In the Heart of the Country

This book was full of colorful descriptions and beautiful symbolism. Well, all that crap was lost on me. I randomly picked this book off of '1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die' in an effort to broaden my horizons and get away from the best seller list. Big mistake. Thank God this book was only 130 pages or I might not have been able to struggle through it. It was mostly narrative with very little dialogue or action. There were about 20 pages towards the end that were interesting because of the dialogue and the interaction of the characters, but most of the book was this chick's crazy thoughts in her head. I never quite understood wtf was going on. Her Dad was married, he wasn't, she killed them, then they were alive. My best guess is that she was crazy as a loon and was imagining this stuff in her head. I'm not really sure what was reality and what was just her rambling. Anyway, I'm sure someone more intellectual than myself would probably appreciate this novel much more than I did. After all, Coetzee is winning prizes for his work, so who am I to say that he sucks. Not for me, but if you are into literature and taking a few minutes to figure out what the heck you just read, check it out:)

Hace un tiempo Vargas Llosa afirmaba que Coetzee (premio Nobel de Literatura en 2003) era uno de los mejores escritores de la actualidad y que la única razón por la que no se decantaba en catalogarlo como el mejor era porque para hacer tal afirmación era necesario haberlos leído a todos. Esta afirmación no es una hipérbole ni mucho menos. Coetzee es una narrador maravilloso y esta novela lo confirma. Narra la historia de Magda, una mujer que vive oprimida bajo la manga de su padre, quien la maldice por el hecho de haber nacido mujer. Magda debe acarrear con este peso toda su vida, nos cuenta sus vivencias con su padre y su nueva madrastra y, en un punto clave, los hechos son adornados por un aroma onírico donde nada parece ser como se presenta. Construida con un lenguaje y una prosa magistrales esta novela es, sin duda, un excelente comienzo para adentrarse en la obra de John Maxwell Coetzee.

Overall, disappointing. Having loved 'Disgrace' for its sparse story-telling, this felt too self-indulgent. It's a first person, diary-like account of a woman living in the middle of the South African veld at some point in the 19th century. Her world is a bullying father, monosyllabic servants, and the harsh landscape around her, and she goes quietly – and at points not so quietly – mad. It’s only 150 pages, but the writing felt stodgy because nothing happens for long periods, and our narrator is perennially isolated. It’s a very genuine attempt to convey the experience of certain women in colonial South Africa, but it took me ages to get through because the tone is so self-reflexive. That, of course, is the point, but it didn’t make it an easy read.

Difícil de definir e classificar. É assim que considero este livro.
Este romance não é, de todo, uma criação que nos transporta para lá da nossa respiração mas, porém, ainda nos faz suspirar. A sua narrativa, a sua estrutura e a forma como está escrito fornecem-lhe um interesse relevante. Digamos que, de algum modo, é genuíno e incomum – valorizando, obviamente, o facto de este livro ser escrito no início da carreira de Coetzee.

Sendo o carácter geral deste livro um romance (quase em monólogo) onde alguém nos relata uma série de acontecimentos e suposições, apreciei, em parte, o facto de a narrativa desenrolar-se pausadamente, apresentando, em corrimento, uma escrita pormenorizada que permite ao leitor perceber e aproximar-se do interior da personagem principal (Magda) - ora com momentos intensamente densos e fluídos, ora, por outro lado menos positivo, com momentos demorados e penosos que, por me cansarem enquanto leitor, me pareceram ser desnecessários e em demasia, como por exemplo as longas linhas de cepticismo que marcam a personagem principal. Devido a estes momentos menos bons é que considero que se este romance fosse mais conciso poderia ser mais vantajoso e ajustado ao seu carácter literário, e, assim, mais interessante, intenso e profundo, visto que estes três aspectos parecem-me ser as suas qualidades-mor.

