Foe (Methuen Modern Plays)

by J.M. Coetzee

[clementine]

I like the impulse to problematize the narrative of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and certainly this book was an interesting exploration of authorship and whose voice gets prioritized. Though this is postcolonial fiction written during the Apartheid era by a (white) South African, I'm not entirely convinced that it does quite enough work to move away from patronizing colonialist attitudes. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak famously asked "Can the subaltern speak?", and in this retelling of Defoe's novel, the tongueless Friday literally cannot speak. Susan's anxieties about Foe accurately representing her story are echoed in her frantic and obsessive quest to find out Friday's truth, which ends in her constructing many a narrative about his life and experiences. The inevitable conclusion of Coetzee's literary rumination is that Friday's voice must give way to Susan's, and that Susan's authorial ownership comes at the expense of Friday's. Lots of interesting stuff going on here, and well-written, but ultimately it doesn't quite hit the mark for me.