Jesus Wants His Name Back

The Schooldays of Jesus. By J. M. Coetzee. (Viking. 2016) A Reaction.

This book was an extraordinary, egregious, mind numbing waste of my time. Any given page could have been fine. But that would have required most of the others to be different. And yet the author won a Nobel Prize for Literature. It's simply shocking for me now to go to Amazon and see how the book reviewers praised it! I read every word and their remarks almost convince me they read a different book, or were on serious hallucinogenics when they read this one. We live in a strange world, my friends, a very strange world whose unimaginable absurdities almost seem on some days to match its possibilities and beauties.

The book has nothing to do with anyone named Jesus, unless the author wants us to think that the boy in the book called David and told repeatedly that this is not his real name, is supposed to be Jesus. A man, Simon (also not his real name - they're running from the law for David's truancy as a 6 year old), came across him on a passenger ship, lost at age 6, and helped him find his mother. The man then shepherds mother and son into a new life, staying with them as a sort of surrogate father. But they aren't a real couple. Ines, the mother, isn't interested. And, yeah, I do get it. Young boy, real mother, dad who isn't biological. Jesus. David is gifted and headstrong and unruly, fascinated by numbers considered as Platonic entities. He's relentless and irritating with why questions far beyond the norm. He's arrogant. The three people go to work on a farm. They leave the farm. David attends a strange dance academy run by odd mystical people who take their young students to a nude beach. A ruffian is in love with the beautiful main teacher of the academy and murders her just to do it. Nothing seems to happen for a reason. The end.

It's as if I were to offer you to repeatedly hit your bare foot hard with a hammer if you'll just pay me $100. "Why?" you say. "To show you the manifest absurdity of life," I explain. "Why don't you just tell that, then, instead?" you ask. "You'll remember it better with the hammer involved, " I point out. "But the offer itself is absurd," you rightly say. "Exactly," I respond. "Well, at least you're consistent," you reply. I frown. "I therefore hereby withdraw the offer, but I'll still take the hundred. Even without the hammer, you'll remember well enough." - That's my doing what the Nobel Prize Winner does with this book. I'll take check or direct deposit.

Here's what the gatekeepers say, and, as I've said, I think they were all on drugs:

<<“[The Schooldays of Jesus is] a kind of fusion genre blending the energy of philosophical dialogue, the warmth and unprogrammed humor of father-son repartee, the emotional potency of a family romance and finally the uncanny suggestion of allegory (womb as ship, birth as disembarkation). The result is rich, dense, often amusing and, above all, full of inner tension and suspense.”—New York Times Book Review

“Freed from literary convention, Coetzee writes not to provide answers, but to ask great questions.” —The Economist

“The Schooldays of Jesus is a powerful novel that steamrolls through the reader’s mind with many striking ideas and beliefs. Propelled by the battle between two different philosophies, the philosophy of the higher realm of passion and fantasy and the philosophy of the orderly, measurable world of rationality, The Schooldays of Jesus explores a striking quest for meaning.”—New York Journal of Books

“Coetzee has an impeccable ear for the tender patter between a curious child and a conscientious father figure who never wants to lose his patience . . . There’s no denying the haunting quality of Coetzee’s measured prose, his ability to suspend ordinary events in a world just a few degrees away from our own." —The Washington Post

“Coetzee delivers a beautiful sequel in The Schooldays of Jesus . . . They are tender, supple works written by a man who engages with the world in a range of moods: from the serious political and ethical thrust of his South African novels to the artistically playful temper of his late style . . . pure poetry.”—Charleston Post and Courier

“Many scenes have the qualities of miniature Socratic dialogues. Their pleasures are pure, as Coetzee has cleared away modern prejudices and stripped his characters’ philosophical conversations to a skeletal core . . . there’s a stark beauty to these novels of ideas and the haunting images that infuse them: a young boy pondering a bird with a broken wing, a beautiful woman turned blue by death, an old man trying to dance.” —New York Magazine

“As compelling, and confounding, as its predecessor.” —Booklist (starred)>>

So. If you waste your time on this one as I did, I'll be keen to hear your reaction.