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[Ghetta Life]

http://www.news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=1344832003


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When Samuel Beckett's wife heard that he had won the Nobel Prize for 
Literature, she is said to have turned to him and pronounced simply: "Quelle 
catastrophe!" Beckett refused to go to Stockholm and dispatched his 
publisher - "very kindly facing the turnips in my stead on that 
Nobloodybeldamday".

This year's winner, JM Coetzee, is being a little more obliging. Although he 
did not turn up to collect either of his Booker Prizes in 1993 and 1999, he 
delivered this year's Nobel Lecture last night and will receive the prize 
itself on Wednesday.

What Coetzee will not do is make himself available for interview. He belongs 
to that small band of heroic writers who - without being as reclusive as 
Pynchon or Salinger - have declined to make themselves available for 
publicity purposes.

Beckett, one of Coetzee's inspirations, stands at their head. He had "no 
views to inter", he would tell applicants; "not even for you" he said to 
friends. As John Fletcher, says in a new book, About Beckett: "Not once was 
his face seen on the front cover of a glossy magazine below a banner 
headline announcing: ¢ÆThe publicity-shy dramatist talks to us exclusively 
about the star-studded production of X, opening this week at the Y Theatre 
on Z Avenue ..."

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