Ah, I think I can never dislike J.M. Coetzee's work. There are exceptional depths in his characters that make me feel like I've known them all my life - the magistrate in Waiting for the Barbarians, Magda in In the Heart of the Country, the professor in Disgrace. They are all extremely different characters, from extremely different circumstances, locations, ages, and time. But written by Coetzee they seem to speak in voices that you can relate to, no matter how un-relatable they should be. Coetzee is a master storyteller. He puts in a lot of detail not just through his prolific description, but through the words the characters choose to use, the opinions, likings and dislikings they have; the first-person narratives he writes seem to embody those very people to perfection.

And of course Youth is an autobiography - so how much more accurate can an author like Coetzee be, if he is speaking in his own voice from the past?

The book is brutally honest, like diary entries the writer knows would be read by thousands of people; people who would judge and berate him for simply being a human being. Like everyone else, the author is selfish, arrogant, insecure, often lonely, often ambitious, but most of the time, he is just fine. He is doing okay. He rejects and is rejected, he ignores and he is ignored, he is lonely but has encountered a lonelier friend, he is considerably intelligent but realizes he's no match to the genuine geniuses at work. He wanted to avoid mediocrity his whole youth, but he embraced it in the end, quite contented to just be alive and be okay. He is like many of us.

As to how much I would recommend a reading of this book, I would say, it's Coetzee, read him! You will both hate and love his characters, but more than that, you will never be able to forget them.

"She writes every week but he does not write every week in return. That would be too much like
reciprocation."

"He has a horror of spilling mere emotion on to the page. Once it has begun to spill out he would not know how to stop it. It would be like severing an artery and watching one's lifeblood gush out."

"They might as well get married, he and Astrid, then spend the rest of their lives looking after each other like invalids."

"He is chagrined to see how well the reality principle operates, how, under the prod of loneliness, the boy with spots settles for the girl with the dull hair and the heavy legs, how everyone, no matter how unlikely, finds, in the end, a partner."

"Without descending into the depths one cannot be an artist. But what exactly are the depths? He had thought that trudging down icy streets, his heart numb with loneliness, was the depths. But perhaps the real depths are different, and come in unexpected form: in a flare-up of nastiness against a girl in the early hours of the morning, for instance. Perhaps the depths that he has wanted to plumb have been within him all the time, closed up in his chest: depths of coldness, callousness, caddishness."

"Sorry: the word comes heavily out of his mouth, like a stone. Does a single word of indeterminate class count as speech? Has what occurred between himself and the old man been an instance of human contact, or is it better described as mere social interaction, like the touching of feelers between ants? To the old man, certainly, it was nothing. All day long the old man stands there with his stacks of papers, muttering angrily to himself; he is always waiting for a chance to abuse some passer-by. Whereas in his own case the memory of that single words will persist for weeks, perhaps for the rest of his life. Bumping into people, saying “Sorry!”, getting abused: a ruse, a cheap way of forcing a conversation. How to trick loneliness."

"What is wrong with him is that he is not prepared to fail."

In che misura la vita del(l'odioso) personaggio racconta la gioventù di Coetzee?

Non sapevo il libro avesse forti tinte autobiografiche e, mi sono accorta, non conoscevo quasi nulla sulla vita di Coetzee. Scopro così che l'autore ha due lauree: una in matematica, e qui suona la campana dell'assonanza, e una in letteratura.
Ma, se il protagonista corrisponde all'autore, la lettura di questo libro mi lascia turbata. Coetzee è davvero così incapace di relazionarsi con il prossimo? È davvero così freddo da ferire quasi volontariamente le donne che frequenta?

Questa lettura mi lascia insoddisfatta e con la sensazione di incompletezza. Devo leggere "Infanzia" e altre opere dell'autore per risentire la voce forte e chiara di "Vergogna"?

Non lo consiglierei come primo approccio a Coetzee, ma forse è una tappa obbligata per dargli uno spessore a tutto tondo.
Chissà come ha vissuto la dicotomia tra matematica e letteratura, come le sue due anime gli hanno reso la vita impossibile.

Chissà.

I believe it was Mary Knott, librarian and friend, who recommended this author to me. In my usual pickiness over fiction, I probably would not have had the joy of reading it had it not been one of my only options to trade for at a hostal we passed through.

