Waiting for the Barbarians - J.M. Coetzee
London: Vintage 2004 edition.
There is a discussion of time travel in Restaurant at the End of the Universe, during which Ford Prefect describes filming water going down a drain, then threading the tape backwards and watching the water spiral out of the drain. Reading Barbarians is pretty much like that, except you're never really sure what emotion or intangible thing is doing the spiraling.
The first-person narrator is an unnamed magistrate in a town on the edge of the empire, adjacent to the territory of the titular barbarians. The only names ever given are for people and government departments; we never find out the name of the town, or the empire, or what the barbarians call themselves. It sounds excessively didactic - 'oh yes, this empire is all empires, whatever' - but it never reduces characterisation. The magistrate might not have a name but he is a distinct person, with a certain style of thinking and acting and a particular sense of humour.
The book moves in four stages:
1 - rising tension as (the magistrate is told) the empire fears barbarian attack. An inspector from the secret police comes to town and interrogates a man and a boy; the man dies. The magistrate can't help looking at the dead man and seeing he has been tortured. The inspector rides out with some soldiers and comes back with prisoners - none of them a threat.
2 - slippage of norms. The magistrate has an indescribable relationship (erotic and platonic, physical and intangible) with a barbarian girl who was tortured by the inspector. He returns her to her people. Then soldiers arrive, to protect the town and attack the barbarians, and the magistrate is locked up for collusion and protesting the brutality of the inspector and army.
3 - imprisonment. The magistrate watches the mood of the town change. Most of the soldiers leave, some remain to guard the town. The magistrate is humiliated.
4 - return. The soldiers left to guard leave the town, taking much of its wealth with them. The remnants of the army pass through, mostly destroyed by weather and disease while chasing the barbarians. The magistrate returns to his old position, except without government approval.
The style is interesting: long sentences that are often quite dry but with flashes of wry humour, appropriate for an aging public servant. He thinks about things, sometimes more than he should. When the narrative becomes tense, when the magistrate is in danger or being humiliated, that comes across. Not in the narration, which is sometimes pretty damn omniscient for first person, but in the dialogue: everyone talks like a real person, and even the magistrate sometimes fumbles and can't express himself.
Much like the plot, the world of the book is dry, cool, and not overly fussed about human frailty. The magistrate is an amateur archaeologist, and unearths some written cards from a previous civilisation, the mystery of which wraps around the book like a noose with a very, very long cord. The barbarians used to occupy the land the town is built on, and they expect to again, once salination runs the empire off (which is implied to have happened to previous empires). The book's swirling morass of power, morality, truth and obedience is set in a wholly temporary environment which the empire is determined to hold forever. The fight against the barbarians seems pointless, orchestrated by fear or ambition from the centre of the empire.
This is a hard book to summarise. You could say it is 'about' civilisation, or power, or empire, or truth; but I don't think it is. It's about a man in a situation, making choices and facing the consequences of them. Applicability rather than allegory, as Tolkien insisted.
Most of the book is spent waiting (hur dur hur), often for something that never arrives. The barbarian attack never comes. The army does not return in glory. The empire's reinforcements will come next year, after the winter.
What matters is what happens during the wait, and that is mostly humans exercising power over other humans. What I took away from the book was the importance of reflection upon power relationships, upon obedience. Who am I obeying? Why? The magistrate struggles with these questions during his incarceration, both about others - he spends a lot of time trying to imagine being a torturer - and about himself. Why is he resisting the empire? What impulse has arisen in him? Does it matter? There is also a lot of consideration of groups and how they function, particularly the somewhat abstract sources of authority on the edge of the empire. 'This man is an inspector of the secret police, he gives you orders' - and they can be terrible orders. Does an inspectorship demand your obedience? If it does not, what does?
This book is hardly a pleasant one, and the prose is not incredible. What it is, is human, the incoherent questions down at the bottom of our souls expressed in a fractured but immediately understandable way. It is a book of questions. What would I do if I was the magistrate?
What would you do?
