AustLit

'Near the end of J. M. Coetzee’s fictionalized memoir Summertime, an undated fragment from the notes of the protagonist John Coetzee presents the character at a crossroads. A cancerous tumor is found on his father’s larynx. After the prescribed laryngectomy, John perceives his father “like a corpse, the corpse of an old man” (262–63).1 John’s father is returned to his home by ambulance workers who provide a sheet of instructions before departing. In the fiction’s closing lines John gradually realizes his father’s care has become his responsibility: “It is not [the ambulance workers’] business, taking care of the wound, taking care of the patient. Their business is to convey the patient to his or her place of residence. After that it is the patient’s business, or the patient’s family’s business, or else no one’s business”. (Author's introduction)