (What does this say about us?), we can look at the varying and multi-layered relationships we make on a daily basis. Sometimes it takes just a few exchanged words to make a connection with another. In addition to the passage you provided, there are two other specific types of relations Elizabeth Costello is involved with in differing, yet equally as important further on in the novel (Paul West’s literature and Robert Duncan). I will specifically focus on the complex relationship builds with Paul West’s von Stauffenberg.
When Elizabeth Costello is invited to present on a conference based on “Witness, Silence and Censorship,” the reader becomes aware of the relationship Costello makes not with Paul West, the person, but rather Paul West’s the author and creator of the ideas in his novel. Though Costello became completely immersed in his von Stauffenberg book, she does not entirely embrace this immersion, as she claims that upon reading it, the book satanically possessed her mind. In doing so, she also gave authorial responsibility to the author for what he had written. To once again further explore the question you asked earlier, What does this say about us [as readers and critics]? As readers and critics, we sometimes fall victims of intentional fallacy and appoint beliefs and ideas to the author. This is what Elizabeth Costello does when she assumes Mr. West was taken over by a malevolent being when writing his book. The reaction from the audience is thus not as receptive to her speech, because as one man points out, she does not know for a fact what Mr. West was thinking or was experiencing when he wrote his book. This idea also correlated with what you said about humanity; as writers we sometimes write about what we see on our surroundings and the factors that are influencing us as individuals. As readers, however, I believe we just have to be a bit more careful about how we frame our interpretations.
It is all very interesting. Thank you for sharing and stimulating the mind into considering different ideas and possibilities.
Norma Perez
November 2, 2011 at 6:52 pm
Rolando, your comment about nurses made me think of Coetzee’s _Slow Man_–a “nurse” plays a big part in that novel, so I think you’ll find this theme developed in much more depth there…
November 4, 2011 at 4:43 pm