رواية تعرض جزء من السيرة الذاتية للكاتب في فترة ماقبل الكتابة و الشعر في اوقات الحيرة والبحث عن الذات . رواية مواجهة الشاب مع المدينة القاسية

Literalmente eu.

Each line is a spindle of tight ended neuron relaying the plot at a modestly enjoyable pace. A lonely poet unbecoming a poet. That is the essence. As Das once said “you don’t make art when you’re living truly”—same applies to the Coetzee’s rude in love migrant.

"Y un día, estos hombres, estos poetas, estos amantes, tendrán suerte: la chica, no importa la excelencia de su belleza, les responderá, y una cosa llevará a la otra y sus vidas se transformarán, las de ambos, y punto. ¿Qué más hace falta sino una especie de obstinación estúpida e insensata como amante y escritor unida a la buena disposición para fracasar una y otra vez?" Estas líneas explican el conflicto del protagonista, el joven licenciado en Matemáticas, programador gris de IBM y aprendiz de poeta y escritor, el joven John Maxwell Coetzee. Exigente, romántico, seguidor de Pound y Eliot, lector de Ford, Kafka, Vallejo. Emigrante de las colonias, en la temible, fría y laberíntica Londres de la década de los sesenta, huyendo de una Sudáfrica que le vió nacer pero que no le pertenece. Coetzee nos muestra con sinceridad extrema y con una precisión que a veces encoje el corazón el retrato de un joven introvertido, ordenado y solitario, que busca la mirada entre la multitud de aquella mujer que libere en él "todas sus energías creativas". Una semblanza autobiográfica muy bien escrita, narrada de forma desnuda y sin aspavientos ni retórica.

Si no es lo mejor de Coetzee, la verdad lo disfruté mucho como mi primer acercamiento al laureado escritor. Lo recomiendo.

Я вважаю шо ця книга дуже погано постарішала

Наш оповідач юний, як і в назві, на це теж можна багато його думок і вчинків списати. Але, в книжці аж занадто багато сексизму та расизму. Головний герой має проблеми з емоціями, він наче намагається все сприйняти через логіку і книжки, марить бути поетом, але не має почуттів. Він жахливо поводиться з дівчатами, жахливі думки має про жінок в цілому, часто оцінює людей за країною походження, робить якісь недоречні порівняння.

Багато можна списати на вік, але це майже його ідеологія в романі - не брати відповідальність за своє життя. Коли шось стається він наче відстороняється, не відчуває шо це наслідки його минулих дій. Я хотіла шось побачити про еміграцію, вле його роздуми були поверхневими, а через все вищенаписане, навіть те, що мало бути цікавим вже не сприймалось серйозно.

Книга написана майстерно, хочу ще почитати disgrace у автора, а потім вже робити висновки про його творчість.

A white confused South African who wants to escape his homeland,one he feels is not rightfully his, to become a poet in the land of the artists and writers. While he would love to go to France, he settles for England. And there, he is again forced to settle for less. He settles for a job that puts food on his table but eats away his creative soul. He settles for women who aren't the muse he is desperately looking for. But that poet in him does not settle down. It flits from thought to thought, aimlessly drifting through the days and nights, summers and winters hoping that his dreams will somehow find him.

The prose is beautiful. It just moves from moment to moment, feeling to feeling in a rushed, haphazard way. It makes you feel helpless and while you keep hoping for something good to happen, you somehow know that nothing is going to happen.There are so many poets and authors referred to in the book, most of them whom I haven't read or even heard of. Makes me want to try them, maybe I'll start with Ezra Pound, our hero's hero. While the political situation across the world in the early sixties isn't the main backdrop, it is the undercurrent that drives the narration forward. I realized that know so little about South Africa. There's a touch of India too. Satyajit Ray makes an appearance and so does Indian curry. And it also appears that Indian computer programmers living abroad haven't changed their habits over the decades.
'"At 18 he might have been a poet. Now he is not a poet, not a writer, not an artist. He is a computer programmer, a 24year old computer programmer in a world where there are (yet) no 30 year old computer programmers. At 31 he is too old to be a programmer: one turns oneself into something else - some kind of businessman - or shoots oneself"

Words that hang heavy on me. Different contexts, same implication. Scary. Very scary.

Had this book not been labelled a 'fictionalized memoir', it would have made it to my dark and twisty shelves. But no. Our hero went on to win the Booker Prize and the Nobel Prize for literature. If Astrid or Caroline or Jacqueline Google him, they would know that he made it.

Have you ever had the feeling that somebody wasn’t able to finish a task because he was called away? This was my impression after reading this book. It ends rather suddenly as if the author was called to lunch and never got back to write a proper finish.

We see the adventures and the struggle of a young South African male in London. Everything Coetzee was able to write before he was called to lunch is pleasant to read. We really want to know what happens to the main protagonist or at least what Coetzee has had for lunch.

The protagonist (Coetzee as a young man?) is a monster, a more repulsive and pitiful character than even Rousseau in his Confessions, although not as extravagantly so. As with all Coetzee’s work, the style is matter-of-fact.

This young man, who spends most of the book in London, is a cad to women, a poor worker, a sad, lonely misfit who cares little about apartheid or other political issues, who reads but does not seem to know what to do with literature, who writes poorly and infrequently, who exists on dreams and delusions, who despises much and loves almost nothing.

It appears to be a calmly told Dostoevskian novel, with no particular point. This seems to have been Coetzee’s point. A fascinating experiment, although not an interesting or entertaining or in any way enjoyable read. A truly joyless book.

Un libro bastante crudo sobre la compleja realidad de Sudáfrica de los años 1940-1960. Las diferencias qué hay entre los ingleses , los afrikáners y los nativos . Lo complejo de las rivalidades en el colegio entre razas . Niños que van sin zapato al colegio y los que van bien vestidos .
La realidad que los profesores golpean con varas a los alumnos .
Todo lo anterior descrito desde la perspectiva del Niño JM Coetzee, la cruda opinión de este Niño sobre su Padre y Madre .
Es un libro sin afectos entre los familiares según la descripción que se narra.
Que complicado el mundo que le tocó vivir al autor en su infancia .

Coetzee is so good at writing unpleasant characters but beyond that not much happened in this short novel that interested me. Though I guess that was the point - the mundanity and realities of life.

Deceptively short. Beautifully written. A letter to all artists, or those aspiring to be.

I'm aware of the debate regarding whether this author deserves a Nobel or not. All I have to say is that I absolutely loved this book and read it slowly so that it would last longer.

The character is really desperate as he is a little bit all over the place and exactly where he wants to be; lost is his own life, trying to make peace with misery, nostalgia, melancholia, depression and other negative emotions that will help him with his art; after all, lots of famous authors before him have benefited from these emotions whereas happiness is useless for people who want to create.

The racism in South Africa is profound, people feeling lost and almost afraid to openly admit how they feel or share their opinion on debatable topics. The uncertainty caused by the cold war makes this story darker, more realistic and easier to read.

Computers, mathematics, art, writing, homosexuality, marriage, love, nuclear war, apartheid, France, England, Austria, South Africa -- all together in a marvelous 167-page book.