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Life & Times of Michael K
In a South Africa torn by civil war, Michael K sets out to take his mother back to her rural home. On the way there she dies, leaving him alone in an anarchic world of brutal roving armies. Imprisoned, Michael is unable to bear confinement and escapes, determined to live with dignity. Life and Times of Michael K goes to the centre of human experience—the need for an interior, spiritual life, for some connections to the world in which we live, and for purity of vision.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
About the author
J.M. Coetzee
167 books4,906 followersJohn Maxwell Coetzee is an author and academic from South Africa. He became an Australian citizen in 2006 after relocating there in 2002. A novelist and literary critic as well as a translator, Coetzee has won the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature.
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August 31, 2022
Life & Times of Michael K is another wonderful novel by Coetzee. It is the 3rd that I’ve read and I am sure it is not going to be the last.
Michael K lives in a South Africa ravaged by civil war together with his servant mother. Born with a harelip and a simple mind, Michael has spent his childhood in a home for special kids. Following a dying wish, Michael tries to take his mother from Cape Town to her childhood village. There are many obstacles on the road and only one of them reach the destination alive. Michael is trained as a gardener so he is trying to live independently in the wild. However, the authorities have other plans and imprison him a couple of times, trying to “re-educate” him in the spirit of the war.
The novel is exceptionally written, it was a humbling and impactful experience to be inside such an odd and simple mind, which only wants to exist free and alone. Michael is a man of contrasts, on one hand he does not seem able to hold a conversation and on the other he is capable of creating a complex irrigation system and to grow successful crops. It was interesting but also bleak to follow his journey through the wilderness, detention, hunger but also self-reliance and freedom in its different forms.
Despite being an intriguing novel, I still prefer the other two that I’ve read. I did not consider Part II to be the best stylistic choice. The author chooses to leave Michael K and we read the thoughts of a nurse who treats the MC of starvation while in detention. There is a bit too much philosophy here, which is in too much contrast with the 1st and last part of the novel.
Michael K lives in a South Africa ravaged by civil war together with his servant mother. Born with a harelip and a simple mind, Michael has spent his childhood in a home for special kids. Following a dying wish, Michael tries to take his mother from Cape Town to her childhood village. There are many obstacles on the road and only one of them reach the destination alive. Michael is trained as a gardener so he is trying to live independently in the wild. However, the authorities have other plans and imprison him a couple of times, trying to “re-educate” him in the spirit of the war.
The novel is exceptionally written, it was a humbling and impactful experience to be inside such an odd and simple mind, which only wants to exist free and alone. Michael is a man of contrasts, on one hand he does not seem able to hold a conversation and on the other he is capable of creating a complex irrigation system and to grow successful crops. It was interesting but also bleak to follow his journey through the wilderness, detention, hunger but also self-reliance and freedom in its different forms.
Despite being an intriguing novel, I still prefer the other two that I’ve read. I did not consider Part II to be the best stylistic choice. The author chooses to leave Michael K and we read the thoughts of a nurse who treats the MC of starvation while in detention. There is a bit too much philosophy here, which is in too much contrast with the 1st and last part of the novel.
December 17, 2021
(Book 266 from 1001 books) - The Life And Times of Michael K, J.M. Coetzee
Life & Times of Michael K is a 1983 novel, by South African-born writer J. M. Coetzee. The novel won the Booker Prize for 1983.
The novel is a story of a man named Michael K, who makes an arduous journey from Cape Town to his mother's rural birthplace, amid a fictitious civil war during the apartheid era, in the 1970-80s.
عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «زندگی و زمانه مایکل ک»؛ «روزگار آقای مایکل ک»؛ نویسنده: جی.ام کوتسی (کوتزی)؛ (فرهنگ نشر نو) ادبیات؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز ششم ماه اکتبر سال2012میلادی
عنوان: زندگی و زمانه مایکل ک؛ نویسنده: جی.ام کوتسی؛ مترجم: مینو مشیری؛ ویراستار محمدرضا جعفری؛ تهران، فرهنگ نشر نو، آسیم، سال1383؛ در پانزده و221ص؛ شابک9647443242؛ چاپ دوم سال1385؛ چاپ چهارم سال1396؛ شابک9789647443241؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان افریقا - سده 20م
عنوان: زندگی و زمانه مایکل ک؛ نویسنده: جی.ام کوتسی؛ مترجم: آناهیتا تدین؛ تهران، روزگار، سال1384، در318ص؛ چاپ دوم سال1390؛ در262ص؛
عنوان: روزگار آقای مایکل ک؛ نویسنده: جی.ام. کوتزی؛ مترجم: ندا رهنوردحق؛ تهران، نگار و نیما (نگیما)، سال1384، در274ص؛ شابک9647905637؛ چاپ دوم سال1384، در299ص؛ شابک9647905521؛
زندگی و زمانه «مایکل ک»، شرح حال مردی منزوی، و به دور از تمدن است، که هماره کوشش دارد، بر ستم چیره شود، و سایه ی سلطه ی را از خود دور کند، و به میل خویش رفتار نماید؛ به این امید که در مزرعه ای زندگی آرامی داشته باشد، به شمال کشور میرود؛ و به رغم تمام اسارتها، تنگدستی و شقاوتها، تسلیم قوانین سخت و خشک بشر نمیشود و...؛ کتاب آسانی نیست، تا بتوانم آن را در یکی دو جمله، یا پاراگراف، تفسیر کنم؛ پس از رسیدن به جایی از کتاب، دیگر دلم آرامش نداشت و آرام نبود، همچو آنروزهای شیرین عسلی بود، که کتابهای «رولان»، و «جان شیفته»ی ایشان، روح و جانم را تسخیر کرده بودند، شاید هم برای همذات پنداری با «ک»، که آهسته میاندیشید، کتاب را آهسته خوانده باشم، گاه تنها یک پارگرافش را میخواندم؛ نویسنده انگار، کامپیوتر و زبان شناسی خوانده باشند؛ در جایی دیدم؛ کوتاه زمانی در «انگلستان» برنامه نویس شرکت آی.بی.ام هم بوده اند، پس از آن بود، که بیشتر به کتابهای ایشان دل بستم، کتاب هنوز کنار دستم است
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 25/09/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 25/09/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Life & Times of Michael K is a 1983 novel, by South African-born writer J. M. Coetzee. The novel won the Booker Prize for 1983.
The novel is a story of a man named Michael K, who makes an arduous journey from Cape Town to his mother's rural birthplace, amid a fictitious civil war during the apartheid era, in the 1970-80s.
عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «زندگی و زمانه مایکل ک»؛ «روزگار آقای مایکل ک»؛ نویسنده: جی.ام کوتسی (کوتزی)؛ (فرهنگ نشر نو) ادبیات؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز ششم ماه اکتبر سال2012میلادی
عنوان: زندگی و زمانه مایکل ک؛ نویسنده: جی.ام کوتسی؛ مترجم: مینو مشیری؛ ویراستار محمدرضا جعفری؛ تهران، فرهنگ نشر نو، آسیم، سال1383؛ در پانزده و221ص؛ شابک9647443242؛ چاپ دوم سال1385؛ چاپ چهارم سال1396؛ شابک9789647443241؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان افریقا - سده 20م
عنوان: زندگی و زمانه مایکل ک؛ نویسنده: جی.ام کوتسی؛ مترجم: آناهیتا تدین؛ تهران، روزگار، سال1384، در318ص؛ چاپ دوم سال1390؛ در262ص؛
عنوان: روزگار آقای مایکل ک؛ نویسنده: جی.ام. کوتزی؛ مترجم: ندا رهنوردحق؛ تهران، نگار و نیما (نگیما)، سال1384، در274ص؛ شابک9647905637؛ چاپ دوم سال1384، در299ص؛ شابک9647905521؛
زندگی و زمانه «مایکل ک»، شرح حال مردی منزوی، و به دور از تمدن است، که هماره کوشش دارد، بر ستم چیره شود، و سایه ی سلطه ی را از خود دور کند، و به میل خویش رفتار نماید؛ به این امید که در مزرعه ای زندگی آرامی داشته باشد، به شمال کشور میرود؛ و به رغم تمام اسارتها، تنگدستی و شقاوتها، تسلیم قوانین سخت و خشک بشر نمیشود و...؛ کتاب آسانی نیست، تا بتوانم آن را در یکی دو جمله، یا پاراگراف، تفسیر کنم؛ پس از رسیدن به جایی از کتاب، دیگر دلم آرامش نداشت و آرام نبود، همچو آنروزهای شیرین عسلی بود، که کتابهای «رولان»، و «جان شیفته»ی ایشان، روح و جانم را تسخیر کرده بودند، شاید هم برای همذات پنداری با «ک»، که آهسته میاندیشید، کتاب را آهسته خوانده باشم، گاه تنها یک پارگرافش را میخواندم؛ نویسنده انگار، کامپیوتر و زبان شناسی خوانده باشند؛ در جایی دیدم؛ کوتاه زمانی در «انگلستان» برنامه نویس شرکت آی.بی.ام هم بوده اند، پس از آن بود، که بیشتر به کتابهای ایشان دل بستم، کتاب هنوز کنار دستم است
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 25/09/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 25/09/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
July 9, 2024
Cît de greu e să fii liber...
Un bărbat de 31 de ani, grădinar în Cape Town, Michael K / Michaels, își duce mama bătrînă & bolnavă spre locul natal, Prince Albert, într-un soi de roabă / cotigă. A fost dorința ei, femeia vrea să moară acasă, la ferma unde s-a născut. Moare, din păcate, pe drum, într-un spital mizer, și Michael K primește a doua zi o cutie cu cenușa ei.
Nu-și schimbă planul și călătorește mai departe, cînd pe jos, cînd cu trenul, pînă ajunge la o fermă părăsită: acolo a copilărit mama lui, deși nu e sigur de asta și nici n-are cum să verifice. E grădinar (chiar grădinar de gradul 1), va cultiva fasole, porumb, dovleac. Va fi liber. Cînd la fermă sosește nepotul proprietarilor, un ins fugit din armată, K își dă seama că e tratat ca un servitor și pleacă în munți.
Știm de la bun început, prin glasul naratorului, că Michael K are două defecte din naștere: o buză de iepure și o minte greoaie. Dacă primul defect, cel fizic, e veritabil (deși femeile îl plac și așa), al doilea e numai aparent. K gîndește altfel decît ceilalți, are un mod particular de a înțelege viața: „cel mai bine e să trăiești în așa fel încît să nu lași nici o urmă a trecerii tale prin lume”. Ciudat, nu? Aș face adaos că povestea lui Michael K se petrece în timpul unui război civil. Luptele se duc în Nord. Nu aflăm cine luptă cu cine...
Unii au văzut o afinitate între personajul lui Coetzee și Josef K din Procesul lui Kafka, dar, la urma urmelor, pe cei doi nu-i unește decît inițiala numelui: e prea puțin pentru a urma această sugestie de lectură, nu duce nicăieri. Unul e taciturn (Michael), celălalt foarte guraliv. Unul preferă solitudinea, celălalt adunările. Doar indiferența medicală a naratorului, lipsa oricărei simpatii, tonul neutru în care consemnează pățaniile lui Michael K ar putea trimite la Kafka, nu mai mult.
Sigur, K nu este sărac cu duhul decît în sensul inocenței depline. Poate e naiv, dar naivitatea nu e o greșeală de raționare. În fond, discursul lui interior îl arată întreg la minte, capabil de gîndire abstractă și de comentarii originale. Spune: „Am decis de la început să tac și să fac pe nătîngul”. Singura lui dorință e să fie lăsat în pace. Ceea ce în vreme de război nu e cu putință. Dacă ar fi singur pe pămînt și nimeni nu ar mai trage de el, s-ar simți fericit. Tot Michael K oferă cea mai precisă imagine a existenței lui:
Receptarea acestui roman este cît se poate de interesantă. Dacă în 1983, J.M. Coetzee a primit Booker Prize, iar cartea a avut parte de recenzii entuziaste - „O capodoperă dură și limpede, asemenea unui diamant îndelung șlefuit” -, cronicarii de azi și-au coborît tonul și au reproșat cărții o mulțime de neajunsuri. Cînd voi avea timp, voi cita din recenziile mai noi...
Eu, unul, cred, totuși, că am citit un roman bun. Și-mi mențin părerea...
P. S. În treacăt fie spus, nu e prima dată cînd întîlnesc această imagine: în America lui Kafka, Brunelda, o artistă înfiorător de grasă, dar plină de talent, e purtată de admiratori într-o roabă. Iată ce înseamnă să fii vedetă!
