Susan Barton lands on an island in the middle of the ocean after a mutinee takes place on board the ship she is travelling on from Brazil. This particular island is not deserted. It's the kingdom of 60-year-old Cruso, a silent man who has lived here for many years after a shipwreck together with his man slave, named Friday.
Nobody can tell how many years Cruso has spent on the island, not even himself - not having kept a record of the passing of time. He has not saved any useful tool from the shipwreck - just a small knife. He has not kept a journal of his adventures for future generations. What adventures, then, since he just moves stones to terrace the island, hoping to see some day a ship pass by and leave some seeds to plant? Why, it is not indeed Cruso's dream to leave the island, he doesn't even attempt to do it. And Friday just does what he is told to, uttering no sound. Somebody cut his tongue out.
I can see faces perplexed about this recounting of the life of the most famous castaway in the history of literature. Is this the very same adventurous Crusoe by Daniel Defoe? Is it the same Friday, who learnt English from his master and became a Christian?
It's Susan Barton who gets saved, with Friday, and dreams of passing on her, their stories. To do so, she contacts a man of letter, Mr. Foe. Can her story work? With a woman as protagonist? With just one cannibal, dumb Friday? No hordes of cannibals, no pistols saved from the wreckage to use against attacks? No attempts to build a ship to leave the island with?
It is by this line of reasoning that questions start, and not about the plot itsself. What is, for example, the task of the Writer: telling the truth?
"It is not whoring to entertain other people's stories and return them to the world better dressed"
Pleasing the reader?
More is at stake in the history you write, I will admit, for it must not only tell the truth about us but please its readers too.
The castaways' tales are just an excuse for a more philosophical approach, to talk about writing, the Writer, his creative power, inspiration, words and the unspoken. And those initials on a trunk, M. J. Who do they belong to? Is it maybe Coetzee's inverted initials, to confirm his presence, puppet master and god of his characters? (May it not be that God continually writes the world, the world and all that is in it?)
Susan slowly becomes clearly a Muse for the writer, even though the creative act is joked about:
And he gave me sixpence, which, though no great payment for a visit from the Muse, I accepted
The book is full of innuendo on how to write. Were it not so complicated at times, it reads almost as a creative writing manual. As creative writing teachers tell us, storytelling responds to an urge to tell our stories:
Without desire how is it possible to make a story?
They also say that not everything must be really told:
In every story there is a silence, some sight concealed, some word unspoken, I believe
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| Foe by JM Coetzee (first published in 1986) |
The re-telling of Crusoe's adventures takes up only a mere 20% of the books. The rest is another thing. Should you be looking for some Stevenson's style approach, you have definitely landed on the wrong shores.
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