3'5⭐

Leseren kommer tett på hovedpersonens liv og perspektiv fra et barnlig, forenklet, men likevel klokt, blikk. Innbiller meg at boka gir meg innsikt i en tid og et samfunn som er annerledes enn mitt eget. Dette oppleves sterkt, troverdig og interessant. Samtidig synes jeg boka er i overkant skildrende, og derfor tidvis flat å lese.

didn't get even a single crumb of joy from reading this

My first Coetzee; I take it you're supposed to start with Waiting for the Barbarians or Michael K., but I just pulled this off our shelf (apparently C found it abandoned on the sidewalk a few years back, which is mildly poetic considering how this ends). It's in the form of a childhood memoir, but the nostalgia is not moist-eyed. It's a look back at a period in his early adolescent when his sense of separate selfhood developed, when he emerged to be something more than a target of his mother's affections, when he realized that there was much about both his parents, the whole of the world, and him self, that he did not like. The narrating voice is interesting for how uncharming it is, without being off-putting, recognizing his general unlikeability without apologizing for it either. It's a sober and dark outlook; maybe the misanthropy is, to the reader, more forgivable coming from an adolescent. "There, there, young John, what can you know? You'll see that the world is not as bleak and awful as you make it...."

3.5

La construcción de nuestra identidad esta influenciada por la geografía, la historia y el clima del lugar donde nos toco vivir, por el lenguaje utilizado a nuestro alrededor, por el entramado social y cultural a donde pertenecen nuestras familias y por las emociones primarias de nuestros años de infancia

Estas son las memorias de infancia del pequeño John, un alma sensible, lleno de pasión y furia por descubrir su mundo (“ansioso de ver mas, de ver todo lo que quedaba por ver”) pero a quien su aguda conciencia le revela también “la crueldad y el dolor y la rabia del odio latente bajo la superfine cotidiana de las cosas”.

Esta aparente contradicción lo lleva a pensar que la infancia no es otra cosa “que un tiempo en el que se aprietan los dientes y se aguanta”; y no un “tiempo de dicha inocente, que debe pasarse en los prados entre ramunculos dorados y conejitos”.

La segregación y sufrimiento existentes en Sudáfrica son transversales y están presentes en la pobreza y desesperanza de los negros, la ignorancia y vulgaridad de los Afrikaans, y la indiferencia y frialdad de los ingleses. El pequeño John no es ajeno a esta realidad dolorosa y lucha por descubrir su lugar en este enmarañado social, racial y religioso. Se resiste a verse como un Afrikaan pero también sabe que jamás sera aceptado como ingles. Se pregunta y repregunta, que es ser normal? La pregunta es universal y refleja su confusión en su paso hacia la pubertad, en la desintegración de su entorno familiar y en los conflictos profundos de su país: “Se siente como un cangrejo despojado de su caparazón, rosado, herido y obsceno”.

Su alma sensible absorbe todos estos impulsos elementales de vida que se convertirán posteriormente en los temas fundamentales y universales de su obra literaria. Coetzee denuncia la violencia, la segregación y el racismo en toda forma.

Infancia parece ser una novela autobiográfica, aunque la forma narrativa elegida es la tercera persona. Para mis preferencias literarias, eso no constituye un buen comienzo, ya que las memorias no es un género que me interese mucho.

La historia se inicia cuando la familia, incluido el protagonista de 10 años, se mudan de Ciudad del Cabo a una urbanización en las afueras de Worcester, donde su padre, abogado, ha conseguido empleo. El lugar no es presentado con mucho afecto, a diferencia del lugar en el mundo del niño, la granja de su familia paterna, Vöelfontein.

Los aspectos más ricos de la novela son la descripción de los padres y otros familiares, y los complejos vínculos que mantiene con ellos, así como los entresijos y tensiones en las relaciones entre los que perciben como ingleses y los afrikaners, descendientes de los primeros colonizadores holandeses; hay también interesantes observaciones sobre la gente de color, una mundo que se presenta con afecto aunque incomprensible y misterioso. Algunas de estas cuestiones, aunque interesantes, hoy parecen anacrónicas a la luz del rumbo que tomó la historia posterior de Sudáfrica.

El niño no es demasiado simpático ni querible, aunque es muy observador y trata permanentemente de ordenar mentalmente el mundo a partir de los indicios que va obteniendo.

La escritura de Coetzee, es, como siempre, impecable; y se le debe reconocer que si efectivamente es autobiográfica, ha tenido la honestidad de no idealizar en absoluto su yo-niño.

Salvo los aspectos mencionados, la novela no me despertó mucho interés; y si logré terminarla fue por la calidad en la escritura del autor. Aunque entiendo que cada uno tiene sus preferencias respecto a los géneros y estilos literarios.

Qué tengan un buen día.

