Philip Glass Half Full

Dear Mr. Coetzee,

You probably know by now that the great American composer Philip Glass has written an opera based on your novel Waiting for the Barbarians. And perhaps you find this as ironically appropriate as I do. After all, Glass is known for his minimalist compositions, characterized by often-repeating structures. And Waiting for the Barbarians, while focusing on a fundamental change in the “Empire” which the magistrate has not seen in his decades of serving, offers a much broader allegorical statement concerning the repetition of history. Glass saw the story of Waiting for the Barbarians in Iraq today, and perhaps he also recognized that his music would fit the story perfectly for this reason. As Glass says in his notes about his opera of the same name, “To reduce the opera to a single historical circumstance or a particular political regime misses the point. That the opera can become an occasion for dialogue about political crisis illustrates the power of art to turn our attention toward the human dimension of history.”

Indeed, Mr. Coetzee, I presume that this was your original intention in writing Waiting for the Barbarians. The facts that all of your characters—with the exception of the brutal Colonel Joll—remain nameless, and that the time and place remain ambiguous lead me to believe that you had something larger in mind than a story that occurred in a vacuum, in one time, and one place. I love what Glass says about the power of art, and I presume you would too. It may be overstated, but what other medium can “turn our attention toward the human dimension of history” besides art, whether a novel or an opera? I think the “human dimension” can be found in particular in the narrator’s physical yet sexless relationship with one of the barbarians. Whereas the harsh military officer (Joll) and the hopeless government aide (the magistrate) are stock character in nearly every historical story about the oppressor and the oppressed, the barbarian woman provides a deeply personal aspect to this story that Glass and I both apparently love. So thank you, Mr. Coetzee, for adding not one, but two works of art exploring the timeless themes of war and love.

Your fan,
Jack

PS. Just because I presume you have a fondness for works by Philip Glass and for saxophone quartet, please visit the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI1iQfQT9K4

Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and Conrad's heart of darkness

Chinua Achebe, An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness

-Conrad's Heart of Darkness most fully embodies the desire (or need) of Western psychology to set Africa up as a foil to Europe
-Though Conrad sets up layers of insulation between himself and the moral universe of his history, he neglects to even hint at an alternative frame of reference by which we may judge the actions and opinions of his characters
-"The point of my observations should be quite clear by now, namely that Joseph Conrad was a bloody racist."
-Achebe says that because of this, Heart of Darkness cannot be called a great work of art
-Conrad's own diary is evidence that he and Marlow have similar theories
-Though Conrad did see and condemn the evil of imperial exploitation, he was strnagely unaware of the racism on which it sharpened its iron tooth

Caddy and Quentin, Sitting in a Tree...

We have already spent nearly an entire class period discussing how troubling and puzzling the last two pages to The Sound and the Fury are. Now, however, I find myself in the much more difficult position of arguing the opposite: how the ending in fact provides resolution. The first thing that comes to mind is the beautiful paralleled imagery of the pear tree. At the beginning of the novel, Caddy climbs up the pear tree to the window of her room. In fact, this image was Faulkner’s conception of the novel—he built the rest around this image. At the end, Quentin, Caddy’s daughter, who sleeps in the same room that Caddy did when she was a girl, escapes out the very same window, down the very same pear tree. When Jason and Mrs. Compson enter her room, they see that “The window was open. A pear tree grew there, close against the house.” And, the tree “brought into the room the forlorn scent of the blossoms.” Both of these images explicitly force the reader to recall Caddy’s relationship with Benjy, perhaps the central storyline of The Sound and the Fury. The scent of blossoms, of course, is how Benjy recognized Caddy, and the lack thereof was how he knew that she had lost her virginity. Faulkner beautifully ties together the entire novel, because when she lost her virginity, she gave birth to Quentin, who now causes the rest of the family to once again take note of the pear tree and its smell. In this way, Faulkner resolves the novel enough to show that the downfall of the Compsons continues, and in fact is now complete.