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Scrutiny2: Issues in English Studies in

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Critical Fictions in JM Coetzee's Boyhood

and Youth
a
DIRK KLOPPER
a
Department of English , University of Stellenbosch , E-mail:
Published online: 16 May 2011.

To cite this article: DIRK KLOPPER (2006) Critical Fictions in JM Coetzee's Boyhood
and Youth , Scrutiny2: Issues in English Studies in Southern Africa, 11:1, 22-31, DOI:
10.1080/18125441.2006.9684199

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 Critical Fictions
in. JM Coetzee's Boyhood and Youth

DIRK KLOPPER
Department ofEnglish
University of Stellenbosch
[email protected]
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ABSTRACT
Thispaperexplores the way in which Coetzee's Boyhood (1997) and Youth (2002) inter-
rogate the conventions of self-representation in autobiographical writing. It begins by
drawing attention to how Coetzee sees the question of subject, truth and writing as a
concernthat runsthrough all hisworks, suggesting that autobiography isnota privileged
genre in presenting the truth of the subject, and then looks at contemporary theoretical
studies of autobiography to show how this genreis ambiguously located at the limits of
selfand other, present and past, narration and historiography.The paperargues that Boy-
hood and Youth accentuate the liminality ofautobiographical writing and engagewiththe
discursive construction of the subject, interrogating the determinants of autobiographical
writing structurally, through experimentation with the form of the genre, and thematically,
through reflections on the relationship between subjectivity and language.

Because thebasic movement ofself-reflexiveness isa ship between protagonist, narrator and author,
doubting and questioning movement, it is in the nat- these works interrogate the conventions of self-
ure ofthetruth told to itself by thereflecting self not to representation in the very act of self-disclosure. 1
befinal.
JMCoetzee
Confession and double thoughts

1 n the absence of what Afrikaans calls

....... a noem-naam, a name that names, a
proper name, the name JM Coetzee resists the
individuality of the personal. The reticence of
From the outset, Coetzee's works have ad-
dressed the problematic of what David Attwell
(1991: 117) calls the "authenticity and authority
of the speaking subject". The phrase links the
question of the subject with the question of
truth. For Coetzee, subject and truth are linked,
the name is consonant with the reserve of an
in addition, with the question of writing. Thus,
.author who notoriously resents intrusions into
pressed in an interview with Attwell to comment
his private life. That Coetzee should choose to
on the nature of the autobiographical subject,
publish an autobiographical sequence would
Coetzee responds by invoking a constellation of
therefore be surprising were it not that Boyhood notions involving subject, truth and writing:
(1997) and Youth (2002) themselves engage in a
kind of evasion. By confounding the relation- Let metreat this as a question abouttelling thetruth
 rather than as a question about autobiography. Be- Coetzee's autobiographical works are in line
cause in a larger sense all writing is autobiography: with recent theoretical studies of the genre that
everything you write, including criticism and fiction, question its apparent ontological and epistemo-
writes you as you write it. The real question is: This
logical certainties. Michael Sprinkler
massive autobiographical writing-enterprise that fills
a life, this enterprise of self-construction does it yield (1980: 342) adopts a characteristic line of
only fictions? Or rather, among the fictions of the self, argument when he says that while autobiogra-
the versions of the self, that it yields, are there any that phy comprises an "inquiry of the self into its
are truer than others? How do I know when I have the own origin and history", such inquiry is "always
truth about myself? (1991: 117) circumscribed by the limiting conditions of
writing". What renders the autobiographical
Coetzee engages here in deft conceptual project problematic is the fact that, contrary to
