Coetzee: Scenes from Provincial Lifel

 Rereading the trilogy. Bought them as a set on Kindle: "Scenes from Provincial Life."


From "Boyhood":


Though he goes to the bioscope every Saturday afternoon, films no longer have the hold on him that they used to have in Cape Town, where he had nightmares of being crushed under elevators or falling from cliffs like the heroes of the serials. He does not see why Errol Flynn, who looks just the same whether he is playing Robin Hood or Ali Baba, is supposed to be a great actor. He is tired of horseback chases, which are all the same. The Three Stooges have begun to seem silly. And it is hard to believe in Tarzan when the man who plays Tarzan keeps changing. The only film that makes an impression on him is one in which Ingrid Bergman gets into a train carriage that is infected with smallpox and dies. Ingrid Bergman is his mother’s favourite actress. Is life like that: could his mother die at any moment just by failing to read a sign in a window?



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