J.M. Coetzee, Scenes from Provincial Life

Abstract

Double-page cover articles in the Times Literary Supplement such as Stephen Abell‟s on Coetzee scholarship (February 23, 2011) are a tribute usually reserved for great writers who no longer themselves yield work for review; such writers, to put it crudely, tend to be dead. J. M. Coetzee, of course, falls under neither category: a rare appearance and reading of his novel-in-progress as part of the University of York‟s international conference on Samuel Beckett this June confirmed both his continued productivity and, if not liveliness, certainly his aliveness.