Me siento engañado por la contratapa. Más allá de eso, me terminó gustando mucho y tiene unas reflexiones acerca de (esta) niñez que me gustaron mucho.

Third book read for my Art of Writing Life class. Big Slog!

Infancia cuenta la historia de John Coetzee, trasunto del propio autor, y ofrece una representación introspectiva de las propias experiencias de infancia del autor en Sudáfrica durante los años 50, sus relaciones con sus padres y su época escolar, entre los diez y los trece años. La novela es la primera de una trilogía de obras autobiográficas que también incluye Juventud y Verano.

La novela es una evocación detallada y cuidadosa del mundo interior de su protagonista, John Coetzee, y explora temas importantes como la identidad, la pertenencia o la búsqueda de sentido en la vida. John es un niño solitario que vive con sus padres y un hermano menor en una pequeña población de las afueras de Ciudad del Cabo. La relación con su padre es tensa y difícil, y el chaval lucha por encontrar un sentido de pertenencia en un mundo que a menudo lo hace sentir marginado y aislado. Una escuela en la que los alumnos son sometidos a castigos físicos reiterados, una personalidad introvertida, el desprecio que siente por su padre y la adoración que siente por su madre, aunque se cuide mucho de demostrárselo, marcan esos años de la infancia del protagonista.

A través de la prosa escueta y concisa de un narrador omnisciente, se nos muestran las complejas emociones, pensamientos y conflictos internos de John. Como en otras obras de Coetzee, la acción se narra en presente, por lo que en ciertos momentos nos parece estar leyendo un diario, aunque con la particularidad de estar narrado en tercera persona, tal vez con la intención de tomar una cierta distancia emocional de su propio personaje.

La novela está escrita en un estilo sencillo pero hermoso que es fácil de leer y que ayuda a transmitir la emotividad de los eventos que se están narrando. El tono de la voz narrativa es introspectivo y emocional, tomando incluso en ciertos momentos un matiz ingenuo y candoroso, como el que se supondría a un chaval de diez años, lo que refleja la naturaleza reflexiva y profunda del personaje principal. Coetzee utiliza frases cortas y simples para describir los detalles de la vida cotidiana de John, lo que acentúa la sensación de aislamiento y soledad que siente el personaje. La voz narrativa es evocadora y poética, lo que contribuye a la creación de una atmósfera emocionalmente intensa y a la exploración de temas profundos y universales, como la identidad, la soledad y la pertenencia. Al propio tiempo, es altamente descriptiva, lo que nos permite tener una imagen detallada de su entorno y su vida en Sudáfrica durante los años 50

Una de las características de la novela es su representación cruda de las duras realidades de la vida en la Sudáfrica de la era del apartheid. Coetzee no evita explorar las tensiones raciales y las injusticias sociales de la época, que provocan en el chaval sentimientos encontrados aunque aún sea demasiado joven para enfrentarse a ellos. Al mismo tiempo, Infancia también es una obra profundamente personal e introspectiva. Coetzee explora la vida interior de su protagonista con un ojo agudo para el detalle, capturando las complejidades de las emociones infantiles y la sensación de aislamiento que a menudo acompaña al crecimiento. El estilo de prosa escueto y poético de la novela es particularmente efectivo en transmitir el tormento interior del protagonista y su sentido de alienación ante hechos que no comprende.

Debido precisamente a esa introspección, la novela puede resultar lenta en su desarrollo. Aunque esto puede ser una virtud en términos de la exploración de temas profundos y la construcción de personajes complejos, también puede resultar frustrante para aquellos lectores que buscan una trama más rápida y dinámica, pues la novela carece de una trama como tal. Los eventos se presentan de forma pausada y no siempre de manera lineal. Esto puede hacer que algunos lectores se sientan aburridos o desconectados de la historia.

Como conclusión, Infancia es una novela notablemente bien escrita que ofrece un examen reflexivo de temas importantes, como la construcción de la identidad personal, la relación padres-hijos, o el sentido de pertenencia. La voz narrativa es cautivadora y la construcción del personaje protagonista es detallada y bien desarrollada, lo que permite que los lectores se sumerjan en la complejidad de su vida y experiencia. Aunque puede ser considerada una novela lenta en términos de su trama, la riqueza de sus temas y su profundidad temática hacen que valga la pena leerla.

