![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Acknowledgments
The support of the National Research Foundation of South Africa and the Research Fund of the University of the Western Cape is gratefully acknowledged. Permission to cite unpublished manuscript material and correspondence was kindly given by J.M. Coetzee, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre and Wieland Schulz-Keil.
Notes
1 Newman, Waiting for the Barbarians, screenplay, unrealised, 107–8.
2 For a useful critical discussion, see Michael Coyne’s The Crowded Prairie. Also John Saunders’s overview, The Western Genre.
3 Coetzee, Two Screenplays. The original text of Coetzee’s unrealized screenplay version of Waiting for the Barbarians is available in the Coetzee Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, henceforth HRC. Coetzee’s other screenplay In the Heart of the Country is available at the National English Literary Museum, Grahamstown.
4 The intersection between Coetzee’s novels and the screenplays is a potentially fascinating area of study. One of the early manuscript versions of Life & Times of Michael K employs cinematic modes, showing the influence of the In the Heart of the Country screenplay. Both texts were written concurrently. See a forthcoming paper, “Cinematic Modes in Life & Times of Michael K” for more detailed discussion.
5 Neale, Genre and Hollywood, 242.
6 Ibid., 238.
7 Burgess, “On the Hopelessness of turning Good Books into Films,” 15. I’m indebted for the Burgess reference to Kamilla Elliott, Rethinking the Novel/Film Debate.
8 For an overview of Coetzee’s thinking on film, see my “Introduction,” in Two Screenplays, ed. Coetzee.
9 Stam, “Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Adaptation,” 4.
10 In adaptation theory, fidelity is generally regarded as with suspicion as a simplistic and uncritical way of understanding the complex relationship between text and film. Robert Stam for example critiques “fidelity criticism’s discourse of loss” (“Introduction,” 20). Brian McFarlane’s Novel to Film: An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation (1996) is an important early study. See also Kamilla Elliot’s complex and rich contribution to the field with her book Rethinking the Novel/Film Debate (2003).
11 Stam, “Introduction,” 19.
12 Palmer, “Introduction,” 1.
13 Levin, “On the Edge of Empire,” 44.
14 Kannemeyer, J.M. Coetzee. A Life in Writing, 315.
15 Ibid., 312–9; Wittenberg, “Introduction.”
16 In a parenthetical aside in Doubling the Point, Coetzee remarks that Dust “retains virtually none of the sequence divisions and indeed none of the quite swift pacing of the novel. It loses a lot of vitality thereby, in my opinion,” 60. Coetzee’s more candidly expressed disapproval is also evident in correspondence, for example in a letter to James Polley, July 17, 1985, Coetzee Collection, HRC.
17 Letter by J.M. Coetzee to Peter Lampack, April 25, 1985, HRC.
18 Letter by J.M. Coetzee to Charlie Nairn, March 31, 1986, HRC.
19 Letter by J.M. Coetzee to James Polley, June 19, 1979, Kannemeyer Papers (henceforth KP).
20 Letter by Chester Dent to J.M. Coetzee, January 31, 1982, KP.
21 Letter by J.M. Coetzee to E. Paice, February 27, 1984, HRC.
22 Letter by J.M. Coetzee to Marion Hänsel, September 26, 1982, KP.
23 Letter by J.M. Coetzee to E. Paice, February 27, 1984, HRC.
24 Letter by J.M. Coetzee to Peter Lampack, February 26, 1984, HRC.
25 Letter by J.M. Coetzee to E. Paice, February 27, 1984, HRC.
26 Letter by J.M. Coetzee to E. Paice, March 25, 1984, HRC.
27 Ibid.
28 Kannemeyer, J.M. Coetzee. A Life in Writing, 314.
29 The information is drawn from Schulz-Keil’s introductory letter to Coetzee, February 16, 1984, HRC.
30 Schultz-Keil, “Ein Richter und sein Henker,” 189. My translation.
31 Ibid., 189.
32 W. Schulz-Keil, Letter and film proposal sent to J.M. Coetzee, March 17, 1984, HRC.
33 In the In the Heart of the Country screenplay, Coetzee had earlier utilized voice-over extensively, leading to conflict with Clive Levinson. Marion Hänsel had also rejected voice-over as a cinematic technique, and used it sparingly in Dust. Coetzee castigated the conservative attitudes to voice-over in Doubling the Point (60).
34 Schulz-Keil, Letter and film proposal sent to J.M. Coetzee, March 17, 1984, HRC.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.
37 Letter by J.M. Coetzee to W. Schulz-Keil, May 14, 1984, HRC.
38 Coetzee was attracted to the estranging effects that could be achieved by separating image and voice in film, effects that could be attained by utilizing the technique of voice-over. For more details on Coetzee’s approach to voice-over, see the discussion in Doubling the Point (60).
39 Letter by J.M. Coetzee to Peter Lampack, April 25, 1985, HRC.
40 Letter by J.M. Coetzee to Peter Lampack, September 1, 1985, HRC.
41 The incident in which a bullet was fired into Coetzee’s car in 1979 is discussed in more detail in Kannemeyer (J.M. Coetzee. A Life in Writing, 211).
42 Coetzee, Two Screenplays, 7.
43 Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, 189.
44 Coetzee, Two Screenplays, 6.
45 Letter by J.M. Coetzee to Murray Pollinger, March 11, 1987, HRC.
46 For years, Schulz-Keil kept Suite 39 at the Chateau Marmont, rooms he had “inherited” from the famous Czech-British film maker Karel Reisz (responsible for the 1981 adaptation of A French Lieutenant’s Woman).
47 Brown, “The Chateau Marmont is Ready for its Close-up,” online.
48 Letter by J.M. Coetzee to Peter Lampack, October 28, 1988, HRC.
49 Froug, Zen and the Art of Screenwriting, 130.
50 Letter by J.M. Coetzee to Peter Lampack, October 28, 1988, HRC.
51 The copy of the Newman screenplay with Coetzee’s annotations is now kept at NELM, part of a miscellaneous collection of adaptations that he deposited in 2001.
52 Letter by J.M. Coetzee to Peter Lampack, December 12, 1988, HRC.
53 Newman, “Waiting for the Barbarians,” unrealized screenplay, 2.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid., 111.
56 Ibid., 75.
57 Ibid.
58 J.M. Coetzee correspondence to Schulz-Keil, December 5, 1988. HRC.
59 Ibid.
60 Schulz-Keil to H. Wittenberg, October 9, 2013, personal email correspondence.
61 Newman, “Waiting for the Barbarians,” unrealized screenplay, 122.
62 Elliott, Rethinking the Film/Novel Debate, 143.
63 Schulz-Keil, Letter and film proposal sent to J.M. Coetzee, March 17, 1984, HRC.
64 Schulz-Keil, personal communication with H. Wittenberg, October 14, 2013.
65 For a more detailed account of the Coetzee—Fitzgerald collaboration, see Wittenberg, “Introduction.”
66 Kazakhstanskaya Pravda, “Festival Over—A New Work Starting,” online.
67 Dovey and Dovey, “Coetzee on Film,” 77.