Un bărbat de 31 de ani, grădinar în Cape Town, Michael K / Michaels, își duce mama bătrînă & bolnavă spre locul natal, Prince Albert, într-un soi de roabă / cotigă. A fost dorința ei, femeia vrea să moară acasă, la ferma unde s-a născut. Moare, din păcate, pe drum, într-un spital mizer, și Michael K primește a doua zi o cutie cu cenușa ei.
Nu-și schimbă planul și călătorește mai departe, cînd pe jos, cînd cu trenul, pînă ajunge la o fermă părăsită: acolo a copilărit mama lui, deși nu e sigur de asta și nici n-are cum să verifice. E grădinar (chiar grădinar de gradul 1), va cultiva fasole, porumb, dovleac. Va fi liber. Cînd la fermă sosește nepotul proprietarilor, un ins fugit din armată, K își dă seama că e tratat ca un servitor și pleacă în munți.
Știm de la bun început, prin glasul naratorului, că Michael K are două defecte din naștere: o buză de iepure și o minte greoaie. Dacă primul defect, cel fizic, e veritabil (deși femeile îl plac și așa), al doilea e numai aparent. K gîndește altfel decît ceilalți, are un mod particular de a înțelege viața: „cel mai bine e să trăiești în așa fel încît să nu lași nici o urmă a trecerii tale prin lume”. Ciudat, nu? Aș face adaos că povestea lui Michael K se petrece în timpul unui război civil. Luptele se duc în Nord. Nu aflăm cine luptă cu cine...
Unii au văzut o afinitate între personajul lui Coetzee și Josef K din Procesul lui Kafka, dar, la urma urmelor, pe cei doi nu-i unește decît inițiala numelui: e prea puțin pentru a urma această sugestie de lectură, nu duce nicăieri. Unul e taciturn (Michael), celălalt foarte guraliv. Unul preferă solitudinea, celălalt adunările. Doar indiferența medicală a naratorului, lipsa oricărei simpatii, tonul neutru în care consemnează pățaniile lui Michael K ar putea trimite la Kafka, nu mai mult.
Sigur, K nu este sărac cu duhul decît în sensul inocenței depline. Poate e naiv, dar naivitatea nu e o greșeală de raționare. În fond, discursul lui interior îl arată întreg la minte, capabil de gîndire abstractă și de comentarii originale. Spune: „Am decis de la început să tac și să fac pe nătîngul”. Singura lui dorință e să fie lăsat în pace. Ceea ce în vreme de război nu e cu putință. Dacă ar fi singur pe pămînt și nimeni nu ar mai trage de el, s-ar simți fericit. Tot Michael K oferă cea mai precisă imagine a existenței lui:
„Ceilalți oameni vor ca eu să îmi deschid inima și să le deapăn povestea unei vieți petrecute în cuști. Vor să audă despre toate cuștile prin care m-am perindat, de parcă aș fi un șoarece alb... Dacă la Huis Norenius aș fi învățat să spun povești..., aș fi zis povestea unei vieți petrecute în închisori, în care am stat zi de zi, an de an, cu fruntea lipită de sîrma de la gard, privind lung în depărtare”.
Receptarea acestui roman este cît se poate de interesantă. Dacă în 1983, J.M. Coetzee a primit Booker Prize, iar cartea a avut parte de recenzii entuziaste - „O capodoperă dură și limpede, asemenea unui diamant îndelung șlefuit” -, cronicarii de azi și-au coborît tonul și au reproșat cărții o mulțime de neajunsuri. Cînd voi avea timp, voi cita din recenziile mai noi...
Eu, unul, cred, totuși, că am citit un roman bun. Și-mi mențin părerea...
P. S. În treacăt fie spus, nu e prima dată cînd întîlnesc această imagine: în America lui Kafka, Brunelda, o artistă înfiorător de grasă, dar plină de talent, e purtată de admiratori într-o roabă. Iată ce înseamnă să fii vedetă!
August 7, 2024
UN GRANELLO DI SABBIA
Non ci sarà più un granello che porti il mio segno, proprio come mia madre che ora, passata la sua stagione sulla terra, è stata lavata via, dispersa dal vento e risucchiata dai fili d’erba.
Michael è nero nel Sudafrica ancora dominato dall’apartheid (il romanzo è uscito otto anni prima che fosse cancellato, e undici prima che Mandela fosse liberato e diventasse presidente). È un giardiniere pubblico e, quindi, lavora per i bianchi, visto che al governo ci sono i bianchi, il potere è nelle loro mani.
Anche sua madre, Anna K., lavora per i bianchi, in una casa di padroni bianchi.
Ma mamma e figlio vivono in case e zone diverse di Città del Capo. Probabilmente perché la donna s’è sempre vergognata di quel figlio nato col labbro leporino, con l’impossibilità di sigillare bene la bocca e dunque d’essere allattato.
Al colore della pelle Michael aggiunge questa menomazione fisica.
Ha trent’anni quando inizia il romanzo. Quanti ne abbia quando Coetzee interrompe la sua narrazione non lo so: ma so che dalla prima all’ultima pagina ha vissuto così tante esperienze da maturare ben più del tempo effettivamente trascorso.
Un po’ di Kafka c’è, checché neghi Coetzee stesso, o la Gordimer. Non è solo quella K solitaria che ricorda lo scrittore di Praga, ma anche quel senso di un rapporto tra stato e individuo nel quale il secondo è un insetto e il primo il corpo che attraverso le sue regole (leggi leggi) lo può calpestare e schiacciare.
O in quel sentore di burocrazia infinita fatta all’unico scopo di difendere il potere e annullare la libertà individuale nella ragnatela di regole: K chiede i permessi (lasciapassare) per poter uscire dalla citta e raggiungere la fattoria portandosi dietro la mamma ammalata. Quando decide che ha atteso abbastanza, quando capisce che l’autorizzazione s’è persa nella rete e non gli sarà mai consegnata, inizia il suo viaggio.
La madre non regge il viaggio, Michael deve portarla in ospedale dove la donna più che morire, crepa.
Con le ceneri della madre messe in un sacchetto, Michael prosegue il viaggio: vuole tornare nella fattoria della sua infanzia.
Coetzze trasporta il lettore in una delle sue tipiche situazioni e atmosfere: è in corso una guerra, come tutte le guerre schifosa e incomprensibile, ci sono campi di raccolta, di internamento, di lavoro, posti di blocco, convogli militari, coprifuoco, armi, violenza, una guerra civile in corso, chi ha la divisa comanda sempre. In che epoca siamo, chi governa, chi si ribella, che sta succedendo…?
Domande che rimangono senza precisa risposta. Per me, anche questo aumenta il fascino della lettura, l’essere lasciato libero di ipotizzare, di trovare le mie risposte.
Michael è un singolo individuo che vive nell’alienazione e nell’isolamento: per lottare contro l’Autorità, contro la violenza del Potere, può ricorrere solo alla resilienza. Virtù della quale sembra ben provvisto: se all’inizio sembra un po’ troppo ingenuo per la sua età, un “semplice di spirito” per usare un eufemismo, alla fine appare carico di saggezza e consapevolezza.
Il suo viaggio è segnato da deviazioni, intoppi, fughe, nascondigli, contrattempi, malattie, ricovero: così tanto frastagliato e faticoso da ricordare l’Ulisse omerico che vuole tornare alla sua casa in Itaca.
Michael non partecipa e non si oppone al male e alla violenza che lo circonda: alla guerra non partecipa, non aderisce neppure alla resistenza, resiste, e, per quanto stretta e costretta, imbocca una sua strada contromano. Resilienza.
Come sottolinea la chiusa del romanzo: se i soldati hanno fatto saltare il pozzo, lui tira fuori dalla tasca un cucchiaio e uno spago arrotolato: piega il cucchiaio e forma un anello a cui lego lo spago:
Poi l’avrebbe calato nella terra in profondità e, quando l’avesse tirato su, ci sarebbe stata acqua nel cavo del cucchiaio. E così, avrebbe detto, si può vivere.
Non ci sarà più un granello che porti il mio segno, proprio come mia madre che ora, passata la sua stagione sulla terra, è stata lavata via, dispersa dal vento e risucchiata dai fili d’erba.
Michael è nero nel Sudafrica ancora dominato dall’apartheid (il romanzo è uscito otto anni prima che fosse cancellato, e undici prima che Mandela fosse liberato e diventasse presidente). È un giardiniere pubblico e, quindi, lavora per i bianchi, visto che al governo ci sono i bianchi, il potere è nelle loro mani.
Anche sua madre, Anna K., lavora per i bianchi, in una casa di padroni bianchi.
Ma mamma e figlio vivono in case e zone diverse di Città del Capo. Probabilmente perché la donna s’è sempre vergognata di quel figlio nato col labbro leporino, con l’impossibilità di sigillare bene la bocca e dunque d’essere allattato.
Al colore della pelle Michael aggiunge questa menomazione fisica.
Ha trent’anni quando inizia il romanzo. Quanti ne abbia quando Coetzee interrompe la sua narrazione non lo so: ma so che dalla prima all’ultima pagina ha vissuto così tante esperienze da maturare ben più del tempo effettivamente trascorso.
Un po’ di Kafka c’è, checché neghi Coetzee stesso, o la Gordimer. Non è solo quella K solitaria che ricorda lo scrittore di Praga, ma anche quel senso di un rapporto tra stato e individuo nel quale il secondo è un insetto e il primo il corpo che attraverso le sue regole (leggi leggi) lo può calpestare e schiacciare.
O in quel sentore di burocrazia infinita fatta all’unico scopo di difendere il potere e annullare la libertà individuale nella ragnatela di regole: K chiede i permessi (lasciapassare) per poter uscire dalla citta e raggiungere la fattoria portandosi dietro la mamma ammalata. Quando decide che ha atteso abbastanza, quando capisce che l’autorizzazione s’è persa nella rete e non gli sarà mai consegnata, inizia il suo viaggio.
La madre non regge il viaggio, Michael deve portarla in ospedale dove la donna più che morire, crepa.
Con le ceneri della madre messe in un sacchetto, Michael prosegue il viaggio: vuole tornare nella fattoria della sua infanzia.
Coetzze trasporta il lettore in una delle sue tipiche situazioni e atmosfere: è in corso una guerra, come tutte le guerre schifosa e incomprensibile, ci sono campi di raccolta, di internamento, di lavoro, posti di blocco, convogli militari, coprifuoco, armi, violenza, una guerra civile in corso, chi ha la divisa comanda sempre. In che epoca siamo, chi governa, chi si ribella, che sta succedendo…?
Domande che rimangono senza precisa risposta. Per me, anche questo aumenta il fascino della lettura, l’essere lasciato libero di ipotizzare, di trovare le mie risposte.
Michael è un singolo individuo che vive nell’alienazione e nell’isolamento: per lottare contro l’Autorità, contro la violenza del Potere, può ricorrere solo alla resilienza. Virtù della quale sembra ben provvisto: se all’inizio sembra un po’ troppo ingenuo per la sua età, un “semplice di spirito” per usare un eufemismo, alla fine appare carico di saggezza e consapevolezza.
Il suo viaggio è segnato da deviazioni, intoppi, fughe, nascondigli, contrattempi, malattie, ricovero: così tanto frastagliato e faticoso da ricordare l’Ulisse omerico che vuole tornare alla sua casa in Itaca.
Michael non partecipa e non si oppone al male e alla violenza che lo circonda: alla guerra non partecipa, non aderisce neppure alla resistenza, resiste, e, per quanto stretta e costretta, imbocca una sua strada contromano. Resilienza.
Come sottolinea la chiusa del romanzo: se i soldati hanno fatto saltare il pozzo, lui tira fuori dalla tasca un cucchiaio e uno spago arrotolato: piega il cucchiaio e forma un anello a cui lego lo spago:
Poi l’avrebbe calato nella terra in profondità e, quando l’avesse tirato su, ci sarebbe stata acqua nel cavo del cucchiaio. E così, avrebbe detto, si può vivere.
April 4, 2022
No sería extraño que en algún momento de la lectura les venga a la mente pasajes de La carretera de McCarthy o de El extranjero de Camus o a Josef K. de Kafka, pero es el famoso Bartleby el que a partir de un punto de la narración más rondaba la mía. “Nada exaspera más a una persona seria que una resistencia pasiva”, se dice en el cuento en el que Melville recalca el desconcierto que nos provocan los comportamientos alejados de la normalidad, ese territorio que nadie es capaz de confinar entre fronteras precisas.
