Jaipur literature festival: Day 3 Coetzee charms Pink city

Nobel and Booker Prize winner was the star attraction on Day 3 of the event

John Maxwell Coetzee or simply, J M Coetzee, doesn't attend public gatherings. Even if it means skipping the ceremony that awarded him the Booker Prize in 1984.
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So when he did show up, quite naturally, he became the star attraction and probably one of the biggest draws at the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival on Day 3.


John Maxwell Coetzee read about humans and cats, Roman Catholicism and how animals have no faces

"Please bear with me for 45 minutes of what will be a hopefully, uninterrupted session," the soft-spoken author told the packed Front Lawns audience, some of whom grabbed a seat nearly an hour before. The audience soaked in his every word his diction crisp, the tone, storyteller-like.

After a brief introduction of the Nobel- and Booker-Prize winner by Patrick French, the soft-spoken, rarely seen author rose to read for the next 45 minutes about humans and cats, Roman Catholicism and how animals have no faces. The audience, a mix of intellectuals, students, expats and tourists, was held in rapt attention.
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Finally, when Coetzee ended his reading, the two-minute applause reflected how lucky the assembled hundreds were who were privy to his reading of the Old Woman and the Cats. French had informed the audience beforehand that publicity-shy Coetzee would not be taking any questions.

Earlier in the day, an arresting debate ensued between American novelists Jay McInerney, Junot Diaz and Richard Ford with UK author Martin Amis as the moderator, while discussing the Crisis of the American Novel.
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Ford turned the debate on its head at the start by declaring, "I doubt there is any panic... in fact, there is an increasing sense of diversification."
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McInerney agreed saying, "There has been a constant resurgence of the novel," and finally when Diaz said, "You must fall in love with the novel - there's no crisis whatsoever; I can talk of a crisis if we ignore 99 per cent of what's written," it became clear that the panel had other ideas.u00a0

The trio unitedly declared that Hemmingway, Fitzgerald and Faulkner were the real heroes of the American novel.
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Ford said, "All the risks you take reflect on the page," while Diaz summed up that segment admitting that after all, "the readers are the final judges."

As the session veered towards how old novelists were usually the ones to make comments that the novel is dead, Diaz didn't hesitate to add. "As Naipaul dies, the novel is dead!"