manoeuvres. To begin with, he shifts the conventional understanding, the author is not
question of autobiography onto the question present in his or her text as a sovereign subject.
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of truth. Next, he maintains that autobiography On the one hand, the subject is divided between
is simply one way of writing the subject, no the narrator and the protagonist, the subject
different in this respect from criticism or fiction, who speaks and the subject who is spoken, and,
because, whatever the topic or genre of writing, on the other hand, the subject is displaced from
the subject is constituted in the very process of the immediate present, the "now" of the writing
writing. Then, he ascribes different modes of process, to an irretrievable past, the "then" of
truth to the act of writing, what he would later what has been.
identify in his essay "Fictions of the truth",
which deals specifically with autobiography, as For Louis Renza (1980: 274), the division and
"historical truth" and "poetic truth" (2000).2 displacement of the subject in autobiography
Finally, having implicated the subject in diverse means that "the autobiographical enterprise
kinds of writing, and having posited varieties of occludes the writer's own continuity with the
truth in the writing of the subject, he concludes T being conveyed through his narrative perfor-
with misgivings that the subject can ever be fully mance". Autobiographical writing, says Renza,
accessible, whether in autobiography or else- evinces "a split intentionality", with the "T
where. becoming a 'he' " (1980: 279). Because this split
intentionality is integral to the genre, "the
Beyond the specific significance Coetzee project of writing oneself to oneself is always
attributes to the notions of subject, truth and at the beginning, is always propaedeutic in
writing, he seems also to be alluding to the structure" (1980: 279). This concern with meth-
interrelationship of fiction, criticism and auto- od, with the rhetoric of writing the self,
biography in his work.' If, as he claims, his ineluctably pushes autobiography in the direc-
criticism and fiction present versions of the self, tion of narrative fiction.
it is likely that his autobiographies, which at the
time of the interview were still to be written, Two conceptions emerge from these theore-
would provide varieties of critical fiction. This is tical reflections. First, autobiographical writing
borne out by the versions of autobiography that is ambiguously located at the limits of self and
have now been published, which contest their other, present and past, narration and historio-
own generic boundaries, drawing attention to graphy. Second, and more elusively, the genre of
the ambiguities of a form of writing that, as autobiographical writing is prior to the actual
John Sturrock points out (1993: 21), is con- writing of autobiography, for autobiography as
ventionally regarded as validated by a "meta- such presupposes an engagement with the
physics of presence". conditions of possibility of autobiography's
 representations of self. These conceptions are narrator and protagonist.' At the same time,
useful in elucidating Coetzee's project in Boy- however, the gap between narrator and prota-
hood and Youth. Both works accentuate the gonist is narrowed by the use of free indirect
liminality of autobiographical writing, and both speech. The narrator projects the consciousness
works engage with the discursive construction of of each of his protagonists, their intimate
the subject. In them, Coetzee interrogates the thought patterns and characteristic vocabulary
determinants of autobiographical writing struc- and phrasing, by deploying a linguistic style and
turally, through experimentation with the form register appropriate to the pre-adolescent and
of the genre, and thematically, through reflec- young adult respectively. With few instances of
tions on the relationship between subjectivity reported speech, the world is apprehended
and language. almost exclusively through their interior dis-
course." This impression of immediacy, of
having access to the mind itself, to its moods
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and private reflections at the very moment of

