3.5

Boyhood by J.M. Coetzee

An equally elegant and unforgiving memoir. South Africa is not a location one would want to grow up in the 1940s but we also learn that his issues really came more from a dislike of his parents than anything akin to poverty.

If you want to gain an understanding of why Coetzee writes bleak, sparse, and unsparing novels that are admittedly beautiful you will probably find the answers here in his early childhood.

5 stars

Another book complete, another hours revision avoided.

But… well worth it! I think this represents some of the best of Coetzee - without the weight of many of his other novels it’s a great read for those looking to relish his style and an easy going read.

Delving into the depths of childhood, this novel offers a unique and insightful consideration of the child’s mind, as well as acutely engaging with provincial life in South Africa.

Would highly recommend.

I loved this.
I approached wearily as I loved Disgrace but struggled to like Waiting for the Barbarians.
This is Coetzee´s very idiosyncratic biography of his life growing up in South Africa in the middle of the last century. Throughout the book Coetzee is "he" or "him" and, although mannered, this works.
Hard to really pick bits out - enough to say that if you like any of Coetzee´s books, you´ll like this. I wasn´t aware it existed - but I´ve just seen that there´s another volume called Youth, too. Might have to read it.
This short book was the most entertaining writer´s autobiography I´ve read since Anthony Burgess´ two volumes (and as great as they are I´m no huge fan of Burgess´ fiction).

Coetzee has been among my favorite writers ever since I first ventured into his incredible range of work over twenty years ago. Age of Iron, The Master of Petersburg, and Disgrace rank among some of the most indelible and searing works of fiction I’ve ever experienced. Having read most of Coetzee’s work including his rarely-mentioned collections of profound essays, I have no good explanation for why I am only now reading his “autobiographies.”

Spanning three separate and rather short volumes, Boyhood is the first in the trilogy, and it is a formidable piece of autobiographical literature, at once confessional, solemn, melancholic, but also in strides funny. Coetzee indeed chronicles “scenes” from his childhood and adolescence, and he is most incisive with making a critical examination of his parents—a mother he both adored and found frustrating for her contradictions, and a father he both respected as a WWII veteran and resented for his alcoholism that induced seismic tremors within the family.

When remembering his experiences in school as a top-of-the-class student and his interactions with relatives, especially his joys of visiting his uncle’s farm out in the veld, he is masterfully observant with capturing details and moods. He is also adept with elaborating on a more philosophical and psychological level what his experiences and memories reveal about his childhood fears of death and his musings about the conundrum of his own existence.

Although Coetzee has a penchant for exploring the hardships of life, he shows he can be funny throughout his recollections, in particular with his “becoming” a Roman Catholic in a split-second after replying to a question that ends up impacting him at school. Even though Coetzee can make us smile, he is still more steady and assured with exploring the meaning of human struggle to endure and defy adversity. In recalling his own early years, Coetzee delivers an autobiography that is very good and entirely worthwhile, but not quite as brilliant as many of his acclaimed works of fiction.

"Infancia" es el primer libro de memorias autobiográficas de J. M Coetzee. Esta es la primera de las tres que lo componen. Espero poder apuntar los dos siguientes en próximas fechas. Al grano, se trata de unas memorias ficcionadas como si fueran una novela, y con la particularidad de que el narrador no es él, sino un narrador omnisciente, él mismo sale nombrado como otro protagonista más... y además están narradas en presente, el presente de los años 50 en Sudáfrica. Nos refleja con una gran humanidad lo que es un niño, con su ingenuidad, con sus odios y amores a partes iguales, con sus sueños... la vida misma, pero teniendo en cuenta que está ambientada allí, y como el mismo dice existe una "rabia/odio subyacente en la pequeña realidad cotidiana". El presente del libro acentúa la vigencia de esa época con la actual, nos lo hace más vívido si cabe. Y se nota que siente nostalgia de esos tiempos a pesar de todo lo que le sucede. Una maravilla más del sudafricano. Más que recomendable.

Una delle più belle memorie d'infanzia che abbia mai letto.

viết chán dã man

A piece of writing that paints a picture of the world as seen through the eyes of a child. Reading the book one is reminded of the feelings and sensations of being a child and a being not fully aware of the complexity of the world in which it lives. I found the description of the boys relationship to his mother particularly compelling and accurate. The main characters convictions thoughts and ideas ring true and show that Coetzee has not forgotten how he felt during his childhood.

Inside the front cover of Coetzee's Boyhood, in the police line-up of ejaculatory blurbs -- which I tend to find outrageously embarrassing -- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is alleged to have called the book 'a liturgy of wisdom.' (Like me, you probably have a hunch that The Atlanta Journal-Constitution was the pimply-faced geek in school who never had a date and spent his lunch hour doing geometric proofs with the head of the math department.) Newsday, meanwhile, says it's comprised of 'pithy urgent sentences from which emotion seems to explode.' (So wear your rain poncho or you'll get covered in emotion. Yuck.) Good ol' Michiko Kakutani scoured the earth for histrionic adverb-adjective combos and came up with 'fiercely revealing' and 'bluntly unsentimental.' I'd gladly agree with the latter but was sadly immune to any fierceness in this book. In fact, it was mostly fiercely perfunctory in my opinion, which, it should be noted -- in the interest of full disclosure -- is not regularly published in The New York Times and may be fiercely deficient.

