Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #57603 in Books
• Published on: 2001-02-22
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Synopsis
Susan Barton finds herself marooned on an island in the Atlantic with an Englishman named Robinson Cruso and his mute slave Friday. Rescued after a year of Cruso's company, back in England with Friday in tow, she approaches the author Daniel Foe, offering him the story of the island if he will make her rich and famous. But Foe is less interested in the history of Robinson Cruso than in the story of Susan Barton. How did she earn a living in Brazil? Who were the mutineers who marooned her? Where is the daughter for whom she claims to have been searching the ends of the earth? And how did Friday lose his tongue?

Customer Reviews

'I am not a story', but a formidable masterpiece
This remarkable short novel has two interlinked levels: the relation fiction (art / writing) - reality and the `meaning / message' of a particular work of art, in our case `Foe'.

J.M. Coetzee uses the Robinson Crusoe story as well as the name of the author (Daniel Defoe, originally Foe) to delve deeply into the real nature of art and the real (hi)story of man (`the heart of man is a dark forest').
A work of fiction is part of reality. It is reality: `We [the novel and its characters] are all alive, part of the world.' But, if fiction (art) is part of the world, what is its function? `By art we have a means of giving voice', for instance to the speechless, who cannot tell the `real' story.
What is the truth in `Foe'? `Since we speak in figures', the truth is that slavers (the North) cut Friday's (the South's) tongue to make him speechless. The slavers continue, however, `to use words to subject their slaves to their will.' Friday underwent also a more atrocious mutilation: he is `unmanned'.
`Foe' states that `there are not two kinds of man, Englishman [pars pro toto] and savage.' Like for anyone else, Friday's desire is freedom: `How unnatural a lot is for any creature to be kept from its kind. Love perishes outside one's kind.' But, `as he is dumb we can tell ourselves his desires are dark to us.'
However, we must speak the unspoken, `we must give reckoning of ourselves to the world to hold our place.'
At the end, Friday's mouth is forced open and his message, `a slow stream, flows up to the end of the earth, like the roar of a seashell held to the ear.'

In `Foe', J.M. Coetzee dresses a sharp and clear mirror for artists and for the South.
He has written a work of genius, a formidable masterpiece.

Difficult, but rewarding: it stays with you.
Man, this took me ages to read considering it's only 200 pages long. Like the rest of Coetzee's books, this is really about South Africa and yet it's not about south africa.

This is a book for 'intellectuals' or rather, my primative brain took a while to digest this. It has a tendancy to go off on tangents too much. I think Disgrace is a much better novel than Foe, but Foe is still one of those books that I recommend to people just because it is so unique. About the same time I read this I watched a DVD called Caché, again a 'difficult' film that took some decoding and input from the viewer. If you have seen Caché you'll know what I mean.

Confusing
First of all I have to say that English is not my mother tongue, but I think that my problems to understand this book have not been only a vocabulary issue, I have just finished this book, and I am still asking myself what was this book about, I can not see what is what Mr Coetzee was trying to tell me, and what is the conclusion of the story.
May be to deep for somebody as simple as me.