Life and Times of Michael K

Feb 23, 2010 David rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

~ This review dedicated to 'Ya Boy.' I'ma sip this, you do the rest. ~

The Community of Misery

'Misery loves company.' I've always kind of really hated that expression because (rightly or not) I've usually deciphered the unsettling subtext whenever it's employed: i.e., that people -- experiencing misfortunes or enduring profound unhappiness -- prefer that others are likewise afflicted.

When I was younger, for instance, my father, a nouveau riche who absurdly prided himself on the mythologized 'p...more

39 likes · like · see review

Jul 29, 2010 D. Pow rated it 5 of 5 stars

I have been thinking how much a good book is like an organic thing. When the proper level of alchemical transformation is reached between a skilled author at the top of his game and a reader with the proper level of receptivity and empathy then something new and wonderful is birthed. You are no longer dealing with some pulped paper glued together with some artful(or not) cover protecting its frail glyphs but you are in the presence of something larger, vaster and infinitely more sacred than just...more I have been thinking how much a good book is like an organic thing. When the proper level of alchemical transformation is reached between a skilled author at the top of his game and a reader with the proper level of receptivity and empathy then something new and wonderful is birthed. You are no longer dealing with some pulped paper glued together with some artful(or not) cover protecting its frail glyphs but you are in the presence of something larger, vaster and infinitely more sacred than just a `good yarn’ designed to kill some time. You actually are allowed to see the world through another pair of eyes, observe, act, fail to act, feel, watch an entire life spool out with Technicolor vividness, rest firmly embedded in another for the length of the journey that is the book. That is something rare and wonderful that isn’t often to be found, but I think it is close to the root of why certain readers trumpet certain authors and books with the fervor of one who has found The Grail or some other talisman of sacred import.

The Life and Times of Michael K is my most recent experience where I closed a book at its end and felt I had been exposed completely to a real, living soul; where I felt the alchemy of a life lived thorough another take place. The book is the journey of one frail, physically malformed and mentally challenged man through the horrors of South African during the apartheid era. Michael K.’s journey is one that begins in poverty and oppression, travels outwards into greater malignancies and terrors, and ends in a cruel stasis that might be synonymous with death. And yet…this book never once struck me as being, depressed, morbid or overly sad. Through the strength of the writing I was so utterly with Michael most of the time, I could not stand outside dispassionately and think about what a terrible lot in life he had. And while the arc of Michael’s journey is pitiful, one of mere subsistence for the greater part, there are also scenes of corresponding beauty that make you realize that even though Michael is a simpleton his connection to the land, to the earth, is something much more subtle and deep. Michael is a planter and a gardener and he finds what redemption he can from his hands delving into the red clay that is the body of South Africa and though he wouldn’t know how to express it, there is sense of completeness and soul-solace he achieves there, that makes his life seem not wholly pitiful.

By letting this half-starved , hair-lipped, street urchin be the recipient of these small instances of grace, Coetzee is really delivering a quite passé and subversive message: the most sordid lives might still seem to the ones experiencing them eminently worth living. And by letting Michael K. remain his plodding, dim and unaware self throughout this book, after numerous exposures to the brutal injustices of apartheid, war and exile, Coetzee has also delivered a stirring paean to the capacity of the individual, no matter how slight and flawed, to stand and prevail against anything.

(less)

35 likes · like · see review

Jan 18, 2009 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: novel readers, social workers, gardeners

Recommended to Jessica by: coterie of rabid coetzee maniacs who have infiltrated this site

Shelves: kind-of-depressing, happyendings, social-work-or-relevant

Obviously there're a lot of people out there who write much better than I do, and in this way I feel writing's similar to distance running. I can run a passable marathon, though of course a lot of amateur runners out there run a much faster one. I'm impressed by people who run faster than I can, just as I am by those who write better than me. These people are humbling, but they're also inspiring: reading good writing or watching good running makes me want to write better and run faster. It's hea...more

17 likes · like · see review

Jul 30, 2010 Paul rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

***CONTAINS SPOILERS I.E. HIGHLY INSULTING REMARKS ABOUT THE LAST PART OF THE BOOK***

Uh oh. Last thing I want to do is fall out with my bookfacingoodreadinfingerlickin friends such as Donald and Jessica, both of whom think this is so good you have to invent a new word for it, good just isn't good enough, brilliant is almost an insult. So as you can tell, I didn't share those views. I was so gripped by this book, couldn't wait to get back and finish it today, and then i hit the Doctor's Tale (las...more ***CONTAINS SPOILERS I.E. HIGHLY INSULTING REMARKS ABOUT THE LAST PART OF THE BOOK***

Uh oh. Last thing I want to do is fall out with my bookfacingoodreadinfingerlickin friends such as Donald and Jessica, both of whom think this is so good you have to invent a new word for it, good just isn't good enough, brilliant is almost an insult. So as you can tell, I didn't share those views. I was so gripped by this book, couldn't wait to get back and finish it today, and then i hit the Doctor's Tale (last third) and the whole thing fell apart like an overripe pumpkin. I loved all the Robinson Crusoe-meets-Knut-Hamsun-in-apartheid-South-Africa. But I didn't love the Doctor's contorted vapourisings on the subject of lowly Michael K. In fact I wanted to Fast Forward very badly. But I had to see where all this handwringing and misunderestimating and fancypants codswallop was leading to. Seems to me that the Doctor is a horrible Sock Puppet through which the Author can write us a ghastly soft rock new age Alchemist daytime tv philosophy essay on the Lowly and Downtrodden, the Great mass of Forgotten People:

"Why? I asked myself: why will this man not eat when he is plainly starving?"

Ah, Grasshopper, why indeed. You have much to learn.

"Then as I watched you day after day I slowly began to understand the truth: that you were crying secretly, unknown to your conscious self (forgive the term), for a different kind of food, food that no camp could supply."

Ah. Yes. Oh, and then it gets Even Worse when Michael K gets a blowjob on the beach. Blimey. I may have got up on the wrong side of the bed today, but I'm quickly developing a theory that Life and Times of Michael K is the intellectual version of Pretty Woman (the movie not the Roy Orbison ballad). Sometimes you have to wonder if you're on the right planet.

Fans of the Book: "No you're not, Bryant, fuck off to your own dismal galaxy and leave us all to enjoy our Nobel Prize and Booker Prizewinner. Here's a spaceship. Now piss off. Pretty Woman? You must be on drugs."

Even now I see a crowd of literary critics and Donald with flaming torches approaching...(less)

25 likes · like · see review

view all 23 comments

Franki While your interpretation of Part 2 with the doctor is very interesting, I would instead argue that the second section is instead a criticism of the d...more While your interpretation of Part 2 with the doctor is very interesting, I would instead argue that the second section is instead a criticism of the doctor himself. After all, he does not really understand Michael, though he appears to be using him as a guide towards a similar lifestyle or mindset. There is a condescension towards his character as he expresses a desire to provide him with “a graduated diet, gentle exercise, and physiotherapy, so that one day soon he can rejoin camp life and have a chance to march back and forth across the racetrack and shout slogans and salute the flag and practice digging holes and filling them again” (133). He does not listen to Michael when he corrects the doctor, who calls him Michaels instead of Michael (131). He is confined by and conscious of the war that is occurring around him, thereby constricted and constrained by the social rules enforced upon him.

