David Attwell David Attwell i(A131144 works by)
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 'A New Footing' : Re-reading the Barbarian Girl in Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians David Attwell , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: Reading Coetzee's Women 2019; (p. 55-68)
1 5 y separately published work icon J. M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing : Face to Face with Time David Attwell , Melbourne : Text Publishing , 2015 8746412 2015 single work criticism

'J. M. Coetzee—winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, twice winner of the Man Booker Prize—is one of the world’s most celebrated and intriguing authors. Yet the heart of his fiction remains elusive.

'In J. M. Coetzee and the Life of Writing, David Attwell explores the extraordinary creative processes behind Coetzee’s novels, from Dusklands to The Childhood of Jesus. Through a close examination of Coetzee’s manuscripts, notebooks and research papers, Attwell reveals the strong autobiographical thread that runs through his work, convincingly demonstrating that Coetzee’s writing proceeds with never-ending self-reflection.

'A preeminent Coetzee scholar, Attwell offers fascinating insight into one of the most important and opaque literary figures of our time.' (Publication summary)

1 Teaching Coetzee, Then and Now David Attwell , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Approaches to Teaching Coetzee's Disgrace and Other Works 2014; (p. 87-95)
1 Coetzee's Estrangements David Attwell , 2008 single work criticism
— Appears in: Novel : A Forum on Fiction , Spring/Summer vol. 41 no. 2/3 2008; (p. 229-243)
'Place in J.M. Coetzee's writing is seldom just home, in any comfortable sense, nor is there the process of re-familiarization that one finds in so much postcolonial writing that answers metropolitan representations of colonial space. On the contrary, place in Coetzee is a site of epistemological dualisms, of failed self/other relationships, of incommensurability, of aesthetic destruction: "too much truth for art to hold" (Doubling 99). Intimacy and detachment, in equal measure, in Coetzee's relationship with South Africa: that is the dynamic I wish to explore in this essay.' (p.229)
1 y separately published work icon J.M. Coetzee : South Africa and the Politics of Writing David Attwell , Berkeley : University of California Press , 1993 8156656 1993 single work criticism

'David Attwell defends the literary and political integrity of the South African novelist J.M. Coetzee, arguing that he has absorbed the textual turn of postmodern culture while still addressing his nation's ethical crisis. As a form of "situational metafiction," Coetzee's novels are shown to reconstruct and critique some of the key discourses in the history of colonialism and apartheid from the eighteenth century to the present. While self-conscious about fiction-making, Coetzee's work takes seriously the condition of the society in which it is produced. Attwell begins by describing the intellectual and political contexts of Coetzee's fiction. He proceeds with a developmental analysis of the corpus of six novels, drawing on Coetzee's other writings in stylistics, literary criticism, translation, political journalism, and popular culture. Attwell's elegantly written analysis deals both with Coetzee's subversion of the dominant culture around him and with his ability to grasp the complexities of giving voice to the anguish of South Africa.' (Publisher's summary)

1 Editor's Introduction David Attwell , 1992 single work essay
— Appears in: Doubling the Point : Essays and Interviews 1992; (p. 1-13)
4 2 y separately published work icon Doubling the Point : Essays and Interviews J. M. Coetzee , David Attwell (editor), Cambridge : Harvard University Press , 1992 6324232 1992 selected work interview essay

Nadine Gordimer has written of J.M. Coetzee that his “vision goes to the nerve center of being. What he finds there is more than most people will ever know about themselves, and he conveys it with a brilliant writer’s mastery of tension and elegance.” Doubling the Point takes us to the center of that vision. These essays and interviews, documenting Coetzee’s longtime engagement with his own culture, and with modern culture in general, constitute a literary autobiography of striking intellectual, moral, and political force.

Centrally concerned with the form and content of fiction, Doubling the Point provides rigorous insight into the significance of certain writers (particularly modernists such as Kafka, Musil, and Beckett), the value of intellectual movements (from structuralism and structural linguistics on through deconstruction), and the issues of political involvement and responsibility—not only for Coetzee’s own work, but for fiction writing in general. In interviews prefacing each section of the book, Coetzee reflects on the essays to follow and relates them to his life and work. In these interviews editor David Attwell, remarkably well attuned to his subject, prompts from Coetzee answers of extraordinary depth and interest (Harvard University Press).

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