Unreliable Narration in Foe

J.M. Coetzee's Foe tells a story which takes place after the events of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, describing a story of a woman named Susan Barton who was also stranded on Cruso's island, and is trying to get her encounter with him published by author Daniel Foe. Many aspects of this story fit the idea of an "unreliable narrator," but the most unreliable part of the story seems to be an unreliable author, something which is by no fault Coetzee's but is inherit in writing a story such as this.

Focusing on the idea of an unreliable narrator, it is apparent that Foe can easily skew the story given to him any way he wants for the sake of creativity. The book unfolds as a series of letters Barton is mailing Foe, one large letter including her original story of Cruso and the rest answering questions Foe has asked her and explain things she would do differently in her work. Barton is giving these letters to Foe because he has much renown as a competent writer, and she wants Foe to turn her story into something readable for the general public. Now knowing that Foe is a writer, and since we are reading the letters given to him, it is entirely possible for him to manipulate the letters given to him or switch their order to make it more entertaining for the reader. His primary goal is to make something readable, not to simply post letters in a book. To achieve this goal, it is entirely possible for him to change Barton's story.

Now the idea of an unreliable author is one I have yet to see, but this story fits the mold for it perfectly. Looking back on the original Robinson Crusoe, many key aspects of the story are either not mentioned in Susan Barton's tale or are something completely different. In the original Friday never lost his tongue, Crusoe was a noble adventurer who did not die on his way back to Britain, and together Friday and Crusoe had another adventure after they arrived back in civilization. Worse yet, there is no mention of a character named Susan Barton anywhere in the novel. There are tons of other minor changes between both of the tales too. This can all be accredited to the writer Foe (obviously drawing a connection between the character Foe and the real writer DeFoe) editing the story around to make it entertaining, seemingly eliminating Barton from the story as a whole, but for the sake of a novel is it alright for Coetzee to change around major details of Defoe's original story? Coetzee turned the original 1719 version of Robinson Crusoe into Susan Barton's extremely bland version that we have in Foe, going as far as adding characters to the story, changing key components and eliminating original events altogether. I do not believe that Defoe's original story has yet achieved a "tall tale" status that warrants many different versions, and I cannot help but think that Defoe would not appreciate what Coetzee has done with his work if he were still around today.

Again, it is not Coetzee's fault that Defoe's tale has changed so much for Foe, as it would have to change to write a story such as this. This calls into question the entire idea of certain writers creating stories centered on the work of other authors, and if it is acceptable for details of the original work to be reconstructed. I believe this would only be passable if the original story remained intact, meaning Coetzee would have to work in certain parts from Robinson Crusoe that he initially left out, trying to get as much detail from Defoe's work as possible. Otherwise the new work would not live up to the standards set by the original, which is how I feel about Foe.

Source: Foe, J.M. Coetzee.