Michael, however, is consistently lowered and limited by the same social rules. However, in the absence of others, as when he was alone in the veld and gardening, his capabilities expand and flourish.

I do not believe that the doctor’s musings of Michael are supposed to be the guiding voice of reason or how the reader is ‘supposed’ to interpret the story or him, I think it is instead a socially structured narrative designed to impose structure and rules on Michael in order to better examine why these rules and structures do not always work. Notably, the doctor is imposing on Michael’s body itself with these social rules -- what and when he should eat. However, instead of criticizing Michael through Part 2, I believe that the voice of the doctor instead criticizes the ‘norm’ through the doctor’s condescension to him.

Nevertheless, I do find your point about why that narrative must exist. It is an all-too-common trope in media that the experiences of persons of color - although seeing as Michael’s race is interestingly not mentioned in a highly racialized apartheid South Africa is very interesting - are translated and interpreted by a white, colonial voice. Interestingly, this is also done on another level by Coetzee himself, who is the writer of the story.(less)
Feb 10, 2013 01:51am

Paul that is unfortunately an almost universal trope - that non-white people's experience has to be mediated through a white person in order to be understo...more
Feb 10, 2013 04:40am

Feb 16, 2010 Ben rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, darkness, war, read-in-2010, good-fiction, important-message, memorable-characters, tough-guys-and-gals, transformative-experience

Life and Times of Michael K completely lives up to the hype and deserves every fucking award it has received. Both corporeally and allegorically it is as deep as they come; it isn’t just about the slow thinking Michael K. trying to survive; it is about inner strength, our perceptions of others, individuality in a world in which we are alone; it is about how we view meaning, and the depths one can reach through those meanings when they are extensions of one’s true self.

Coetzee amazed me....take a...more

20 likes · like · see review

Mar 14, 2009 C. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to C. by: Most of goodreads

Shelves: 2009

Huh.

The prose was detached and lifeless, as I have come to expect from Coetzee. Which leaves you cold and alone. In the rain, outside on the deserted street gazing at the lighted windows of the stalinesque apartment buildings across the road. And inside you there's this dull ache of hollowness that is where the prose would be if it was there. And because you are so empty there is a sort of lack that swells and swells until it fills you whole and spills over into your thoughts and your actions. A...more Huh.

The prose was detached and lifeless, as I have come to expect from Coetzee. Which leaves you cold and alone. In the rain, outside on the deserted street gazing at the lighted windows of the stalinesque apartment buildings across the road. And inside you there's this dull ache of hollowness that is where the prose would be if it was there. And because you are so empty there is a sort of lack that swells and swells until it fills you whole and spills over into your thoughts and your actions. And this is depression and as you read it emanates from your very pores until you and the book are enveloped in it like a halo of light the colour of the outside of the universe.

So that was good. I always like a book that makes me feel that way. Because here is a man who is alone, more alone than I have ever been and no one cares. Because here's the thing. I have a family and I have friends and if somehing happens to me they care. And I have this government that would give me money if I had none. And when I was sick I got the best medical care around, and it was free, because there's this attitude here that I matter and that everyone matters enough to deserve the same. And then there is Michael K, who doesn't matter to anyone, and all he wants to do is be left alone, but the establishment can't even do that. They have to take him and do things to him even though he can be of no conceivable use to them or anyone else. And he turns away from anyone who could help him and who wants to help him. And that was really good. By which I mean it was brilliantly portrayed and hopelessly moving.

But then we get to part the third and suddenly the thing turns into this pathetic Coelho-esque excuse for a book. And it's full of patronising, pseudo-philosophical drivel that doesn't mean a thing. And the prose loses its beautiful detachment and becomes airy and pretty and floaty and suddenly I'm not liking it nearly so much any more. So I give it five stars for the first part and two point five for the last part, which I somehow average out to make four.

___________________________________

No, I probably shouldn't have borrowed this. But I just joined a new library today and it was sitting there, looking so small and cute and just crying out to be taken to a good home! And it's thin, right, and I can keep it for three whole weeks, right, so I should have plenty of time to read a maths textbook, right, finish off my modern and contemporary literature booklist and read me some Brigade Mondaine before school starts next Monday, right? Right.

And I really would have liked to have joined in the Coetzee-fest when it was actually on. But at that time I had self-discipline. And there were no Coetzee books in the public library.(less)

15 likes · like · see review

Jul 03, 2011 Shovelmonkey1 rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: everyone and 1001 book readers

Recommended to Shovelmonkey1 by: 1001 book list

Shelves: 1001-books, africa, bookcrossing-books, read-in-2011

Normally when I write a review I like to be a bit sarcastic, or sometimes poke fun at the subject matter. This is not a book for sarcasm and I've had to set down my pointy mirth stick (the one I normally use for the poking of the fun).

Life and Times of Michael K is many thing
Poignant
Brief
Tragic

The writing has a sort of cold clarity, like a first breath of icy cold air on a winters morning which makes your lungs ache. Michael K is living in a war zone. He is an intelligent man who appreciates th...more Normally when I write a review I like to be a bit sarcastic, or sometimes poke fun at the subject matter. This is not a book for sarcasm and I've had to set down my pointy mirth stick (the one I normally use for the poking of the fun).

Life and Times of Michael K is many thing
Poignant
Brief
Tragic

The writing has a sort of cold clarity, like a first breath of icy cold air on a winters morning which makes your lungs ache. Michael K is living in a war zone. He is an intelligent man who appreciates the gravity of his situation but his world view is also simplistic. He knows only that the blighted riot strewn streets of his former home are not where he needs to be and that he has to get his mother out of the city. Bureaucracy prevents flight from the violence by conventional means so he constructs a hand cart and proceeds to wheel his ailing mother towards her home town of Prince Albert.

Events take an predictably unhappy turn and Michael K, or K as he becomes known is stripped of his identity through loss of his ID cards but also through the loss of his family and possessions. He is a man with no past. Can a man with no past really go on and create a future for himself? K continues his quest to reach Prince Albert and when he finds it deserted he sets about trying to establish his own acre, an oasis of peace, life and sustenance in the empty Karoo. K's survival does not conform the the westernised ideal of survival and so eventually, he is picked up by the army and forced into a work camp where he will be cared for in return for providing physical labour. This side of the book is not seen for K's perspective but from the perspective of a doctor (who at first I assumed was female but actually turns out to be male) who cannot understand why Michaels (as he has now been named, thus further muddying the waters of his true identity) is the way he is. Michaels becomes a wraith, slipping between two worlds, fuelled only by the desire to be alone and self sufficient he is passively intent on not being absorbed into the world which a civil war is forcing him to confront.