Nos momentos mais interessantes encontram-se filosofias e perspectivas de vida profundas que, por vezes, chegam a roçar a loucura, o excesso do sentido do amor, o desespero de alguém que se quer ver e (re)conhecer, e quer ser visto e ser (re)conhecido. E, depois das várias interrogações sobre um mundo silencioso e silenciado, no qual a personagem principal considera a sua existência uma nulidade - em parte por ser mulher, o que nos revela um mundo onde as diferenças de género são muito presentes -, conclui-se que a essa existência foi uma auto-escolha. Manter-se inexplicada e inexplicável foi, pura e simplesmente, uma opção de Magda, porque aquela existência, apesar das infelicidades e dúvidas, era a que, no fundo, Magda não desejava mas construiu para si. Nessa existência, Magda encontra um conforto na solidão e na infelicidade:

“Vivo, sofro, estou aqui. Com astúcia e perfídia, se necessário, luto para não me transformar numa das esquecidas da história. Sou uma solteirona com um diário fechado a sete chaves, mas sou mais do que isso. Sou uma consciência agitada, mas também sou mais do que isso. Quando todas as luzes se apagam, sorrio na escuridão. Por incrível que pareça, os meus dentes luzem.” (pp: 11)

Como disse, não é uma leitura excepcional, mas tem pormenores muito interessantes como por exemplo o facto de terminar-se o livro e ficar-se com a sensação de que tudo ou nada do que foi lido pode, ou não, ter acontecido. Como Magda diz: “Só enterrando os nossos segredos dentro de nós é que os conseguimos guardar(…)invento tudo para que me inventem”.
Nós, leitores, não temos acesso a tais dimensões, sendo os segredos lidos possivelmente inventados que, por sua vez, inventam o romance de uma personagem que tem sempre algo a desvendar.

The first-person narrator of this book is Magda, the daughter of an Afrikaner sheep farmer on a remote ranch in the South African veldt. Magda has grown up alone with her stern, patriarchal father and the servants. She is a bitter old maid, ignored and disregarded. By page ten, you figure out that Magda is kind of nuts. Somewhere along the way, you figure out that between one paragraph and another, sometimes within the same paragraph, Magda slips between fantasy and reality without warning. By the end of the book, she has completely lost her mind and you have to reevaluate everything you've read because it's not clear what really happened and what was Magda's imagination, fabrication, or delusion.

The story centers around Magda and her father and Hendrick, a black African servant who comes to work on the farm, and his wife Anna, whom Magda's father, living alone and wifeless out on the veldt, soon covets. Obviously this isn't going to end well, especially with Magda watching, judging, and resenting. The violence seems to be the point where Magda goes off the rails into complete unreliability. She tells multiple separate and conflicting stories over the course of the book, with no textual clue to the reader that they are not all part of one seamless narrative.

The imagery is stark and isolating as Magda and the handful of other characters scratch out a living in the scorpion and jackal-haunted boonies, but what's really stark and isolating is the relationship between the white farmer and daughter and the black servants, initially friendly and benevolent on the surface, but their every interaction is fraught with the weight of colonialism. The power dynamic between oppressor and oppressed switches several times over the course of the novel, which I think was probably Coetzee's intent. It is indeed a bleak and powerful tale.

That said, this is a book for readers who like literary prose, meaning sentences and paragraphs worked and reworked to artistic effect rather than to tell a story. Magda's internal monologue, even when it's not spinning off into crazy la-la land, is incessantly navel-gazing, dense, and verbose. In the Heart of the Country is one of those books where sometimes you have to reread a paragraph several times to figure out what is actually being said and what's going on. You would think a novel with as much sex and violence as this one packed into its sparse few pages would be more, well, interesting, but it's only interesting on the level of verbiage and literary analysis. It's the kind of book literature professors like to talk about and ask midterm questions like "Describe some of the metaphors the author uses for colonial and patriarchal relationships," blah bah blah.

Honestly, I don't understand people who read books like this for "fun." Literary, prize-winning prose is often not exciting, storytelling prose, and in this case it's almost like simple declarative sentences and a linear narrative are verboten. Yes, I understand the story, yes, I saw the hidden depths in Coetzee's book and I'm sure I could write a term paper about it as well as the next English major (even though I was never an English major), but boy did did it drag and unlike some other literary authors (like Cormac McCarthy and Haruki Murakami) who sometimes annoy me but also tell a story even when they are experimenting, and intrigue me enough to want to read more, Coetzee makes me want to stay away from anything else he's written because this book did not endear him to me.