Verdict: A powerful book. Worthy of being on the list.
There is a discussion of time travel in Restaurant at the End of the Universe, during which Ford Prefect describes filming water going down a drain, then threading the tape backwards and watching the water spiral out of the drain. Reading Barbarians is pretty much like that, except you're never really sure what emotion or intangible thing is doing the spiraling.
The first-person narrator is an unnamed magistrate in a town on the edge of the empire, adjacent to the territory of the titular barbarians. The only names ever given are for people and government departments; we never find out the name of the town, or the empire, or what the barbarians call themselves. It sounds excessively didactic - 'oh yes, this empire is all empires, whatever' - but it never reduces characterisation. The magistrate might not have a name but he is a distinct person, with a certain style of thinking and acting and a particular sense of humour.
The book moves in four stages:
1 - rising tension as (the magistrate is told) the empire fears barbarian attack. An inspector from the secret police comes to town and interrogates a man and a boy; the man dies. The magistrate can't help looking at the dead man and seeing he has been tortured. The inspector rides out with some soldiers and comes back with prisoners - none of them a threat.
2 - slippage of norms. The magistrate has an indescribable relationship (erotic and platonic, physical and intangible) with a barbarian girl who was tortured by the inspector. He returns her to her people. Then soldiers arrive, to protect the town and attack the barbarians, and the magistrate is locked up for collusion and protesting the brutality of the inspector and army.
3 - imprisonment. The magistrate watches the mood of the town change. Most of the soldiers leave, some remain to guard the town. The magistrate is humiliated.
4 - return. The soldiers left to guard leave the town, taking much of its wealth with them. The remnants of the army pass through, mostly destroyed by weather and disease while chasing the barbarians. The magistrate returns to his old position, except without government approval.
The style is interesting: long sentences that are often quite dry but with flashes of wry humour, appropriate for an aging public servant. He thinks about things, sometimes more than he should. When the narrative becomes tense, when the magistrate is in danger or being humiliated, that comes across. Not in the narration, which is sometimes pretty damn omniscient for first person, but in the dialogue: everyone talks like a real person, and even the magistrate sometimes fumbles and can't express himself.
Much like the plot, the world of the book is dry, cool, and not overly fussed about human frailty. The magistrate is an amateur archaeologist, and unearths some written cards from a previous civilisation, the mystery of which wraps around the book like a noose with a very, very long cord. The barbarians used to occupy the land the town is built on, and they expect to again, once salination runs the empire off (which is implied to have happened to previous empires). The book's swirling morass of power, morality, truth and obedience is set in a wholly temporary environment which the empire is determined to hold forever. The fight against the barbarians seems pointless, orchestrated by fear or ambition from the centre of the empire.
This is a hard book to summarise. You could say it is 'about' civilisation, or power, or empire, or truth; but I don't think it is. It's about a man in a situation, making choices and facing the consequences of them. Applicability rather than allegory, as Tolkien insisted.
Most of the book is spent waiting (hur dur hur), often for something that never arrives. The barbarian attack never comes. The army does not return in glory. The empire's reinforcements will come next year, after the winter.
What matters is what happens during the wait, and that is mostly humans exercising power over other humans. What I took away from the book was the importance of reflection upon power relationships, upon obedience. Who am I obeying? Why? The magistrate struggles with these questions during his incarceration, both about others - he spends a lot of time trying to imagine being a torturer - and about himself. Why is he resisting the empire? What impulse has arisen in him? Does it matter? There is also a lot of consideration of groups and how they function, particularly the somewhat abstract sources of authority on the edge of the empire. 'This man is an inspector of the secret police, he gives you orders' - and they can be terrible orders. Does an inspectorship demand your obedience? If it does not, what does?
This book is hardly a pleasant one, and the prose is not incredible. What it is, is human, the incoherent questions down at the bottom of our souls expressed in a fractured but immediately understandable way. It is a book of questions. What would I do if I was the magistrate?
What would you do?
Verdict: A powerful book. Worthy of being on the list.