Summertime: Scenes from Provincial Life is the third installment of J.M. Coetzee’s memoirs, following on Boyhood (1998) and Youth (2002). Summertime pursues further the themes touched on in these earlier volumes: maturation, solitude and alienation, family dynamics, the outsider and the artist in society, South African politics, racism, sex, ideas of home and homeland, and exile. Taken together, the books offer a multivolume portrait of the artist.
They follow an arc across decades from Coetzee’s boyhood in the 1940s and 1950s through his maturity in the 1970s. Over this period he struggles to define himself as an individual, tries to make his way in the world, pursues grand literary ambitions, tallies up unsatisfying love affairs, makes compromises, and suffers humiliations and setbacks. A complex, enigmatic, and creative human being emerges in Coetzee’s own account. Continue reading “Review of J.M. Coetzee’s ‘Summertime: Scenes from Provincial Life’ for The Common Review | Mar 20, 2010”