I am not often a reader of fiction, and so it is sometimes hard for me to describe how I experience it (do I say this in all of my reviews of fiction?). This book is about the 1960s, London, South Africa, and work. But Coetzee has primarily written about, as titled, youth (especially the mentality of it) and all of its ups and down. The main character is something of a Catcher in the Rye Holden Caulfield, he is many things to sympathize with, judge, laugh at, and sigh for all in one. His thoughts are practical, linked, natural yet irrational. They are big picture idealism that`s hitting a brick wall in the real world. He is a loner, an individual, bitter and grumpy, dreamy and brave. These things are youth, I suppose.

My 25-year-old husband and 28-year-old self were amused that a book titled “Youth” is about someone around our age, because we forget we are still in it, but we are a bit of those things still. Hopefully we will remain the best of them, too. I enjoyed Youth. Will I return to Coetzee? I`m not sure, but I will certainly recommend him.

Maybe I am just bored with J.M. Coetzee's utter literary perfection, but I will not rate "Youth" with five stars. Clearly, it is a five-star work in any reasonable scale, but not when compared with "Disgrace", "Waiting for the Barbarians", or "Boyhood". To me, "Youth" is a great book, yet a tiny bit short of a masterpiece.

Like "Boyhood", this book is a fictionalized autobiography. It covers the period from 1959 to 1963 or so, meaning that "he" (the author writes about himself in the third person) is 19 years old when the book begins, and about 23 when it ends. He studies mathematics at a Cape Town University in South Africa and plans to devote himself to art. The danger of getting called to military service forces him to leave the country. He moves to London, where he finds a job as a computer programmer, all the time trying hard to become an artist

Cold War is at its peak, the Cuban missile crisis threatens the world with nuclear annihilation, horrible events are happening in South Africa torn by racial strife. He is trying to escape from politics, and also to shake off the possessive love of his mother, or, as the author writes, "to run away from his mother and the smothering ease she offers." He has not yet become himself and is still trying.

He is of the age when the discrepancy between what a young man knows (not much) and what he thinks he knows (a lot) is most pronounced. Mr. Coetzee again shows his unparalleled mastery of the literary craft by writing from within the mind of a naive young man, who - because of his voracious reading - believes he knows almost all there is to know about life. He matures a little, though, and wonders "Is that what growing up amounts to: growing out of yearning, of passion, of all intensities of the soul?"

This beautifully written book, full of wisdom about people and their lives, can also be read as a treatise on art: poetry, literature, music, painting. It has stunning passages that take my breath away. On the grass of Hampstead Heath "he experiences a moment of ecstatic unity with the All!". Once, being his age, I had a similar experience. But I wish I were so hard on myself as "he" is, and as thoughtful in understanding and exposing the weaknesses and dark, scary corners of my psyche.

So why not five stars? I perceive some lack of cohesion in portraying "his" inner self and the big events of the outer, real world. They feel separate. Maybe it was the author's intention, and I am just not getting it. Anyway, I read "Youth" much faster than "Boyhood", which means that it was not extremely delightful reading, just very delightful.

Four and a half stars.

Ehum…

Well…

What can I say? This is the tenth novel (or so, I just made a quick calculation in my head) by Coetzee that I have read, and it leaves me puzzled in a way that the others do not, even though they may be less approachable, more brutal and enigmatic. This one is clear-cut, with simple language and a typical coming-of-age plot. It is very easy to read, and in fact, I finished it in an afternoon. But it has left me agonising over its content in a way I did not anticipate at all.

There are autobiographical elements in the story of the young man who leaves Cape Town in 1962 to start a new life in London. The character is called John, and aspires to become a poet, or writer in general, while trying to fit in by taking a job as a computer programmer. So far, so good. It is the search of the poet for the right modus vivendi to develop his creativity.

Where is the problem?

I absolutely loathed the main character. There is no other way to describe what I felt, page after page, digging deeper into his psyche filled with pretentious nothingness and arrogance. This makes me wonder what the character meant to the author. Does he reflect Coetzee’s own development? If so, there is a huge amount of prejudice and misogyny in his world view, almost painfully evident in every sentence. Or is it a critical analysis of the mindset of the early 1960s, showing the reality of that time ruthlessly in order to make a subtle statement on the era without embracing those attitudes in 2002, when the novel was published?

I don’t know.

Apart from the problematic relationship of 1960s South Africa to the rest of the world, I was appalled by the stereotypical description of women from Provence, London, small towns in England or Sweden.