Recomendaría la novela a los lectores interesados en la exploración profunda de la vida interior de los personajes y en la reflexión sobre temas como la identidad, la soledad y la pertenencia. También es adecuada para los lectores interesados en la historia y la cultura de Sudáfrica, así como para aquellos que aprecian la prosa poética y la narrativa introspectiva. Sin embargo, debido a que la novela no tiene una trama de acción intensa, puede no ser adecuada para los lectores que prefieren historias más dinámicas o de ritmo rápido.

لما قرأت لهذا الرجل روايته (خزي)، تمنيت ساعتها أن أكون أنا كاتبها، وقلت: لا بد أن هذا الرجل يشبهني في شيء وأشبهه. وقررت متابعة القراءة له. واقتنيت في انتظار البرابرة، وحياة وزمن مايكل ك، من معرض القاهرة للكتاب أول هذا العام، واقتنيت أيام الصبا هذا من مكتبة مغمورة في وسط البلد، بسعر زهيد، وبدأت متابعة القراءة لكويتزي مرة أخري مع أيام الصبا.

وقد كان ما توقعته تماما: إنه يشبهني وأشبهه، وشعرت كأن مذكراته هي مذكراتي، لو قررت كتابتها فعلا. فهناك صفة إذا ما وجدت، سيترتب عليها أغلب بناء الشخصية؛ الخجل. إنه خجول، وأنا مثله. (يحكي عن فترة صباه حتي المراهقة)، يكذب، ويحب أمه، متخذا موقفا من أبيه. واختلفنا معا في نقطة حيوية: إنه يحب الرياضيات، ويكره الجغرافيا والتاريخ، عكسي تماما، في هذه النقطة.

وهناك نقطة جد واضحة، فكويتزي يمتلك ذاكرة بصرية حادة. كل الصور مكتملة وواضحة، كل الأسماء حاضرة، وكل التفاصيل الدقيقة.

عالم كويتزي رائع، وجميل. لا يمل منه.

i dont get it... i get it but... i dont

The book gets good by the second half. Couldn’t put it down, very absorbing.

Coetzee has to become a writer in order to immortalize all the things and places he’s seen, all the thoughts and emotions he’s experienced. The various states of mind and mental, interior places a person inhabits and is composed of.

How can one go about preserving one’s legacy? All his Aunt Annie has to show for the life she lived is a set of boxes in her basement full of the schizophrenic religious ramblings of a cruel father she was never not in fear of.

Coetzee’s fictionalized alter ego is a creature who has adapted to living in a chaotic universe. Seems to be a borderline psychopath. One of the few times his younger brother figures into the narrative in a significant way is when memoir Coetzee remembers the time he destroyed his middle finger with machinery. His six-year-old brother has the finger amputated. Gone for life.

Coetzee faces a lot of adversity throughout the narrative but still seems to possess (or is possessed by) an innate, inherent darkness that even the worst of what he faces cannot seem to count for. May come from the emotional detachment between his parents. No love between them anymore, as far as he can tell. Coetzee is wary of love. In fact, he appears to find it repulsive. Also seems to be afraid of being forced to grow up. Stuck between two states of discontent: feels too old to be babied and doted on by his mother, feels too young to be forced to take responsibility and have himself fully exposed to the terrors and disillusions of the world that we are all eventually presented with at some point or other. Wants to be a tyrant but what little conscience he has just won’t let him. Constantly tormented by his morality, which he rejects or corrupts or acts on in ways that ultimately nothing to anyone, not even himself. Useless gestures of kindness or mercy that no one would know about if he hadn’t recorded them here, in his writing. But even then, are they enough to absolve him of all his other evil?

His father tries to connect with him through classical literature, but he rejects him. Later his father becomes a raging alcoholic and spendthrift and puts the whole in jeopardy, teeming on the verge of debt. His mother is forced to go back to work. Coetzee appears to be suffering from a textbook case of Oedipus complex. Always seeking his mother’s love while hating his father. At one point he believes his father has attempted to commit suicide by overdoing on sleeping pills. This turns out not to be true, he was simply sleeping, but Coetzee nevertheless still goes so far as to contemplate waiting until the pills have taken their effect before checking on him. Even makes plans as to how he’ll exonerate himself when the police come to investigate.

“His heart is old, it is dark and hard, a heart of stone, that is his contemptible secret.”

“Nothing can touch you, there is nothing you are not capable of. Those are the two things about him, two things that are really one thing, the thing that is right about him and the thing that is wrong about him at the same time. This thing that is to things means that he will not die, no matter what; but does it not also mean that he will not live?”