Michael K es aquí el Bartleby que desconcierta a todos con unos actos que escapan a cualquier conjetura, que impide cualquier acercamiento, cualquier acción sobre él, que les lleva a cuestionarse si, de hecho, deben hacer algo por él, aunque sepan que sin ayuda está abocado a una muerte segura.
“Michaels significa algo y su significado no es solo asunto mío.”Desde su nacimiento Michael K provocó extrañeza y rechazo debido a su labio leporino y a su limitada inteligencia. Ello, en un contexto de marginalidad, miseria e injusticia, y tras la muerte de su madre, intensificó su más que posible tendencia natural a la soledad, al silencio, a la rutina vacía de los días todos iguales, a no esperar ni necesitar nada.
“No se veía como un cuerpo pesado que va dejando un rastro, sino como algo parecido a una partícula liviana sobre la superficie de una tierra demasiado dormida como para notar el rasguño de las patas de las hormigas, el mordisqueo de las mariposas, el revoloteo del polvo.”Carecía de vocación y de ambición, teniendo como único propósito dejar pasar el tiempo. A eso se reduce su libertad, la cual valora por encima de cualquier otra cosa, incluido su salud o su bienestar. No quiere depender de nadie, pero tampoco quiere que nadie dependa de él (“No parecía tener creencias, o al menos no parecía tener una creencia en cuanto a ayudar al prójimo”), no quiere hijos, no necesita amigos ni compañera, no procura ayuda ni caridad, por muy bienintencionada que sea, y responde con el silencio a cualquier intento ajeno por comprender quién es Michael K.
“Cuando tenía trabajo, no se sentía contento ni descontento; daba lo mismo. Podía tumbarse toda la tarde con los ojos abiertos, mirando las ondas y las manchas de óxido de la plancha del tejado; su mente no se desviaba, no veía más que la plancha, las líneas no se transformaban en dibujos o fantasías; él era él mismo tumbado en su propia casa, el óxido no era más que óxido, todo lo que se movía era tiempo, y le llevaba a él en su curso”Este es el personaje descrito en el capítulo uno, dos tercios del libro, por parte de un narrador omnisciente, que también se encargará del capítulo tercero a modo de epílogo, caracterizado por un estilo sobrio con el que no cabe decir más que lo estrictamente necesario, de forma objetiva y distante que, sin embargo, no nos aleja ni un ápice ni de la historia ni del personaje sino que recalca lo inhóspito del paisaje y de aquellos que lo habitan, un mundo en guerra permanente.
“Se parece a una piedra, un guijarro que, tras haber estado tranquilamente en la tierra, ocupándose de sus cosas desde el origen de los tiempos, de repente ahora lo recogen y lo lanzan al azar, pasando de mano en mano. Una piedra pequeña y dura, apenas consciente de lo que la rodea, arropada en sí misma y en su vida interior... una criatura inconsciente, irresponsable.”En medio de estos dos capítulos, el autor inserta otro en el que se le da voz al doctor del sanatorio en el que es internado Michael y que será el encargado de enfrentarse a la anomalía que él representa, de plantearnos de una forma más visceral y emotiva las cuestiones centrales de la novela: ¿Se puede ser una isla autosuficiente separado de todo y de todos, indiferente a todo y a todos, se puede ser un animal, una piedra, una planta? ¿Este distanciamiento te protege o te hace más débil? ¿Es envidiable ese afán de libertad pese a todo? ¿Cómo encaja la vida que ha elegido Michael en la sociedad de nuestra época? ¿Se puede hacer algo por él… se debe hacer algo por él? ¿Qué responsabilidad tiene la sociedad en lo que es Michael y en su bienestar, se debe actuar incluso en contra de su deseo?
“Empezaron a encerrar a los simples antes que a los demás. Ahora tienen campamentos para los niños cuyos padres han huido, campamentos para los que patalean y echan espuma por la boca, campamentos para los de cabeza grande y para los de cabeza pequeña, campamentos para los que no tienen un medio de vida aparente, campamentos para los expulsados de la tierra, campamentos para los que descubren viviendo en cloacas, campamentos para las chicas de la calle, campamentos para los que no saben sumar dos y dos, campamentos para los que se olvidan los papeles de casa, campamentos para lo que viven en las montañas y dinamitan puentes por la noche. Quizás la verdad sea que ya es suficiente estar fuera de los campamentos, no estar en ninguno de ellos. Puede que por ahora ya sea un gran éxito. ¿Cuántos quedan que no estén ni encerrados ni de centinelas en la verja? Me he librado de los campamentos; puede que si procuro no llamar la atención, también me libere de la caridad.”
November 27, 2016
Just a few words, a first step...
Life and Times of Michael K completely lived up to what I expected from J.M. Coetzee, after having been overwhelmed by his Disgrace. It is much more than the slow thinking Michael K. It is about his inner strenght and his search for survival, in a world in which we are eminently alone. But it goes beyond even that, it is about the depths one can reach through the things we value, and their meanings when they are extensions of one’s true self.
If life is a journey, Life and Times of Michael K is a road-trip of survival in a world enterily set against him.
To escape the downpur the only choice it to vanish, get smaller and smaller…
What is there left, if he could just disappear would he become free of this terrible world?
----------
An update, or a few more steps...
So soon after revealing here my first impressions yesterday, after exchanging comments with my dear friends Seemita and Dolors, I feel compelled to add:
Yes, there's much more. How could I have covered it thoroughly with some rapid thoughts... Indeed, Michael K, alone in a brutal world of roving armies and unable to bear confinement, escapes in search of salvation. This is a life affirming road-trip that reaches what is most worthy: the need for an interior or spiritual life. What can he do within his own limitations or constraints? What can anyone reach for, when faced with a journey of suffering that will inevitably lead to an inconceivable nothingness? Thus, Michael K finds his saving grace in [T]he truth, the truth about me. 'I am gardener,' he said again aloud. Ah, such purity.
Life and Times of Michael K completely lived up to what I expected from J.M. Coetzee, after having been overwhelmed by his Disgrace. It is much more than the slow thinking Michael K. It is about his inner strenght and his search for survival, in a world in which we are eminently alone. But it goes beyond even that, it is about the depths one can reach through the things we value, and their meanings when they are extensions of one’s true self.
If life is a journey, Life and Times of Michael K is a road-trip of survival in a world enterily set against him.
“His first step was to hollow out the sides of the crevice till it was wider at the bottom than the top, and to flatten the gravel bed. The narrower end he blocked with a heap of stones. Then he laid the three fence posts across the crevice, and upon them the iron sheet, with slabs of stone to hold it down. He now had a cave or burrow five feet deep.”
To escape the downpur the only choice it to vanish, get smaller and smaller…
“He thought of himself not as something heavy that left tracks behind it, but if anything, as a speck upon the surface of an earth too deeply asleep to notice the scratch of ant feet, the rasp of butterfly teeth, the tumbling of dust.”And,
“No papers, no money; no family, no friends, no sense of who you are. The obscurest of the obscure, so obscure as to be a prodigy.”
What is there left, if he could just disappear would he become free of this terrible world?
----------
An update, or a few more steps...
So soon after revealing here my first impressions yesterday, after exchanging comments with my dear friends Seemita and Dolors, I feel compelled to add:
Yes, there's much more. How could I have covered it thoroughly with some rapid thoughts... Indeed, Michael K, alone in a brutal world of roving armies and unable to bear confinement, escapes in search of salvation. This is a life affirming road-trip that reaches what is most worthy: the need for an interior or spiritual life. What can he do within his own limitations or constraints? What can anyone reach for, when faced with a journey of suffering that will inevitably lead to an inconceivable nothingness? Thus, Michael K finds his saving grace in [T]he truth, the truth about me. 'I am gardener,' he said again aloud. Ah, such purity.
I am more than a earthworm, he thought. Which is a kind of gardener. Or a mole, also a gardener, that does not tell stories because it lives in silence.How could Michael K not remind me of Voltaire's satirical Candide (who after tragedy and violence, finally finds his just-retreat in [W]e must cultivate our garden!)? As to Michael K, simple but not less alive or aware of who he is. Who can be certain to have achieved so much, under such harsh circumstances or so alone? I don't know if I would have, at least without a paralyzing despair.
I was mute and stupid in the beginning, I will be mute and stupid at the end. There is nothing to be ashamed of in being in being simple.He does not seem stupid, after all.
October 22, 2017
Three allegoric movements compose this symphonic tale, whose inert melody is inwardly repeated in a concentric canon of voices where character, writer and reader create a fused metanarration alternating rhythms of disquiet, frigidity and discomfort.
It all starts with bafflement.
Michael K is an outsider with a harelip, a defective soul whom people take for an indolent moron, a wooden man thrown into the battlefield of life with a past as opaque as his present and as elusive as his future.
I read subjugated, tempted to dissect such specimen to find a logical explanation but the text acts as a mirror showing a reflection of myself that is everything but gratifying.
Michael K pushes a wheelbarrow that carries his sick mother to her native town in the countryside with little awareness of the phantasmagorical atmosphere that rings in the reader’s ears with its muted bombs, disguised mine shafts and nightmarish ambushes. Does it really matter whether the civil war occurs in South Africa during Apartheid time? Dehumanization knows of no races, no nationalities, no dogmas, and Michael’s insignificant life is diluted in the ocean of human misery.
Michael K abandons himself to starvation surrounded by sterile nature in a desperate attempt to step out of the Kafkaesque labyrinth of mankind and to return to origins, to reconnect with the earth that nurtures his pumpkin seeds and his gardener soul. The silver moonbeams, the sight of every morning and the shadow of the mountain shape his atemporal existence in an alien world where man and land become one.
Michael K knows he is nothing. He doesn’t want to die because his life is not even worth telling but ironically he lives in dying more intensely than he does in living. He refutes the absurdity of an imposed system based on bigoted domination and ruthless abuse and sets for the path of self-determination through passive resistance. With isolation comes spiritual transformation and echoing one of the most famous bugs in the history of literature, Michael K metamorphoses into a “smaller, harder and drier” lethargic creature whose consciousness appears more and more fragmented each passing day.
Michael K is captured and sent to a “rehabilitation” camp. His mind obeys because his rebellion wouldn’t make a difference but his body acts of his own accord, refusing to be poisoned by food that will revive his emaciated frame into a sellable piece of meat ready to be exploited, mistreated and deprived of identity.
The initial bafflement gives way to an escalating distress that reaches its pinnacle coinciding with a narrative shift in the second movement of the novella. The omniscient Michael K disappears and a first person narrator embodied in one of the doctors of the labour camp takes his place and starts contemplating Michael’s motives for his stubborn refusal to eat, making the new narrator reflect on his inculcated beliefs and his reasons to endorse war. Why does he feel an irrepressible urge to save this weird man? What is the story hidden behind his patient’s silence? What is he fighting for? The doctor’s persistent pondering seeps over and into the reader’s thirst for answers and his voice takes a universal quality transcending fiction, character and plotline.
Doctor, reader, the same Coetzee or even the whole humanity incarnate the metaphorical voice-over dwelling on the story of a man without history who understands nothing about wars, political ideologies, dogmatic belief, races, life, death, love or even pain but whose apparent indifference bears a terrifying consistency and a mystical aura reminiscent of Melville’s scrivener Bartleby and his motto “I would prefer not to”. Pacifist revolutionary? Dauntless freethinker?
Coetzee doesn’t supply answers and his slippery hero dissolves into the reeking darkness of a recondite barrow in the uterus of a depraved civilization where he waits in eternal stand-by, oblivious to past or future, to be reborn in a shocking and final third movement where “the obscurest of the obscure becomes a prodigy”. And I, stupefied reader whose life and times are inconsequential, look at the world with closed eyes and see deserts blooming with pumpkin flowers that smell like groundless hope.
It all starts with bafflement.
Michael K is an outsider with a harelip, a defective soul whom people take for an indolent moron, a wooden man thrown into the battlefield of life with a past as opaque as his present and as elusive as his future.
I read subjugated, tempted to dissect such specimen to find a logical explanation but the text acts as a mirror showing a reflection of myself that is everything but gratifying.
Michael K pushes a wheelbarrow that carries his sick mother to her native town in the countryside with little awareness of the phantasmagorical atmosphere that rings in the reader’s ears with its muted bombs, disguised mine shafts and nightmarish ambushes. Does it really matter whether the civil war occurs in South Africa during Apartheid time? Dehumanization knows of no races, no nationalities, no dogmas, and Michael’s insignificant life is diluted in the ocean of human misery.