That sounds like a pretty negative review, and if I were rating this based on my enjoyment of the book alone, In the Heart of the Country would probably get 1.5 or 2 stars. But I can't help but admire an author who puts words together in a way that most can't and manages to drag such powerful weight and layered meaning into such a small book. So I am bumping it up to 2.5 stars based on "literary merit," but rounding down because I still thought it was self-important dudeliness. I can't say I recommend it unless you are reading it for a specific purpose, though, or you just really like this kind of book.

Một trong những nguyên tắc cơ bản của trang goodreads nằm ở phần chấm điểm những cuốn sách bạn đã đọc, để những người khác có thể dựa vào ý kiến của số đông, hoặc đọc chi tiết các reviews mà lựa chọn ra những tác phẩm được đánh giá cao. Nhưng có những cuốn sách thậm chí rất lâu sau khi đọc xong, bạn vẫn không muốn, hay đúng hơn là không dám chấm điểm cho nó, vì cảm thấy bản thân hành động chấm điểm cho tác phẩm này cũng đã là một việc làm giảm đi giá trị khó diễn tả bằng lời của nó. Nhưng vì nghĩ tới nguyên tắc kia, và vì tin rằng nhờ vào những ngôi sao, những người khác cũng sẽ tìm tới cuốn sách, nên bạn bỏ qua một bên những cảm giác lấn cấn, và mạnh bạo chấm điểm cho nó.
"Giữa miền đất ấy" là một tác phẩm như thế.

This is Coetzee´s best book.
My long odyssey with his literary corpus had ended where he began. It was initiated when I was drawn by nostalgia to the cover of "Summertime" one of the books from his trilogy of fictional autobiography, that I had found in a bookshop abroad where I was studying. This set me on a tour de force through Coetzees books which had culminated in his early South African works. Amongst theese "In the heart of the country", "Dusklands" and perhaps even "Waiting for the barbarians" are in a somewhat seperate category than "Life and Times of Michael K.", "Age of Iron" and "Disgrace". The first three employ first person narration and although very political focus very much on the inner tension that is rendered in the protagonist. The latter three are narrated in second person and though outlining the inner struggles well, have somewhat more of a focus on the narrative and rendering the political circumstances of the South Africa described therein.

"In the heart of the country" relates the tale of Magda, a secluded spinster daughter who is stranded in the torpid backlands of the rural South Africa of an undefined time. There is the suggestion later, that Magda witnesses the emergence of the first aeroplanes which she in her complete seclusion interprets as gods, a terrific use of the "Verfremdungseffekt" quite like the opening sentence to "Waiting for the barbarians". This farmland South Africa of the turn of the- and mid 20th century is similar to Olive Schreiner´s depiction of a patriarchal, rough and injust constellation.

Oh man, diese Bewertung fällt mir echt schwer. Einerseits war "Im Herzen des Landes" eines der unangenehmsten Bücher, das ich je gelesen habe. Andererseits beeindruckt es mich, wie Coetzee mit Sprache umgeht und eine Parabel auf das Apartheids System schreibt.

Die Zerrissenheit der Hauptperson Magda bringt er meisterhaft auf den Punkt. Sie möchte sich zwar von dem alten System lösen, aber ist viel zu tief darin verwurzelt als das es ihr tatsächlich gelingen könnte. Folgendes Zitat zeigt dies treffend:

"Ich bin nicht einfach eine von den Weißen, ich bin ich! Ich bin ich, nicht ein Volk. Warum habe ich zu zahlen für anderer Leute Sünden?", sagt sie zu Hendrik, um dann im nächsten Satz hinzuzufügen "Wartest du darauf, dass die weiße Frau vor dir kniet? Wartest du darauf, dass ich deine weiße Sklavin werde?" (S. 174)

Wie schwer ein solcher gesellschaftlicher Prozess der Annäherung ist, beschreibt Coetzee im Mikrokosmos der Farm, die nie klar in Südafrika lokalisiert ist. So könnte man das Buch auch als die Skizze einer tiefgreifenden Psychose begreifen, die die Hauptperson durchlebt und die möglicherweise auch durch das Unterdrückungssystem bedingt wird, unter dem die gesamte Gesellschaft leidet. Alles in allem sollte einem vor der Lektüre bewusst sein, das dieses Buch den Leser an die Grenzen des erträglichen treibt. Wer sich aber darauf einlässt, wird einiges zum Nachdenken haben.