Van de Schoonheid en de Troost — Season 1, Episode 17: Innocence?: John M. Coetzee

Episode synopsis

Interview with John Coetzee, South African writer (in a hotel room in downtown Cape Town and on Diaz Beach, South Africa). Coetzee talks about the complexity and meaning of beauty, aesthetics, marriage, authorship and the solace of writing, South Africa and the cruelty of the Apartheid system, human suffering, the solace of nature, his childhood, perfectionism, music, the flora and fauna of Diaz Beach, conservation, silence, innocence, discomfort, art, language, self-knowledge, his conception of heaven, the afterlife and death. Coetzee reads from his own work in the hotel room.

About Van de Schoonheid en de Troost

To his guests – artists, scientists, writers, philosophers and musicians – Wim Kayzer in Of Beauty and Consolation asks the philosophical question: What makes this life worth living?

More episodes from Season 1

• E1Fathers Roses: Wole Soyinka
• E2Homecoming: Roger Scruton
• E3Alone on the mountain: Jane Goodall
• E4The Code of Pasternak: George Steiner
• E5The End of the Thirteenth: Vladimir Ashkenazy
• E6Thor, Newton, Einstein: Steven Weinberg
• E7Guilt: Martha Nussbaum
• E8You Are There and You Are Not: Karel Appel
• E9The Greatest Mystery Is Not the Universe: Edward Witten
• E10Dear Mother: Elizabeth Loftus
• E11When My Father Was Still Big: Rutger Kopland
• E12What's Mary Doing in the Cave: Gary Lynch