AUSTER AND COETZEE

Paul Auster & J. M. Coetzee, Here and Now: Letters (2008-2011) (New York: Viking, 2013) (Auster to Coetzee, January 10, 2009: "What I am saying, I suppose, is that there are things that happen to us in the real world that resemble fiction. And if fiction turns out to be real, then perhaps we have to rethink out definition of reality." Id. at 35, 36. Auster to Coetzee, September 29, 2009: "We live in an age of endless writing workshops, graduate writing programs (imagine getting a degree in writing), there  are more poets per square inch than ever before, more poetry magazines, more books of poetry (99% of them published by microscopic small presses), poetry slams, performance poets, cowboy poets--and yet, for all this activity, little of note is being written. The burning ideas that fueled the innovations of the early modernists seems to have been extinguished. No one believes that poetry (or art) can change the world anymore. No one is on a holy mission. Poets are everywhere now, but they talk only to each other." Id. at 89, 90-91. Coetzee to Auster, October 14, 2009: "Something happened, it seems to me, in the late 1970s or early 1980s as a result of which the arts yielded up their leading role in our inner life. I am quite prepared to give heed to diagnoses of what happened between then and now that have a political or economics or even world-historical character; but I do nevertheless feel that there was a general failure among writers and artists to resist the challenge to their leading role, and that we are poorer today for that failure." Id. at 96, 98. Auster to Coetzee, November 12, 2010: "The 'mean vision' you talk about has been with us a lot longer than since 1970, I'm afraid. And contrary to the view I held when I was young--that people vote out of economic self-interest--I have now come to feel that many voters' choices are entirely irrational--or ideological, even if that ideology goes against their economic well-being. In 1984, during the Reagan's reelection campaign, I was going somewhere in a Brooklyn car service. The driver, who had been a welder at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, had lost his job when the union he belonged to was crushed by management. I said to him: ''You can thank Reagan for that--the greatest union-busting president in history.' And he replied" 'Maybe so, but I'm voting for him anyway.' 'Why in the world would you do that?' I asked. His answer: Because I don't want to see the fucking Commies take over South America.' An indelible moment in my political education. It was men like this, I imagine, who voted Hitler into power in 1933." Id. at 195, 196-197.).