Also very insecure. Seething self-hatred. Feels pressured by the intense love his mother places upon him. Feels as if it is a burden. Doesn’t like the way his parents treat him at home. Instead of punishing him when he does wrong, they appear to bend to his will, let him do whatever he wants. Lack of a proper power hierarchy. Sees the two of them as weak. Wants them to set him straight, make him ‘normal’ like the rest of the kids in his class.

Also feels guilty about his skin color and the way ‘coloured’ kids are treated in South Africa. His birthday is ruined by the sight of two coloured beggar children standing outside the window, watching him eat ice cream with his friends, with looks of awe as opposed to malice.

“Sometimes, in the days that follow, the gloom lifts. The sky, that usually sits tight and closed over his head, not so near it that it can be touched but not much further either, opens a slit, and for an interval he can the see the world as it really is. He sees himself in his white shirt with rolled-up sleeves and the grey short trousers that he is on the point of outgrowing: not a child, not what a passer-by would call a child, too big for that now, too big to use that excuse, yet still as stupid and self-enclosed as a child: childish; dumb; ignorant; retarded. In a moment like this he can see his father and his mother too, from above, without anger: not as two grey and formless weights seating themselves on his shoulders, plotting his misery day and night, but as a man and a woman living dull and trouble-filled lives of their own. The sky opens, he sees the world as it is, then the sky closes and he is himself again, living the only story he will admit, the the story of himself.”

Coetzee is the artist as a demon of some sort, who manifests itself from some dark, deep part of the universe like Heathcliff. He’s too different from other people, he cannot get out of life what ordinary people do. But he’s also different from other artists as well. It doesn’t seem as if there’s anywhere for him to belong. Too ‘of the world’ to be like somebody like Maldoror or Moravagine, too ‘out of the world’ to be a regular human being, or a regular boy. Seems, for the most part, to embody the worst of both the worlds of childhood and adulthood. Perpetually persecuted by the fears and weaknesses of childhood as well as the sober, deconstructive perspective of adulthood. The positives of both life stages always seem to elude him. Even through the worst of his formative experiences, it seems he is incapable of growing out of his childish cruelty and selfishness. Always uses his mother as a crutch, a prop to vent his frustrations out on. His father is practically a non-presence. Whenever he thinks about him, it’s with seething hatred and resentment. Resentment at the very lack of presence he inhabits in Coetzee’s head.

The prose of the novel itself is written in a way that is meant to pick apart every aspect of life and the universe and reality. Every little thing Coetzee comes across is torn apart this away, so that it’s ‘true nature’ becomes more obvious to the reader. Clear-eyed sobriety, that is the tone and view. But with it comes depersonalization, coldness, detachment. So that’s probably why it’s also written in the third-person.

It is only after he moves away from the hell on earth that is Worcester that Coetzee finally seems to gain some recognition/awareness regarding who he really is and what’s he done. That ‘parting of the clouds’ moment appears to be the beginning of the writer in him. And then the very last paragraph on the very last sentence about his Aunt’s books. The fear of extinction seems to be what pushes him onto the path of writer. The fictionalized Coetzee is very much a fear-driven creature.

Why is the book a fictionalized memoir as opposed to a purely factual memoir or a work of semi autobiographical fiction in the vein of Henry Miller? I don’t know, I don’t care. It doesn’t seem to matter at the end of the day. The real point is the message Coetzee is trying to convey about morality. About the harshness of reality and the ways we cope with it, sometimes resisting it, sometimes giving into it. We are taken through some of the various steps in the young fictionalized Coetzee’s psychological and artistic development.

South Africa seems to have a darkness about it that other countries don’t. Probably because it’s the closest thing to a voice of reason on the continent. The closest thing to a first-world country there, surrounded by the chaos of war and primivity on all sides. A culture guilty about what it’s done to get to that point of sanity and development. Elevation on the backs on the natives and other Africans around them. Afrikaners having descended from the Dutch. Afrikaners being portrayed by Coetzee as tribal men’s men, cruel and stupid and physical, who communicate physically, through dominance and initiation rituals. Coetzee refuses to get naked in the river with his father and uncles, who are all Afrikaners. Is afraid of ‘stooping to their level’, afraid of being forced to live the life of an Afrikaner because of his Afrikaans last name.

