Statements from colleagues of John M. Coetzee

Additional Contact: Bill Harms 773-702-8356 w-harms@uchicago.edu Photos: John Coetzee Additional Links: Coetzee appointed Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought BBC: Coetzee wins Nobel literature prize Independent London: Mr Coetzee is run to earth through cyberspace Cultures of Creativity: The Centennial Exhibition of the Nobel Prize opens October 6 at the Museum of Science and Industry

Wayne Booth, George M. Pullman Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in English:

"Having read almost all of Coetzee's work I can honestly say that if I had been on the Nobel Prize Committee, he would have received it earlier. This enthusiasm springs from the ways in which he imagines himself sympathetically into characters of so many diverse kinds."

Jonathan Lear, John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought:

"John Coetzee is one of the great writers of our times, but he is also one of the world's great teachers. In the tradition of the exemplar, and the witness, he teaches us all what is really involved in reading a great book. He has taught me to look with greater clarity at the human soul, and his remarks in and out of class are lifetime memories, reverberating away."

Nathan Tarcov, Professor and Chair, Committee on Social Thought:

John Coetzee has been an invaluable colleague on the Committee on Social Thought the past seven years. He has taught a wide-range of courses on such subjects as realism in the novel, autobiography, Tolstoy's War and Peace, Proust's In Search of Lost Time, and Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov. Exemplifying the collegiality and interdisciplinarity we aspire to, he has frequently co-taught with other faculty on the Committee, This quarter, for example, he is teaching a course on Whitman with Mark Strand and one on Plato's Phaedrus with Jonathan Lear. He is admired by the students not only for his insight into works of literature but for his conscientious dedication to their education. He has participated actively in the composition and evaluation of our students' Fundamental Examinations on major texts, even emailing his characteristically thoughtful and detailed evaluations from the far corners of the earth in those quarters when he is not in residence. All the faculty and students of the Committee on Social Thought are thrilled at his newest honor.