Everything I read from Coetzee has a profound impact on me. His words are so cutting, direct, affective, sincere, clear and concise. His ability to draw me in, paint a picture and transport me to wherever and whatever he is writing about astounds me. This is an autobiographical work with Coetzee himself as the narrator, referring to himself in the book as "he". I really like this approach because he is telling the reader about his life and the experiences that formed the man that he is today but as an observer, almost as if he is observing himself.

This is a short, easy read but still fantastically beautiful. "Boyhood" is a clear account of his life as an exceptionally intelligent boy growing up in South Africa in the 1950s. It is a bold, compelling, funny, raw account of a boy's life who is tormented by guilt, fear and confusion. How he feels as a boy and his observances of the world around him remind me of what it was like to look at the world through child's eyes and know that everything was not the way that it was supposed to be and to wonder how it would all turn out one day.

Written in Coetzee's sparse prose, this short novel encapsulates the angst of the author's childhood, which he narrates in the third person as an onlooker, critically observing his younger self. The harsh contradictions of the Apartheid system in 1950's South Africa provide a compelling backdrop to the story of a child who is grappling to come to terms with his place in the world. Touches of humour invigorate an otherwise austere narrative, as the author leads the reader through a courageous self examination of his formative years and his uneasy relationships with his family, his peers and the world around him.

Boyhood is the name of a film by Richard Linklater that most people feel is one of the best of this past year, and I haven't seen it yet. It is not based on this memoir, which I guess might be classified as auto-fiction, too, because it is written in the third person. It's the first of three (so far) in a series of growing up memoirs, followed by Youth and Summerime, both of which I purchased in hardcover just as they came out and have been gathering dust on my shelf ever almost ever since. Coetzee is the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and he's one of my all time favorite writers. His Waiting for the Barbarians, an allegory about power, political and sexual, is one of the best books I have ever read. Foe takes Daniel DeFoe's Robinson Crusoe and tells it from the position of the mute native Friday. Disgrace tells a devastating tale of sexual power as a university English professor is dismissed from his position for an affair with one of his students. The Master of St. Petersburg is a novel about Dostoevsky, and Coetzee is an heir of the great Russian writer's major themes and his anguish, as well as of Kafka and similarly brilliant and brooding souls. I love all of the Coetzee novels I have read, and I have read many, but every time I picked up this book I couldn't get far in it, it was so distant and bleak and unhappy. And let me tell ya, most of the novels above are bleak but gorgeously written.

Boyhood is about Coetzee's early years in provincial South Africa, in Worcester, and it's dry and hard there and no one is happy, not the carefree time we get in some memoirs. The young John is private, brooding, mirthless, living with a mother he loves but is not close to, a younger brother he doesn't connect to, and a father he hates. He has few friends. He is the smartest boy in his grade, maybe his whole school, but school is also not engaging, not great for him; it's pretty oppressive.

So! Fun, right? Feel like reading it just for kicks? In this intense memoir we get the background for how the ideas he engages with in his novels came about: colonialism, racism, issues of representation, the meaning of life. Young John is filled with guilt and fear and rage throughout his young life. He tries to fight all these emotions by ordering his life severely, by working hard, striving to "rise above" his circumstances. I am an ex-Calvinist and this severity seems familiar to me, but Coetzee is sort of a non-religious (I think) Calvinist, wracked as he is by fear and guilt.

In spite of these terrible emotions, young John thinks of himself as possibly having a special destiny, which he mainly gets from literature, heroic fantasies and comic books and the heroism of sports, like rugby and cricket, though he is just an average athlete. But here is where you see the tone and subtlety of his tale. He's self-deprecating throughout. He is not without humor in mocking his young arrogance and anguish, his extreme self absorption. How could he think of himself as better than others coming from where he has come, his parents, his schooling, this arid veld?

At one point, introduced to Roman history and literature, he decides he is a Roman Catholic, though his family is atheist and he knows nothing about religion. That he hangs on to this weird notion is in part because were he to admit he wasn't Catholic would be humiliating. He is overly dramatic about this possible outing of his lie; if they reveal his lie and ignorance, he says he will refuse to go to school and threatens to kill himself. He's an intense boy, wracked by everything. But he also has many humorous misunderstandings about the world, including one about how babies are born; he misunderstands something his mother says about how babies come in out of "the backside" so he thinks they are born anally, pushed out of the stomach, a notion he weirdly hangs on to for years, even faced with friends' mockery of him. If he is right, he is right! There are lots of revelations of his arrogance and ignorance that are subtly humorous, if not exactly hilarious. You almost never get laughs from Coetzee, but there are smiles to be had here. And you admire his honesty in mocking his young self. He's as vicious about himself as his young self is of others.

But as he says, "sometimes the gloom lifts": He does love some things intensely in his quiet way; his mother, whom he is also anguished about, as with so many things. who is also unhappy with her husband and disappointed her life wouldn't be more. He loves cricket and rugby. He loves reading stories. From an early age; he sees he is suited for nothing but teaching, for school. He also loves nature, especially his father's family farm. He "belongs" to the farm, though it will never be his, he is just a guest there. But he loves the country and feels happier there than any other place. He only mentions a sense of belonging with respect to his mother. Not even in school, really, as the schools he attends are terrible and he feels so isolated from the other kids and teachers. But in nature and with sports he finds some release.