I was lured into checking out those blurbs because I found myself without any strong feelings whatsoever about Boyhood, and I wanted to see what was causing its fans to get off. Sure, it's an okay, entirely palatable autobiography. (There's a blurb for you. 'Entirely palatable!' - David K.) It's not a difficult slog, by any means. But the problem is that, if, before reading, you were to imagine to yourself what an autobiography of Coetzee's childhood would be like, this is exactly the sort of thing you'd come up with. Spare, unemotional, prosaic, insightful but oddly removed.

In his allegorical novels, his detachment and clinical analysis work just fine. They actually serve the material very well. But here, where he's reflecting upon his childhood, I guess you'd hope he'd invest the telling with a little animation, a hint of passion or energy, and attempt at least to convince us that the ten-year-old Coetzee wasn't as grim and emotionally ascetic as the sixty-five-year-old Coetzee. But maybe he was a tiny Nobel laureate even then. (Fiercely unchildlike?) It probably didn't help to imbue his childhood with liveliness when he chose to write the autobiography in the third person. It keeps the whole enterprise very arm's-length and white-gloved. (As a stylistic device, the once-removed narration also makes the readers a little skeptical at the authenticity of the memoir. Is it puffed-up, over-dramatized? Of course, most autobiographies are to some extent, but it feels more conspicuous in this format.)

This makes it sound like I didn't like this book. Not true. It's just that Coetzee has kind of built up expectations for me: I want to really, really like his stuff, not just think it's okay. Plus, I probably didn't get all I could out of this thing in that it discusses the finer points of race and caste in South Africa, the history and social composition of which I know little about. The only things I know about South Africa are apartheid, Mandela, and that 'Sun City' song by Steven Van Zandt (remember that?). But these are all very vague concepts in my mind because I am (apparently) a self-obsessed American who is ignorant about the world around him. Sure, when I was splayed on the couch reading this thing, I could've gotten up and wiki'd 'South Africa' but I wasn't motivated enough, so the subtleties of Afrikans, 'Coloured People,' 'Natives,' and the English were mostly lost on me. I don't think a familiarity with these distinctions is essential to enjoying the book, but it surely couldn't hurt. And in one chapter he talks a bunch about cricket, and I was, like, 'Who cares?' I have no idea how cricket is played so I couldn't even conjure up any approximate images in my head of what Coetzee was talking about.

The format of the book is generally one of vignettes. Each chapter usually serves as a stand-alone, non-cumulative story of his childhood about one or more subjects. It's almost like an autobiographical short story collection. I think this is probably a good route for recollecting young childhood because let's face it... our memories of that time are pretty scattershot, and thus we aren't able to understand the true correlative effect of our experiences because some of them are missing or incomplete. So, all in all, the episodic nature of the book is a good strategy, but it was still a little bland.

Sorry, but just couldn't get into the rhythm (or lack thereof ) of this novel. Found the writing bland and jagged and the third person narration dull and insipid. Very disappointed for it had come highly recommended. Have two other of his books and will still give them a try and hope the author uses a different writing style, more to my liking.

Postales de un pueblo de provincias (Enumeración, 2020)

1.tUna mujer pasea en bicicleta por las calles levantando a su paso murmullos y tierra roja. El padre y el hijo se burlan de su pedalear. La mujer es la madre. Pronto la bicicleta desaparece.

2.tEl hijo decide ser católico sin comprender lo que eso significa. Lo prefiere a ser judío. Lo prefiere a ser cristiano. Los compañeros católicos desconfían de su fe y le reclaman no asistir a la catequesis. Jamás lo hace.

3.tHay un lenguaje, que no es el inglés, el hijo se mueve en él con comodidad frágil. Es el lenguaje de los sueños, de la lejanía, de algo que no le pertenecerá jamás del todo, de algo que siempre lo dejará un poco de lado.

4.tHay una finca, lejana, perdida. Hay un terreno donde las estrellas se estrellan contra el horizonte sin interrupción y donde en laberintos de piedra el hijo siente pertenece su corazón. No se lo dice a nadie.

5.tOvejas que balan, camino a la muerte, la sangre no alcanza a advertirles su destino. No deducen, no saben. O acaso, piensa el hijo, lo saben y se encogen de hombros. Deciden morir como podrían decidir cualquier otra cosa.

6.tEnfermo en cama piensa. Al hijo le gusta pensar. No le cuenta a nadie que le gusta pensar. Lee algunos libros. Juega con mecanos y piezas de construcción. Siente que, haga lo que haga, siempre deberá guardar un secreto.

7.tEl aprendizaje de la pobreza es un lento martirio, más moral que físico. Aunque nunca hay hambre, hay deshonor. El padre fracasa. Se convierte en un espectro. El hijo vela junto a él, sin saberlo asume el papel de un espejo.

8.tUna habitación llena de libros evangélicos. Una tía vieja que es custodia de la labor misionera de su padre. El hijo no comprende, pero recibe la marca del lenguaje. La tía le dice que es especial. No puede creerlo, pero no lo olvida.

9.tLa muerte de la tía es un oprobio. La tumba solitaria. Una vergüenza imprecisa, todavía, pero que poco a poco irá tomando forma. Nadie debería dejar morir a los que ama en soledad. Pero eso hará, eso hará, eso hará.

10.tEl hijo decide recordar. Recordarlo todo. Guardar las historias. Asumir el papel de arconte. Será el responsable de la memoria familiar. Si no lo hace él, nadie lo hará. Si no lo hace él nadie lo hará.