As far as narrative structure is concerned,
occurrence, is heightened through the use of the
several features are significant. In the first place,
simple-present tense. The focus on a single
there is the question of narrative continuity. The
consciousness and the immediacy of its symbo-
works depart from standard autobiographies in
lizations notwithstanding, the language also
offering not a comprehensive or even represen-
transmits something of the external linguistic
tative record but fragments of the life. Boyhood
context in which the protagonists are located,
covers the period from age ten to thirteen, when
the ideological inflections of the broader social
the protagonist and his family lived in Worce-
environment, resulting in the creation of an
ster, a small country town on the edge of the
inter-subjective or dialogical symbolic order,
Karoo. Youth covers the period from age twenty
where the language of the subject, even when it
to twenty four, beginning with the protagonist's
final years of study at the University of Cape seems most particularized, is not necessarily the
Town and concluding with his three years of subject's language."
employment in England as a computer pro-
Third-person perspective, free indirect
grammer. Within each work the narrative is
speech, simple-present tense and the dialogical
equally episodic, dwelling lengthily on some
are familiar devices of perspective and voice in
episodes and leaving many blank spaces in the
chronology. In other words, the narrative fiction. When put to use in autobiography, the
inscribes a discontinuous subject, one whose effect is to defamiliarize the genre, drawing
life fails to conform to a naturalistic logic of attention to it as writing, as narrative. Speci-
cause and effect. Events as represented in this fically, the deployment of these devices gives
life are determined by the arbitrariness of local rise to a complex portrayal of the subject in
contingencies," and are vulnerable to the vag- terms of a contradictory simultaneity of
aries of unstable memory.f intimacy and distance, directness of observa-
tion and emotional detachment, access to the
In the second place, there is the question of textured impressions of consciousness and its
perspective and voice. Defying autobiographical ironic displacement.!" We are given an auto-
convention, Boyhood and Youth employ the biographical subject who both is and is not
perspective of a third-person singular narration present, who is portrayed vividly and convin-
rather than the customary first-person narra- cingly as interiority, as consciousness, but is
tion." The "I" has literally become "he", an located elsewhere, as an imaginary and an
other, drawing attention to the split between imaginative construct, the self as other,
 divided and displaced. To use a term coined by which literary writing delivers truth resides
Coetzee himself (1992a: 394), this is autobio- primarily at the level of syntax. The very
graphy as "autrebiography". tautness of Coetzee's sentences, says Attridge,
"is part of the experience of a struggle to shape
Referring to the choice of narrative devices in and thus discover the truth" (2005: 148).
Boyhood and Youth, Sheila Collingwood-Whit-
tick (2001: 21) asserts that while Coetzee's
intention may have been "to translate his
theoretical principles on autobiographical Aside from the structural ways in which
truth-telling into practice", his actual achieve- Boyhood and Youth engage with the relationship
ment is to have marshalled "fictional strategies between subject, truth and language, these
for enabling a more realistic impression of preoccupations are also taken up at the level
telling the truth". This observation recognizes, of theme, not surprisingly as the autobiogra-
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on the one hand, that Coetzee is engaged in phies deal, after all, with the life of the writer,
these works in theoretical reflection on auto- with the formation, that is, of the aesthetic
biographical form, and, on the other, that these consciousness. In this respect, there is a close
works establish a close relationship between intertextual relationship between the making of
fiction and truth. Yet, contrary to what Colling- the artist in Coetzee's fictional autobiography
wood-Whittick seems to suggest, there is noth- and in James Joyce's autobiographical fiction.'!
ing incidental about the latter. Indeed, the Hermione Lee (2002: 15), for example, claims
works highlight the paradox of creating a kind that the alienated and high-minded Stephen
of truth through the medium of fiction precisely Dedalus of A portrait of the artist as a young
through the self-reflexivity afforded by the man "looms over" Youth. Margaret Lenta
unconventional narrative structure. The choice (2003: 161-162) enlarges on the parallels by
of narrative devices simultaneously foregrounds citing the problematic relationship with family,
the constructedness of the subject in the third- avoidance of commitment to nationalist ideol-
person singular, and presents the immediacy of ogies, solitary artistic aspiration, and self-
this subject's consciousness in the simple pre- imposed exile. Coetzee's autobiographical
sent-tense, resulting in an autobiography that is works evince a similar preoccupation with
both removed from and close to the subject, and language, with forms of signification, and with
that, in drawing attention to its fictional the way in which the subject is interpellated by
strategies, opens up a space for reflection on the symbolic. This thematic preoccupation with
the truth claims of the imagination. the subject of language, specifically as regards
aesthetic language, will be examined in some
Finally, in addition to narrative continuity, detail in what follows.
perspective and voice, there is the question of
style. Like Collingwood-Whittick, Derek At- In Boyhood, reflection on language occurs
tridge sees Boyhood and Youth as investigating primarily in the context of the difference
the nature of autobiographical truth. Claiming between English and Afrikaans, not simply as
that the truth in question is not of a "historical, formal sign systems but as ways of being in the
factual kind" (2005: 149), he argues that Coet- world, ways of constituting subjectivity and
zee's autobiographical works do not so much establishing inter-subjective relations. Given the
"refer" to the truth as "produce" it, rendering context of the 1950s and the rise of Afrikaner
the autobiographical confession "a variety of nationalism, Afrikaans is experienced, from the
literature, perhaps even a variety of fiction" point of view of the English speaker, as the
(2005: 145). For Attridge, evidence of the way in language of the oppressor, and is associated
 with conformity and intolerance. However, it is exists in his soul as an "unsubstantial image"
also associated with a kind of freedom, a and in whose presence he will be transfigured
playfulness and flexibility of expression (Coet- into something "impalpable", creating an am-
zee 1997: 81). Trying to come to terms with this biguous play of mental representation and
contradictory language, as well as the fact that corporeal body (Joyce 1996: 73). This early
he both is and is not an Afrikaner himself, the apprehension of desire is followed by encounters
protagonist reveals not only the social schisms that vacillate between the spiritual and the
of the country in which he has been raised, but sensual, culminating in the sighting of the
also the psychic divisions, the fault-lines that bird-girl, who conjoins associations of spiritual
traverse public life and private life. yearning and sensual attraction. This moment
of conjunction between the aspirations of the
Over and above a general concern with the soul and the longing of the body marks the
role of language in the constitution of the
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protagonist's assumption of his artistic vocation

