Foe 2

"There are times when benevolence deserts me and I use words only as the shortest way to subject him to my will."

Here, Coetzee's Susan Barton is writing to Daniel Foe (Defoe) about the mute Friday whom she has brought back from Cruso's island.

It is a less extreme version, perhaps, of the end of the long text Conrad's Kurtz writes about the problem of the natives (in Heart of Darkness): "Exterminate all the brutes!"

I was inspired to reread Heart of Darkness by C. Dale Young's comment that he re-reads it every year. But I have not gotten around to it yet. First a bunch of Coetzee.