My country has no civil war. I have only moved through what might be described as war zones. This book may be as close as I will ever get to sensing the powerlessness of the dispossessed. This book is enough.(less)

5 likes · like · see review

May 01, 2008 Trevor rated it 4 of 5 stars

"The damp weather was no good for her, nor was the unending worry about the future. Once settled in Prince Albert she would quickly recover her health. At most, they would be a day or two on the road. People were decent, people would stop and give them lifts."

This is one of those rare works of art that by showing ugliness gets the person paying attention to recognize, more deeply, beauty. I'm not sure how it happens, but while reading this book, this book about a war and about one man's physical...more "The damp weather was no good for her, nor was the unending worry about the future. Once settled in Prince Albert she would quickly recover her health. At most, they would be a day or two on the road. People were decent, people would stop and give them lifts."

This is one of those rare works of art that by showing ugliness gets the person paying attention to recognize, more deeply, beauty. I'm not sure how it happens, but while reading this book, this book about a war and about one man's physical decline as he attempts to become invisible--I looked around me and saw so many wonderful things. I would read the sad way Michael K passes time while alone or in captivity and feel some fundamental truth, some elemental beauty even among the ugliness of human nature. For example, this simple passage from early in the book is simple, its momentary bliss is rare, yet for all its simpleness it shouts a message louder than the ravages going on around the characters:

"[H:]e was again able to take his mother, wrapped in coat and blanket, for a seafront ride that brought a smile to her lips."

I liked this book more than Coetzee's Disgrace. In both Coetzee has a way of using simple words in seemingly simple sentences, coming up with a fabulously understated style:

"He had a feeling that he was losing his grip on why he had come all these hundreds of miles, and had to pace about with his hands over his face before he felt better again."

But Life and Times of Michael K felt more compassionate. Because Coetzee had to recognize the fundamental beauty I talked about earlier, I felt more drawn to K and to the writer. Simple passages like the one here made me feel like Coetzee was not merely defending a character--as I felt in Disgrace, where the character was almost completely unlikeable--but also working hard to get the reader to love a character that he loved.

"There was a cord of tenderness that stretched from him to the patch of earth beside the dam and must be cut. It seemed to him that one could cut a cord like that only so many times before it would not grow again."

Michael K is deceptively complex. He seems simple. He barely talks. The simple style of the novel strengthens this feel. However, like the novel itself, there is much more to Michael K. The doctor, who tells Part II, is one of the only characters who recognizes Michael K as something more than a simpleton. His revelation is probably flawed too, but that leaves more room for the reader to get what they can from the life of Michael K.(less)

4 likes · like · see review

May 05, 2013 Con McVeety rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: southern-hemisphere

Michael K wants no part of the Civil War taking place in South Africa, he works at a park in Cape Town, and takes care of his mother, expect that it rains all the time, everything is wet inside the house, Michael takes care of his mother in and lives in,rocks have been thrown through all the windows,so it's wet insdie. What are son and mother, who can't stand up on her weak legs, to do but leave and move out to the country away from the cold rain and strife of the city? This isn’t safe as they...more

5 likes · like · see review

Jan 10, 2010 Richard rated it 5 of 5 stars

Is There Joy in Utter Destitution?

Musings on The Life and Times of Michael K.

When I was thirteen, we moved out to a smallholding on the outskirts of Johannesburg. We still refer to it as “The Farm”, but only about a third of the land was arable, the rest was slate, covered with a thin crust of dust and scrub. There was a borehole and an orchard, a vegetable patch, chickens, three horses, two donkeys, a cow, and two pigs. There was also a family of nine – Wilson and Rebecca M. and their seven chi...more

4 likes · like · see review

Feb 25, 2013 Kaloyana rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

Така, така... Явно Кутси не може да пише по друг начин освен силно, много силно, смилено, потресаващо, умопомрачително добре. Така само ограничава възможността ми аз да кажа нещо смислено и различно за книгите му. Но това си е мой проблем :)

Майкъл К. е роден със заешка устна. Според околните е леко бавноразвиващ се, но читателят остава с друго впечатление - човек, който не е част от системата, не мисли и не реагира като Цялото. А щом е така, значи нещо не е наред. Това предопределя различния жив...more Така, така... Явно Кутси не може да пише по друг начин освен силно, много силно, смилено, потресаващо, умопомрачително добре. Така само ограничава възможността ми аз да кажа нещо смислено и различно за книгите му. Но това си е мой проблем :)

Майкъл К. е роден със заешка устна. Според околните е леко бавноразвиващ се, но читателят остава с друго впечатление - човек, който не е част от системата, не мисли и не реагира като Цялото. А щом е така, значи нещо не е наред. Това предопределя различния живот, който води в една не особено дружелюбна обстановка в Африка. Историята му започва с майка му, която той се опитва да спаси от тежка болест, като изпълни нейното желание - да се върнат в града, където е родена. Така започва пътят на Майкъл. Всъщност цялата книга е за Пътя (в двата му смисъла, да ме прощава Маккарти пак:))Той не може да живее в "лагера", не може да се примирява като другите, не иска да го спасяват. Всичко, което Майкъл иска е, да го оставят на мира. Не се съпротивлява с воля, не прави нищо агресивно. Тялото му отказва храна. Не иска да му помагат. Всъщност той нищо не иска. Само си тръгва. Спасява се в мизерията и се губи в милостинята на другите, страда от добротата им. Тялото му отказва да бъде спасявано. Това е история, засягаща много проблеми, един от които тегобата на хорското милосърдие. Колко много трябва да пожертваш за да дадеш възможност на другия да е милосърден и колко много коства това! "Трудно е да си добър към някого, който нищо не иска". А и трябва ли? Ето за това е книгата.

Малко ми е трудно да опиша всичко, което изпитвам и разбирам след прочитането на текста, но знам, че това също е книга, която дълго ще помня. Ето малко от това, което силно ме впечатли.

"Превърнах се в обект на милосърдие - помисли си. - Където и да отида, хората само това чакат - да упражнят милосърдието си върху мен. В миналото приличах, пък и все още приличам на сирак. Отнасят се с мен като с децата от Якалсдриф, които бяха готови да се хранят, защото още са твърде малки, за да носят вина. От тях очакваха само да измърморят някаква благодарност в замяна. От мен искат повече, защото съм бил по-дълго на този свят. Искат да си разтворя душата, да им разкажа как съм живял в разни клетки. Искат да научат за всички клетки, в които съм живял, като че ли съм папагалче, бяла мишка или маймуна. И ако в "Юи Норениус" се бях учил да разказвам, вместо да беля картофи и да смятам, ако ме бяха карали да разказвам живота си всеки ден, застанали с пръчка над главата ми, докато се науча да разказвам гладко, без запънки, може би щях да знам как да им угодя. Щях да им разказвам за живота си минал по затворите, където съм стоял дни наред, години наред, с чело притиснато в телената мрежа и поглед впит в далечината, изпълнен с мечти за приключения, които никога няма да преживея; където стражата ме е наричала с какви ли не имена и ме е ритала по задника, и ме е пращала за наказание да търкам пода. И когато завършех историята си, хората щяха да клатят глави, да изказват своето съжаление и възмущение и да ме отрупват с храна и напитки; жените щяха да ме вземат в легалата си и да ме приласкават в тъмното. Докато истината е, че съм бил градинар - първо към Общината, после ей така, за себе си, а градинарите прекарват живота си с нос, забит в земята."

