Life & Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

Such a melancholy, haunting book! Life & Times of Michael K won the Booker in 1983, and no wonder - its a spare, precise prose is perfect for the pared-down life of its central character, Michael K.

He's a misfit; near mute from a disfguring cleft palate, and intellectually disabled. He's taken from his mother and put into a 'home' where he is barbarously ill-treated. In adulthood he lives a simple life as a gardener, but all that changes when his ailing mother asks to be taken to her old hometown, Prince Alfred in the Cape. He makes a simple barrow and sets off, unable to acquire the requisite permit because of bureaucratic delay, but his mother dies en route. (This need to have a permit, BTW, is what identifies him as non-White, for Whites in the apartheid era could travel wherever they liked within South Africa without permits.)

The K, I think, is an allusion to Kafka, for like K in The Trial, Michael K is an innocent abroad in an insane world, where he is falsely accused of 'crimes' that are illegal only in the obscene regime of South Africa under apartheid. Determined to travel on so that he can spread his mother's ashes, Michael then loses what little he has, but takes up residence in an abandoned farmhouse and begins to grow pumpkins and melons. When the owner's son returns (AWOL from the undefined war, which identifies him as White since all Whites had to undergo national service) Michael has to move on again, and takes shelter in a cave. There, half-starved, he is arrested by the security forces who interpret his inarticulate manner as cover for helping the rebels.

So he's interned, and the novel reaches a crescendo when Michael's refusal to eat is interpreted as a political protest. He's too inadequate and inarticulate to even think it for himself, but the medical officer takes over the narration and fills us in on Michael's subconscious desire to be free of camps and controls and restrictions.

K escapes, and returns to Cape Town. He is taken up by a bizarre group of homeless pimps and prostitutes but they too try to steal from him. The novel closes with Michael living on teaspoons of water and fantasising about a return to the farm.

I think that what Coetzee is saying is that there is no place for people like Michael K anywhere in a society that has no compassion, but that K is able to retain his dignity by controlling the one thing he can - his body. He is anorexic, past curing, but he is indomitable.

This novel was written at a time when both Reagan and Thatcher were defying UN condemnation of the apartheid regime and Thatcher had declared the ANC a terrorist organisation. I think the melancholy tone of Life and Times of Michael K reflects the hopelessness of those who were working for the abolition of apartheid in that period.

I finished reading and journalled this book on 28.8.2002.
Cross posted at The Complete Booker.

Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers

Life and Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee

I just cross-posted my review of Life and Times of Michael K by Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee on Rose City Reader and The Complete Booker:



Despite the credentials, I did not like this book and I do not see the point of it. Near the end, the main character, Michael K, questions whether the moral of the story is that there is time for everything. But if that is the moral of this story, then it was not clear at all. Michael K has nothing but time, but he does not do anything. He seems incapable of doing anything. He cannot cope with living in any kind of society; nor does he succeed in living on his own in the wilderness.

Read literally, the book is horribly depressing, because Michael seems to be mentally ill or mentally deficient (because he cannot provide for himself and he has no will to survive), but no one is able to help him. Read symbolically, I just do not get it. If Michael is supposed to represent some greater meaning, as the doctor/narrator suggests in the second part of the book, what is that meaning? The book does not answer that question and I am at a loss to understand how Michael's numbing, endless suffering has meaning.

Life and Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee

Booker Prize-winning Life and Times of Michael K by Nobel-prizing winning J.M. Coetzee was a challenging but rewarding read for me.

In the midst of a futuristic South African civil war, Michael K lives to survive, and that is all. He has no wants and needs other than to be left alone. I spent the first portion of the book feeling sorry for Michael, who was born with a cleft lip and is alternately pitied and despised as he tries to find a bit of earth were he might live in peace. In the end, however, I found that facing the charity of the world was Michael’s greatest struggle of all, and I had succumbed to pitying him just as had those he met. Michael didn’t want to be different from anyone else.

Life and Times of Michael K was written in very straight-forward language that was both intriguing to read and challenging to embrace, leaving me with mixed feelings about this book. However, the writing perfectly matched the character of Michael K and properly told his story. Michael K’s story is the story of a human searching for himself and his purpose on the earth. Just as the language was both a challenge and a reprieve to read, the story of Michael’s life is both depressing and inspiring.

Life and Times of Michael K is a slim volume, just 184 pages, but I would argue that it is a masterful work that captures the struggling inherent in our human nature. I would recommend this book.

Have you read Nobel-prizing winning author J.M. Coetzee? Which novel do you recommend I read next?

Cross-posted here.

Life and Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee (Wendy's Review)

The first thing the midwife noticed about Michael K when she helped him out of his mother into the world was that he had a hare lip. -From Life and Times of Michael K, page 1-

Michael K's hare lip is the first thing everyone notices about him - a disfigurement that sets him apart and causes his mother to institutionalize him at a young age. This physical defect seems to set the tone for Michael's life of isolation and a turning inward of himself. As an adult, Michael finds work as a gardener in the city of Cape Town; later as his mother's health deteriorates he decides to return to the country and the home of her birth. But a civil war makes this journey a challenge in more ways than one. Michael and his mother do not have papers to leave the city, they don't have reliable transportation, and they must avoid armed guards and roadblocks. When Michael's mother dies along the way, Michael is left with her ashes and the determination to reach his destiny.

This is a disturbing and revealing novel about the strength of the human spirit to not only endure, but to overcome physical obstacles in the discovery of self. Michael's connection to the earth, his desire to grow his own food, becomes his sole purpose of living.

His deepest pleasure came at sunset when he turned open the cock at the dam wall and watched the stream of water run down its channels to soak the earth, turning it from fawn to deep brown. It is because I am a gardener, he tough, because that is my nature. - From Life and Times of Michael K, page 59

Coetzee's writing is vivid in its descriptions. The sense of place is strong, which makes this novel a somber look at South Africa. The human suffering, the pointlessness of the re-education camps, the cruelty of the military - all resound heavily on the pages of this book. Michael stands out, not only because he is physically marred, but because he possesses a peace within that those around him lack. A doctor who treats Michael in hospital seems to be the only character who identifies what makes Michael special.

I am the only one who sees you for the original soul you are. I am the only one who cares for you. I alone see you as neither a soft case for a soft camp nor a hard case for a hard camp but a human soul above and beneath classification, a soul blessedly untouched by doctrine, untouched by history, a soul stirring its wings within that stiff sarcophagus, murmuring behind that clownish mask. -From Life and Times of Michael K, page 151

As with all of Coetzee's novels, Life and Times of Michael K is not light reading. In many ways it is depressing; but ultimately it captures the beauty of the human soul.

Recommended; rated 4/5.