I began reading
Boyhood this afternoon and I enjoyed the first few chapters. From what little I have read thus far, I can certainly see why so many critics have found Coetzee's memoirs to be useful resources when working with his fiction. I mean, even though I try not to conflate an author's biographical details with those of his or her fictional creations, it is hard not to notice the striking similarities between, say, father-son relationships in
Boyhood and
The Master of Petersburg. That many people use the clearly Joycean phrase "a portrait of the artist as a young man" to refer to Coetzee's book, too, strikes me as relevant: the memoir does, in fact, read quite a bit like James Joyce's famous novel. Needless to say, there's a lot going on in the book, much more than I could possibly say at two-thirty in the morning, so I will wrap this up now and sign off for the evening, again promising to discuss the two articles that I haven't yet had the time or energy to cover these past few days.
For tomorrow: Read more of Boyhood.
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