One of the interesting things about this story is that issues of race, class, gender and sexuality, barely on his radar as a young kid, emerge throughout his growing up story set in apartheid South Africa. He is Afrikaans, but mostly wishes to be British, he wants to be superior, he's sort of smug about wanting to be set apart. I admire this honesty; it's like his ignorance about being "Roman" Catholic or how babies are born. He's young and naive but we see emerge from his life story the themes in his work as he begins to reflect on them.

Why did I have trouble getting into this book? Well, it's sorta bleak! For a memoir, it initially feels distant, in third person, though this choice feels ultimately perfect for him. But he's a Nobel prizewinning writer and this is as elegantly written as anything else he has done. And In the end of this first installment of his life story, we see his "destiny" emerging, what really does come to be his specialness. His aunt Annie dies, he goes to the funeral, and he recalls his aunt telling his mother that he is a special boy, this aunt who taught for more than 40 years, who leaves behind a small library of books. In the end Coetzee also becomes a teacher, and of course a writer, but at the time he thinks: "How will he keep them all in his head, all the books, all the people, all the stories? And if he does not remember them, who will?" (166).

This isn't one of Coetzee's greatest books, but especially if you like Coetzee, it is interesting.

Boyhood. Scenes from provincial life es una autobiografía novelada, pero narrada desde una tercera persona, escrita por J. M. Coetzee y publicada en 1997 como parte de una trilogía a la que completan Youth (2002) y Summertime (2009).
El texto relata el paso hacia la adolescencia de John Coetzee, el joven protagonista de diez años que se encuentra atravesando su infancia en Worcester, un pequeño pueblo rural al norte de Cape Town, durante las décadas del cuarenta y del cincuenta, en un contexto de Guerra Fría y Apartheid. Es un libro cargado de contradicciones propias de la infancia de un niño que es ejemplar en la escuela pero un tirano en su casa: la imitación de un padre a quien desprecia y el amor incondicional hacia una madre a quien busca herir. Deja en evidencia la inocencia de un niño frente a los desafíos, la violencia y la crueldad de la vida: lo atormentan los miedos, la culpa, los juicios ajenos y la búsqueda de su identidad. Es víctima de bullying escolar y testigo de las diferencias raciales y religiosas, pero al mismo tiempo desarrolla un amor profundo por la granja de su abuelo y por el cricket. La relación con el otro define su singularidad; es un personaje cuya marcada susceptibilidad lo hace sentir apartado, alienado, “dañado” o “no normal”.
Pese a que el texto esté narrado desde una tercera persona sobria y distante, la profundidad con la que ésta replica los sentimientos y las percepciones del niño hace sentir que es aquel el narrador, y genera una conexión de identificación y simpatía con el lector. Al mismo tiempo, el uso de un narrador aparentemente imparcial habla de la capacidad de J. M. Coetzee para verse como otro y observar su infancia desde ojos de observador.
Sin embargo, el uso de todos los verbos en presente genera una distancia con la historia, que borra cualquier perspectiva adulta o posibilidad de reflexión al mismo tiempo que destaca la inmediatez de los sucesos narrados.

Otro elemento que genera distancia es la ausencia de nombres en los personajes. John es llamado “he” y sus familiares son llamados según la relación que tengan con respecto a él: “his mother”, “his father”, “his brother”. Éste último aparece solamente en un par de ocasiones, y para resaltar, por contraste, el carácter autoritario de John. Asimismo, las relaciones que forja el protagonista con los otros se ven ausentes de diálogo; toda la trama se presenta desde la perspectiva del propio niño.
El lector es el que acompaña al protagonista por el trayecto de sus primeras experiencias con la sexualidad, el amor, la humillación, la religión, la muerte y el pudor, gracias a un notable uso del “flujo de consciencia” con una dimensión psicológica que le permite entender las actitudes del protagonista.
Es destacable, a la vez, el modo en que Coetzee logra retratar el crecimiento o la evolución del niño, quien ya no le ve sentido a sus colecciones y comienza a ser más autocrítico, “como un cangrejo sacado de su caparazón, rosa, lastimado y obsceno”, a través del enriquecimiento progresivo del lenguaje utilizado.
En conclusión, Boyhood es un retrato profundo del paso por la infancia del propio Coetzee, desde la perspectiva ingenua de un niño del mundo, un mundo que, en ocasiones, puede resultar demasiado cruel para la comprensión del niño.

A psychological portrait of the author from age 10 to 13, Boyhood is an unflinching account of Coetzee's personality, family dynamics, and South African society. The series is aptly named Scenes from a Provincial Life since there is scarcely a plot. The unsentimental revelation of his flaws, fears, and resentments is more like a therapy session or confession.