Michael K abandons himself to starvation surrounded by sterile nature in a desperate attempt to step out of the Kafkaesque labyrinth of mankind and to return to origins, to reconnect with the earth that nurtures his pumpkin seeds and his gardener soul. The silver moonbeams, the sight of every morning and the shadow of the mountain shape his atemporal existence in an alien world where man and land become one.
Michael K knows he is nothing. He doesn’t want to die because his life is not even worth telling but ironically he lives in dying more intensely than he does in living. He refutes the absurdity of an imposed system based on bigoted domination and ruthless abuse and sets for the path of self-determination through passive resistance. With isolation comes spiritual transformation and echoing one of the most famous bugs in the history of literature, Michael K metamorphoses into a “smaller, harder and drier” lethargic creature whose consciousness appears more and more fragmented each passing day.
Michael K is captured and sent to a “rehabilitation” camp. His mind obeys because his rebellion wouldn’t make a difference but his body acts of his own accord, refusing to be poisoned by food that will revive his emaciated frame into a sellable piece of meat ready to be exploited, mistreated and deprived of identity.
The initial bafflement gives way to an escalating distress that reaches its pinnacle coinciding with a narrative shift in the second movement of the novella. The omniscient Michael K disappears and a first person narrator embodied in one of the doctors of the labour camp takes his place and starts contemplating Michael’s motives for his stubborn refusal to eat, making the new narrator reflect on his inculcated beliefs and his reasons to endorse war. Why does he feel an irrepressible urge to save this weird man? What is the story hidden behind his patient’s silence? What is he fighting for? The doctor’s persistent pondering seeps over and into the reader’s thirst for answers and his voice takes a universal quality transcending fiction, character and plotline.
Doctor, reader, the same Coetzee or even the whole humanity incarnate the metaphorical voice-over dwelling on the story of a man without history who understands nothing about wars, political ideologies, dogmatic belief, races, life, death, love or even pain but whose apparent indifference bears a terrifying consistency and a mystical aura reminiscent of Melville’s scrivener Bartleby and his motto “I would prefer not to”. Pacifist revolutionary? Dauntless freethinker?
Coetzee doesn’t supply answers and his slippery hero dissolves into the reeking darkness of a recondite barrow in the uterus of a depraved civilization where he waits in eternal stand-by, oblivious to past or future, to be reborn in a shocking and final third movement where “the obscurest of the obscure becomes a prodigy”. And I, stupefied reader whose life and times are inconsequential, look at the world with closed eyes and see deserts blooming with pumpkin flowers that smell like groundless hope.
November 15, 2019
Is life a journey? And how to survive when the entire world seems to turn against you?
Even a tiny miserable ant needs home… To escape the storm one must get smaller and smaller…
To become free of the world one must be ready to diminish one's consciousness until it turns into an infinitesimal dot.
His first step was to hollow out the sides of the crevice till it was wider at the bottom than the top, and to flatten the gravel bed. The narrower end he blocked with a heap of stones. Then he laid the three fence posts across the crevice, and upon them the iron sheet, with slabs of stone to hold it down. He now had a cave or burrow five feet deep.
Even a tiny miserable ant needs home… To escape the storm one must get smaller and smaller…
He thought of himself not as something heavy that left tracks behind it, but if anything, as a speck upon the surface of an earth too deeply asleep to notice the scratch of ant feet, the rasp of butterfly teeth, the tumbling of dust.
To become free of the world one must be ready to diminish one's consciousness until it turns into an infinitesimal dot.
July 28, 2015
Ask me to pronounce verdict on a work of literature flaunting mere self-indulgent wordplay, revelling in its own brand of avant-gardism, which stops short of making a powerful statement on our troubled times, and my response to it is likely to be lukewarm.
Ask me to judge a book dissecting the greater human quandary with keen insight but in stilted prose, and my reaction will possibly be more or less the same.
But give me a story capable of dismantling all the divides of race, culture, political/religious indoctrination, time and space, encompassing all the inner contradictions of our existence into a compelling commentary on human follies that elicits a very visceral, emotional response, and my being won over is practically guaranteed.
Reading Michael K's tale took me on one such heart-breaking, metaphorical journey, at the culmination of which I realized that pitying the innocence of Michael Ks of the world who are repeatedly squashed like bugs under the bootsoles of the 'system' is but a foolish thing to do. Instead, I felt pity for the ones who are incapable of recognizing true misery when they see it, the ones who fail to identify the root cause of all human conflict and its futility, who pride themselves on their achievements which are, sometimes, nothing but grave mistakes in the greater scheme of things.
In spite of being born with genetic deformities and other crucial handicaps like the absence of a privileged background, Michael K is a fortunate being in my eyes. Someone who doesn't baulk at staring truth right in the eye, a venerable hero stranded in the midst of cowards. He can summon the moral strength to shun the comforts of life, deprived of which each one of us are bound to wither away and die the pathetic death of an unwatered plant. He can seek refuge in the heart of the inhabitable mountains, combat starvation by feasting on insects and the cherished pumpkins he cultivates with the tender care of a mother. He is brave enough to eschew the path prescribed by the ones positioned on the top most echelons of the social hierarchy. He doesn't know which side to choose during a war. So he chooses life over death, physical suffering over psychological enslavement, creation over destruction. Simply put, he deserts the company of men to embrace humanity.
Despite being considered 'messed up in the head', he understands the one thing that others are too afraid or too ignorant to acknowledge. That laying the groundwork for a future way of life through ruthless violence blunts the human intellect to the point where one is only aroused by the urge to draw blood, inflict fatal injury and the application of reason loses its appeal.
Michael doesn't understand what a war is, so he struggles to flee the myriad horrors of it, clinging to the last shred of his dignity and his self-made definitions of right and wrong. As everything falls apart in the cities, in the labour camps, swallowed up by the chaos brought forth during war, Michael busies himself with creating and rebuilding life in the countryside.
Thus, Michael is nothing but a representation of that slumbering voice of reason within each one of us, the voice of the dissenter, the voice of the one putting up a passive but stubborn resistance against the absurd, inhumane demands of society at large. And that is precisely the reason why this world needs more silent revolutionaries like him.
P.S.:- My only grouse with Coetzee is his pedagogical compulsion to launch into a lengthy discourse, expounding on hidden meanings, instead of having faith in the perceptive reader to grasp underlying implications. That caused me to take away that 1 star which I had no intention of taking away otherwise.
Ask me to judge a book dissecting the greater human quandary with keen insight but in stilted prose, and my reaction will possibly be more or less the same.
But give me a story capable of dismantling all the divides of race, culture, political/religious indoctrination, time and space, encompassing all the inner contradictions of our existence into a compelling commentary on human follies that elicits a very visceral, emotional response, and my being won over is practically guaranteed.
Reading Michael K's tale took me on one such heart-breaking, metaphorical journey, at the culmination of which I realized that pitying the innocence of Michael Ks of the world who are repeatedly squashed like bugs under the bootsoles of the 'system' is but a foolish thing to do. Instead, I felt pity for the ones who are incapable of recognizing true misery when they see it, the ones who fail to identify the root cause of all human conflict and its futility, who pride themselves on their achievements which are, sometimes, nothing but grave mistakes in the greater scheme of things.
In spite of being born with genetic deformities and other crucial handicaps like the absence of a privileged background, Michael K is a fortunate being in my eyes. Someone who doesn't baulk at staring truth right in the eye, a venerable hero stranded in the midst of cowards. He can summon the moral strength to shun the comforts of life, deprived of which each one of us are bound to wither away and die the pathetic death of an unwatered plant. He can seek refuge in the heart of the inhabitable mountains, combat starvation by feasting on insects and the cherished pumpkins he cultivates with the tender care of a mother. He is brave enough to eschew the path prescribed by the ones positioned on the top most echelons of the social hierarchy. He doesn't know which side to choose during a war. So he chooses life over death, physical suffering over psychological enslavement, creation over destruction. Simply put, he deserts the company of men to embrace humanity.
"You are precious, Michaels in your way; you are the last of your kind, a creature left over from an earlier age, like the coelacanth or the last man to speak Yaqui. We have all tumbled over the lip into the cauldron of history: only you, following your idiot light, biding your time in an orphanage, evading the peace and the war, skulking in the open where no one dreamed of looking, have managed to live in the old way, drifting through time, observing the seasons no more trying to change the course of history than a grain of sand does. We ought to value you and celebrate you, we ought to put your clothes and your packet of pumpkin seeds too, with a label; there ought to be a plague nailed to the racetrack wall commemorating your stay here."
Despite being considered 'messed up in the head', he understands the one thing that others are too afraid or too ignorant to acknowledge. That laying the groundwork for a future way of life through ruthless violence blunts the human intellect to the point where one is only aroused by the urge to draw blood, inflict fatal injury and the application of reason loses its appeal.
Michael doesn't understand what a war is, so he struggles to flee the myriad horrors of it, clinging to the last shred of his dignity and his self-made definitions of right and wrong. As everything falls apart in the cities, in the labour camps, swallowed up by the chaos brought forth during war, Michael busies himself with creating and rebuilding life in the countryside.
Thus, Michael is nothing but a representation of that slumbering voice of reason within each one of us, the voice of the dissenter, the voice of the one putting up a passive but stubborn resistance against the absurd, inhumane demands of society at large. And that is precisely the reason why this world needs more silent revolutionaries like him.
P.S.:- My only grouse with Coetzee is his pedagogical compulsion to launch into a lengthy discourse, expounding on hidden meanings, instead of having faith in the perceptive reader to grasp underlying implications. That caused me to take away that 1 star which I had no intention of taking away otherwise.
June 29, 2023
Like Disgrace and Waiting for the Barbarians, Life and Times of Michael K certainly left it's mark on me, and of the three, I'd say it was the most intriguing. However, overall, I still think the other two were the better novels, as its simple minded protagonist here felt more like a cloddish plot device than a real man. I really couldn't work him out. Just how much of a dullard was he?
Coetzee is persistently reminding the reader just how much of a borderline simpleton Michael K actually is, and how little he can make sense of the world, and yet, he seems able to easily outwit those who want to capture him, knows irrigation systems, growing crops and building shelters like the back of his hand, talks forcefully, and asks many searching questions.
We first meet him when things appear relatively normal, until in a discomfiting way, Coetzee describes a jeep knocking a youth off a road, a crowd gathering, curfew sirens ignored, a man firing a revolver from a nearby building and the arrival of the military. Things are getting very dangerous in this alternate South Africa. Michael K decides he and his mother simply cannot stay where they are, especially as she is sick and pining for her rural birthplace, so using a trolley he wheels her away and they heads for the hills. But out on the road things aren't any better, to Michael K at the start of this journey, brutality and danger and stiffness of limb and rain seem all the same; tyranny feels as natural an ordeal as the bleak harshness of the road. His mother deteriorates so piteously that Michael must surrender her to a hospital, were he is shunted aside, until he receives the worst possible news. And here begins the parable of Michael K's freedom and resourcefulness; here begins Michael K's brief life of bliss. He is a sort of Robinson Crusoe meets Huckleberry Finn - he is the lord of his own life.
Continuing to an abandoned farm where he begins to cut his remaining ties with the world, he hides away in a self-made dugout, living off little more than water, warm daylight, a few gathered bugs, and some crops. Every so often Michael's quiet existence is disrupted by the war he feels he has no part in, but is constantly told he is part of it whether he likes it or not. He finds himself in and out of prison camps, forced to work, and to answer questions he fails to understand, or simply chooses not to. He defies his captors by rejecting the food they give him, he starts to waste away.
By switching voice later on, the text cleverly evades authority, as we get the first-person notes of the prison-camp doctor who ministers to the starving prisoner. This I thought was a smart move, seeing through the eyes of someone else, and what they make of this oddity of man.
I found some of the scenes throughout deeply moving, and also the ending to be one of those that lingers around in your head for a good while, and despite the book being under 200 pages it felt longer to me. Coetzee is a writer of clarifying inventiveness and translucent conviction, and here get we get a vivid and eloquent tale. His subdued yet urgent lament is for the sadness of a South Africa that has made dependents, parasites, and prisoners of its own children, black or white. Having read three of his novels now, it becomes more clear to me why he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
June 16, 2018
During a civil war in South Africa, Michael K., a simple man born with a harelip, tries to get help for his sick mother; then, after she dies, he attempts to take her ashes to the farm where she grew up.