subject, there is a specific concern with a certain as priest of the imagination:
kind of language, the language of reciprocity,
intimacy and deslre.F It is in respect of this A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still,
particular concern, and especially the way in gazing out to sea ... Herlong slender barelegswere
which the language of desire is made to delicateas a crane's and puresavewhere an emerald
correspond with the language of the aesthetic, trail of seaweed had fashioned itselfas a sign upon
the flesh. Her thighs, fullerand softhued as ivory, were
that the significance of Joyce is most apparent.
baredalmostto the hips ...
Like the protagonist of A portrait of the artist,
the protagonists of Boyhood and Youth are She was alone and still, gaZing out to sea, and when
she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her
introspective, solitary individuals who routinely
eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze,
imagine themselves in communion with a female
withoutshameor wantonness ... (1996: 195)
other who would satisfy their desire for self-
presence and self-creative plenitude.
Notwithstanding the sensual bare thighs, the
In A portrait ofthe artist, the desired female is girl is associated, by virtue of the reference to
presented in terms that suggest she is to be seen ivory, with the image of the Madonna, and the
both as a conceptual construct and as a physical protagonist's subsequent rapture equivocates
being, a topos as much as a literal body. More correspondingly between the erotic and the
. than simply a muse, she figures the aspiration of devout. Although the dimension of the numi-
the aesthetic imagination towards wholeness. nous may appear remote from Coetzee's con-
Joyce's modernist rewriting of such romanticist cerns, whose language is shorn of such rapture,
yearning treats this figure ironically, so that the the dialectic between the conceptual and the
reader is never entirely sure how seriously to corporeal, what the passage describes as "a sign
take the protagonist's imaginings. Coetzee upon the flesh", does indeed concern him, as
develops this irony even further, portraying the does the deployment of the female other to
desired female in terms of romantic disenchant- figure the quest of consciousness for an embodi-
ment with a succession of loveless embraces, ment of its own desire for self-presence, for
prompting Lee (2002: 15) to remark that closure between self and other, word and object.
"Coetzee is even harsher towards his younger
self than Joyce is to Stephen's high aspirations". Boyhood portrays as follows an encounter
between the youthful protagonist and a female
The young Stephen Dedalus is described as character in relation to whom he seems to
seeking in the external world the woman who discover his true self:
 Agnes ... wasallotted to be hiscompanion. Shetook experiences here is attachment and connected-
him for a walk in the veld. She went barefoot; she did ness. "The secret and sacred word that binds
notevenown shoes. Soonthey wereout of sightofthe him to the farm," he says, "is belong"
house, in the middle of nowhere. They began to talk.
(1997: 95). He claims to belong not only on
She had pigtails and a lisp, which he liked. He lost his
reserve. As soon as he spoke he forgot what lan- the farm but also to the farm, and then
guage he was speaking: thoughts simply turned to comments as follows:
wordswithinhim, transparent words ...
Beingwith her isdifferent frombeingwithhisschool That is the furthest he is prepared to go, even in his
friends. It has something to do with her softness, her most secret heart. But in his secret heart he knows
readiness to listen, but also with her slim brown legs, what the farm in its way knows too: that Voelfontein
her bare feet, the way she dances from stone to belongs to no one.The farm is greater than any of
stone ... them.The farm exists from eternity to eternity. When
Whyisit that he can speak so easily to Agnes? Is it theyareall dead,when even thefarmhouse hasfallen
because she is a girl? Towhatevercomes from him into ruin likethe kraals on the hillside, the farm will still
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she seemed to answer without reserve, softly, read- be here. (1997: 96)
ily ... Isthis love- this easygenerosity, this sense of
being understood at last, of not having to pretend? The farm that exists from eternity to eternity
(1997: 94-95)
is distinct from the way of life the farm has
previously sustained and which has now all but
While the description lacks the lyricism and vanished, though traces remain in the ruined
languid mystery of the Joyce passage, the girl is kraals, the reduced orchards, the shearers who
similarly associated with the natural environ- arrive seemingly from "a heartland even more
ment, is likewise invested with sensuous quali- secluded from the world" (1997: 93). It is the
ties, and has a comparable quiet receptivity. idea of the farm that the boy cherishes, what it
Most revealing, though, is that she facilitates a represents in terms of human relationships and
certain kind of communication in which differ- relationships with the land. In truth he knows
ences between the languages of English and that he is simply an "uneasy guest" here, and