“Spiritually, he would feel at home in Stockholm, he suspects. But what about Swedish?”

I hate when people assume by hearsay that they know exactly what Sweden is like, and what they can expect of it. There seems to be a consensus in the world how to categorise Swedes, and the general common denominator between the analysts is that they have never lived in Sweden or talked to a Swede, or read a Swedish author. Yet, they “spiritually” identify with Stockholm.

Swedish women, of course, are useful to young poets-in-the-making with patriarchal instincts and ancient attitudes towards women’s roles as muses and sexual objects:

“Because they are creators, artists possess the secret of love. The fire that burns in artists is visible to women, by means of an instinctive faculty. Women themselves do not have the sacred fire (there are exceptions: Sappho, Emily Bronte). It is in quest of the fire they lack, the fire of love, that women pursue artists and give themselves to them.”

Good artists can hope for Swedish or French muses, while boring poets have to take a local girl, a pert little something from the countryside…

Judging by the butcher approach of the main character when it comes to all encounters with women, he does not have the creative spark himself, despite his conviction to the contrary.

He is literally caught between two worlds: the respectable middle class and the bohemian artist life, and he is equally hopeless in both:

“The right thing is boring. So he is at an impasse: he would rather be bad than boring [note from the furious reviewer: he is BOTH!], has no respect for a person who would rather be bad than boring, and no respect either for the cleverness of being able to put his dilemma neatly into words.”

No respect for anything might be a good summary of the character’s mindset. The outside world only exists to deliver what he needs to fulfil his literary destiny. He offers nothing in return.

Leaves me to form a judgment on the novel. Clearly Mr Coetzee himself is spiritually at home in Stockholm, as he received the Nobel Prize in Literature from the Swedish Academy in 2003, shortly after he wrote this novel. Clearly he has a sharp analytical mind and is able to describe an abject character objectively without raising an eyebrow. The story as such is compelling, and most definitely a mirror of what many young men in 1962 would have thought or done.

It does take a master storyteller to create a portrait of such a man and get the reader to feel so strongly against him, and still want to read on.

I will have to reread my Coetzee collection again in order to make a proper evaluation of why I can’t make up my mind about this one.

The jury is still out. Not expected back anytime soon.

Disgrace was so incredibly written, I read Youth (and Boyhood) to learn more about the author. His brutally critical account of a cold, passionless young man who dreams of becoming a poet is well-written, but the protagonist is intentionally extremely unlikeable. This was not a head I wanted to be in.

The reluctant, inwardly drawn, conscience-stricken 10-year-old from Boyhood returns as a prudish and insecure young man who dreams of being a great artist. As a 19-year-old Mathematics student in a South African university, John is leading an extraordinarily practical life – making cheese with left-over milk and working hard at multiple jobs during vacations – to escape the deterioration of South Africa (like Stephen Dedalus wants to cut all ties from Ireland) and find his way as a poet in London. But his inherently cautious and rule-abiding nature doesn’t let him get soaked in the experiences that a city like London offers. Stuck in a soul-sucking day job as a computer programmer which provides him financial independence, he is lonely and miserable, with no outlet for his creative expression.

This is a fictionalized autobiography of J.M. Coetzee and he has been relentless and perhaps remarkably truthful in the examination of his youth, his ideals, and more importantly his inadequacies. John desires freedom from the traps of his family (especially his mother), his country, and the “provincial culture” – all of which he considers embarrassing. But he is never able to extricate himself from this “trap”; he is torn between his South African and English identities. Like most of his works, the apartheid in South Africa and its social and economic implications form the backdrop of life there. When he runs away to London, he wishes for acceptance but experiences social snubbing and alienation in the stony frigidity of the European capital. The solitude he craves slowly turns into isolation. As he undergoes this misery, he tries to believe that the agony and darkness which fill his days are the rites of passage to be a great writer and he would channel them in his work.

John is not particularly likable; he is cold, indifferent, and too proud of his artistic temperament. In all his associations with others, he wants his inner artistic flame to be acknowledged. He waits for his “destined woman” to reveal herself – only an exceptional girl who is his equal in all ways and is attracted to the creative fire within his dull exterior. This torrid, life-altering passion will consume him and bring out the great artist in him. In the meanwhile, he looks at women as objects of desire and sometimes even as obstacles to art. In his interactions with these women, he is immature and insensitive. He has a string of meaningless affairs where his attempts are half-hearted and passive; he is ashamed about his failure as a lover which, for him, also translates to his failure as an artist. Outwardly, he dismisses exhibitions of vulnerability, but deep down he knows he is a child incapable of handling what life is throwing at him.

