Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II [Paperback]

 

 

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Sometimes there is an advantage in reading books by the same author in reverse order. This has been the case here for me. Having read and greatly enjoyed his most recent Summertime: Fiction, in which Coetzee creates an intriguing portrait of one John Coetzee, deceased, a kind of alter ego, and whose personality emerges through interviews and recollections by several friends and acquaintances. In his 2002 portrait "Youth" he distances himself from the younger John by writing what he terms an "autre-biography"*). Written in the present tense and in the third person, the story has a lively and immediate reality while at the same time suggesting a clear distance between the author and his subject. With the hindsight of SUMMERTIME, this reader for one, wondered how much Coetzee has creatively changed or adapted the realities of John's growing up story to suit his idea of who he might have been.

Coetzee concentrates on a decisive period in John's life - from his mid-teens to his early twenties. In this coming of age portrait of John, we see an awkward youth, whose mind hovers between ambitious dreams and self-doubt. He is a young South African, determined to escape the confines of family and the restrictions in his country. Coetzee presents us with a fascinating and often entertaining quasi-memoir, set against the backdrop of a tumultuous period in history: The frequent unrests and subsequent violent suppression of protests by South African blacks (e.g. Sharpville), the Cuban missile crisis, the declaration of South Africa as a republic, etc.

John, while a reasonably successful mathematics student, sees his real calling in being a poet. Poetry for him is the ultimate in artistic expression, prose would only be second best. He also dreams of being kissed by a muse, falling madly in love and that everything else will follow from there smoothly and happily. Life, not surprisingly, turns out very differently and Coetzee's sense of irony is subtle, yet evident throughout the novel. John is somewhat of a reluctant student of passion, experiencing it more vividly in his mind than he is able to transpose it into reality.

Leaving South Africa, he moves to London and from there to a country estate in Berkshire where he is employed as a computer programmer. The description of his daily routines, in North London in particular, and his commentary on life around him are wonderfully accurate, perceptive and also funny. Having lived there for many years, I could relate to many of John's experiences. His ambitions, on the artistic and the personal fronts, don't progress as hoped and are, at least for a while, pushed to the back of his mind. Somewhat disillusioned John nevertheless finds a certain level of inner peace. However, this state of mind and body can only be temporary and he soon struggles again with options and alternatives to move on. Will he get back to his dream of being a poet? Or will he have to settle for second-best and try his hand on prose.

J.M. Coetzee writes in a dry, yet engaging style. The reader feels empathy with the subject and despite Coetzee's detached and often ironic analysis of John's complex inner struggle, the reader cannot help but smile at times as John describes the environment around him. [Friederike Knabe]

*) In an interview with David Attwell in 2002, Coetzee asserted that "all autobiography is autre-biography", or the biography of an other. "Genre definitions", he said, "- at least those definitions employed by ordinary readers - are quite crude.

My voyage of trough Coetzee's books continues as the time progresses, and as I read more and more, I begain to undersatnd all that I failed in earlier readings...and I find myself wondering, how could one write so good, how could one put on paper every thought that troubled me since I'm aware of my existence...
This you may call an autobiography, an autobiography which presents a young student, artist-to-be, fleeinf from sout-africa in a land of romantic poets, The england, where he does not find, neither poets nor art...
If you ever wondered about your place in modern world, if you ever longed for an "old times" this is the book for you...
(Oh, I almost forgott - if you don't have an elementary education of romanesque poets, philosophy and general conception of the world, this book will be slightly incomprehensible :)

Very beautiful written. But don't expect an easy-listening afternoon. This book is black. Very black. A very depressing athmosphere but interesting to the reader. It gives you the chance to look back yourself and see what you reached so far in life. And are you better off than John, who is in fact Coetzee himself? You look trough the eyes of a young man who has thrown himself into the big world while in fact he is not ready. Coetzee reveals his youth in London and wich kind of person he was. At the surface he seems egoistic, asocial and pathetic but deeper you discover someone completely else. Just by reading.

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