Long summary of book recommendations 7/00

[Derek C. Maus]

On Wed, 19 Jul 2000, Murthy Yenamandra wrote:

> To this I'd add my current obsession: J. M. Coetzee.[...] If I could
> I'd mail you all a copy each of "Dusklands" - it's that good and to
> think it was only his first book!

Second that emotion with a loud "Hell, yes!" I published an article this
spring in _Journal of Literary Studies_ out of South Africa comparing _V._
and _Dusklands_. The good news is that paperback editions of the book are
really not all that hard to come by (it's out of print again, but Penguin
reprinted it a few years back in a fairly large edition).

Very good pair of novellas--one about an American military writer who is
producing a paternalistic strategy to produce victory in the Vietnam War
(then ongoing) which sounds remarkably like von Trotha's policy of
"Vaeterliche Zuechtigung" from _V._ (guess what the article was about).
The second novella is supposedly a journal kept by an Afrikaner making a
trip in to the South African back country to subdue some of the local
population. Very powerful writing and very unusual style. If you've read
_Master of Petersburg_ or _Life and Times of Michael K._ you'll know what
to expect. If not, well...imagine Nadine Gordimer and Paul Auster grafted
onto each other.

Best first novel since...um..._V._.

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Derek C. Maus               |   "Heck, I reckon you wouldn't even be
dmaus at email.unc.edu         |   human beings if you didn't have some 
UNC-CH, Dept. of English    |   pretty strong feelings about nuclear
http://www.unc.edu/~dmaus/  |   combat."  --Major Kong, DR. STRANGELOVE
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