In the South Africa of Coetzee’s time, the English are seen as the most cultured, the most sophisticated. There is a lot of resentment towards them. When the National Party takes over the English influence is minimized and South African (Afrikaner) pride and culture is emphasized instead. Coloured people are at the bottom of the food-chain. Poor, forced into subservience to the Afrikaners and English. The Russians and Americans are too distant to figure meaningfully within the culture, although even here they are mentioned. Immigrants are discounted altogether. Coetzee makes friends with a rich Greek but because he isn’t easy to place within the categories of English, Afrikaner, Coloured, or Native (those native to South Africa, who Coetzee looks on with a sort of condescending reverence), he is dismissed entirely. His social class takes precedence over his ethnicity.

Coetzee doesn’t fit easily into any category. Doesn’t know what economic class he belongs to. Doesn’t know what ethnicity. Speaks English as well as the English themselves, but has an Afrikaner from poorer roots father and a formerly upper-class mother from Pomerania (Germany). Doesn’t fully get along with either side of his family. Paternal family sees him as a spoiled brat. Maternal family does too, even though they’re just as undisciplined and selfish. Doesn’t know where he belongs. May not belong anywhere. His ‘wisdom beyond his years’ doesn’t seem to help either. He see things for what they are, sees them too easily. And is forced to bear the knowledge everywhere he goes. Cannot get away from his conscience nor his consciousness.

He has a strange appreciation of aesthetics. Finds beauty in ankles, for some example, or in the lisp of his cousin, Agnes. He’s still too young for it to be related to human sexuality, and even when he’s thirteen and reads a book on sex, he feels nothing. That aspect of his character hasn’t taken form yet, but it will in the next novel, “Youth”.

I don’t rate books, but this one turned out to be better than I thought it was for the first sixty pages or so. The character is extremely unlikable, but he’s supposed to be, that’s the point. Coetzee’s style isn’t my favorite in the world, but it makes you think. It has the power to force you into a moody state of contemplation. A dark kind of meditative awareness. It’s an acquired taste, but I like it. I want to pursue it even further. I was looking more forward to reading “Youth” than I was “Boyhood” but “Boyhood” is not a bad book by any means. It’s first half is just slow and steeped in the misery of the town in which he lives, Worcester. Coetzee doesn’t make it easy for you, he considers himself a very ‘demanding’ writer. Forces you to take your time with his sentences. Isn’t a writer who cares about entertaining. At the end of the day, he is a moral one. Just like his ancestors who preached their faith to scores of the ‘unenlightened’, there is a fundamental part of Coetzee who wants to lecture you with his writing. That being said, you can learn a lot about human nature through his example.

In real life, he seems to be just as shitty as he is in the novels. A lot of the preaching he wants to do (which he does indirectly, invisibly, literally between the lines) is directed towards himself. It’s obvious. He’s ashamed of who he is and even at 80 appears to be just as harassed by self-loathing and guilt as he was back then. In a way, he embodies the confusing trauma of his country. And that makes him an effective artist, as far as I can tell.

It is funny how blind we are to the things we do not wish to see.

“Tutto ciò che fa a Worcester, a casa o a scuola, lo porta a credere che l’infanzia non sia nient’altro che un periodo in cui bisogna stringere i denti e resistere.”


”Viene da una famiglia anomala della quale vergognarsi, dove non solo non si picchiano i bambini, ma ci si rivolge agli anziani chiamandoli con il nome di battesimo, e dove nessuno va in chiesa e le scarpe si portano tutti i giorni.”

Ecco il racconto dell’infanzia del futuro Nobel Coetzee, dal momento in cui si trasferì con la famiglia da Città del Capo in quel di Worcester (oggi Western Cape).
Un’infanzia vissuta nella vergogna per non essere come la maggioranza.
Un mondo segreto di pensieri, sensazioni, pulsioni soffocate che nessuno deve conoscere.
Le difficoltà comuni del crescere, dunque, sommate ad un contesto sociale complicato per le tensioni di una convivenza difficile: afrikaner, inglesi, meticci, nativi.
Lingue e religioni che si sfidano; stili di vita che chiudono i recinti in un sistema d’inclusione ed esclusione.

Una scrittura a denti stretti.
La distanza della terza persona che narra crea un clima di freddezza: algido l’autore, diffidente chi legge che fatica a sintonizzarsi.

