I’ll give you the names. From here I travel to South Africa — it will be my second trip — to speak to Coetzee’s cousin Margot, with whom he was close. Then on to Brazil to meet a woman named Adriana Nascimento who lived in Cape Town for some years during the 1970s. After that — but the date isn’t fixed yet — I go to Canada to see someone named Julia Frankl, who in the 1970s would have gone under the name Julia Smith. And I will also be seeing Sophie Denoël in Paris.
Sophie I knew, but not the others. How did you come up with these names?
Basically I let Coetzee himself do the choosing. I followed up on clues he dropped in his notebooks — clues as to who was important to him at the time, in the 1970s.
It seems a peculiar way of selecting biographical sources, if you don’t mind my saying so.
Perhaps. There are other names I would have wanted to add, of people who knew him well, but alas they are dead now. You call it a peculiar way of going about a biography. Perhaps. But I am not interested in delivering a final judgment on Coetzee. I am not writing that kind of book. Final judgments I leave to history. What I am doing is telling the story of a stage in his life, or if we can’t arrive at a single story then several stories from different perspectives.
And the sources you have selected have no axes to grind, no ambitions of their own to pronounce final judgment on Coetzee?
[Silence.]
Let me ask: Leaving aside Sophie, and leaving aside the cousin, was either of the women you mention emotionally involved with Coetzee?
Yes. Both. In different ways. Which I have yet to explore.
Shouldn’t that give you pause? With your very narrow roster of sources, will you not inevitably come out with an account or set of accounts that are slanted towards the personal and the intimate at the expense of the man’s actual achievements as a writer? Worse: do you not run the risk of allowing your book to become no more than — forgive me for putting it in this way — no more than a settling of scores, personal scores?
Why? Because my informants are women?
Because it is not in the nature of love affairs for the lovers to see each other whole and steady.
[Silence.]
I repeat, it seems to me strange to be putting together a biography of a writer that will ignore his writing. But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps I am out of date. Perhaps that is what literary biography has become. I must go. One final thing: if you are planning to quote me, would you make sure I have a chance to check the text first?
Of course.
Interview conducted in Sheffield, England,
in September 2007.
Sophie
MME DENOËL, TELL ME how you came to know John Coetzee.
He and I were for years colleagues at the University of Cape Town. He was in the Department of English, I was in French. We collaborated to offer a course in African literature. This was in 1976. He taught the Anglophone writers, I the Francophone. That was how our acquaintance began.
And how did you yourself come to be in Cape Town?
My husband was sent there to run the Alliance Française. Before that we had been living in Madagascar. During our time in Cape Town our marriage broke up. My husband returned to France, I stayed on. I took a position at the University, a junior position teaching French language.
And in addition you taught the joint course that you mention, the course in African literature.
Yes. It may seem odd, two whites offering a course in black African literature, but that is how it was in those days. If we two had not offered it, no one would have.
Because blacks were excluded from the University?
No, no, by then the system had started to crack. There were black students, though not many; some black lecturers too. But very few specialists in Africa, the wider Africa. That was one of the surprising things I discovered about South Africa: how insular it was. I went back on a visit last year, and it was the same: little or no interest in the rest of Africa. Africa was a dark continent to the north, best left unexplored.
And you? Where did your interest in Africa come from?
From my education. From France. Remember, France was once a great colonial power. Even after the colonial era officially ended, France had other means at its disposal to maintain its influence — economic means, cultural means. La Francophonie was the new name we invented for the old empire. Writers from Francophonie were promoted, fêted, studied. For my agrégation I worked on Aimé Césaire.
And the course you taught in collaboration with Coetzee — was that a success, would you say?
Yes, I believe so. It was an introductory course, no more than that, but students found it, as you say in English, an eye-opener.
White students?
White students plus a few black. We did not attract the more radical black students. Our approach would have been too academic for them, not engagé enough. We thought it sufficient to offer students a glimpse of the riches of the rest of Africa.
And you and Coetzee saw eye to eye on this approach?
I believe so. Yes.
You were a specialist in African literature, he was not. His training was in the literature of the metropolis. How did he come to be teaching African literature?
It is true, he had no formal training in the field. But he had a good general knowledge of Africa, admittedly just book knowledge, not practical knowledge, he had not travelled in Africa, but book knowledge is not worthless — right? He knew the anthropological literature better than I did, including the francophone materials. He had a grasp of the history, the politics. He had read the important figures writing in English and in French (of course in those days the body of African literature was not large — things are different now). There were gaps in his knowledge — the Maghreb, Egypt, and so forth. And he didn’t know the diaspora, particularly the Caribbean, which I did.
What did you think of him as a teacher?
He was good. Not spectacular but competent. Always well prepared.
Did he get on well with students?
That I can’t say. Perhaps if you track down old students of his they will be able to help you.
And yourself? Compared with him, did you get on well with students?
[Laughs.] What is it you want me to say? Yes, I suppose I was the more popular one, the more enthusiastic. I was young, remember, and it was a pleasure for me to be talking about books for a change, after all the language classes. We made a good pair, I thought, he more serious, more reserved, I more open, more flamboyant.
He was considerably older than you.
Ten years. He was ten years older than me.
[Silence.]
Is there anything you would like to add on the subject? Other aspects of him you would like to comment on?
We had a liaison. I presume you are aware of that. It did not endure.
Why not?
It was not sustainable.
Would you like to say more?
Would I like to say more for your book? Not before you tell me what kind of book it is. Is it a book of gossip or a serious book? Do you have authorization for it? Who else are you speaking to besides me?