The Exchanges of The Good Story

This contribution to the Special Issue on epistolary form in the work of J. M. Coetzee examines the form of the “exchanges” in The Good Story (2015). These exchanges extend Coetzee’s longstanding interest in the methods and limitations of psychoanalysis. They stand as an iteration of self-reflexive meditation on his writing’s imbrication in these methods and limitations. At the same time, the exchanges strive to enact methods—the sympathetic, the erotic, the intimated—that Coetzee’s writing associates with the literary and would bring into productive dialogue with psychoanalytic practices.