Ali ste kdaj brali knjigo, katere najvišji pomen je le to da obstaja? Namesto da bi nosila neko sporočilo? No naj vam povem, da je to ena tistih knjig.
Zgodbo pripoveduje mladenič, ki v bistvu ne vem kako mu je ime (saj ga omenijo le enkrat v celotni knjigi) in kako izgleda. Vse kar vemo o njem je to, da ga zanima literatura (pravi, da je tudi sam umetnik) in pa ženske. Vsa ta njegova občutja o stvareh, ki jih ima rad so zelo platonska. V celi knjigi le razmišlja, da se je preselil v London, da postane pesnik a nastane računalničar, izgubi navdih za poezijo in se sprašuje kako mora izgledati in kaktero državljanstvo mora ima ženska, ki bi mu ustrezala.
Rada pa bi še povedala, da je stil pisanja skozi celo knjigo enak. Niti na koncu avtor ne naredi povzetka/zaključka ampak zgodbo le enkrat preneha pisati in temu reče konec.
Prisežem, da je knjiga tako suhoparna in slabo napisana, da vam tega samo z besedami ne moram opisati.

3'5

I am all for flawed protagonists, but not perhaps, for insufferable ones. And John, center of this story, is obnoxious. Women are objects, it's their fault they can't see into his inner flame of poetry, his mother likes him too much, blah blah blah pretention. I like to think Coetzee wrote this with self awareness, but it is still a frustrating read. Anyways, he still has a way with words.

The one saving grace are the passages on loneliness in a new city. Most remarkable is counting the days in which he does not speak to another soul. At one point, he considers bumping into people on purpose so that he can say "sorry", so that words come out of his mouth.

بتتناول الرواية/المذكرات حياة جي إم كوتزي في فترة الجامعة، الوحدة والعزلة، الاضطرابات السياسية ومقته لبلاده، والهروب إلى الفردوس المتخيل (لندن). ثم الصدمات و الحياة الرتيبة و التأملات والبحث عن الطريق الصحيح للفن والفنان.

El joven Coetzee, para poder ser poeta, se va de Sudáfrica a Inglaterra. Me gustó mucho cómo lo cuenta, en especial en esta pregunta que se hace allá: "¿Por qué en este país las grandes palabras parecen fuera de lugar?"

Another stellar read from Coetzee. I started this and next minute I was looking at the free end page...I devoured it. Not much happens, traditionally plot wise. But I couldn't help but see myself in this book, with the characters musings on poetry, the minor tragedies of an artist trying to find his art, in a world heavily reliant on pathetic and mundane rituals, also known as making a living.

A read somewhat “as dark as the inside of a needle.” Inspiring and melancholic. I resonated deeply with Coetzee in many situations. Felt nostalgic.

I LOVE Coetzee.
No more words are there to express my feelings for him. :)

One of those rare books that I liked less and less with each new chapter, a new member of my least favorite books shelf.

A miserable and humorless book about a miserable and humorless young man who may or may not 'be' the author in a narrative where the misery is compounded by the use of wearying third person present tense. A plethora of paragraphs are filled with laundry-list self-discovery-seeking navel-gazing questions that presented a serious distraction in resisting the temptation to tally the number of '?'s on every page. All the more wearying is the miserable and humorless young man's emotional predicament that stems entirely from his near total self-involvement and inability to summon up even a modicum of empathy from the kiddie-pool level shallows of his soul for any individual human being despite his morose narcissism being partially camouflaged by his expressions of outrage at injustices towards peoples in South Africa and the world at large. Every other chapter or so he treats a woman awfully and we are expected to feel sorry for ... not her, but him. Despite all the serious pondering of profundities in the literary, visual, musical and cinematic arts by this sad sack misanthrope I found myself yearning for the more profound pleasures of the un-artistically inclined sad sack misanthropes found on the tv show Seinfeld - I'll take George Costanza's philosophizing over John Coetzee's any day. If this book is indeed autobiographical then I am glad that I have met so few people of such impoverished emotional spirit as this author. If this book is more fiction than autobiography then perhaps it is a complete success, to its detriment. At least I can add another Nobel winner and another country to my internal "authors read" lists so it is not a total loss.

Note to self: any time I am tempted to try out another Coetzee book recall this paragraph and decline: "Because they are creators, artists possess the secret of love. The fire that burns in the artist is visible to women by means of an instinctive faculty. Women themselves do not have the sacred fire (there are exceptions; Sappho Emily Brontë). It is in quest of the fire they lack, the fire of love, that women pursue artists and give themselves to them. In their lovemaking artists and their mistresses experience briefly the life of the gods. From such lovemaking the artist returns to his work enriched and strengthened, the woman to her life transfigured." Misogynistic pretension much?

This second part of Coetzee's "autobiographical trilogy in novel form" was maddeningly dull in that I can only read so much of someone's adolescent angst without a break. It's true that the narrator here, John, is in his early 20's but having lived through this period myself (without nearly as much meaningless sex as John is getting), what I ended wanting to do was slap him and tell him to shut up and stop whining. This is Knausgaard, boiled down, without any of the cleverness or plot development I expect from Coetzee - although it still has the succinct prose that I admire. Well, on to part three, I suppose...

The second book of the trilogy Scenes from Provincial Life, describing how the author left his own country and how he struggled in surviving in a big city such as London.

Its sequel is Summertime.

3* Elizabeth Costello
4* Disgrace
4* Waiting for the Barbarians
3* A Ilha
4* The Master of Petersburg
3* Slow Man
4* Age of Iron
4* Boyhood (Scenes from Provincial Life #1)
4* Youth (Scenes from Provincial Life #2)
TR Dusklands
TR Life & Times of Michael K
TR Summertime (Scenes from Provincial Life #3)
TR The Schooldays of Jesus
TR L'Abattoir de verre

6 días y 171 páginas después. El tercer libro de Coetzee que leo, y este fue un prestamo de un buen amigo literario.

A ciencia cierta no supe que me motivó a leer este libro, quería seguir leyendo a Coetzee después del libro de los barbaros, pero creo que no fue la mejor opción, ya que considero que un libro de memorias es únicamente para los seguidores fervientes de los autores, y aunque me fascina Coetzee no me considero un ferviente admirador... por el principal motivo que no he leído lo suficiente de él.

Aunque el libro no es malo, leer los pasajes de casi cualquier juventud es un ejercicio de inspección interna y externa, ya que es inevitable no comparar... aunque en este caso ni el país ni la época ayudan mucho a una comparación.

Comprendo los motivantes del autor y los temas de los que habla el libro, pero simplemente no me generó gran emoción, por supuesto que la narrativa es demasiado hermosa (no encuentro otro superlativo para describirlo) pero en este caso no es suficiente. Hay unos episodios realmente bueno, mayormente al principio y al final. Me quedaron muchas dudas acerca de si todo fue real.

Un libro que nos ayuda a darnos cuenta de las dos Sudafricas y las grandes diferencias, que hubo (seguramente que aún hay).

No habrá reseña.