This week I looked at Coetzee's Slow Man and while I found the book a bit slow at first I was able to get into it and absorb some of the ideas Coetzee was getting across. The things that interested me the most in the novel was its take on history and the dynamic of the old and the new. History is set as part of the old, and is set in great peril when it comes into contact with the new. Furthermore, the novel points to the way in which the new is unnatural, or at least in a sense detached from the natural world that was part of the old. Machines can fabricate natural “looking” substitutes, but for Paul Reymant natural and originality only lies within the old. I found there to be a certain disdain for the new because it is seen as artificial and unable to tell the truth, while the old is presented as being pure and truthful. The first instance where I saw this was in chapter eight where Paul Reymant and Marijanna's daughter Ljuba have a discussion regarding his leg. Ljuba asks Paul if he has an artificial leg insisting on concept of having “screws” and Paul states, “I have no screws in me. If I had screws I would be a mechanical man. Which I am not.” (Coetzee, pg.56) Here in this phrase we see that for Paul any invasion of his body would be unnatural and he makes it a point to remark at the end that he is not, mechanical in any way, this is only the start of Paul's efforts to affirm his naturalness. Furthermore, what is important here is that the mixing of metal and flesh is seen as unnatural and so Paul can only fathom metal in a man if the man is machine, in other words a “mechanical man.” This idea is further emphasized by the story of the seamstress and the needle that Paul recalls. Paul then asks himself if “steel really [is] antipathetic to life? Can needles really enter the bloodstream?” The focus of Paul's meditation on this idea is that the steel is an invasive, and foreign being in the body, but what is most significant is Paul's inability to understand how someone made of flesh and bone, of the organic, can ignore the presence of something man-made and lifeless inhabiting their body. (Coetzee, pg. 55)
Another example of this comes in a moment where Paul is attending therapy and he is being pressed to get a prosthesis so that he may “look natural,” but Paul repeats that he “[prefers] to feel natural. (Coetzee, pg. 59) What is significant here is the idea that the mechanical has the ability to mimic the natural, but it would not be truthful to nature. In chapter nine in particular there is an emphasis on language that is associated with technology and the mechanisms of machinery. For example, Paul states that his therapist “Madeleine tells them...to re-program old and now obsolete memory systems.” (Coetzee, pg. 60) Madeleine uses words that could be easily applied to a machine, or more specifically something like a computer, because she is talking about changing the way something functions, replacing one program for a new program. Madeleine is presented as viewing her patients as having the capability to change almost seemingly at the drop of a hat. She does not make this statement explicit but she implies it with her language. The human body is set on the same level as the machine by Madeleine symbolizing the way in which the modern world pushes the natural into the mechanical trying to not simply change nature, but replace it. It is also significant that Madeleine uses the word “obsolete” because it implies that something is out of date, and so it can be said that the implication is that the natural, the body is out of date, and that it needs the aid of technology to be up to the minute. I also believe that the reference to “memory systems” is significant because in using this kind of technical languages tries to supplant and erase the organic language, it does not talk about memory as something ethereal but as something that can be stored and categorized within a system, to used as aid at later times. Paul resists this idea of “re-programming” all through out the novel, and it reminds me a lot about Disgrace and David Laurie's inability to accept the new South Africa that is unfolding in front of his eyes. Similarly, Paul resists change not simply because he is resisting the control from outside forces, but also because Paul cannot leave behind the natural world where things move at a different pace, a slower pace, much like pictures he developed in his youth. Paul's rejection of the a “new” world is a rejection of a fast changing, fast moving world, which does not allow him to go through a proper mourning process for his loss.
Another example of this comes in a moment where Paul is attending therapy and he is being pressed to get a prosthesis so that he may “look natural,” but Paul repeats that he “[prefers] to feel natural. (Coetzee, pg. 59) What is significant here is the idea that the mechanical has the ability to mimic the natural, but it would not be truthful to nature. In chapter nine in particular there is an emphasis on language that is associated with technology and the mechanisms of machinery. For example, Paul states that his therapist “Madeleine tells them...to re-program old and now obsolete memory systems.” (Coetzee, pg. 60) Madeleine uses words that could be easily applied to a machine, or more specifically something like a computer, because she is talking about changing the way something functions, replacing one program for a new program. Madeleine is presented as viewing her patients as having the capability to change almost seemingly at the drop of a hat. She does not make this statement explicit but she implies it with her language. The human body is set on the same level as the machine by Madeleine symbolizing the way in which the modern world pushes the natural into the mechanical trying to not simply change nature, but replace it. It is also significant that Madeleine uses the word “obsolete” because it implies that something is out of date, and so it can be said that the implication is that the natural, the body is out of date, and that it needs the aid of technology to be up to the minute. I also believe that the reference to “memory systems” is significant because in using this kind of technical languages tries to supplant and erase the organic language, it does not talk about memory as something ethereal but as something that can be stored and categorized within a system, to used as aid at later times. Paul resists this idea of “re-programming” all through out the novel, and it reminds me a lot about Disgrace and David Laurie's inability to accept the new South Africa that is unfolding in front of his eyes. Similarly, Paul resists change not simply because he is resisting the control from outside forces, but also because Paul cannot leave behind the natural world where things move at a different pace, a slower pace, much like pictures he developed in his youth. Paul's rejection of the a “new” world is a rejection of a fast changing, fast moving world, which does not allow him to go through a proper mourning process for his loss.
