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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,
By
This review is from: Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II (Paperback)
Rarely have I encountered so much insight and knowledge in such a short 169 pages. "Youth" is the second novel by the Nobel Prize-winning author J.M. Coetzee. The first, "Waiting for the Barbarians" was a novel about societies whereas "Youth" is a novel about an individual. I get the strong suspicion that this is an autobiographical novel although I know little, if anything, about the author's life. However, his subject character's thoughts, actions, and observations are so real and humanly imperfect that I have to feel the book emerges from the authors own memory. If I'm right, it's all the more reason to praise the talent of Coetzee because he is willing to share the good and the bad about himself. Even if it isn't autobiographical, it is a masterful disection of the inner soul of an emerging adult writer.
"Youth" tells the story of a young man of university age who sensed that his future as a writer in his native South Africa is hopeless. He also realizes that his entire life there is hopeless. We see the clumsiness of his relationships with others; especially women. Most of this is his own fault as he sees everything in the context of whether it will help the development of his artistic talent. Love has no serious role to play in this life (at least at this point in his life). He emigrates to London (his other options for artistic development were Paris and Vienna). Unfortunately he has to get a job and his mathmatical background enables him to find a reasonably good one. However, everything continues to be measured in its' ability to enhance or detract from his development as a poet. The book ends with the anticipated dispair that such a detached life would bring. The strength of "Youth", for me, is the author's ability to bring us such a candid view of an obsessed life and leave us wondering how we would have done things different. There are many actions and attitudes that we would have definitely handled differently. Yet, the candid reader will see himself committing many of the same errors. It's hard at 53 to remember just what I would have done 30 years ago without the maturity (hopefully) that comes with age and experience. Many authors, I believe, make their youthful characters too mature for their age. Who wants to spend time describing warts when the character is destined for greatness. Coetzee gives us a dose of immature reality and teaches us about ourselves through the improper and unrealistic expectations of a narcissist. We learn by wanting to reach out and correct our anti-hero's shortcomings. We also learn by occassionally seeing ourselves as well. It was an eye-opening experience for me to read "Youth". I'm more anxious than ever to read more of Coetzee.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Superb,
By
This review is from: Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II (Paperback)
Twenty taut chapters of lucid prose is what Nobel Laureate Coetzee conjures up in this superb little novel. It is - presumably - a largely autobiographical work about a young South African (himself) leaving his native Cape Town for the UK in the hope that a life in London may finally wrest from him his ultimate destiny: to become a poet. The book brilliantly exposes the mind of this sensitive and somewhat listless youth, who searches for identity and meaning through a rare mix of poetry, computing, and a host of miscarried love affairs.
Coetzee is a master of erudite objectivity, suspending outside judgement in a stream of succinct observations. His narrative runs its course with hardly an extraneous word, and, although the themes are often somber, he maintains an undercurrent of optimism. The result is both satisfying and memorable. This book is highly recommended. Read it and enjoy.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't be afraid to fail,
By
This review is from: Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II (Hardcover)
Coetzee's fictionalized memoir is a painfully honest account of a would-be writer trying to forge himself through two misguided yet common strategies of youth: heading to one of the world's "great cities" (London) because only in these places does "destiny happen"; and kidding himself that both he and his work will be somehow redeemed by love. That he promptly falls into an abyss of middle-class working life and a series of loveless relationships is unsurprising. Coetzee's detached third-person style (an admirable achievement in such a personal work) and his preference for narrating rather than dramatizing most situations here add to the lugubrious mood, though this never becomes a self-indulgent or melancholy work. Indeed, it is saved from that by two things. First, Coetzee's inspiring articulation, in the final pages, of the real reason behind artistic failure in the young: a paralyzing lack of self-confidence which kills art and any chance of a loving relationship. It's the unwillingness to fail and therefore the unwillingness to try which usually thwart us. Secondly, Coetzee's reflections on what I presume to be his own reading history are wonderful. His interleaved commentaries on Henry James, Ezra Pound and Ford Madox Ford are keen and insightful. This is a book that young would-be writers will find alternately depressing and inspiring - and perhaps the not-so-young ones, too. Exhausted, over-educated dwellers in the white-collar wasteland will find much to inspire and console them here. After all, Coetzee was an I.T. professional who didn't publish until well into his 30s and went on to win the Nobel this year at 63. He's certainly made up for lost time.
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