There’s something powerful yet elusive about this short novel by Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee. As in his other Booker Prize-winning novel, Disgrace , this fictional world is simultaneously familiar and nightmarish.
The spirit of Franz Kafka hovers over the book: in the protagonist’s name (think of Josef K. from The Trial); in the way Michael is brutally and inhumanely treated by various people he meets; and in his self-imposed starvation, which suggests Kafka’s famous story “A Hunger Artist.”
Coetzee refrains from providing many specific details about warring factions. Race, interestingly enough, is barely mentioned; soldiers prowl the land, asking for identification papers; at one point Michael finds himself working in a labour camp.
But by keeping the details about the political situation vague, Coetzee creates a timeless allegory about suffering and endurance. Michael just wants to live, grow his own food (he’s got some gardening skills) and get by. Can he do that in this world?
The prose is at times hypnotic in its understated simplicity: uncluttered and clear, devoid of sentimentality.
Some readers have found the introduction and perspective of another character late in the book to be jarring, but I felt it added an additional layer of complexity to this enigmatic and haunting novel about living with dignity, freedom and a sense of purpose.
There’s something powerful yet elusive about this short novel by Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee. As in his other Booker Prize-winning novel, Disgrace , this fictional world is simultaneously familiar and nightmarish.
The spirit of Franz Kafka hovers over the book: in the protagonist’s name (think of Josef K. from The Trial); in the way Michael is brutally and inhumanely treated by various people he meets; and in his self-imposed starvation, which suggests Kafka’s famous story “A Hunger Artist.”
Coetzee refrains from providing many specific details about warring factions. Race, interestingly enough, is barely mentioned; soldiers prowl the land, asking for identification papers; at one point Michael finds himself working in a labour camp.
But by keeping the details about the political situation vague, Coetzee creates a timeless allegory about suffering and endurance. Michael just wants to live, grow his own food (he’s got some gardening skills) and get by. Can he do that in this world?
The prose is at times hypnotic in its understated simplicity: uncluttered and clear, devoid of sentimentality.
Some readers have found the introduction and perspective of another character late in the book to be jarring, but I felt it added an additional layer of complexity to this enigmatic and haunting novel about living with dignity, freedom and a sense of purpose.
November 25, 2023
War is the father of all and king of all.
Some he shows as gods, others as men.
Some he makes slaves, and others free.
-Heraclitus
A South Africa ravaged by civil war, a son who believes he has been brought into the world to look after his mother, a mother bent on returning to the countryside of her girlhood, to die there under blue skies.
Let me not lose my way.
They embark on their laborious journey, fleeing the burning Cape Town without a permit, Michael pushing the heavy makeshift cart carrying his ailing mother, panting under her weight and dodging armed authorities, only for her to die on the way in a hospital.
He did not know what was going to happen. The story of his life had never been an interesting one; there had usually been someone to tell him what to do next; now there was no one, and the best thing seemed to be to wait.
It is a nightmare; to be homeless, to be alone. To be like an ant that does not know where its hole is.
What is left for Michael is a fistful of his mother’s ashes and a determination to continue his journey; to reach the farm and scatter her remains where they belong.
There seemed nothing to do but live…. wanting nothing, looking forward to nothing.
Finally, he arrives at the farm finding it abandoned and dilapidated but also regarding it as a possible shelter; where he won’t feel homeless; where he would belong; where only he knows the way to.
Or so he thinks…
He lived by the rising and setting of the sun, in a pocket outside time. Cape Town and the war and his passage to the farm slipped further and further into forgetfulness.
But for how long this newfound bliss, this oneness with nature will last?
He thought of himself not as something heavy that left tracks behind it, but if anything as a speck upon the surface of an earth too deeply asleep to notice the scratch of ant-feet, the rasp of butterfly teeth, the tumbling of dust.
Some he shows as gods, others as men.
Some he makes slaves, and others free.
-Heraclitus
A South Africa ravaged by civil war, a son who believes he has been brought into the world to look after his mother, a mother bent on returning to the countryside of her girlhood, to die there under blue skies.
Let me not lose my way.
They embark on their laborious journey, fleeing the burning Cape Town without a permit, Michael pushing the heavy makeshift cart carrying his ailing mother, panting under her weight and dodging armed authorities, only for her to die on the way in a hospital.
He did not know what was going to happen. The story of his life had never been an interesting one; there had usually been someone to tell him what to do next; now there was no one, and the best thing seemed to be to wait.
It is a nightmare; to be homeless, to be alone. To be like an ant that does not know where its hole is.
What is left for Michael is a fistful of his mother’s ashes and a determination to continue his journey; to reach the farm and scatter her remains where they belong.
There seemed nothing to do but live…. wanting nothing, looking forward to nothing.
Finally, he arrives at the farm finding it abandoned and dilapidated but also regarding it as a possible shelter; where he won’t feel homeless; where he would belong; where only he knows the way to.
Or so he thinks…
He lived by the rising and setting of the sun, in a pocket outside time. Cape Town and the war and his passage to the farm slipped further and further into forgetfulness.
But for how long this newfound bliss, this oneness with nature will last?
He thought of himself not as something heavy that left tracks behind it, but if anything as a speck upon the surface of an earth too deeply asleep to notice the scratch of ant-feet, the rasp of butterfly teeth, the tumbling of dust.
September 3, 2022
My all-time favorite Coetzee
There are protest novels that protrude a very clear message: an openly rejection of certain political systems, of injustice, discrimination or sheer terror. And then you have a book like this one: very clearly rooted in a moralising story (against apartheid), but at the same time having a much more subtle and much broader message, exhibiting nothing less than a reflection on human condition.
Coetzee does this through the main character, Michaël K, a "simple" coloured man living in a town near the sea, a gardener working for the city council. In the background there is a civil war going on, regularly disrupting ordinary life. Michael is seen by others as a simpleton: he has been born with a hare lip, grew up in a youth institution, but is living now with his mother; this mother is getting sick, feels her end approaching and wants to return to her native ground.
At the outset, you can recognize 4 literary references: the K. in the name of the main character is a clear reference to Kafka (the whole novel is drenched in the atmosphere of The Castle, the journey Michael makes, first with his mother and than on his own, is like an odyssey, in which Michael develops into an Everyman (like Peer Gynt or other variations), and the gardening motive clearly refers to Candide by Voltaire.
But Coetzee has molded this rich material into a very original story. In the eyes of most of the other men Michael just is an idiot, he struggles with structures, regulations and human relations he does not understand, but he keeps on searching for a way to remain upright in life and in time (the experience of time also is a very important theme in this book). And without noticing it, this walking skeleton (as Michael has become in the end), develops into an icon of humanity! I can't say anything more about it without spoiling the story, but this novel really did captivate me. Coetzee certainly keeps on amazing me.
There are protest novels that protrude a very clear message: an openly rejection of certain political systems, of injustice, discrimination or sheer terror. And then you have a book like this one: very clearly rooted in a moralising story (against apartheid), but at the same time having a much more subtle and much broader message, exhibiting nothing less than a reflection on human condition.
Coetzee does this through the main character, Michaël K, a "simple" coloured man living in a town near the sea, a gardener working for the city council. In the background there is a civil war going on, regularly disrupting ordinary life. Michael is seen by others as a simpleton: he has been born with a hare lip, grew up in a youth institution, but is living now with his mother; this mother is getting sick, feels her end approaching and wants to return to her native ground.
At the outset, you can recognize 4 literary references: the K. in the name of the main character is a clear reference to Kafka (the whole novel is drenched in the atmosphere of The Castle, the journey Michael makes, first with his mother and than on his own, is like an odyssey, in which Michael develops into an Everyman (like Peer Gynt or other variations), and the gardening motive clearly refers to Candide by Voltaire.
But Coetzee has molded this rich material into a very original story. In the eyes of most of the other men Michael just is an idiot, he struggles with structures, regulations and human relations he does not understand, but he keeps on searching for a way to remain upright in life and in time (the experience of time also is a very important theme in this book). And without noticing it, this walking skeleton (as Michael has become in the end), develops into an icon of humanity! I can't say anything more about it without spoiling the story, but this novel really did captivate me. Coetzee certainly keeps on amazing me.
September 1, 2016
~ 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 'poverty' of his youth, was fond of the saying, 'I used to be sad because I had no shoes, but then I met a man who had no feet.' As a grossly insensitive (that is to say, normal) child, the idea of a footless man was greatly humorous to me, so the moral was lost. I was too busy imagining a sort of idiot-manchild waddling around as if on rounded-off stilts to bother thinking about the relativism of misery. But now, as a highly actualized, compassionate man (quit laughing, you fucker), when I think of these sayings, which seem to pit our own misery in a competition with those of others, I find them disturbingly utilitarian or, worse, sadistic.
In considering Coetzee's exceptionally grim novel Life and Times of Michael K, I am leery of invoking anything that even vaguely stinks of the M.L.C. (Misery loves company) ethos, but at the risk of still calling to mind these allusions, I'd prefer to speak of a community of misery.
Now you Mary Poppins types (yeah, the ones who live in a debilitating state of denial regarding their material and existential plight) will heckle, jump up on tables, maybe burst into song. Who knows? But it is fundamentally wrong and, ergo, stupid to deny that misery is a fundamental part of life. It is. You may call 'misery' by another name, a kinder, gentler, more palatable name; instead of misery, for instance, perhaps you 'encounter challenges' or 'suffer setbacks.' At any rate, let's not fret over semantics, and let's concede that shit happens. Holy shit, does shit ever happen. And it happens more to some people than to other people. And -- perhaps even more interestingly -- some people are better equipped (psychologically, biologically?) to cope with shit than other people are. The latter category of people may, pejoratively, be referred to as 'weak,' but in many cases, where unhappiness appears organic, this is akin to saying that the lazy bastard with the leukemia who lies around all the time is merely shiftless. But that's another discussion altogether.
The community of misery I'm speaking of is the shared experience wherein we realize that our suffering is unexceptional. We discover this, for example, in our day-to-day interactions with So-and-So when he happens to say that he wakes up in the middle of the night sweating and shrieking with terror at the realization that his body is a mechanism, a 'factory' of life, if you will, and it operates precariously, without his supervision or awareness and is subject to unforeseeable defects and irregularities. That it, like a car or a toaster or a fax machine, may suddenly cease to operate correctly -- or to operate at all. And then you say, 'Omigod, I do the same thing! I wake up in the night shrieking about my strangely mechanistic biology!'
The example is exaggerated, of course, but in the prior instance the Hypothetical You have entered a community of misery. You have discovered that you are unexceptional.
Now usually, you understand, when we speak of something being 'unexceptional' it's generally considered either insulting or dismissive. But not so, misery! It's a horrible, horrible, horrible thing to be miserable, but it's exponentially worse to imagine that no one has any insight or empathetic entryway to our pain. We don't necessarily want to bring people down to our level, but we want to be understood and to not be alone. Occasionally, I want to be alone (to read, to masturbate, to scribble down my thoughts about this or that), but I don't believe -- and this is arrogant extrapolation -- that it is in the nature of the human condition to want to be alone in a greater existential sense. We desire community. Maybe not even a literal community, but a community of empathy and understanding.
Michael K: Whipping Boy
This book is about many things (some of them allegorical), but it is also about misery (or whatever we choose to call it in our own vocabularies). Michael K, the protagonist, suffers what most of us would call, in the vernacular, a pretty fucked-up life. He's impoverished. He's harelipped. He's a 'simpleton.' His mother is dying and must be cared for. He is mostly alone (in every sense of the term). He is abused seemingly by everyone around him. He is subject to misunderstanding and misinterpretation by those he meets. He is placed in a work camp. He hides in an underground burrow. His life is undirected; it's just bland endurance -- working toward nothing.
When I read this book, I was reminded of some of the films of Lars Von Trier, such as Dogville and Dancer in the Dark, in which he introduces a noble and innocent but somewhat naive protagonist (Nicole Kidman and Björk's characters, respectively) into a relentlessly cruel environment and lets the environment fuck her over in the worst way: either corrupting or destroying her.
This is where the comparison ends, however, because while Von Trier is aggressive and manipulative, Coetzee's writing is humane and compassionate. Von Trier always seemed to me interested in the environment, in which the naif character is just a cipher, whereas Coetzee here also appears concerned with the 'victim' (a term I use with great reluctance because of how it is heavily weighted in society today).