"Може би щастието е да си вън от лагерите, вън от всички лагери взети заедно. Може би засега това е достатъчно постижение. Колцина са онези, които не са нито заключени, нито охрана при някой портал? Избягах от лагерите. Може би, ако се спотайвам, ще избягам и от милосърдието."(less)

5 likes · like · see review

Dec 30, 2009 TD rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Kafka, K, Michael K, Koetzee

In Kafka’s ‘The Castle’, K seeks admittance to the castle of the title. He is foiled. In fact, his failure was pre-determined and his travails against his fate pathetic and absurd, but oddly touching. Michael K, protagonist of ‘Life and Times of Michael K’ shares a congenital predetermination with his Kafkan namesake; he is born poor, black (although his skin colour is implied, never stated) and with a hare-lip which renders him unable to feed at his mother’s breast....more Kafka, K, Michael K, Koetzee

In Kafka’s ‘The Castle’, K seeks admittance to the castle of the title. He is foiled. In fact, his failure was pre-determined and his travails against his fate pathetic and absurd, but oddly touching. Michael K, protagonist of ‘Life and Times of Michael K’ shares a congenital predetermination with his Kafkan namesake; he is born poor, black (although his skin colour is implied, never stated) and with a hare-lip which renders him unable to feed at his mother’s breast. He is also, we are repeatedly told, dull-witted. But at this point Coetzee diverges, inverting Kafka’s order, for whereas K sought admittance Michael K seeks to avoid fraternity at all costs.

Coetzee has recognised that the image of the inaccessible castle, a figuration Kafka treats literally, possesses a real-world correlative in the modern nation state. The essence of the nation state is one in which everyone within its borders is presumed to be included, whether they like it or not; it is the invisible apparatus of the state itself in possession of (inaccessible) power. The medical officer of section two who treats Michael K in the training camp he is eventually brought to on death’s door, states, “I am dubious anyhow that one can separate the self that scrutinizes from the self that hides”. Both he and Noel (the camp’s director) are acutely aware of their paradoxical position within the functioning of the state, a position accentuated by the civil war which forms the backdrop of the novel. Both perform their official, allocated functions, albeit reluctantly; both represent the state in dealing with prisoners they are sent to brain-wash, but neither possesses power over either the extant power structure or their own circumstances, let alone that of their charges. They are at once ostracised and in the seat of power; conscious of themselves as individuals but unable to conceive of themselves as anything other than subjects.

Earlier in the novel, and further from the ever-deferred centre of power, Michael K is incarcerated in an apparently more benign camp for drifters and the unemployed. But here on the social fringe the state presumes that even undesirable elements have a use and are by nature its citizens too. The people of the near-by town are outraged after an arson attack by insurgents and blame the undesired occupants of the camp. Their reasoning is all too familiar: we, as citizens of the state (tax payers), provide shelter, food and work for these people, who return the favour by attacking us. The reaction of the authorities is predictable; whereas previous to the attack the inhabitants had been told they were free to leave the compound (although they are also told there is no reason for their wanting to), after the attack they are locked in and the state’s altruism is disclosed for what it actually is: oppression and cruelty in service of perpetuating and universalising its power. For at no point is the state ready to relinquish its hold on even these miserable, marginal subjects.

Michael K escapes this situation to seek union with the other castle, the only other castle, the world as it is. It is an escape from society, from K’s state of indignity in Kafka’s novel. However, Coetzee is merciless in his portrayal of grace’s cost. No pity is granted Michael K. He was born unable to feed from his mother’s breast and after her death and living on an abandoned station, he is afforded little more succour from Mother Earth, the dust of which his mother has since joined. He is even washed out of the womb/tomb-like dwelling he digs for himself in the ground to hide and sleep in. But despite the terrible physical deprivations Michael K suffers, his faith in the earth as benefactor never wavers. When it does not deliver he simply reduces his need. He imagines he is a mere ghost on the earth, barely leaving trace of passage; at the end of the novel he believes he might survive by lowering a bent teaspoon down the bore to draw the water he once relied on, the pump for which was sabotaged by soldiers determined to believe that he was collaborating with guerrilla fighters. Michael maintains his dried pumpkin seeds on his person at all times. Coetzee is warning us of (Kafkan) abstractions – union with ‘the castle’, the castle beyond the sphere of human enterprise, requires forbearance of gruesome pain and deprivation, and ultimately a transfiguration (unto death) of all we might consider human.

“The truth is that the only chance I had is gone, and gone before I knew it.” The medical officer recognises that if Michael K was blessed/cursed at birth, then so was he; blessed and cursed never to be able to slip the temporal shackles of the society he was born into and which he carries always within him. And in section three, after Michael K’s escape from the medical officer and the training camp, we find that even Michael doesn’t seem to have escaped the social sphere. He returns to sit outside the door of the closet his mother once lived in while working as a maid, fantasising a surrogate father he might wheel back into the veld, reattempting what he tried to do with his sick mother; and ponders of the dubious pimp whose society he has inadvertently fallen in with “How does he stay so neat, living on a mountain?” (less)

2 likes · like · see review

Jul 05, 2009 El rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books-list, late20th-centurylit

In the first part of this book we meet Michael K, born with a harelip and living in Cape Town, South Africa. As an adult his mother falls sick and he is struck by the realization the only way to save her is to bring her to her homeland not involved in the civil war of his own town. What happens on their journey change the direction of Michael K's life and he is forced to depend upon himself in order to survive.

This is a testament to human nature, what a strong spirit can do for one person and th...more In the first part of this book we meet Michael K, born with a harelip and living in Cape Town, South Africa. As an adult his mother falls sick and he is struck by the realization the only way to save her is to bring her to her homeland not involved in the civil war of his own town. What happens on their journey change the direction of Michael K's life and he is forced to depend upon himself in order to survive.

This is a testament to human nature, what a strong spirit can do for one person and the enduring quality of life in the face of hardship. Michael K is a character with very little in life, looked down upon for his physical deformity, and stuck in the middle of a country being destroyed by apartheid. His journey from Cape Town to Prince Albert is not just a physical journey but an emotional and psychological one as well. His purpose is not just to go from Point A to Point B but to make it in one piece - mind, body, spirit. In his war-torn country, however, it seems everyone is out to break him.