«Chissà perché Coetzee lo ha fatto?» mi chiedevo leggendo.
La scrittura autobiografica – si sa- comporta lo sforzo della confessione. Quello spogliarsi a volte impudico davanti a tutti. Certo c’è chi ha bisogno di esibirsi per narcisismo congenito ma c’è anche chi lo ritiene un compito arduo ma necessario come percorso di auto-analisi.
Ma Coetzee perché lo ha fatto quando si sente chiaramente che non c’è nessuno di questi bisogni?
Il tono è sforzato. Forse – ipotizzo- gli gravava fare quell’ammissione di aver provato gli estremi dell’amore e su cui verte un po’ tutto lo scritto: l’odio profondo per il padre e il legame morboso con la madre.
La mia lettura è, pertanto, proseguita con imbarazzo: come presentarsi a casa di qualcuno senza essere invitati.
Coetzee bambino sperimenta una scrittura che costruisce una corazza s’una personalità già di per sé introversa:
“Scrivere per lui non è come dispiegare le ali; al contrario, è come raggomitolarsi, farsi piú piccolo e inoffensivo possibile”

Cercavo tracce che guidassero le mie future letture e/o rischiarissero le passate di quest’autore che ammiro tantissimo. Ciò che ho trovato è l’origine di ciò che si dice e si è detto di lui: uomo schivo e riservato.
Testimoni lo hanno avuto come vicino a delle cene ufficiali (ad una delle poche che ha presenziato) dicono di non aver avuto il piacere di sentire mai la sua voce per tutta la serata.
Riluttante al pubblico tanto che avere un suo libro autografato è di tale rarità da poter sistemare economicamente una famiglia.
Un po’ asociale dunque.
Ma che importa di fronte al fatto che è lo scrittore di opere che hanno descritto in modo così preciso lo stato d’animo di una società dilaniata dai contrasti?

A massive slab of my childhood was spent as an outsider in the UK, a quarter of a century after Coetzee´s childhood in South Africa, yet so much of his world resembles so much of mine, the affinity is startling and unsettling: the alienness of the adult world, the brittle childish sense of solipsism, a deep, unutterable love of a place in nature, the remote otherness of other children, the ambivalent need to distance feelings, the yearning to shine, the addiction to reading, the treacherous vicinity of embarrassments, the chasm between imagination and reality, the moral puzzles and meaning of religion, the naive fantasies about heroism, pride born out of profound ignorance, the meaning of family, of poverty, of discrimination...

Judging from these memoirs, Coetzee´s childhood was emotionally bleak:

Childhood, says the Children´s Encyclopedia, is a time of innocent joy, to be spent in the meadows amid buttercups and bunny-rabbits or at the hearthside absorbed in a storybook. Nothing he experiences in Worcester, at home or at school leads him to think that childhood is anything but a time of gritting the teeth and enduring.
[...]
He thinks of Afrikaners as a people in a rage all the time because their hearts are hurt. He thinks of the English as people who have not fallen into a rage because they live behind walls and guard their hearts well.
[...]
Feeling her hurt, feeling it as intimately as if he were part of her, she part of him, he knows he is in a trap and cannot get out [...] What can ignorant, innocent Aunt Annie know about love? He knows a thousand times more about the world than she does, slaving her life away over her father´s manuscript. His heart is old, it is dark and hard, a heart of stone. That is his contemptible secret.

As the memoir progresses it becomes clearer that the memoir child´s inner confusion is a reflection of the confusion of his surroundings, that the fierce defense of his core being is a defense against a family that is, and has been, in the process of crumbling away, that what he despises or fears about his parents and his relatives is, in a darker sense, what he despises or fears about himself, about his uncertain and unpromising future, that what is good enough for the child cloaked in the half-reality of the remote veldt is sadly lacking for the child rudely dumped into a second-rate school on the outskirts of Cape Town.

Sometimes the gloom lifts. The sky that usually sits tight and closed over his head, not so near that it can be touched but not much further either, opens a slit, and for an interval he can see the world as it really is. He sees himself in his white shirt with rolled-up sleeves[...] not a child, not what a passer-by would call a child, too big for that now, too big to use that excuse, yet still as stupid and self-enclosed as a child: childish, dumb; ignorant; retarded. In a moment like this he can see his father and his mother too, from above, without anger: not as two grey and formless weights seating themselves on his shoulders, plotting his misery day and night, but as a man and a woman living dull and trouble-filled lives of their own. The sky opens, he sees the world as it is, then the sky closes and he is himself again, living the only story he will admit, the story of himself.

A surgeon´s scalpel memoir that coldly probes and illuminates the turmoil, confusion, yearnings and emotions of a distant childhood in a difficult land.

I love the writing of J.M. Coetzee. He writes about a life I can relate to and topics that interest me, mainly the experiences of different people in South Africa, especially regarding issues such as race, culture and 'otherness', as well as personal development.