Allegorical intent aside, what Coetzee creates in Michael K is the impetus for a community of misery in which the readers are forced to identify with Michael K (and, later, with Michael K's environment, as the narrative shifts from third person to first person). Beyond the social critique of the novel, and at a more fundamental level, it addresses what it means to be alone -- completely, unfathomably alone in the world, in a way that is both moving and unsentimentalized. And this is surely a credit to Coetzee's talent.
Consider the following sentence, in which a doctor at an internment camp speaks of Michael K:
This is what great art does, of course. It's not rocket science to understand this, but what great writers do is something akin to rocket science -- inscrutable to laymen, seemingly mystically effective. They make us feel less alone and leave us with an augmented sense of the world we live in.
So if you suffer in a very particular way, yes, you'll almost always find an uncanny affirmation in literature, music, painting, whatever... And by seeking to explicate and to understand that pain, art lessens it in some miraculous way. And that right there is one of the best reasons to read at all, I think.
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 'poverty' of his youth, was fond of the saying, 'I used to be sad because I had no shoes, but then I met a man who had no feet.' As a grossly insensitive (that is to say, normal) child, the idea of a footless man was greatly humorous to me, so the moral was lost. I was too busy imagining a sort of idiot-manchild waddling around as if on rounded-off stilts to bother thinking about the relativism of misery. But now, as a highly actualized, compassionate man (quit laughing, you fucker), when I think of these sayings, which seem to pit our own misery in a competition with those of others, I find them disturbingly utilitarian or, worse, sadistic.
In considering Coetzee's exceptionally grim novel Life and Times of Michael K, I am leery of invoking anything that even vaguely stinks of the M.L.C. (Misery loves company) ethos, but at the risk of still calling to mind these allusions, I'd prefer to speak of a community of misery.
Now you Mary Poppins types (yeah, the ones who live in a debilitating state of denial regarding their material and existential plight) will heckle, jump up on tables, maybe burst into song. Who knows? But it is fundamentally wrong and, ergo, stupid to deny that misery is a fundamental part of life. It is. You may call 'misery' by another name, a kinder, gentler, more palatable name; instead of misery, for instance, perhaps you 'encounter challenges' or 'suffer setbacks.' At any rate, let's not fret over semantics, and let's concede that shit happens. Holy shit, does shit ever happen. And it happens more to some people than to other people. And -- perhaps even more interestingly -- some people are better equipped (psychologically, biologically?) to cope with shit than other people are. The latter category of people may, pejoratively, be referred to as 'weak,' but in many cases, where unhappiness appears organic, this is akin to saying that the lazy bastard with the leukemia who lies around all the time is merely shiftless. But that's another discussion altogether.
The community of misery I'm speaking of is the shared experience wherein we realize that our suffering is unexceptional. We discover this, for example, in our day-to-day interactions with So-and-So when he happens to say that he wakes up in the middle of the night sweating and shrieking with terror at the realization that his body is a mechanism, a 'factory' of life, if you will, and it operates precariously, without his supervision or awareness and is subject to unforeseeable defects and irregularities. That it, like a car or a toaster or a fax machine, may suddenly cease to operate correctly -- or to operate at all. And then you say, 'Omigod, I do the same thing! I wake up in the night shrieking about my strangely mechanistic biology!'
The example is exaggerated, of course, but in the prior instance the Hypothetical You have entered a community of misery. You have discovered that you are unexceptional.
Now usually, you understand, when we speak of something being 'unexceptional' it's generally considered either insulting or dismissive. But not so, misery! It's a horrible, horrible, horrible thing to be miserable, but it's exponentially worse to imagine that no one has any insight or empathetic entryway to our pain. We don't necessarily want to bring people down to our level, but we want to be understood and to not be alone. Occasionally, I want to be alone (to read, to masturbate, to scribble down my thoughts about this or that), but I don't believe -- and this is arrogant extrapolation -- that it is in the nature of the human condition to want to be alone in a greater existential sense. We desire community. Maybe not even a literal community, but a community of empathy and understanding.
Michael K: Whipping Boy
This book is about many things (some of them allegorical), but it is also about misery (or whatever we choose to call it in our own vocabularies). Michael K, the protagonist, suffers what most of us would call, in the vernacular, a pretty fucked-up life. He's impoverished. He's harelipped. He's a 'simpleton.' His mother is dying and must be cared for. He is mostly alone (in every sense of the term). He is abused seemingly by everyone around him. He is subject to misunderstanding and misinterpretation by those he meets. He is placed in a work camp. He hides in an underground burrow. His life is undirected; it's just bland endurance -- working toward nothing.
When I read this book, I was reminded of some of the films of Lars Von Trier, such as Dogville and Dancer in the Dark, in which he introduces a noble and innocent but somewhat naive protagonist (Nicole Kidman and Björk's characters, respectively) into a relentlessly cruel environment and lets the environment fuck her over in the worst way: either corrupting or destroying her.
This is where the comparison ends, however, because while Von Trier is aggressive and manipulative, Coetzee's writing is humane and compassionate. Von Trier always seemed to me interested in the environment, in which the naif character is just a cipher, whereas Coetzee here also appears concerned with the 'victim' (a term I use with great reluctance because of how it is heavily weighted in society today).
Allegorical intent aside, what Coetzee creates in Michael K is the impetus for a community of misery in which the readers are forced to identify with Michael K (and, later, with Michael K's environment, as the narrative shifts from third person to first person). Beyond the social critique of the novel, and at a more fundamental level, it addresses what it means to be alone -- completely, unfathomably alone in the world, in a way that is both moving and unsentimentalized. And this is surely a credit to Coetzee's talent.
Consider the following sentence, in which a doctor at an internment camp speaks of Michael K:
With Michaels [The doctor doesn't know his correct name.:] it always seemed to me that someone had scuffled together a handful of dust, spat on it, and patted it into the shape of a rudimentary man, making one or two mistakes (the mouth, and without a doubt the contents of the head), omitting one or two details (the sex), but coming up nevertheless in the end with a genuine little man of earth, the kind of little man one sees in peasant art emerging into the world from between the squat thighs of its mother-host with fingers ready hooked and back ready bent for a life of burrowing, a creature that spends its waking life stooped over the soil, that when at last its time comes digs its own grave and slips quietly in and draws the heavy earth over its head like a blanket and cracks a last smile and turns over and descends into sleep, home at last, while unnoticed as ever somewhere far away the grinding of the wheels of history continues.
This is what great art does, of course. It's not rocket science to understand this, but what great writers do is something akin to rocket science -- inscrutable to laymen, seemingly mystically effective. They make us feel less alone and leave us with an augmented sense of the world we live in.
So if you suffer in a very particular way, yes, you'll almost always find an uncanny affirmation in literature, music, painting, whatever... And by seeking to explicate and to understand that pain, art lessens it in some miraculous way. And that right there is one of the best reasons to read at all, I think.
July 30, 2010
***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...
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...
November 11, 2022
کتاب جالبی بود فقط یک مقدار خواندنش کند پیش میرود. *********************************************************************
«راه سومی میان حرف زدن و سکوت وجود دارد و آن ادبیات است. زبانی که من حرف می‌زنم مناسب نوشتن است، و نه گفت‌وشنود.» (جی. ام. کوتسیا) پیشگفتار مترجم - صفحه سیزده کتاب
مایکل یک انسان بکر است که جهان را از دید خاص خودش می‌بیند. با اینکه خشونت تبعیض نژادی را تجربه می‌کند- و کوتسیا در طول رمان حتی یک بار هم اشاره‌ای به رنگ پوست او نمی‌کند- از طریق شکیبایی به آزادگیی دست می‌یابد که هم رژیم آپارتهاید و هم نیروهای چریکی را شگفت‌زده و مبهوت می‌کند؛ زیرا او، درنهایت سادگی، هیچ‌چیز نمی‌خواهد: نه جنگ و نه انقلاب، نه قدرت و نه پول. مایکل ک فقط کرامت انسانی را می‌خواهد. پیشگفتار مترجم - صفحه پانزده کتاب
نمی‌دانست چه خواهد شد. داستان زندگی‌اش هیچ وقت جالب نبود؛ معمولاً همیشه کسی بود که به او بگوید بعدش چه کار کند؛ حالا کسی نبود، و بهترین کار این بود که صبر کند. صفحه ۸۳ کتاب
در نظرش زندگی صحنه به صحنه جلو چشم‌هایش اجرا می‌شد و تمام صحنه‌ها ربطی منطقی داشت. قلبش گواهی می‌داد که تمام این صحنه‌ها که با هم تلاقی می‌کردند یا بیم تلاقی شان می‌رفت، به معنای واحدی می‌رسند. اما نمی‌دانست آن معنا چیست. صفحه ۱۰۹ کتاب
حیف که برای زندگی کردن تو این دوره و زمونه باید قبول کرد که مث حیوون زندگی کنیم. آدمی که بخواد زنده بمونه نمیتونه توی خونه‌ای زندگی کنه که پنجره‌هاش روشنن. باید بره تو یه سوراخی تموم روز قایم بشه. باید جوری زندگی کنه که ردی از زندگیش معلوم نشه. زندگی اینجوری شده. صفحه ۱۲۰ کتاب
همیشه، وقتی می‌خواست خودش را برای خودش توجیه کند شکافی باقی می‌ماند، یک حفره، ظلمتی که درک او در برابرش متوقف می‌ماند و پر کردن آن با کلمات بی‌فایده بود. کلمات تمام می‌شدند و شکاف باقی می‌ماند. داستان او همیشه حفره‌ای داشت: داستانی اشتباه، داستانی همیشه اشتباه. صفحه ۱۳۳ کتاب
آیا احساس نمی‌کرد زندگانی‌اش معلق است، هم زنده است و هم زنده نیست، در جایی که تاریخ در تردید است چه راهی را برگزیند؟ صفحه ۱۹۲ کتاب
«راه سومی میان حرف زدن و سکوت وجود دارد و آن ادبیات است. زبانی که من حرف می‌زنم مناسب نوشتن است، و نه گفت‌وشنود.» (جی. ام. کوتسیا) پیشگفتار مترجم - صفحه سیزده کتاب
مایکل یک انسان بکر است که جهان را از دید خاص خودش می‌بیند. با اینکه خشونت تبعیض نژادی را تجربه می‌کند- و کوتسیا در طول رمان حتی یک بار هم اشاره‌ای به رنگ پوست او نمی‌کند- از طریق شکیبایی به آزادگیی دست می‌یابد که هم رژیم آپارتهاید و هم نیروهای چریکی را شگفت‌زده و مبهوت می‌کند؛ زیرا او، درنهایت سادگی، هیچ‌چیز نمی‌خواهد: نه جنگ و نه انقلاب، نه قدرت و نه پول. مایکل ک فقط کرامت انسانی را می‌خواهد. پیشگفتار مترجم - صفحه پانزده کتاب
نمی‌دانست چه خواهد شد. داستان زندگی‌اش هیچ وقت جالب نبود؛ معمولاً همیشه کسی بود که به او بگوید بعدش چه کار کند؛ حالا کسی نبود، و بهترین کار این بود که صبر کند. صفحه ۸۳ کتاب
در نظرش زندگی صحنه به صحنه جلو چشم‌هایش اجرا می‌شد و تمام صحنه‌ها ربطی منطقی داشت. قلبش گواهی می‌داد که تمام این صحنه‌ها که با هم تلاقی می‌کردند یا بیم تلاقی شان می‌رفت، به معنای واحدی می‌رسند. اما نمی‌دانست آن معنا چیست. صفحه ۱۰۹ کتاب
حیف که برای زندگی کردن تو این دوره و زمونه باید قبول کرد که مث حیوون زندگی کنیم. آدمی که بخواد زنده بمونه نمیتونه توی خونه‌ای زندگی کنه که پنجره‌هاش روشنن. باید بره تو یه سوراخی تموم روز قایم بشه. باید جوری زندگی کنه که ردی از زندگیش معلوم نشه. زندگی اینجوری شده. صفحه ۱۲۰ کتاب
همیشه، وقتی می‌خواست خودش را برای خودش توجیه کند شکافی باقی می‌ماند، یک حفره، ظلمتی که درک او در برابرش متوقف می‌ماند و پر کردن آن با کلمات بی‌فایده بود. کلمات تمام می‌شدند و شکاف باقی می‌ماند. داستان او همیشه حفره‌ای داشت: داستانی اشتباه، داستانی همیشه اشتباه. صفحه ۱۳۳ کتاب
آیا احساس نمی‌کرد زندگانی‌اش معلق است، هم زنده است و هم زنده نیست، در جایی که تاریخ در تردید است چه راهی را برگزیند؟ صفحه ۱۹۲ کتاب
July 29, 2010
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.