I honestly did not have high hopes for this book. I think I once tried to read Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians but never made it past a few pages. Having read Life & Times of Michael K makes me want to go back and see if I might have a better appreciation of Barbarians now. I want all of his books to be this powerful to read; due to the lack of chapter breaks (the book is split into three parts, the first of which is almost the whole book) made it easy for me to sit down and read it all in almost one sitting (with the occasional break to walk one of the dogs and to get some ice cream up the street). I felt winded by the end of reading it, but in a healthy way, like I finally remembered that it was okay for me to breathe. While the last part of the book seemed to be a complete disconnect from the rest of the book, it wasn't enough to make me hate the novel in its entirety. Which is good as I can be sometimes very unforgiving about things like a sloppy ending.(less)

3 likes · like · see review

Sep 19, 2007 Wriju rated it 5 of 5 stars

Unconventional, radically unconventional. I have read books on non-descript people. K is so non-descript that you would find an ant-hill more exciting. Yet his utter lack of 'will to power' (to borrow a phrase from Nietzsche) is poignant. It shakes the earth below your feet. His passiveness yells out a shrill "Just let me be. I exist in my oblivion, in my non-existence." In his passiveness K recognizes no human boundary, no barbed wires, no affront, no sympathy. No book glorifies freedom like th...more

2 likes · like · see review

Mar 16, 2009 Rhonda rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was the first book I read by Coetzee and I wanted an introduction to his style before I tackled the great Barbarians, about which the literary world sings paeans of glory. When I finished this book, I went back to read the comments left by others because I believed that I must have picked up the wrong book. With only a handful of exceptions, the reviews I read seemed to indicate a brilliance I cannot locate.

That this books is evocative of the bleak and pointless existence of some people in...more This was the first book I read by Coetzee and I wanted an introduction to his style before I tackled the great Barbarians, about which the literary world sings paeans of glory. When I finished this book, I went back to read the comments left by others because I believed that I must have picked up the wrong book. With only a handful of exceptions, the reviews I read seemed to indicate a brilliance I cannot locate.

That this books is evocative of the bleak and pointless existence of some people in South Africa, I can neither confirm nor deny, although I have no reason to doubt that it is. In fact, the book offers a wonderful social commentary about desire and effort and failure and hollowness. I am not objecting to the fact that I don’t need to be reminded of any more of this as I really haven’t seen it all that much in my relatively protected life. I just have a problem thinking that this depiction in any way approaches great literature.

I was at first captivated by Coetzee’s prose, the simple statements and descriptions of the possible, outside of which exists the life which humans truly deserve. Real life, we are told, remains out of reach and authority is there to ensure that it does. It was simple, like Michael’s thoughts of duty and existence, although surprisingly without any great emotional content. We are left to find that on our own, discover our own rage, as it were. I thought it a brilliant device.

Nevertheless, I became tired of the nefarious accoutrements with which Michael and his mother were continuously saddled in their lives. He is disfigured and his mother becomes ill and there is a great social upheaval by the military and Michael, despite his best efforts, cannot accomplish what he wants in his very simple way. I ceased to marvel at it very early and kept reading only to wince at each and every indignity imposed upon his life.

My criticism of this writing was that none of it depicted the characters very well, despite the fact that carrying someone in a wheelbarrow was perfectly depicted. The best defined personae were the couple who employed Michael K’s mother and we only see them fleshed out when we look through their belongings they leave behind. In addition, I found the doctor very real and well thought out. His decision to make no effort to recapture Michael comes across as real, although flawed, a precursor to the grand portrayal of psychology as a man in Barbarians. Still, this is the only character in the book which has any depth and I found it strangely out of place.

Michael at the end dreams of going back to the wilderness, away from society. Are we really surprised? After allof his humiliating defeats atdeaing with people, he likes growing things better. So should we all. Perhaps if he had read Sartre, he would be able to echo that hell was other people. At least he comes by his conclusions honestly.

Still, the prose I thought so starkly descriptive in the beginning became overwrought and incommunicative, reminding me much of Dustin Hoffman’s performance in Rain Man, very clever in the beginning but tiring and predictable after an hour or so. Coetzee attempts to shock us from time to time and I suppose that these efforts are intended to keep our minds off what became the droning tone. Perhaps, this is the mere monotonous tone of a spiritless life, as Paul said, the tinkling of a bell in the wilderness. It is the spiritual wasteland of mankind which believes that it is brave enough to look at by itself and still be proud. If this were true, I should think we would all be better off cultivating our own gardens like Michael. The difficulty, of course, is that we have become too civilized to believe in the life which doesn’t come to us under cellophane. Thus, though I found this book worth reading, I think it falls short of what it intended to do.
(less)

4 likes · like · see review

Jul 30, 2008 jordan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Literary historians credit much of Ireland's rich literary tradition to its often tragic history. No surprise then that the nation of South Africa, likewise so rich in grief that it might as well diamonds, has produced so many extraordinary writers, two of whom, Coetzee included, who can boast a Nobel Prize. Which brings us to one of his many fine novels, the Life and Times of Michael K.

Telling the tale of a black man caught in the twisted and violent web of Apartheid might appear at first an o...more Literary historians credit much of Ireland's rich literary tradition to its often tragic history. No surprise then that the nation of South Africa, likewise so rich in grief that it might as well diamonds, has produced so many extraordinary writers, two of whom, Coetzee included, who can boast a Nobel Prize. Which brings us to one of his many fine novels, the Life and Times of Michael K.

Telling the tale of a black man caught in the twisted and violent web of Apartheid might appear at first an obvious tale, but then again, so might the story of a child who turned to crime in London in the 19th century or one of a boy and his friend journeying down the Mississippi. It is in this vein which one must see The Life and Times of Michael K, one which captures a place and an age. Other reviewers have focused on the tale of the central character, Michael K, so I would instead look at another aspect of the novel. Despite writing about a place and a story where race surrounds every character and facet like smog, Coetzee never once tells us anyone's race. At first I found this strange, discerning it in its broad aspects but finding the absence the stated fact more than a little strange. It was then that a south African friend explained to me that while I could tell only the characters' races in the broadest sense, she could tell it easily, immediately, and down to which subgroup each belonged. Indeed, like an Englishman knowing the class of a countrymen by their accent, she knew this based on job, dress, and dialogue.

This then is to me part of the genius of Coetzee's novel, giving his reader a story that is at once subsumed by race and yet never mentioning it. True, as some complain, Michael K does not grow to a character larger than life, becoming some hero; no he is a simple man, living to the best of his common ability in a world where evil is so common that it deserves no mention.

I would be remiss not to mention Coetzee's gift for prose, his ability to distill a scene or a feeling down to a few words, like grain alcohol. Many Americans remain unfortunately ignorant of this writer and his country's other extraordinary authors, like Freed and Gordimer. This is a tragedy, which I urge every reader to correct. (less)

like · see review

Jun 22, 2008 Joseph rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

So disappointed was I with the second half of his two volume memoir, Youth, that not long after he won the Nobel, I left Coetzee sitting over the dim blue lotus of my literary backburner. Five years later, with a taste for the grim joys of some Kafka or Beckett but needing light respite from the labyrinthic bales of Gaddis’s Byzantine sentence; I picked up this slim volume and grazed through it for a couple afternoons. I chose wisely: anyone having savored Beckett or Kafka will see at every turn...more So disappointed was I with the second half of his two volume memoir, Youth, that not long after he won the Nobel, I left Coetzee sitting over the dim blue lotus of my literary backburner. Five years later, with a taste for the grim joys of some Kafka or Beckett but needing light respite from the labyrinthic bales of Gaddis’s Byzantine sentence; I picked up this slim volume and grazed through it for a couple afternoons. I chose wisely: anyone having savored Beckett or Kafka will see at every turn their deepest influence.

