ŷ������

����ܳ���

�±������

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.