Afrikaans dissolve, thought is immediately that as he grows up the separation will increase,
accessible to "transparent words", the self is until "[o]ne day the farm will be wholly gone,
"understood" for the first time, and falsehood wholly lost", and "already he is grieving at that
falls away. This language of self-presence and loss" (1997: 79-80). Visiting the farm, he
truth is associated with absence of reserve and attempts to affirm a bond that is already
"easy generosity". In other words, it is under- unravelling, that has never been secure to begin
stood in terms of reciprocation and interrela- with, that exists largely in the imagination as an
tionship, a rare occurrence in an autobiography ideal rural order, one that has been compro-
characterized generally by lack of mutuality in mised from the outset, as the boy is vaguely
relationships. Given the context of what is aware, by the colonial conditions under which it
otherwise an austere account of an alienated arose.l? To belong is already to know what it
childhood, there is, in this revelation of authen- means not to belong. The unbelonging is
tic being, an epiphany of sorts, however muted. intimated in the belonging. What endures is
the space that enables the longing in belonging
It is significant that this affinity with another to emerge. 14
should occur on the Karoo farm Voelfontein,
which the protagonist describes as a place of the If the all-encompassing love inspired by the
heart that elicits a "devouring love" (1997: 91) farm is indistinguishable from nostalgia for
extending to "every stone of it, every bush, what is already past, and did not exist in this
every blade of grass" (1997: 80). What he idyllic way in the first place, what then of
 human relationships? What, specifically, about The language of reciprocity, the language of
desire? Significantly, the conversation with desire, language as desire, what is this but poetic
Agnes is described in the past tense, marking a language? Since at least the late-eighteenth
break from the present tense of the surrounding century, beginning with Friedrich Schiller's On
narrative, as if to underscore that this is no more the aesthetic education of man (1795), the form
than a recollection, a nostalgia for what is in of language that has promised to reconcile
fact lost. The reciprocity the young protagonist subject and object, self and other, thought and
recalls is a singular event, a rare moment of self- feeling, word and referent, the conceptual and
possession, perhaps inseparable, when consid- the sensible, has been the language of the
ered closely, from a kind of narcissism, which aesthetic. More recently, the aesthetic ideal has
discovers in relation to the other an idealized been shown, in Terry Eagleton's words (1990:
image of the self, the true self as the self 362), to be "a scandalous impossibility", as
imagines itself to be from the perspective of the there can be no such overarching reconciliation.
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other - the likeable self, the desired self. Does The yearning nevertheless persists. Paul de Man
this constitute reciprocity? How is true recipro- shifts the emphasis away from the attainment of
city to be recognized? Coetzee himself addresses wholeness towards the yearning itself, explain-
the question of reciprocity in his essay on ing the relationship between consciousness,
Achterberg (1992b: 72), where he endorses desire and the aesthetic in terms of the move-
Martin Buber's view that the primal relation ment of consciousness towards a condition of
between I and You has been lost in the completion it never attains, a movement that
objectification of the You into It and the constitutes, he says, the very impulse of the
consequent isolation and reduction of the l. aesthetic aspiration towards an impossible
He observes that "Intimations of the lost unity:
relation ... inspire our efforts to reconstitute
again and again the 'between' of the primal [- To the extent that desire is a movement of conscious-
ness toward something that it has lost, toward some-
Thou."
thing that it wants to possess in order to be complete,
its pattern is truly aesthetic. The desire of an aesthetic
Inasmuch as the human condition presup- consciousness is orientated toward its authenticity,
poses a lost relation that prompts repeated [which] it lost in the fallen world of empirical experi-
attempts at its reconstitution, it is not surprising ence. It experiences this desire as a lack, as a short-
that Boyhood and Youth portray an absence of coming in itself, which it tries to remedy. (1993: 45)
reciprocity, or at least its tenuousness, while
intimating that reciprocity is what is most The aesthetic consciousness seeks to over-
desired. Attwell (1992: 58) recognizes the im- come lack but is unable to do so. It cannot
portance to Coetzee of the notion of reciprocity attain the closure it desires and ends up
and maintains that forms of this relation can be inscribing its own impossibility. This very
detected not only in Coetzee's deliberations on correspondence between the structure of desire
"desire and its objects" but also in his interest in and the structure of aesthetic consciousness
"problems of consciousness". The crucial point provides the narrative drive of Youth, whose