I read once that when asked whether the main character’s name had been a reference to Kafka’s ‘K.’, Coetzee claimed that it had never crossed his mind. And yet you’ll find constant echoes of artistic hunger, penal camps, there comes a prayer that “the Castle will forget about us,” and through chaos the Law torments—a conviction in its every accusation. And yet for all the Kafka we see here, Beckett eats at its center like a worm “that does not tell stories because it lives in silence.” One could even read the novel’s structure against that of Molloy.

All this isn’t to say that the book lacks its own voice. Part of Coetzee’s achievement is that of having been able to take that cerebral Beckettian consciousness folding in on itself and place it alongside the divine persecutions of Kafka’s nightmares—to have carried these to the historical and political contexts of a South African civil war. In Coetzee these abstractions, their plunge into the circuitries of the fantastic, are given the color, music, and flesh of a specific cultural experience. It is the tremendous irony of the novel that Michael K finds within these historical realities a cover, a lesson, a rout of escape: to vie with those that came before and live alongside him would be to set “himself of a trail that might lead to the re-enactment of their misfortunes. The worst mistake, he told himself, would be to try to found a new house, a rival line, on his small beginnings.” Michael, like Coetzee, retreats from the delineations of the recognized world into a life that imitates death by imitating unto death, evaporating into the silence of a nonentity, to become—as Michael is later called—“The obscurest of the obscure, so obscure as to be a prodigy.”
(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Dec 04, 2008 Sharron rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-list, 2008-books-read, fiction

The more I think of this book, the more I love it. It is a mere 185 pages but is packed with enduring images of a man who only asks to be allowed to be himself. Michael K is a simple man of modest means but his life is so much more than those words would suggest. I would recommend this book highly.

3 likes · like · see review

May 14, 2008 Zach rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read Disgrace a long time ago and enjoyed it thoroughly, but not as much as Michael K (I think I was both too young and read it on a beach, so it could certainly use a revisit). In reading Coetzee's prose this time, I was struck by his economy of language. His sentences are like coiled springs; short declarative statements that seem to convey so much emotion despite being, on their face, relatively ambivalent to bleak existence they are describing. I found myself dogearing pages, highlighting...more

1 like · like · see review

Aug 06, 2011 Matthew added it

More difficult than Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians and yet simultaneously somehow more quotidian, the story of a simple gardener, Michael K., mirrors the structure of Camus' The Stranger and the imagery of Kafka's The Hunger Artist. Michael, often referred to simply as "K." calling to mind Kafka's characters in The Trial and The Castle, is a stand-in for any oppressed minority, but here is specifically a black man in South Africa toward the end of the apartheid regime. Althogh race is neve...more More difficult than Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians and yet simultaneously somehow more quotidian, the story of a simple gardener, Michael K., mirrors the structure of Camus' The Stranger and the imagery of Kafka's The Hunger Artist. Michael, often referred to simply as "K." calling to mind Kafka's characters in The Trial and The Castle, is a stand-in for any oppressed minority, but here is specifically a black man in South Africa toward the end of the apartheid regime. Althogh race is never explicitly mentioned, it remains tangible by its noticable absence. The ever-present references to an ogoing war and the breakdown of civil society are evident throughout. The endless, stultifying bureaucracy, the impossibility of travel; required travel permits, roadblocks, the roving bands of looters and rioters all combine to make a dark and oppressive pall over the once beautiful countryside (the veld). K. attempts to get his mother out of Cape Town and back to her home on a farm in Prince Albert, but along the way she dies and K. is left without direction or purpose. Literally swept up like rubbish and relocated to a "relocation camp." He discovers that in this world, persons can be criminalized and punished for their mere existance. Wracked with hunger he asks the guards, "Where do I get food?" The reply is, "This is a camp, not a prison. You have to work for your food, like anyone else." At the gate, he asks to be let out. "No" is the answer, "but if you try to escape or climb the fence, I will shoot you dead." Yet, it is still not a prison. K. escapes and returns to an abandoned farm, where he extracts a minimal existance, nursing pumpkins and melons from the blighted soil. He lives away from people, the war and most importantly the constant irruption of time. Returning to a simpler existance, in harmony with nature and its cycles, K. finally seems at home. But it is not to last. The war intrudes again in the form of a guerilla band that pass through his area. Soon after, he is picked up by the military as an insurgent opgaarder, provisioner. Sent to a re-education camp, K. realizes that he is hungry for his kind of food, food from the soil, food tended and grown. He can no longer eat their food and begins to waste away. It isn't a hunger strike, as much as a disinterest in eating food. Part two is told from the point of view of a sympathetic doctor at the camp, who cares for K. and worries about his failing health. He does not understand K.'s situation and pleads with him to eat. He does not realize that one cannot be force fed the bread of freedom. Sad, poignant and diminuative, Coetzee translates the grand narrative of irrationality and injustice, of rascim and domination into the story of a simple man who only wants to go away.(less)

like · see review

Apr 06, 2013 Abdul Hair rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, sastra-dunia

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

like · see review

Feb 25, 2013 Jerry Levy rated it 5 of 5 stars

It's hard to say anything bad about a Booker-prize winner like J.M. Coetzee. And in fact, I have nothing bad to say about this book. I read it many years ago and it remains one of my all-time favourite books. It takes place in S. Africa during the civil war. K, the protagonist is a slow-witted 31-year-old man who was born with a hare-lip, never corrected. He leads a very soliatry life and "because of his face K. did not have women friends." But he had a mother, a very sick one at that. Toward th...more

like · see review

Nov 11, 2012 Vibina Venugopal rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Time is 1940's were south Africa is hit by civil war unending and undeclared, people are affected by it deeply and engrossingly but that is not the storyline of the novel..Its is about Michael K , his hare lip set him apart from the crowd..His lip shaped like a snail's foot hurdles his speech with disorientation and flimsy pronunciation..Born to Anna K who works as a servant in Cape town, he is raised in state institution, home for handicapped children...His communication with the world and...more The Time is 1940's were south Africa is hit by civil war unending and undeclared, people are affected by it deeply and engrossingly but that is not the storyline of the novel..Its is about Michael K , his hare lip set him apart from the crowd..His lip shaped like a snail's foot hurdles his speech with disorientation and flimsy pronunciation..Born to Anna K who works as a servant in Cape town, he is raised in state institution, home for handicapped children...His communication with the world and its people shrinks as he grows up making him an isolated man..He is employed as a gardener by the municipality of Cape town at the town park.. It is during this time the civil war breaks down, Michael is unaffected by all of it...But his mother health deteriorates, she finds it difficult to get relief in the over crowded hospital..She wants to go back to her hometown, a near-desert state of Karoo.... Together they set on the journey turned down at the check points not getting too far...He loses his mother ,leaving behind her ashes in a brown parcel.. He is unstoppable from this point, he is detained for not having sufficient papers for the journey , sent to prison and rehabilitation center thereafter..He is homeless, hunger struck goes through several days down with racism and confinement of prison..Yet his zeal to life with dignity and to take his mother's ash home burns high in his mind rendering him strength and the grit to pursue his journey..

