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Life & Times of Michael K
by J.M. Coetzee
What's your story? What is your life? What's the story of your life? Would you call it "The Life and Times of...", or would you leave out the "The", as Coetzee does here? If your life were set in stone, if it were one specific thing, with a beginning and an end, you'd include the "The". But what if it wasn't? What if it was ever-changing, ever-growing, outside of time? What if there was "time enough for everything"?
This particular story is told in three parts. In the first, our "hero" Michael K -- in the middle of a vague war which seems to be simply an excuse for the State to make and enforce stupid rules -- sets off on a journey he didn't intend to set off on: taking his sick mother from the city (Cape Town) to the country farm where she grew up. On the way he encounters "careless violence" and bureaucratic stupidity (among other things), and then his mother dies before reaching their destination. He continues on to the farm without really knowing where it is, and when he thinks he's found it, he "plants" his mother's ashes, thus beginning his transformation into a "gardener".
In the second part, we switch to the perspective of a medical officer in a "rehabilitation" camp. The first part was in the third person, but from K's perspective. This section is in the first person and is diary-like. Here, our medical officer is trying to make sense of K (as perhaps we might be). In a way, it's Coetzee stepping back and offering his take on what we've just been through.
In the 3rd and final part, we return to K in the third person, his transformation nearly complete.
Transformation is a good word I think, because K is constantly compared to various animals: dogs, cats, ants, moles, monkeys, budgies, "like a beast", "like an animal", "timorous as a mouse", "cockroach pilgrimages", "like a worm", "like a snail", "like a parasite", "like a lizard", "a stick insect", etc etc. Animals are closer to Nature, closer to the ground, closer to the earth.
Is it a coincidence that I read this immediately after Pavese's La luna è i falò? (My choice was "random" anyway.) The styles are wildly different, but the earth, and our necessary connection to it, is everywhere in both. Not to mention a hunger to be free, which, put another way, is really the hunger for openness.
I could go on because, as always, Coetzee manages to pack a lot into a small package (I tried to sneak in some of the ideas into my review anyway). So I'll end with a cinematic reference [1]:
I was almost going to give this only 4 stars, but then I changed my mind because of the ending. As in the films of the Dardenne brothers, you're taken through a bleak landscape, you're subjected to hardship and violence, and then at the end -- prepared for the worst, expecting the worst -- you emerge into a new world. Not a better one, just one with hope.
[1] While I hate literature that pretends to be cinematic, I don't mind using the cinema in literature reviews. It can help with trying to describe a feeling. For example, one director that came to mind was Haneke. The "purity" in the style, the violence, the "I have no idea what's going to happen next" feeling because "anything could happen next".
This particular story is told in three parts. In the first, our "hero" Michael K -- in the middle of a vague war which seems to be simply an excuse for the State to make and enforce stupid rules -- sets off on a journey he didn't intend to set off on: taking his sick mother from the city (Cape Town) to the country farm where she grew up. On the way he encounters "careless violence" and bureaucratic stupidity (among other things), and then his mother dies before reaching their destination. He continues on to the farm without really knowing where it is, and when he thinks he's found it, he "plants" his mother's ashes, thus beginning his transformation into a "gardener".
In the second part, we switch to the perspective of a medical officer in a "rehabilitation" camp. The first part was in the third person, but from K's perspective. This section is in the first person and is diary-like. Here, our medical officer is trying to make sense of K (as perhaps we might be). In a way, it's Coetzee stepping back and offering his take on what we've just been through.
In the 3rd and final part, we return to K in the third person, his transformation nearly complete.
Transformation is a good word I think, because K is constantly compared to various animals: dogs, cats, ants, moles, monkeys, budgies, "like a beast", "like an animal", "timorous as a mouse", "cockroach pilgrimages", "like a worm", "like a snail", "like a parasite", "like a lizard", "a stick insect", etc etc. Animals are closer to Nature, closer to the ground, closer to the earth.
Is it a coincidence that I read this immediately after Pavese's La luna è i falò? (My choice was "random" anyway.) The styles are wildly different, but the earth, and our necessary connection to it, is everywhere in both. Not to mention a hunger to be free, which, put another way, is really the hunger for openness.
I could go on because, as always, Coetzee manages to pack a lot into a small package (I tried to sneak in some of the ideas into my review anyway). So I'll end with a cinematic reference [1]:
I was almost going to give this only 4 stars, but then I changed my mind because of the ending. As in the films of the Dardenne brothers, you're taken through a bleak landscape, you're subjected to hardship and violence, and then at the end -- prepared for the worst, expecting the worst -- you emerge into a new world. Not a better one, just one with hope.
[1] While I hate literature that pretends to be cinematic, I don't mind using the cinema in literature reviews. It can help with trying to describe a feeling. For example, one director that came to mind was Haneke. The "purity" in the style, the violence, the "I have no idea what's going to happen next" feeling because "anything could happen next".