Youth

Youth

This
is a book
written by J.M.Coetzee the nobel prize winning South African writer.
I had mixed feelings about this book.
On a few occasions when I was reading this I asked myself why was I reading it? Indeed why did he write it? I've read two other books by him, Disgrace and Waiting for the barbarians. Both of which I really enjoyed. Youth was not what I was expecting it to be. The main character is so passionless and lives such a mundane existance and yet in a funny way it is interesting.

The book is about a young man who finishes uni in Sth Africa and then moves on to London with ideas in his head of becoming a poet. Coetzee writes entirely in the third person, although we know the main character is based on himself. He probably did that to give some apparent objectivity to his study of himself as a young man. The "He" of the novel is for most of the book unhappy. He is devoid of passion and lives a miserable existence of a computer programmer. His relationships with women are completely unsatifying. He realizes that he in fact is making himself miserable through his attitudes. But his intention is to live the life of an artist and so he justifies this as a worthwhile experience. We see him struggle through things and know the ideas he has of how to be an artist are misgiven. He seems to think the best way to be an artist is to cut himself off from his family, his country and his feelings. He idolizes writers like Henry James who seem to write in a vaccuum, with brilliant passages issueing forth from the higher cortex of their brains, and Ezra Pound with his cryptic ramblings. It is so unlike Coetzee's other writing that comes from his feelings and his Sth African roots. I guess that's the irony of the book. The author is writing about himself as a struggling artist who could never, with the mindset he's in, ever write the book that he is writing.

I think Coetzee is missing something here about his youth and youth in general. Is this book meant to be a criticism of his own attitudes as a young man? Or has he just forgotten the full experience of his own youth?.....I think he is too great a writer to say this. He seems to be trying to convey the banality of our lives, which we are confronted with even when we are young. His book stands in contrast to cliches that we often see of youth being a time of passion and thrills. I don't think it's an accurate picture but I guess it's not meant to be.The saving grace of the book is the truth in the writing. The detail and clarity of the youth's observations about himself is striking. I could see many observations and experiences that I myself have had. As the book continued I felt more sympathetic to him. He is brutally honest with himself. On one level I felt a bit sickened when I was reading it but on another level it was also very intriguing. I do find myself thinking of reading the other book he wrote about himself; entitled "Boyhood".

I wouldn't recommend this book although I can see that it is a well crafted work of art.
To me he's avoided all the "youth" cliches but in the process lost something important.