Michael's story that begins in a simple note, branches up with several layers of complexities of life and people..He grows up very slowly that at times the reader miss to realize them..During the start of the journey, he builds up a cart out of scrap to push his ill mother through to her hometown, escapes the confinement of prison faking as a dead man..Learns the art of survival through evrey experience he goes on with....The novel is set into three different parts one from Michael's point of view then from the authors point of view, a third person account and back to Michael's point of view...I loved Michael's vantage more but the third person account helped me to define Michael better...The book is not about overcoming the physical obstacles one has to overcome but also finding strength to live with dignity in the face of prejudice and bigotry...The images and symbols of life and its adverse circumstances are brought up well by Coetzee..Its an absorbing tale that is decently portrayed....The novel also discusses the reason for the war, minorities should have a asay in the governance a superficial reason from the vantage of democratic idealism...But the time were during the period when the place was ruled by the white minority over the black majority.....Not a light read, go for it if you have time for a thoughtful read...I am looking forward to read Coetzee's Disgrace...(less)

like · see review

Aug 18, 2012 Bradley Turner rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The reviews for this book are prolix and literary and impassioned. This seems natural because the book is disturbing (in the sense of challenging many comfortable and normal valuations of life) and it is cerebral and steeped in literary allusions and tradition, not to mention that Coetzee's readers are of a certain intellectual sensibility.

It's a tough book to understand, that is, it's tough to understand the life and times of Michael K, likewise tough for Michael K and the "normal, smart, sens...more

like · see review

Jun 12, 2012 deliciouslyfictitious rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: word buffs, clever types

Read my full review and others like it at www.deliciouslyfictitious.com.

I have to be honest. I didn’t love this book. (I actually gave it 3.5 stars, but GoodReads doesn't seem to allow half-star ratings...)

It is a seminal work. It won Coetzee the Booker Prize in 1983 (his first win of two). No doubt it also had something to do with his Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.

It is clearly the work of a superior writer and a superior mind. You can see it in the opening description of Michael K, sittin...more

1 like · like · see review

Dec 11, 2011 Timj rated it 5 of 5 stars

'Though this is a large country, so large that you would think there would be space for everyone, what I have learned of life tells me that it is hard to keep out of the camps. Yet I am convinced there are areas that lie between the camps and belong to no camp, not even to the catchment areas of the camps... I am not so foolish, however, as to imagine that I can rely on maps and roads to guide me. That's why I've chosen you to show me the way.'

The above section sees the themes of this novel seve...more 'Though this is a large country, so large that you would think there would be space for everyone, what I have learned of life tells me that it is hard to keep out of the camps. Yet I am convinced there are areas that lie between the camps and belong to no camp, not even to the catchment areas of the camps... I am not so foolish, however, as to imagine that I can rely on maps and roads to guide me. That's why I've chosen you to show me the way.'

The above section sees the themes of this novel severed from the specific historical context of the civil war in South Africa and universalized - the camps referred to are not just the literal internment camps sponsored by the South African government, but more abstract and existential ones, entrenched philosophical and ideological norms and narratives of identity that strip from an individual his or her personal agency, much like those examined throughout the oeuvres of Kundera and Kafka. In the specific situation analysed by this novel, the eponymous vagrant Michael K seeks to live alone in the veld, entirely off the land, and appears completely unaware of the historical events unfolding around him that seize the lives of everyone else in the country. Eventually ending up imprisoned in an internment camp, since his growing of food for his own survival becomes unavoidably signified as a gesture in support of the rebellion based in the countryside nearby, Michael becomes an object of fascination for a nameless doctor who sees in him a way of living beyond the historical context that writes such entrenched and damaging identities onto everyone else he has ever met.

It is hugely clear, however, that Michael does not represent anything like the successful living of a life beyond history or ideology that this doctor imagines; to the reader, he seems permanently on the edge of death through malnutrition, suggesting that the narratives he is attempting to live on the outside of have become such a vital source of sustenance that attempting to eschew them leads only to a literal disappearance. The true horror of living within the particular narratives and ideologies at play in 1980s South Africa is ultimately conveyed by the doctor who treats Michael ascribing to him such an extreme importance that the reader is unable to share, for where he sees a Christ-like figure pointing towards an infinitely more favorable way of living, we can only see a desperately sick man who suggests instead that this better way of life can only ever endure as a unrealisable ideal. This novel refuses to present an easy answer to the dilemmas it poses: life beyond ideology, philosophy or narrative proves just as unsustainable as life within them - and only someone so brutalized by living within a particularly cruel set of these could read Michael's story as an affirmation of life without.(less)

like · see review

Sep 15, 2011 Elsje rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2004

Ik las Life and times of Michael K. van Coetzee (in het Nederlands want mijn biebje is niet zo ruim gesorteerd).

Het verhaal: Michael K is een sociaal zwakke man, hij werkt als hovenier voor de gemeente. Zijn meest opvallende 'eigenschap' is zijn hazelip. Als zijn moeder ziek wordt en daardoor niet meer kan werken, en bovendien de burgeroorlog in hun stad (Seepunt wordt genoemd, is dat een stadsdeel?), vluchten ze naar het platteland waar zij vandaan is gekomen, allerlei controlposten ontwijkend....more

like · see review

Sep 07, 2011 Richard Gobin rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Life & Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee is a novel that is told in three parts. The first part takes place in South Africa during the 1970s. There is a civil war going on, Michael K, a thirty one year old man, who is institutionalized as child because he thinks slowly. Michael has a hare lip, a hare lip is when a piece of the lip is missing or is connected to the nose, it is easily corrected through surgery, but Michael never gets his fixed. Michael's mother Anna works as a servant, and sh...more Life & Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee is a novel that is told in three parts. The first part takes place in South Africa during the 1970s. There is a civil war going on, Michael K, a thirty one year old man, who is institutionalized as child because he thinks slowly. Michael has a hare lip, a hare lip is when a piece of the lip is missing or is connected to the nose, it is easily corrected through surgery, but Michael never gets his fixed. Michael's mother Anna works as a servant, and she is very sick. In the novel she convinces Michael to take her back to her hometown where she was raised. Michael decides to take it upon himself to complete this journey he constructs a cart to carry his mother to the county in. Anna dies on this trip, but Michael makes it to the country by himself. The second part begins when Michael is captured by army in suspicion of helping the collaborators. This part is told by a doctor at the camp that Michael is being held prisoner at. Most of Michaels time here he is kept under supervision of the doctor, who is so interested in Michael that he starts taking notes on his observations of Michael. Later on Michael escapes from the camp and returns to the city that this journey started in, this is the third part of the novel. After reading this novel I felt really bad for Michael because he only did this for his mother and she died on him during this journey which is hard for a person to overcome, but he also had to deal with being held in a camp against his will at the time. J.M. Coetzee does a great job on Life & Times of Michael K it is very descriptive and just paints a picture in your head. There is a lot of disappointing and sad scenes in the book which the vivid picture in your head works against you! Overall Life & Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee is truly one of the best novels I read in a long time, even though there are some scenes where you just want to put the book down and stop but it always pulls you back in because you just want to know what is going to happen next. (less)

