Elizabeth Costello! (and next month's book!)

Hello dear blog readers,

We had a very enjoyable stimulating discussion this evening about Elizabeth Costello.
We had 8 people at the meeting, and in addition to the book discussion, ate some cheese and cookies, drank some wine, and celebrated Lisa's birthday with an orange sherbert ice cream cake and some chocolate cake as well! The new student lounge is really great. Some of us played pool and ping pong afterwards. Check it out when you get a chance.

Before getting in to some of the what we talked about... I should mention that we selected next months book: it is Longitude by Dava Sobel. Tentative meeting time is 6PM Tue. June 19. More info to come.

On to Elizabeth Costello... Some people were skeptical about this book at first, but in the end found things to enjoy about it. One complaint was that the plot was not very tight. There were certainly some interesting ideas being discussed, but as fiction, some found it not quite up to par. I'm personally ambivalent about this issue and would like to hear from others about it. Another issue we discussed was Coetzee's choice of an older woman as his protaganist. Is she the character that most represents his views, or perhaps her son or some of the other background characters who judge her? I think that many of us agreed that as a portrait of a writer, we found Elizabeth to be a realistic person. Her relationships with her son and sister were discussed- which some of us were really able to relate to.

There was also the question of whether it was a supportive rendering of the character of Elizabeth. Does Coetzee try to undermine her, or is he ultimately supportive?

I raised the question of what purpose the the chapter called "Eros" played in the book. It was suggested that the same question could be raised about any of the chapters.

I'm sure I left out all sorts of other interesting things, but I'll leave it there for now. If anyone who was there wants to throw in some other stuff, that'd be great. And for anyone else who read the book (or those who have yet to finish ;) ), let's hear what you're thinking about!

...Update: I'd originally posted the date for the next meeting as Tue. June 21. I seem to be incapable of reading a calendar these days. June 21 is Thursday. So I've changed the date to one that actually exists: Tue. June 19.