Typist of A Bad Year
In J.M. Coetzee’s new novel Diary of A Bad Year, the old protagonist is in lust with a Filipina named Anya. From the New York Times book review:
“At 72, Señor C has Parkinson’s disease; his eyesight is failing him; his typing isn’t what it used to be. But his lust is intact, at least as expressed by “a metaphysical ache.†In the laundry room of his apartment building, he encounters a young woman with “a derrière so near to perfect as to be angelic,†and soon he has hired the owner of this apparition, a Filipina whose name is Anya and who lives upstairs, to type the manuscript of his opinions, which he dictates to her. These make up the first of the novel’s narratives and appear at the top of each page. Beneath them are Señor C’s accounts of his transactions with Anya, who (like Marijana, the Croatian nurse who cares for Paul Rayment in “Slow Manâ€) provides at least as much psychic as physical assistance. In contrast to her employer, Anya is body first and intellect second. Her less lofty point of view inhabits, fittingly, the nether portion of the page. . .”