like · see review

Sep 07, 2011 Jillian rated it 2 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book was a tough one to get interested in. The theme seemed to be, in the beginning of the book, embarrassment/shame, but as i read on it became clear to me that the overall, reoccurring theme of the book was progress. It was progress in the sense of moving forward and making changes in life. Michael K was constantly moving on, doing a new thing to alter or improve his life in some way. He was born with a hare lip and this unfortunately did not please his mother. She did not, however, want...more This book was a tough one to get interested in. The theme seemed to be, in the beginning of the book, embarrassment/shame, but as i read on it became clear to me that the overall, reoccurring theme of the book was progress. It was progress in the sense of moving forward and making changes in life. Michael K was constantly moving on, doing a new thing to alter or improve his life in some way. He was born with a hare lip and this unfortunately did not please his mother. She did not, however, want to get it fixed. She let him go on living with this imperfection.
The book takes place during a civil war in South Africa. In the beginning of the book Michael is trying to help his sick mother get from Cape Town to Prince Albert so that she can die in peace. He applies for a permit to leave but it takes months to come so he puts together a make shift wheel barrow to put his mother in and goes on his way. Along the way to Prince Albert, Anna K, Michael’s mother, passes away in a hospital. She was cremated and Michael stayed put in the hospital for a few days, not knowing what to do with himself. He soon left with his mothers belongings. He continues on his journey and ends up in the hospital himself. When he has recovered the nurse gives him a clean change of clothes and sets him on his way. He finally reaches Prince Albert, finds the farm his mother grew up on and spreads her ashes across the field. He is captured by soldiers and taken to a labor camp where people without homes are taken so that they are not a nuisance on the streets. He spends his days there then when the police take it over from the soldiers he escapes over the fence. He goes back to the farm where his mother grew up. He hides there for a bit but then is captured by the police he escaped from. In part two of the book he is admitted into a hospital and they are trying to get him to confess to hiding runaways in the farm he was on and also they want him to tell them the names of these imaginary people. He tells them he is not part of the war but they refuse to believe so. In part three of the book, K is back in Cape Town. He meets these people who give him food and help him because he is drunk and hungry. He stays in Cape Town managing to live.
Though the progress in Michael K’s life was not all positive he did push forward and make it places he needed to go. He spread his mother on her old home like she had wished, and returned to her old room under the stairs in Cape Town where she used to work. He found people who live there and although they may not be the best company, hes got a better chance and progressing on in his life.
(less)

1 like · like · see review

Feb 01, 2011 Philippe rated it 4 of 5 stars

The elementary tension between the orders of the 'symbolic' and the 'real' is the foundation which supports Coetzee's narrative imagination. Simplified, the 'symbolic' is the realm of language, which at the same time grounds and destroys our lifeworld. Words are elementary particles that coalesce in ideologies. These ideologies lead to partisanship, conflict and ultimately war. The book's protagonist, Michael K., is someone who is committed to leave behind the realm of the symbolic. He drops out...more The elementary tension between the orders of the 'symbolic' and the 'real' is the foundation which supports Coetzee's narrative imagination. Simplified, the 'symbolic' is the realm of language, which at the same time grounds and destroys our lifeworld. Words are elementary particles that coalesce in ideologies. These ideologies lead to partisanship, conflict and ultimately war. The book's protagonist, Michael K., is someone who is committed to leave behind the realm of the symbolic. He drops out of the war, drops out of human society, out of the magic spell of language in a universe that is enveloped by silence, and supported by selflessness, a slow metabolism, a deep identification with animate and inanimate nature and by moral indifference.

K's dominion is the 'real', that which according to Lacan, 'resists symbolisation absolutely'. The real is that which paradoxically gives meaning to the symbolic order and, at the same time, fundamentally escapes symbolisation. Human beings cannot thrive in the order of the real. They simply suffocate by an absence of meaning. The Life and Times of Michael K. is a philosophical thought experiment: Coetzee has created an avatar which he sends out on the vast and dark ocean of the real to study how he survives in the face of this immensity. What we are reading then is a phenomenological study of a human being who tries to carve out a foothold of utmost symbolic precariousness ('mother', 'earth') at the treshhold of the great black hole of meaninglessness.

I am convinced that Coetzee's argument is basically metaphysical, not ethical. The South African context has led to a strong and unjustified moral and political bias in the reading of this author. J.M. Coetzee is not Nadine Gordimer. Nowhere in this book is there a condemnation of the ravages of war. The violence is simply there, as an inevitable part of the symbolic order. Michael K. is not a pacifist: for him the war simply does not exist.

It is difficult to evaluate this book. As a novel it has enormous merit but also a number of flaws. What troubles me most is the difference in mood and style between the brief second part (narrated by the rehabilitation camp doctor) and the two other sections (where the narrative is told from K's point of view). I believe that Coetzee added the final two parts to show how the human, symbolised world deals with the mystery of K's appearance. Clearly, neither force nor bribery allow to neutralise the disquieting impact of the 'real'. From a didactic point of view this narrative strategy may work, but I am less certain that it enhances the quality of the book as a novel.

The philosophical mind and the writerly imagination are subject to different laws and dynamics. It is very difficult to have them work in sync. Kafka and Nietzsche could do it. Coetzee is not (yet) in the same league. His scintillatingly clear prose and his philosophical acuity are still forming a somewhat uneasy marriage. But this only fuels our hope for a definitive, 21st century masterpiece by this very gifted artist. (less)

like · see review

topics	posts	views	last activity
Hội Thích Đọc Sách: Cuộc đời và thời đại của Michael K	16	52	May 17, 2013 08:59am
Great African Reads: "Life and Time of Michael K." by J.M Coetzee	11	34	Jan 26, 2010 05:46pm

title link	preview: Life and Times of Michael K
avg rating	preview: Life and Times of Michael K Goodreads rating: 3.81 (5866 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6193.Life_and_Times_of_Michael_K?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327203650l/6193.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6193.Life_and_Times_of_Michael_K?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Life and Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee[/url]

Life and Times of Michael K

Friend Reviews

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

combine
Other Editions (54)

Genres

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About J.M. Coetzee

Books by J.M. Coetzee

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website

Trivia About Cuộc đời và thời ...

Quotes from Life and Times of Mich...