Stranger Shores : Essays, 1986-1999 by J.M. CoetzeeCall Number: PR9369.3.C58S77 2002
ISBN: 009942262X
Publication Date: 2002
This is a collection of J.M. Coetzee’s essays on various subjects. We know Coetzee as the author of Foe, his postmodern novel that reworks and critiques Robinson Crusoe. I was intrigued to see what Coetzee, whose day job is Professor of General Literature at the University of Cape Town (i.e. he’s also an academic!), had to say in his essay on Crusoe, helpfully titled, “Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe” (20-26). This essay, which originally appeared as the introduction of the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Crusoe in 1999, centers on how the novel fits within the canon of European realist novels.
Within the opening paragraphs, Coetzee introduces the "Robinsonade" genre and mentions how this “pretended history” fit into Defoe’s authorial career as Defoe masqueraded as Crusoe himself, asserting in his Serious Reflections, how “‘the story, though allegorical, is also historical’” (20). Continuing his focus on Defoe’s place in the realist tradition, Coetzee notes that in Robinson Crusoe, “Defoe [tries] -- with incomplete success -- to bend the story of his adventurer hero to fit a scriptural pattern of disobedience, punishment, repentance, and (22) deliverance” (22-23). Coetzee earned my trust when he stated that Moll Flanders is a better novel than Crusoe.
Given how much Foe dismantled the mythos of Crusoe, I was pleasantly surprised to see the respect Coetzee showed Crusoe, ending on the note that, “Nothing [Defoe] set down on paper is less than intelligent” (26).