is that reciprocity is implicated in consciousness protagonist reflects endlessly and obsessively on
by virtue of its intentional relation with its passion and poetry. He speaks of "some
objects. If, as Lacanian psychoanalysis suggests, indwelling shape in his soul", of the "Destined
this relation comprises a structure of desire One" from whose embrace he will return to life
constituted by language, then the failure of "as a new being, transformed" (2002: 92-93),
reciprocity is simultaneously a failure of both parodying Stephen Dedalus's fantasy of "weak-
consciousness and of language. ness and inexperience and timidity" falling from
 him as he is "transfigured" by love (1996: 73). protagonist anticipates the writing of a literary
For both protagonists, the transformational work that will return him in his imagination to
power of love is linked with the transfiguring the home country.
power of the aesthetic, leading the protagonist
of Youth to muse that only "love and art are Solipsistic introspection, remorseless ratioci-
worthy of giving oneself to without reserve" nation and deflating irony, evident in Joyce's A
(2002: 85). The difference is that in Youth it is portrait of the artist, are deployed with savage
the failure of love and of poetry that preoccu- self-exposure and dark humour in Coetzee's
pies the protagonist: Boyhood and Youth. Nevertheless, despite the
self-deprecation, there is a serious process of
One question still nags at him, and will not go away. reflection in these autobiographical works, and
Will the womanwho unlocksthe store of passion with- especially in Youth, concerning the aesthetic
in him, if she exists, also release the blocked flow of imagination and the nature of its understanding,
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poetry;or on the contraryisit up to himto turn himself its epistemology. When, encountering the work
intoa poet and thus prove worthyof her love? Itwould
of Joseph Brodsky, the protagonist claims that
be nice if the first were true, but he suspects it is
not ... the intended one willhaveto know him by his
"Poetry is truth" (2002: 91), and when, listening
works, to fall in love with his art before she will be so to Bach, he discovers in the music an intimation
foolish as to fallin lovewith him. (2002: 134) of "a joyous yielding of the reasoning, compre-
hending mind to the dance of the fingers"
Identification between the failure of desire (2002: 93), he is not simply to be taken
and the failure of the aesthetic is made explicit ironically. What he is getting at, what he means
when the protagonist mentions that "his failure by poetic truth and by the pleasure of the senses,
as a writer and his failure as a lover are so is hinted at in his reading of Burchell. His own
closely parallel that they might as well be the writing, he says, will seek to communicate
something as "convincing" as Burchell's Tra-
same thing" (2002: 166). By the end of the
vels, something that might not have happened
narrative, he has come to accept that he might
but is nevertheless located in sensory experience,
never encounter the beloved muse: "[Tjhe words
something that might not be true but never-
will not come to him. Or rather, many words
theless has an "aura of truth", something that
will come, but not the right words, the sentence
might not be historically factual but nevertheless
he will recognize at once, from its weight, from
constitutes a "humble" kind of knowledge
its poise and balance, as the destined one"
(2002: 138-139).
(2002: 166). Of course these words did come
eventually, not to the protagonist nor even to The truth of the imagination is different from
the narrator, neither of whom can be assumed either empirical truth or the truth of formal
to exist outside the text that inscribes them, but logic. When the youthful protagonist discovers
certainly to the author, or, rather, to an author, Brodsky, he is captivated by the line "As dark as
one who goes by the name of JM Coetzee, and the inside of the needle" (2002: 91). What truth
the words did not come in verse but in prose, is this that communicates obscurely and am-
and what prompted them was not high literature biguously, that chooses the opaque corporeality
but an immersion in the non-fictional work of of the image rather than the clear abstractions
early travel writers in South Africa, in particular of reason, that seems to distract the mind rather
Burchell, whom both the protagonist and JM than direct it? Youth illustrates the ineffectuality
Coetzee read in the British Museum in London of reason in resolving the problem of living and
in the early 1960s. Having fled South Africa in the complexity of reciprocity. Like Stephen
order to pursue a career as literary artist, the Dedalus, the protagonist's endless analysis of
 motives and responses in his relationships leads 2 See also Coetzee's essay "The novel today" in
him no closer to establishing intimacy with Upstream (1988d).
another. This compels him to interrogate the 3 The interrelationship of fiction, critical metafiction
very logic of reason as he pores over Aristotle, and the writing of the life has been evident in
Ramus and Carnap, trying to locate "the Coetzee's work from the outset, beginning with
moment in history when either-or is chosen Dusklands.

