{"id":462,"date":"2005-03-02T16:23:18","date_gmt":"2005-03-02T23:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefangeens.com\/?p=462"},"modified":"2005-03-02T16:23:18","modified_gmt":"2005-03-02T23:23:18","slug":"what-is-it-like-to-be-elizabeth-costello","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2005\/03\/what-is-it-like-to-be-elizabeth-costello\/","title":{"rendered":"What is it like to be Elizabeth Costello?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Elizabeth Costello<\/em><\/a> the novelCoetzee’s latest novel to come out in paperback here in Stockholm is currently on sale during the annual countrywide book sale\/reading frenzy.<\/span> Elizabeth Costello the novelist gives a series of lectures on topics that clearly interest J.M. Coetzee the author. Costello is not Coetzee’s mouthpiece, however; she gets a generous hearing, but we get hints that while she and Coetzee know the same things, her perspectives are that of another person — perhaps an older, waning person.<\/p>\n

One of Costello’s lectures is a passionate defense of animal rightsThis part of the novel was originally published by Coetzee as the novella The Lives of Animals<\/em>, delivered as a lecture at Princeton University in 1997. The Nation has a great review<\/a>.<\/span>. In the middle of her speech, just as her daughter-in-law whispers to her son that “she is rambling,” she begins a critique of Thomas Nagel’s famous essay, What is it like to be a bat?<\/a><\/em> Nagel argued that even if we can imagine what it is like to behave like a bat, we cannot ever know what it is like to be<\/em> a bat, because human mental states are just too different from those of bats — for starters, we can’t sense sonar.<\/p>\n

Costello’s retort is twofold: First, she can make inroads into imagining her own death (so why not an animal’s life?):<\/p>\n

‘For instants at a time’ his mother is saying, ‘I know what it is like to be a corpse. The knowledge repels me. It fills me with terror; I shy away from it, refuse to entertain it.
 <\/p>\n

‘All of us have such moments, particularly as we grow older. The knowledge we have is not abstract — “All human beings are mortal, I am a human being, therefore I am mortal” — but embodied. For a moment we are<\/em> that knowledge. We live the impossible: we live beyond our death, look back on it, yet look back as only a dead self can.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Second, novels work because “there are no bounds to the sympathetic imagination.” And if that is the case, “if I can think my way into the existence of a being who has never existed, then I can think my way into the existence of a bat or a chimpanzee or an oyster…”<\/p>\n

Later, it struck me: Elizabeth Costello<\/em> the novel is really an essay entitled “What is it like to be Elizabeth Costello?” Coetzee wants to know: To what extent is it possible to imagine what it is like to be<\/em> her or someone like her? Not just behave like an elderly person, but be<\/em> one?<\/p>\n

It’s a question I never really asked myself when I was 18, but which I have pondered more often in recent years. Perhaps we can at then least answer the question “What is it like to be<\/em> 35?”
Answer: You wonder what it is like to be 70.<\/span> I’m sure in part it has to do with both surviving grandparents — my grandmothers — now being in their early 90s.<\/p>\n

One grandmother is as sharp as ever, living unassisted, devouring crosswords and French novels when not cheating atrociously at Solitaire or ScrabbleWhy do the elderly cheat at games so much? Have they learned a lesson in life we haven’t yet? I’ll put down phoney words at Scrabble but that is allowed. Feeling for blanks, however, is beyond the pale.<\/span>. Every so often, matter of factly, she mentions that she won’t be around for much longer. I’ve noticed myself (and others) hush her on such occasions, telling her she will likely outlive us all, or mock-chiding her for her morbidness. I think these episodes reveal more about us than about her, however. At her age, death is not something you can put off thinking about. It looms. It is we young ones who grow skittish when compelled to contemplate death. But I wonder if we are not doing my grandmother a disservice by denying her an opportunity to give voice to such thoughts. I wonder if it is something that the elderly talk about when we are not around.<\/p>\n

My other grandmother lives in a dementia ward. She is frail, often confused, and tires quickly. It is as if she has a surfeit of memories to process, but only as if<\/em>, because that’s not really what I suspect she is experiencing. In fact, I am not at all sure I am able to imagine what it is like to be her, in part because when I attempt the exercise I find myself using mental faculties that I suspect I need to imagine no longer having.<\/p>\n

Contemplating her existence doesn’t provide any new intellectual insights. We know consciousness is not a binary notion, on or off, a matter of being awake to the world or dead, but a collective, a group effort prone to slow dissolution. Yet what is it like<\/em> to feel your identity ebbing? Could someone not in her state write a convincing novel about a protagonist who is?<\/p>\n

There seem to be several different challenges to overcome, then, when trying to think one’s way into the existence of an elderly person. I can think of three. Perhaps the easiest is to imagine being physically frail; after all, we’ve all broken a bone or been bedridden. Then there is the matter of acquiring the right perspective — from near the end of a life, from where you can count with your hands the number of summers left to you. And finally, in some cases, the challenge of imagining being on a trajectory into mental unbeing.<\/p>\n

I will probably live to find out what my grandmothers are experiencing now. It will be too late to compare notes with them, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Elizabeth Costello the novelCoetzee’s latest novel to come out in paperback here in Stockholm is currently on sale during the annual countrywide book sale\/reading frenzy. Elizabeth Costello the novelist gives a series of lectures on topics that clearly interest … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7eNhC-7s","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}