In this short book Coetzee writes about what he knows, as he tells the story of his own childhood growing up in a poor family during apartheid in South Africa, in a time where fathers were feared and liberal thinking frowned upon. I found this to be a fascinating insight into the early mind and growth of such a renowned and (supposedly) reclusive author, and a glimpse into how he became the man he is today.

Nydelige skildringer, litt lite handling

La tenuta intorno alla fattoria è enorme, al punto che quando, nel corso delle loro battute di caccia, lui e suoi padre arrivano a uno steccato che taglia il letto di un fiume, e suo padre annuncia che hanno raggiunto il confine tra Voëlfontein e la tenuta limitrofa, lui è colto alla sprovvista. Nella sua immaginazione Voëlfonstein è un regno a sé stante. Non basterebbe una vita per conoscerla tutta, conoscerne ogni pietra e ogni cespuglio. Il tempo non basta mai quando si ama un luogo con una simile vorace passione.
Voëlfontein la conosce meglio d’estate, quando si distende piatta sotto una luce uniforme, accecante, che si riversa giù dal cielo. Eppure Voëlfontein ha anche i suoi misteri, misteri che non appartengono alla notte e all’ombra, ma ai pomeriggi torridi, quando i miraggi danzano all’orizzonte e l’aria stessa gli canta nelle orecchie.


Voëlfontein, tenuta dello zio di Coetzee


Coetzee si immerge (e ci fa immergere) nel mondo di provincia del Sudafrica, dove persone di diversa ascendenza vivono in contatto, sebbene divise da credi, religioni e usanze diverse. La storia è narrata dal punto di vista di un ragazzino saccente e troppo presuntuoso, che tratta male la madre anche se la “ama” e disprezza il padre, che scialacqua i soldi della moglie. Il ragazzino vive inizialmente in un paese vicino Città del Capo, qui frequenta la scuola e viene a conoscenza della vita degli afrikaans e dei meticci, li osserva quasi con occhio scientifico, cercando di capire come vivano. D’altra parte però, si sente nelle sue parole una freddezza mentale che lo allontana da queste persone, anche se ripete varie volte che si vergogna per come vengono trattate. Il ragazzino vive nel Sudafrica post seconda guerra mondiale, tifa per gli inglesi ed ama i russi, adora il cricket. Vive in provincia ed è il primo della classe. Quando si trasferisce a Città del Capo, perde il privilegio di essere il più bravo della scuola, perde sicurezza in sé perché non trova persone che lo elogino, si stacca ancora di più dalla figura del padre, mentre il suo rapporto con la madre si fa contorto: da una parte la appoggia, dall’altra la guarda con compassione.

Non posso dire che sia stata una bella esperienza leggere i pensieri del ragazzino, e spesso mi veniva da chiudere il libro e mollare. Intere sezioni poco interessanti riprendono vigore con una o due frasi illuminanti, che spingono nella lettura. Sicuramente Coetzee è capace di dar voce a milioni di personaggi, e riesce a farlo bene ache con questo qui.

Ora deliziamoci con la vista di questa bella foto che ho trovato su internet...

Los recuerdos de nuestro pasado es una explicación de lo que somos ahora. Aquella frase tiene certeza en lo referente a las vivencias como conductoras de la vida presente o, en el caso de la literatura, de lo que se produce en una obra. Pues, finaliza Coetzee en la novela, "Lo han dejado a él solo con todos los pensamientos, ¿Cómo los guardará todos en su cabeza, todos los libros, toda la gente, todas las historias? Y si él no los recuerda, ¿quién lo hará?", dejando una idea sobre la obligación que tiene el autor con su pasado para contarte algo y, así, no permitir que caiga en manos del olvido (a mi modo de interpretarlo).
Y es que una biografía es eso, la lucha encarnada por sobrevivir al tiempo; un tiempo donde hubo guerras después de otras. Quizá sin armas como tanques o rifles, pero sí con segregación social y leyes (o moral) que separaba a unos con otros; y más si entendemos el pasado de Coetzee, vislumbramos la normalidad con la que se aplicaba el racismo.
La hosca y despectiva relación con su padre, la necesidad por la madre, los cambios de colegio, el idioma de la gente de color; la religión, el gusto por manejar bicicleta, el temor a fallar y no verse como el mejor; la granjas, los parientes lejanos, la muerte de seres no tan queridos y las carencias económicas, son aspectos que Coetzee reflejará a lo largo de sus novelas (cuando sea grande) y mantendrá su estilo lóbrego, arisco, pero, aun así, directo y sin ornamentos; tal y como sus historias lo requieren.