This book has 160-odd pages, but I took time to read it, partially because I kept going back to the restrained writing and the simple sentences which are chosen with so much care and precision; this artful economy brings out the complexity inherent in Coetzee’s work. I’m sure I will pick it up again in 2021.

Lui è come Lo Straniero di Camus (che poi in francese ha anche il significato di "Estraneo" che forse in questo caso è più consono e d'impatto...). Lui è un altro personaggio in "formazione", è acerbo, però è asettico alle emozioni, lui tra le altre sue azioni senza significato (cose che semplicemente gli capitano per noia) mette in cinta una donna e poi cerca elegantemente, scrupolosamente con garbo di rimediare con una procedura fattibile e burocratica alla sua incapacità di amare, per potersi allontanare il più velocemente dalla parte peggiore e inutile di se stesso.
Lui è fragile e inconsapevole, lui non vuole finire nei meccanismi aridi della catena di montaggio di un lavoro falso e d'ufficio, tra gente ipocrita e tra cervelli che sono solo macchine in funzione e dove c'è solo la politica del guadagno e non dell'umanità, ma finisce poi a fare un lavoro banale e a perdersi nel grande meccanismo dell'accettazione di ciò che durante l'adolescenza non avremmo mai accettato, quando studiavamo i poeti e recitavamo affascinati il "to be, or not to be..." Il suo disincantato cinismo è il protagonista di questo breve romanzo. Finisci l'ultimo rigo e rimani in apnea e ti guardi attorno sperando di riuscire a estrarti nella tua vita reale dall'automatismo delle azioni nella vita di tutti i giorni che nel romanzo sono ben raccontate.
Vorresti almeno tu che hai letto il romanzo non essere un topo di laboratorio... in realtà hai la sensazione di esserlo già da tempo, allora sospiri... e pensi: il prossimo romanzo forse mi porrà di fronte altre sfide, così che io possa dimenticare che di sicuro non sto vivendo ciò che in realtà desidero.
È venuta così... senza gioia...

This is a book about a boy who flees his home country in the hope of finding a wild life as a poet with a never-ending string of fabulous no-strings-attached lovers. This sounds like the introduction to a young adult book, except for two facts: the country the boy flees from is South Africa at the time of the Sharpeville massacre, which means Apartheid was still raving. And the place he flees to is London in the 60s, where he becomes a computer programmer, hardly a glamorous profession.

He is torn between figuring out the kind of English person he could be: a worker, or maybe a gentleman or still pursue his poetry dream. He does not seem to be able to settle on a persona. This is also visible in his changing taste of authors and poets he admires. Instead of finding who he wants to be, he changes between different authors he aspires to mimic. The boy is constantly torn between different questions, never settling on any answers. This makes his life meaningless, something he suffers from greatly. These feelings of loneliness are connected with the question of belonging. He left his despised homeland to be free of its attitude, but he has not found the new homeland he hoped for. Ultimately he did not manage to get loose of South-Africa at all, because he still writes about the country. Which makes one wonder if a person can ever cut itself of from cultural or national ties, they do not want to belong to anymore.

This is only part of the review, read the full review here: https://bookwormsshallruletheworld.wo...

This is the most autobigraphical book i related to on so many levels, however reluctant i am to admit that. Its a rather bleak book with such raw honesty and rhetoric questions. This is my first book by Coetzee, and i absolutely love it, his way of exploring so much striking truth in this short sentences, going straight into the consciousness of the 19 year old in London. I find myself enjoying it and finishing it fast, probably the fastest i have ever finished a book. The pretentiousness of an artist wannabe in london, debating what it means and takes to be an artist, wondering how others do it, being in london yet not living within it and what it offers, drifting and justifying what he is doing, secretly desiring the torture of being an artist - only superficially, the relation between being a good lover/artist, lots of contemplation and doubts delivered in a rather casual way. Im not sure if the title is apt, is this what being young is all about, is this what everyone can relate to in their youth? and ultimately settle into a job, car and family? Gone is the passion and intensity of being young? or does it just manifest in different ways?

Slightly better than boyhood but still a sigh and eye roll kind of book