J. M. Coetzee: Youth

[miobrien]

Youth is J. M. Coetzee's second fictional-memoir. I read Summertime a few months ago, and finished Boyhood last week. It would probably have been convenient to read this before Summertime but at least I read it after Boyhood. The first and second books in this "series" are much more similar in style, plot, tone, and chronology. Summertime, on the other hand, is a bit more, but not overbearingly, experimental.

As usual, Coetzee's prose is surgical and precise. One can expect this in all his writing -- even in his weaker post-Nobel fiction like Diary of a Bad Year. He eschews maximalism but isn't necessarily a minimalist either (though his prose could pass for it with a quick glance). He uses the occasional big word, but often settles for crushingly precise, formal language. It is the epitome of fluidity. But this doesn't necessarily make it lyrically fluid; it is more academic in tone than poetic.

This book follows Coetzee's life in London. He lives a solitary existence, works as a computer programmer at IBM, reads and writes. It is an odd, intimate, and brutal examination of the aspiring artist. The narrative is empowered by questions and irony; he is always asking something, even about the most mundane thing.

There is not dispute that Coetzee works to deconstruct his "celebrity" here. He never flatters himself. Is this some sort of reverse hubris? I personally don't think so. I think it's mostly modesty, but the overbearing criticisms he has of himself sometimes become repetitive. I thought to myself: "I get it. Stop. Lighten up, man."

While many have criticized him for not being outspoken about apartheid and other things political, I quite like Coetzee's terseness, and think it suits his style very well. He certainly has opinions, but values subtly and dislikes passion. He engages politics in an understated, skeptic manner. I think there's something to learn from this in our age of zany electioneering and propagandizing.

Nonetheless, I plan to read all of Coetzee sometime in the near future. As a reader, I find his style engaging and reader-friendly. As a writer, I look up to him. I admire his control and measurement.

 

[Bubba]

All right, then, miobrien, I'm feeling a bit sorry for this post that's been up here for several days without any responses, so I'll bite. After all, Youth, along with Disgrace and Waiting for the Barbarians, is one of three Coetzee books I've managed to finish. I've abandoned several others, some of them just a few pages in.

I very much agree with your characterization of the book as an "odd, intimate, and brutal examination," but I'm not sure it isn't, as you put it, "reverse hubris." In fact, I think it probably is. Is it not written in the third person? Shades of LeBron James's saying of himself: "LeBron James is taking his talents to Miami." Or, maybe, in its unflattering portrait of the artist, the book is an heir to Rousseau's Confessions.

If I were an aspiring writer, I think I'd be very wary of taking Coetzee as a model.

 

[miobrien]

I very much agree with your characterization of the book as an "odd, intimate, and brutal examination," but I'm not sure it isn't, as you put it, "reverse hubris." In fact, I think it probably is. Is it not written in the third person? Shades of LeBron James's saying of himself: "LeBron James is taking his talents to Miami." Or, maybe, in its unflattering portrait of the artist, the book is an heir to Rousseau's Confessions.

I like the idea of a third person memoir. I think it removes some of the inherent indulgence involved in writing a memoir. But, on the other hand, I can see how it helps a writer detach and distance himself with the character of his memoir -- potentially invalidating the thing altogether.

If I were an aspiring writer, I think I'd be very wary of taking Coetzee as a model.

Well, why? Besides the criticism of hubris, you haven't said what you dislike about his writing. You don't like his style? What caused you to abandon the other books?

 

[Bubba]

I like the idea of a third person memoir. I think it removes some of the inherent indulgence involved in writing a memoir. But, on the other hand, I can see how it helps a writer detach and distance himself with the character of his memoir -- potentially invalidating the thing altogether.


Well, why? Besides the criticism of hubris, you haven't said what you dislike about his writing. You don't like his style? What caused you to abandon the other books?

Well, as several of us mentioned in another thread (one you started, I think), writing is a way of creating the kind of writer you like; Coetzee, for the most part, I find slightly boring, so, were I an aspiring writer, modeling myself after him would be illogical: it would invalidate my reason (to create the kind of writer I like) for writing.

Much of what I don't like about his books is exactly what you mention: the "hubris" (I think of it more as narcissism), the impression he gives me that he needs to lighten up and get over himself. The frequent humorlessness. You are apparently more willing to overlook these flaws than I am.

I think there's a kind of compact between writer and reader: both are aware that literature is affectation. But affectation isn't the problem; laborious efforts to appear unaffected are. And a memoir in the third person, it seems to me, may destroy the compact between writer and reader. When someone writes a memoir (or a novel) he should give himself over to it, assume whatever flaws are inherent to the genre. If, as you suggest, Coetzee, is trying to ward off accusations of self-indulgence or hubris by writing his autobiography in the third person, the ploy fails: he seems only all the more self-indulgent or narcissistic for trying so ostentatiously to avoid appearing so. Well, I don't know if what I'm saying makes any sense.

I abandoned Age of Iron because I found it unengaging, and I abandoned Elizabeth Costello because I found it unengaging and shrill. I can't remember if I finished Dusklands. Still, I admire Coetzee's way of not casting overt moral judgments on his truly despicable characters, and in Disgrace I thought his likening of the faculty committee before which the protagonist is brought on charges of moral turpitude to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was subtle and well done. It may not have been all that subtle for his South African readers or for people who followed events in South Africa, but it was good for the rest of us. And on a line-by-line basis Coetzee's prose generally avoids calling attention to itself (a virtue, in my book), except, of course, as in Waiting for the Barbarians or Dusklands, when he revels oddly in describing, at some length, the bowel movements of men stricken with dysentery.

In short, I think an aspiring writer (of the kind I'd like to read) would do well to learn from work other than Coetzee's.

 

[Daniel del Real]

Shades of LeBron James's saying of himself: "LeBron James is taking his talents to Miami." Or, maybe, in its unflattering portrait of the artist, the book is an heir to Rousseau's Confessions.

If I were an aspiring writer, I think I'd be very wary of taking Coetzee as a model.

Come on Bubba, stope comparing Coetzee with Lebron James!

 

[Jan Mbali]

Tried to get into it and failed. The main character, so clinically drawn, was only interesting in terms of getting into the head of a historical type. Not one you would want to meet in life or in art. Basically boring with no feature that aroused my interest; and I am interested in almost any person I meet in any social world or genre. Of course, if there is an affinity with a reader's character or life experience, then it would spark something. Waiting for the Barbarians is a classic that speaks through its universal themes and of course his unique and brilliant style. The rest of his work I find mostly sterile and his humanism querulous and carping. Am now getting into a warmly humane and vibrant South African writer, Zakes Mda. Try Cion.

 

[Remora]

As mentioned, Coetzee's precisely controlled and measured prose is admirable. However, one can only take so much of the gloomy, sullen, and morose tenor of the writing (and presumably the man behind it). If the book was any longer, I doubt I would've stuck with it.

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