{"id":5744,"date":"2022-12-09T21:39:46","date_gmt":"2022-12-10T05:39:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=5744"},"modified":"2022-12-09T21:39:46","modified_gmt":"2022-12-10T05:39:46","slug":"new-yorker-j-m-coetzees-war-against-global-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=5744","title":{"rendered":"New Yorker: J. M. Coetzee&#8217;s War Against Global English"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/JM-Coetzee-El-Polaco.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5745\" width=\"375\" height=\"528\"\/><\/center><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>It may come as a surprise to most of J. M. Coetzee\u2019s readers that he published a new novel in August. \u201cEl Polaco,\u201d which is set in Barcelona, is about a romantic entanglement between Witold, a concert pianist of about seventy known for his controversial interpretations of Chopin, and Beatriz, a music-loving Catalan woman in her forties who assists him during his stay in the city. Fired more by mind than body, the two attempt to conduct their affair using the kind of stilted, colorless \u201cglobal English\u201d to which international communication so often defaults. Apart from an initial carnal encounter, their romance takes place in large part by correspondence: Witold writes Beatriz poems, but, with English verse lying beyond his grasp, he does so in his native Polish. Beatriz engages a translator in order not just to understand but evaluate Witold\u2019s poems, which she gives modest marks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A short novel, restrained even by Coetzee\u2019s standards, \u201cEl Polaco\u201d is made up entirely of numbered paragraphs, some of which consist of a single sentence. The first: \u201c<em>La mujer es la primera en causarle problemas, seguida pronto por el hombre<\/em>.\u201d Witold is <em>el hombre<\/em>; Beatriz is <em>la mujer<\/em>. But occasional slips in the dissimulating, pseudo-objective voice of the text suggest that she\u2019s also the narrator. Another sign of her role is the book\u2019s language: though first written in English, \u201cEl Polaco\u201d has so far only been published in a Spanish translation. The translator, Mariana Dim\u00f3pulos, played an unusually active role in the novel\u2019s creation: Coetzee has spoken of incorporating her suggestions about how a woman like Beatriz would think, speak, and act back into the original manuscript.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Read the whole thing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/books\/page-turner\/j-m-coetzees-war-against-global-english\">at the New Yorker<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It may come as a surprise to most of J. M. Coetzee\u2019s readers that he published a new novel in August. \u201cEl Polaco,\u201d which is set in Barcelona, is about a romantic entanglement between Witold, a concert pianist of about seventy known for his controversial interpretations of Chopin, and Beatriz, a music-loving Catalan woman in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-new-yorker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5744"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5746,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5744\/revisions\/5746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}