On Beckett & Coetzee

'Beckett and Coetzee repudiate the idea that literature teaches or uplifts — it simply is what it is, thoughtful or not, and incapable of engagement on “issues.” It’s up to the reader to provide meaning. Conrad, too, wrote powerful fiction that readers would invest with contradictory interpretations. In Heart of Darkness, Conrad’s narrator introduces readers to what he is about to recount as one of Marlowe’s “inconclusive tales,” and Summertime, a story that luxuriates in doubt, echoes Conrad’s indirection.'

— John Strawn, The Oregonian