J.M. Coetzee’s ELIZABETH COSTELLO

J.M. Coetzee, winner of the  Nobel Prize in Literature and the Booker (twice), doesn’t eat meat. That’s a fact.

And he wrote Elizabeth Costello (here’s an excerpt), which garnered wildly-disparate reviews that reached no consensus.

There are oodles of debates regarding the quality of the novel, whether it has a plot and is a novel at all, and whether the main character, writer Elizabeth Costello, is to be taken seriously as a intellectual/artist/person who compares the way we treat animals to the Holocaust.

Though I don’t think the book is entirely about the validity of animal rights, I do think the manner in which Costello talks about it, and the content of what she says, isn’t as incoherent or bizarre as some say. And I also think that–as a character who is fed up with the mainstream view and disgusted with what we as humans do in the name of our egos, our palates, and our entertainment–she is entirely believable. (Which is not to say likable.)

I worry about reviewers who make comments like: "I cannot imagine that Coetzee would ever take seriously the theses of Costello’s speeches." (See blogger waggish.) But Coetzee is a vegetarian, and he is described by friends as a supporter of animal rights.

Waggish later writes "considering Costello’s ideas only leads to silliness and frustration."

To respond, I enlist Schopenhaer. "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."