Waiting for the Barbarians - Buddy Read

[Katy, Quarterly Long Reads]

Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee is a January 2021 buddy read.

[John Dishwasher John Dishwasher]

I found this book very enigmatic. I struggled with identifying its philosophical message all the way through. Probably there are layers of meaning I don’t get; but the thesis I put in my review is at least a defensible one. Some parts of the story were more engaging than others for me. I really liked the ambiguity of the book’s time and place and culture. His leaving those specifics out made its universality more palpable.

[Margaret]

I’m thinking of this novel as an exploration of how difficult it can be for us to truly open our minds to new concepts; how entrenched the boundaries between “us” and “them” can be. The narrator says (p. 179) “I think: There has been something staring me in the face, and still I do not see it.”

At times he tries to think outside the box: (p.58) “How do you eradicate contempt, especially when the contempt is founded on nothing more substantial than differences in table manners, variations in the structure of the eyelid? Shall I tell you what I sometimes wish? I wish that these barbarians would rise up and teach us a lesson, so that we would learn to respect them.”

But then he just can’t quite get there: (p. 178,179) “I think: I wanted to live outside history. I wanted to live outside the history that Empire imposes on its subjects, even its lost subjects. I never wished it for the barbarians that they should have the history of Empire laid upon them… I think: But when the barbarians taste bread, new bread and mulberry jam, bread and gooseberry jam, they will be won over to our ways.”

Each group sees “the others” as the barbarians. The indigenous people obviously learn to resent the Empire, the townspeople distrust the foreign soldiers and the Empire calls the indigenous people barbarians (as the narrator continues to do throughout the novel). I’m intrigued by the novel’s title.

I’m really glad I read this, it’s given me a lot to think about.