Read It For What It Isn't

For part of fall break, I was in New York City with my dad. He asked, as most parents do, how my classes were going. More specifically, he asked what books I was reading. I responded, "A book called Foe; I've never heard of it." He'd never heard of it either, I presume, because he responded, as I shared in class, "Faux? F-a-u-x?" I quickly and absentmindedly answered, "No. F-o-e, like an enemy." It was not until our class discussion yesterday that I realized that I should have thought about this homonym to the novel's title a bit more thoroughly. In the moment, however, not only did I not notice this connection, but as soon as my dad brought it up I corrected him and made sure he knew that the right title was Foe. This interaction made it clear to me that sometimes, to understand the full meaning of something, like a book title, you need to read it for what it isn't; to step back, stop thinking about things so literally, and look for different meanings. I think that my realization is similar to the realization that Susan Barton begins to have about the way that she should have Mr. Foe tell her story. Around the middle of Part II, Susan begins to see why keeping her story completely literal and truthful won't be as fruitful an endeavor as adding some new meaning to the story. "Alas, we will never make out fortunes, Friday," (82) Susan laments "by being merely what we are, or were." (82) To get the most out of her story, Susan can keep her intentions the same (as in, her reason for telling the story in the first place), but relate her story in a less literal sense, perhaps making it more exciting as she knows Mr. Foe wishes to do. It seems as though Susan's intentions in publishing this story is to make money so she can move on with her life. Therefore, the literal truth of the story is less important than the connections and meaning that her audience will discover and add. It's possible (although unlikely) that Coetzee never thought about the homonym "faux" when choosing his title, but because we were able to make a connection between this word and the story, the homonym has meaning. These discovered meanings, whether intended or not, add depth and new connections to the story.