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2005-12-14 13:32
From: dotann
(Bay Area)
a review of Youth
 
A few months prior to reading "Youth" I read Coetzee's famed novel about white people's redemption in South Africa, "Disgrace", I was slighly taken back by the grimness of his subjects. Then my sister recommended that I read this book, an autobiography about the author's immigrant life in London in his early twenties, as grim and gray as Coetzee's tone is, it was a delight to read, probably because it echos our own lives in so many aspects. The whole book was told in third person and the author never once mentioned his own name, which makes it sounds like a calm and unaffected retrospect. Coetzee has wanted to be a poet since entering college, but his poetry never taken flight, instead, it is in the fluid language of his prose that one sees poetry.
I cannot help comparing Coetzee's novels with our own immigrant writer Ha Jin, who too choose to cut off his tie from his native country, yet write mostly about the struggles and lives of people who remain there. For me both authors' perspectives are so detached that their credibility is in doubt. At the end of the day, Coetzee won my appreciation because of his language. This comparision is certainly unfair because English is almost Coetzee's native tounge. Maybe we should review Vladmir Nabakov's prose for the best example of an immigrant writer.
Coetzee has done a great job in retelling an honest account of a young artist's thoughts and struggles, even the characters we all so despise in young artists, such as vainity (not of appearance but of his artistic instincts), extremely bad social skills, low respects for women, and being out of touch with reality. If anything, the young Coetzee could have been quite an annoying kid. Somehow the fact that he did not write this book in a remorseful or critical way makes it more interesting, as if the character (Coetzee himself) is still developing while we read the book.
Armed with all the common fallacies of an artist, at that time Coetzee's only real claim to art is perhaps his avid readings, and his on-going graduate studies in literature. Here's the part I like the best, he makes a living by being a programming at IBM. The scenario is so familiar it made me grin, a fresh graduate living in a foreign city all by himself, trying to find inspirations, and maybe someone to ignite the fire inside him, he is sensitive to all the indignities a inexperienced foreigner could face in a big city, the only way to escape is through books, films and art galleries, isolation creeps in but he pretends it is part of the sacrifice an artist must go through. His struggles to be "free" are so far futile, and his crave for the comfort of love and something more had only brought him guilt and humiliation.
Despite of the troubled reality there is some lightness in Coetzee's way of telling the story that made it sound almost "easy". This book being written in 2002, after the many prizes and acknowledgement he has received, he is definitely humble about his talents for literatures, there is no telling about the young artist's future from the book itself, it ends abruptly at his acquaintance with an "American educated" Indian coworker, in whom he saw himself, minus the artistic interests and self-discipline. Interesting how lives mirror each other the way life mirrors art.
This review is helpful to 8 person.
2005-12-14 22:42: JJ
Try "Interpreter of Maladies", Jhumpa Lahiri's writing is ten times more moving than Coetzee's.
"Moving", i think that's Coetzee's problem. I found his words extremely cold and distant. I could hardly find any humanity or warmth toward humanity in his words. "Youth" is better than all his other works, mainly because it is softer, like you said. But I still feel the softness is largely due to his self-pity rather than any empathy with human suffering.
But, "youth" is witty. Had to give him that. :) He writes well.
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2005-12-15 01:39: Orpheus
"Maybe we should review Vladmir Nabakov's prose for the best example of an immigrant writer. "
-Agreed. Joseph Conrad, too, for his awkwardly creativeuse of the English language.
I would also recommend ---Orwell (JJ: take that snicker off your face...), in "Down and Out in London and Paris". An admirable---if odd, too---record of a deliberate and clear-headed encounter with squalor and sordidness.
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2005-12-15 10:44: jpasden
I enjoyed your review! Please keep them coming.
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2005-12-18 06:35: shygoly
why can you bear the cold words from a writer of no sympath.
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2005-12-19 13:12: JmeDoom
Conrad, not one of my favorites, was writing in his third language...quite impressive and something to be admired. Sometimes I wonder if someone who is new to a language can use it in a fresher way. Brilliant pictures and good stories always translate well, but a boring/cliche ridden story doesn't hum even with the most masterful of writing.
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Social and political status of a "immigrant writer" determines the core and the audience of his/her writing.
Read Said.
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2006-03-20 05:37: sodeep
"Sometimes I wonder if someone who is new to a language can use it in a fresher way." (JmeDoom)
I think so.
'New-comers' view the language in a new way and hasn't the same relations to words or expressions. Thus, the use changes in a bit. Maybe it adjusts to the author's main language in direct translations. Sort of..
I like Youth. I read it first in 2004 and it made a great impression and me. As said, brilliant pictures, humour.. And despair. Oh yes.
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By J. M. Coetzee
Penguin Books
ISBN: 0142002003
Release Date: 2003-10
Paperback
List Price: USD 14.00
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