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.
July 23, 2022
در ستایش آزادی ، در ستایش طبیعت
جان ماکسول کوتسی نویسنده اهل آفریقا جنوبی افزون بر پرداختن به جنگ داخلی و آپارتاید از نگاه مایکل ک قهرمان نه چندان دوست ��اشتنی کتاب به تلاش انسان برای جستجوی آزادی و نیز کوشش او برای زنده ماندن به هر قیمتی اما در زیر چتر آزادی پرداخته است .
قهرمان کتاب او مایکل ک ، که علاوه بر کم هوشی و فقر دچار نقصی در صورت است در ماموریتی دن کیشوت وار تلاش می کند تا مادر پیر خود را به زادگاهش ببرد ، تلاش او بدون آگاهی از جنگ داخلی و آنچه که در جریان است به فاجعه ختم می شود .
می توان شباهتهایی میان مایکل ک داستان کتاب کوتسی و فارست گامپ کتاب ویسنستون گروم پیدا کرد ، اگرچه مایکل استقامت و اراده فارست گامپ را در پینگ پنگ یا صید میگو و یا در دویدن ندارد ( البته آفریقاجنوبی هم مانند آمریکا سرزمین فرصتها نیست )، اما هر دو آنها تلاش برای زیستن دور از آدمیان و در پناه طبیعت دارند .
اما با وجود داستان نسبتا متمایز و شخصیت متفاوت مایکل ک ، کتاب روند یکنواخت ، کند و کسل کننده و قابل پیش بینی دارد ، مسیری که مایکل ک می رود فرجام و عاقبت آن روشن است .
جان ماکسول کوتسی نویسنده اهل آفریقا جنوبی افزون بر پرداختن به جنگ داخلی و آپارتاید از نگاه مایکل ک قهرمان نه چندان دوست ��اشتنی کتاب به تلاش انسان برای جستجوی آزادی و نیز کوشش او برای زنده ماندن به هر قیمتی اما در زیر چتر آزادی پرداخته است .
قهرمان کتاب او مایکل ک ، که علاوه بر کم هوشی و فقر دچار نقصی در صورت است در ماموریتی دن کیشوت وار تلاش می کند تا مادر پیر خود را به زادگاهش ببرد ، تلاش او بدون آگاهی از جنگ داخلی و آنچه که در جریان است به فاجعه ختم می شود .
می توان شباهتهایی میان مایکل ک داستان کتاب کوتسی و فارست گامپ کتاب ویسنستون گروم پیدا کرد ، اگرچه مایکل استقامت و اراده فارست گامپ را در پینگ پنگ یا صید میگو و یا در دویدن ندارد ( البته آفریقاجنوبی هم مانند آمریکا سرزمین فرصتها نیست )، اما هر دو آنها تلاش برای زیستن دور از آدمیان و در پناه طبیعت دارند .
اما با وجود داستان نسبتا متمایز و شخصیت متفاوت مایکل ک ، کتاب روند یکنواخت ، کند و کسل کننده و قابل پیش بینی دارد ، مسیری که مایکل ک می رود فرجام و عاقبت آن روشن است .
June 9, 2022
حیف که برای زندگی کردن تو این دوره و زمونه باید قبول کرد که مث حیوون زندگی کنیم. آدمی که بخواد زنده بمونه نمیتونه توی خونه‌ای زندگی کنه که پنجره‌هاش روشنن. باید بره تو یه سوراخی تموم روز قایم بشه. باید جوری زندگی کنه که ردی از زندگیش معلوم نشه. زندگی اینجوری شده.
.
کتاب داستان زندگی فردی به نام مایکل است. از کودکی بخاطر هوش کم و ظاهرش و همین‌طور فقر خانوادش چندان مورد توجه نبوده. او با مادرش زندگی میکنه و مادرش از ظاهر او شرمنده هست و سعی میکنه اون رو خیلی وارد اجتماع نکنه. ولی هیچکدوم از این اتفاقات تلخ دوران کودکی مایکل باعث نمیشه که در بزرگسالی زندگی شرافتمندانه‌ای رو لایق خودش ندونه... درگیر شدن در جنگ، اسارت، تبعیض نژادی و ... باعث کم شدن مقاومتش نمی‌شوند.
کلا کتاب خوبی بود. ترجمه‌ی خوبی داشت.
.
.
کتاب داستان زندگی فردی به نام مایکل است. از کودکی بخاطر هوش کم و ظاهرش و همین‌طور فقر خانوادش چندان مورد توجه نبوده. او با مادرش زندگی میکنه و مادرش از ظاهر او شرمنده هست و سعی میکنه اون رو خیلی وارد اجتماع نکنه. ولی هیچکدوم از این اتفاقات تلخ دوران کودکی مایکل باعث نمیشه که در بزرگسالی زندگی شرافتمندانه‌ای رو لایق خودش ندونه... درگیر شدن در جنگ، اسارت، تبعیض نژادی و ... باعث کم شدن مقاومتش نمی‌شوند.
کلا کتاب خوبی بود. ترجمه‌ی خوبی داشت.
.
August 17, 2022
This is an oddly compelling book about Michael K's journey from Cape Town to the place of his mother's childhood. Interestingly, Coetzee doesn't label his characters Black or white or mention the word apartheid - yet Michael K encounters constant conflict with authorities as a war drones on. He is a passive, opaque man - sometimes more symbolic than flesh and blood.
Michael K has been overlooked his entire life and has spent it mostly in isolation. His simple-minded demeanor cloaks a fierce determination to survive on his terms. He moves randomly about, not sure what he wants, but seems to find contentment on the land, where he can grow pumpkins secretly. Along the way, he encounters strangers who treat him both cruelly and with kindness. This is a thought provoking novel and would be great to discuss as I'm sure there are layers of meaning here that I missed.
Michael K has been overlooked his entire life and has spent it mostly in isolation. His simple-minded demeanor cloaks a fierce determination to survive on his terms. He moves randomly about, not sure what he wants, but seems to find contentment on the land, where he can grow pumpkins secretly. Along the way, he encounters strangers who treat him both cruelly and with kindness. This is a thought provoking novel and would be great to discuss as I'm sure there are layers of meaning here that I missed.
April 3, 2015
"War is the father of all and king of all. Some he shows as gods, others as men. Some he makes slaves and others, free."
But how does one differentiate between The Slave and The Free? Is that Man a slave, whose captivity by the victor frees him of his worldly expectations? Or should we call that Man, free who has no kin to bother about since they have all been enslaved in the war fire? Is it possible to live a life without succumbing to either side? Or is it inevitable to be one without being the other?
Coetzee doesn’t answer these questions since it would be too insulting for a war survivor. But he lifts us up to a devastating height from where we can see the merciless resilience that survival demands from a Man under the darkest clouds of war and death, by focussing our attention to Michael K. Michael K is a humble gardener with the local authority and is staying with his aged mother in Cape Town. But in the aftermath of the Civil War, when his mother, through fits of falling health, expresses her desire to move back to her childhood place across the countryside, the filial Michael doesn’t refuse for long. Discouraged by a train reservation not before two months and non-issuance of travel permit from authorities, Michael decides to ferry his mother by road on a make-shift barrow that he makes indigenously.
But the journey soon turns out to be his most fatal curse, during which, he not only loses his mother but also loses his many virtues, passions, dreams and even, sensibilities. In the war torn land, he is left to fend for himself, getting driven from hospitals to rehabilitation camps. But Michael surprises himself when he snatches a brief period of independence from the clutch of his destiny in the form of an abandoned, yet fertile land which he comes to love as his own child and tends to it with renewed purpose. But when strangers infiltrate into his little utopia, he once again finds himself at the cusp of decision.
"… he watched the water wash slowly across the field, turning the earth dark. Now when I am most needed, he thought, I abandon my children."
He finds drawing different versions of himself from his innards, much to his shock and occasional pride, to counter them. His decisions, no matter how inconsequential, stare at him, with a thousand questions in their eyes: that to eat, he can kill as well as produce; that to sleep, he can befriend day as well as night; that to comprehend, he can be mute as well as blind; that to survive, he can stuff as well as fast.
He gains new perspectives, hopes and emotions while the origin of these new possessions continue to elude him.
"He awoke and squinted into the sun. Striking all the colours of the rainbow from his eyelashes, it filled the sky. I am like an ant that does not know where its hole is, he thought."
Wading through captors, dodging policemen, escaping camps, at last, he falls into the hands of a genial Medical Officer who offers him guidance to start all over again. This Officer, although bears the brunt of a silent illegal suspect on his infirmary walls every day, confers him the benefit of doubt that every human deserves at least once in his lifetime. But Michael, by now, has learnt one of the biggest truths of life: it is far more worthwhile to die with intensity than to live without it.
"Not being iron was his greatest virtue."
And so, Coetzee brings us down to that one night into whose stillness Michael walks finally, leaving behind the Slave Michaels that were lost to War and taking along the Free Michaels who might help him weather another War.
But how does one differentiate between The Slave and The Free? Is that Man a slave, whose captivity by the victor frees him of his worldly expectations? Or should we call that Man, free who has no kin to bother about since they have all been enslaved in the war fire? Is it possible to live a life without succumbing to either side? Or is it inevitable to be one without being the other?
Coetzee doesn’t answer these questions since it would be too insulting for a war survivor. But he lifts us up to a devastating height from where we can see the merciless resilience that survival demands from a Man under the darkest clouds of war and death, by focussing our attention to Michael K. Michael K is a humble gardener with the local authority and is staying with his aged mother in Cape Town. But in the aftermath of the Civil War, when his mother, through fits of falling health, expresses her desire to move back to her childhood place across the countryside, the filial Michael doesn’t refuse for long. Discouraged by a train reservation not before two months and non-issuance of travel permit from authorities, Michael decides to ferry his mother by road on a make-shift barrow that he makes indigenously.
But the journey soon turns out to be his most fatal curse, during which, he not only loses his mother but also loses his many virtues, passions, dreams and even, sensibilities. In the war torn land, he is left to fend for himself, getting driven from hospitals to rehabilitation camps. But Michael surprises himself when he snatches a brief period of independence from the clutch of his destiny in the form of an abandoned, yet fertile land which he comes to love as his own child and tends to it with renewed purpose. But when strangers infiltrate into his little utopia, he once again finds himself at the cusp of decision.
"… he watched the water wash slowly across the field, turning the earth dark. Now when I am most needed, he thought, I abandon my children."
He finds drawing different versions of himself from his innards, much to his shock and occasional pride, to counter them. His decisions, no matter how inconsequential, stare at him, with a thousand questions in their eyes: that to eat, he can kill as well as produce; that to sleep, he can befriend day as well as night; that to comprehend, he can be mute as well as blind; that to survive, he can stuff as well as fast.
He gains new perspectives, hopes and emotions while the origin of these new possessions continue to elude him.
"He awoke and squinted into the sun. Striking all the colours of the rainbow from his eyelashes, it filled the sky. I am like an ant that does not know where its hole is, he thought."
Wading through captors, dodging policemen, escaping camps, at last, he falls into the hands of a genial Medical Officer who offers him guidance to start all over again. This Officer, although bears the brunt of a silent illegal suspect on his infirmary walls every day, confers him the benefit of doubt that every human deserves at least once in his lifetime. But Michael, by now, has learnt one of the biggest truths of life: it is far more worthwhile to die with intensity than to live without it.
"Not being iron was his greatest virtue."
And so, Coetzee brings us down to that one night into whose stillness Michael walks finally, leaving behind the Slave Michaels that were lost to War and taking along the Free Michaels who might help him weather another War.
May 9, 2024
Cuenta la historia que estando el filósofo Diógenes sentado frente al tonel donde vivía con su perro, se le presentó Alejandro Magno: “Mis respetos, Diógenes. Soy el hombre más poderoso de la tierra; decime que puedo hacer por vos". Y Diógenes le respondió: “Correte un poco que me tapas el sol”: Diógenes era un hombre libre, porque había logrado reducir sus necesidades a lo esencial.
Michael K es un hombre que tiene todos los factores de la vida en su contra, desde un defecto de nacimiento hasta el contexto histórico de ser un negro pobre en la Sudáfrica del Apartheid.
Y a lo largo de la novela podremos acompañarlo en su deriva, como un hombre libre, con necesidades mínimas; una deriva que me resultó ágil, atrapante y fascinante gracias al arte y la sensibilidad de Coetzee.
