Youth 10

Last one from Coetzee's Youth:

"What more is required than a kind of stupid, insensitive doggedness, as lover, as writer, together with a readiness to fail again and again?"

Coetzee continues: "What is wrong with him is that he is not prepared to fail." At twenty-four, then, perhaps JMC did arrive at a moment of insight about his attempts at being a writer.

It's certainly a moment of insight that is useful for any aspiring writer: if you are not ready to write something bad, then you have little chance of writing anything good. Of course, the main thing is to write something.

I'm not sure about the value of the insight for the lover, although perhaps it is a version of this.