and and/or discarded" (2002: 160). It is not clear 4 For example, the young protagonist of Boyhood
what precisely the logic of and/or entails, or even finds himself positioned as a religious outsider at
if it is to be taken seriously, but it does point in school on account of an arbitrary choice of Cath-
olicism as his religion of choice.
the direction of a kind of thinking that is both
inclusive and singular, that pays attention to 5 The young protagonist of Boyhood recalls three
context and to detail, that invokes the generality "first" memories.
of reason and the particularity of feeling. The 6 There are exceptions to the first-person narration
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logic of and/or might be taken, that is, to suggest in autobiography, the most celebrated being
the logic of the aesthetic. Henry Adams' The education of Henry Adams.

7 Folkenflik (1993: 234), for example, maintains that

"[t]he idea of self as other is a condition of the
autobiographical narrative, for there is generally
The ambiguity of distance and immanence that some distinction between the 'I' who is talking
and the figure in the past who is described (call
arises from the choice of narrative devices is
them 'narrator' and 'protagonist' for both com-
thus repeated at the level of theme, where it
prise the 'character'):'
takes the form of an ambiguous relation
between desire and loss, between modes of 8 What Derek Attridge (2005: 138) says of Coet-
zee's fiction applies equally to these autobiogra-
conceptualization and modes of bodily appre-
phical works: "The characters through whose
hension. The protagonist of Youth seeks emo- consciousness the narrative is relayed . . . occu-
tional intimacy but remorselessly rationalizes py the entire affective and axiological space of the
his feelings, renounces the anti-intellectualist fiction:'
romanticism of Keats in favour of classicist 9 I am indebted to Margaret Lenta's discussion, in
rigour but remains enthralled to a romantic ':Autrebiography: JM Coetzee's Boyhood and
conception of art and of the artist. The Youttt' (2003),of the narrative devices mentioned
indeterminacy of the autobiographical works, in this paper.
their fragmentary nature, split subjectivities, 10 Attridge (2005: 140) maintains that the third-per-
and depictions of conflicting experience, all son, present-tense narration allows for immedi-
indicate the extent to which Boyhood and Youth acy but disallows the kind of intimacy associated
with the first-person autobiography. My view is
simultaneously engage with the impossibility of
that immediacy constitutes intimacy.
the aesthetic and enunciate its necessity, im-
plicating the aesthetic in the very attempt at 11 Other intertextual relations are also evident, such
making meaning of the life they delineate. as the obvious allusion to the title of Conrad's no-
vel Youth, as well as the sardonic influence of
Beckett. This article is only concerned, however,
Notes with what seems to be the more sustained en-
gagement with Joyce, and with the issues this re-
One of the consequences of this interrogation of
veals.
the conventions of autobiography has been to
create uncertainty about the intention and status 12 This concern is not confined to the autobiogra-
of Boyhood and Youth. Ian Buruma, for example, phies. It is present from the outset in Coetzee's
treats Youth as a novel in his review 'Portrait of the writings, in Dusklands as well as in the essay
artist" (2002: 52). "Reading the South African landscape" (1988a).
 13 For an analysis of the significance of the farm in the mystery of I and you. In: David Atwell (ed). Dou-
South African prose fiction, see JM Coetzee's es- bling thepoint: essays and interviews. Cambridge
say"Farm novel and plaasroman" in White writing and London: Harvard University Press: 69-90.
(1988b).
- - . 1997. Boyhood. London: Vintage.
14 lfthis ideaof unbelonging is related to the ideaof
- - . 2000. Fictions of the truth. The Age, 24 May.
the sublime as that which refuses closure in the
very act of implicating it, then the Karoo farm - - . 2002. Youth. London: Seckerand Warburg.
may be seen as a kind of sublime landscape.
Coetzee haswritten about the SouthAfrican pic- Collingwood-Whittick, Sheila. 2001. Autobiography as
turesque and sublime in "The picturesque, the autrebiography: thefictionalisation ofthe selfinJM
sublime, and the South African landscape" in Coetzee's Boyhood: scenes from provincial life.
White writing (1988c). Commonwealth 24(1): 13-23.
Conrad, Joseph. 1995. Youth. Penguin.
De Man, Paul. 1993. The Gauss seminar. In: ES Burt,
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