Una novela que me cambió: me hizo valorar mucho más la importancia de ser una persona realmente libre, y me permitió desarrollar una sensibilidad para identificar y comprender en otros esta libertad, esta falta de necesidades, en mi vida cotidiana.
Hasta ahora no tenía dudas de que la mejor obra de Coetzee era Esperando a los bárbaros; ahora no estoy tan seguro.
Una obra de arte.
John Maxwell Coetzee nació y vivió gran parte de su vida en Sudáfrica, hasta de la condena social que recibió tras su novela Desgracia (en la era de la euforia post apartheid tuvo la impertinencia escribir una novela en la que el malo es negro; una falta de corrección política inaceptable); actualmente vive en Australia. De cierta manera, más allá de que parece ser arrogante y antipático, Coetzee es posiblemente un hombre libre.
Michael K es un hombre que tiene todos los factores de la vida en su contra, desde un defecto de nacimiento hasta el contexto histórico de ser un negro pobre en la Sudáfrica del Apartheid.
Y a lo largo de la novela podremos acompañarlo en su deriva, como un hombre libre, con necesidades mínimas; una deriva que me resultó ágil, atrapante y fascinante gracias al arte y la sensibilidad de Coetzee.
Una novela que me cambió: me hizo valorar mucho más la importancia de ser una persona realmente libre, y me permitió desarrollar una sensibilidad para identificar y comprender en otros esta libertad, esta falta de necesidades, en mi vida cotidiana.
Hasta ahora no tenía dudas de que la mejor obra de Coetzee era Esperando a los bárbaros; ahora no estoy tan seguro.
Una obra de arte.
John Maxwell Coetzee nació y vivió gran parte de su vida en Sudáfrica, hasta de la condena social que recibió tras su novela Desgracia (en la era de la euforia post apartheid tuvo la impertinencia escribir una novela en la que el malo es negro; una falta de corrección política inaceptable); actualmente vive en Australia. De cierta manera, más allá de que parece ser arrogante y antipático, Coetzee es posiblemente un hombre libre.
October 4, 2018
In a word: devastating.
This is Coetzee's signature novel and absolutely must be read. To say that I loved it feels like a highly inappropriate statement because even though I feel that way I can't love a book that devastated me as a reader and challenged my notions about reconciliation and redemption from injustices of the past on an individual as well as societal levels. Perhaps not many would see it that way but the novel is also a subtle statement on race relations in modern times and its power dynamics, and it offers no rainbow ending, no feel-good resolution.
This is Coetzee's signature novel and absolutely must be read. To say that I loved it feels like a highly inappropriate statement because even though I feel that way I can't love a book that devastated me as a reader and challenged my notions about reconciliation and redemption from injustices of the past on an individual as well as societal levels. Perhaps not many would see it that way but the novel is also a subtle statement on race relations in modern times and its power dynamics, and it offers no rainbow ending, no feel-good resolution.
June 7, 2023
The best Coetzee yet.
April 16, 2020
God damn it, that was close!
I had high hopes about this novel but I finished it feeling slightly disappointed. Oh well, Coetzee couldn’t have guessed how different wars were going to be in the 21st century, could he? If only he could I’m sure he wouldn’t have included all the ‘preaching‘ which turned this from an amazing five star read to a strong four star one.
It’s been quite a few days since I finished this novel and the more I thought about it (at work, obviously, because that’s where I seem to spend all my time nowadays) the more certain I am that the second part of the book is pointless and in my view outdated. A timeless classic this ain’t! I really tried to find a purpose for it but I just couldn’t.
I don’t know a lot about the apartheid besides the basics and what its name suggests but I have a feeling that the second part of the book was written with the objective of trying to create more empathy; not about the main character but the generality of the victims of the political system(?).
Now, time to focus on the good, and there was so much to love about it. First of all the first class writing. Coetzee really doesn’t waste a word (we’re not talking about that second part now) and the imagery he creates using only a few words is outstanding. The way the story unfolds is remarkably quick and although this is a very short novel it never loses impact and Michael K “jumps” out of the pages. And you’ll have to love him. You’re going to.
“Always, when he tried to explain himself to himself, there remained a gap, a hole, a darkness before which his understanding baulked, into which it was useless to pour words. The words were eaten up, the gap remained. His was always a story with a hole in it: a wrong story, always wrong.”
Like Disgrace, this novel, with its violence, graphic imagery and his strong main character are going to haunt me for a long long time. Maybe forever if such a thing is possible.
I had high hopes about this novel but I finished it feeling slightly disappointed. Oh well, Coetzee couldn’t have guessed how different wars were going to be in the 21st century, could he? If only he could I’m sure he wouldn’t have included all the ‘preaching‘ which turned this from an amazing five star read to a strong four star one.
It’s been quite a few days since I finished this novel and the more I thought about it (at work, obviously, because that’s where I seem to spend all my time nowadays) the more certain I am that the second part of the book is pointless and in my view outdated. A timeless classic this ain’t! I really tried to find a purpose for it but I just couldn’t.
I don’t know a lot about the apartheid besides the basics and what its name suggests but I have a feeling that the second part of the book was written with the objective of trying to create more empathy; not about the main character but the generality of the victims of the political system(?).
Now, time to focus on the good, and there was so much to love about it. First of all the first class writing. Coetzee really doesn’t waste a word (we’re not talking about that second part now) and the imagery he creates using only a few words is outstanding. The way the story unfolds is remarkably quick and although this is a very short novel it never loses impact and Michael K “jumps” out of the pages. And you’ll have to love him. You’re going to.
“Always, when he tried to explain himself to himself, there remained a gap, a hole, a darkness before which his understanding baulked, into which it was useless to pour words. The words were eaten up, the gap remained. His was always a story with a hole in it: a wrong story, always wrong.”
Like Disgrace, this novel, with its violence, graphic imagery and his strong main character are going to haunt me for a long long time. Maybe forever if such a thing is possible.
September 2, 2021
They want me to open my heart and tell them the story of a
life lived in cages. They want to hear about all the cages
I have lived in, as if I were a budgie or a
white mouse or a monkey.
In the days of apartheid in Capetown, South Africa, Coetzee gives us the story of Michael K, a bullied, downtrodden young man, who finds himself in the middle of a civil war he does not understand. His mother, who is dying, wants to return to her home in Prince Albert, and Michael rigs a cart and sets out to take her there, navigating his way through checkpoints and troops without the necessary papers. The mother dies en route, but that is just the beginning of Michael’s struggles to survive in a society that makes no sense and will not allow anyone of Michael’s ilk to live a simple or happy life.
This is a story of isolation and loneliness. Michael becomes so much the secluded individual that he loses any desire or ability to co-exist with other people. The dangers are innumerable and unidentifiable. They come from both sides of the conflict, and no one is likely to be allowed to exist without choosing a side, but Michael is slow and naive, almost childlike, and he cannot even understand the dynamics of the conflict. Even the kind people he encounters befuddle him.
As we begin to wonder if any individual has purpose in such a society, Michael also grapples with what his existence means, and Coetzee asks the question in captivating prose:
Every grain of this earth will be washed clean by the rain, he told himself, and dried by the sun and scoured by the wind, before the seasons turn again. There will be not a grain left bearing my marks, just as my mother has now, after her season in the earth, been washed clean, blown about, and drawn up into the leaves of grass.
A little more than halfway through the novel, Coetzee switches from the story we have been seeing exclusively in a third person voice from Michael’s viewpoint, to a first person voice of a medical officer tasked with Michael’s care in an internment camp. It seems to me that Coetzee wished to show us the human face of the opposition and demonstrate how difficult it would be to separate the players into strictly good and evil camps. This doctor is struggling, as well, with making sense of the system he serves.
I wanted to say, “you ask why you are important Michaels. The answer is that you are not important. But that does not mean you are forgotten. No one is forgotten. Remember the sparrows. Five sparrows are sold for a farthing, and even they are not forgotten.”
I felt acutely the helplessness of Michael’s situation and the attempt at self-preservation that takes the form of self-destruction. Michael rejects any interaction with society, either those who share his position or those who claim authority over him. While we are never told that Michael is black, or for that matter that the doctor or soldiers are white, we instinctively know this to be so. Michael’s deformity that is the source of ridicule and derision, we are told, is his harelip that he has had from birth, but it is clear to me that we are meant to see that it is in truth his color, his class, his position in society that are his handicaps, and just like his physical deformity, they are not of his making or in his control. I found it interesting that more than one character in the novel asks if any attempt was ever made to correct Michael’s deformity, and when told “no”, they each remark how easily the correction could have been made.
Profound writing.
life lived in cages. They want to hear about all the cages
I have lived in, as if I were a budgie or a
white mouse or a monkey.
In the days of apartheid in Capetown, South Africa, Coetzee gives us the story of Michael K, a bullied, downtrodden young man, who finds himself in the middle of a civil war he does not understand. His mother, who is dying, wants to return to her home in Prince Albert, and Michael rigs a cart and sets out to take her there, navigating his way through checkpoints and troops without the necessary papers. The mother dies en route, but that is just the beginning of Michael’s struggles to survive in a society that makes no sense and will not allow anyone of Michael’s ilk to live a simple or happy life.
This is a story of isolation and loneliness. Michael becomes so much the secluded individual that he loses any desire or ability to co-exist with other people. The dangers are innumerable and unidentifiable. They come from both sides of the conflict, and no one is likely to be allowed to exist without choosing a side, but Michael is slow and naive, almost childlike, and he cannot even understand the dynamics of the conflict. Even the kind people he encounters befuddle him.
As we begin to wonder if any individual has purpose in such a society, Michael also grapples with what his existence means, and Coetzee asks the question in captivating prose:
Every grain of this earth will be washed clean by the rain, he told himself, and dried by the sun and scoured by the wind, before the seasons turn again. There will be not a grain left bearing my marks, just as my mother has now, after her season in the earth, been washed clean, blown about, and drawn up into the leaves of grass.
A little more than halfway through the novel, Coetzee switches from the story we have been seeing exclusively in a third person voice from Michael’s viewpoint, to a first person voice of a medical officer tasked with Michael’s care in an internment camp. It seems to me that Coetzee wished to show us the human face of the opposition and demonstrate how difficult it would be to separate the players into strictly good and evil camps. This doctor is struggling, as well, with making sense of the system he serves.
I wanted to say, “you ask why you are important Michaels. The answer is that you are not important. But that does not mean you are forgotten. No one is forgotten. Remember the sparrows. Five sparrows are sold for a farthing, and even they are not forgotten.”
I felt acutely the helplessness of Michael’s situation and the attempt at self-preservation that takes the form of self-destruction. Michael rejects any interaction with society, either those who share his position or those who claim authority over him. While we are never told that Michael is black, or for that matter that the doctor or soldiers are white, we instinctively know this to be so. Michael’s deformity that is the source of ridicule and derision, we are told, is his harelip that he has had from birth, but it is clear to me that we are meant to see that it is in truth his color, his class, his position in society that are his handicaps, and just like his physical deformity, they are not of his making or in his control. I found it interesting that more than one character in the novel asks if any attempt was ever made to correct Michael’s deformity, and when told “no”, they each remark how easily the correction could have been made.
Profound writing.
January 18, 2009
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 healthy to see the thousands of names before my own in the race finishers' list, just as it's exciting to read what talented writers have written. I like looking at them and thinking that someday by training harder on the road, or working to improve my writing skills, perhaps I might rise a little higher in the ranks. And that's nice, right? That's a nice little thing!
Then, though, there are the Paula Radcliffes and Haile Gebrselassies of the world. Elite athletes' two-hour-and-change marathons aren't exactly inspiring to me in any normal or useful sense, and describing them as humbling is so understated as to be meaningless. What these runners do doesn't fall under the same classification as what I and most other people do when we run. These runners' bodies do not seem human: they accomplish feats that aren't physically possible. There is barely a relationship between their "running" and my "running," and that's where inspiration in its normal sense stops, and beyond even just being impressed with the individuals themselves, there's not much left to do except sit there and marvel that such things occur.
Anyway, sometimes I feel like this when I'm reading. In the same way that I can't actually believe Radcliffe's human legs are capable of what they have done, I don't quite understand how Coetzee's brain manufactured this book.
In my professional capacity, I've come to know some people who one might describe as being among the wretched of New York City. I'm talking about impoverished, chronically homeless, physically and mentally ill, largely powerless, pitied, and despised people who spend decades being shuffled through systems and slipping through cracks, sleeping in Port Authority tunnels and on trains and sidewalks, living under conditions that most other people can barely imagine. For a long time I've been impressed by how infrequently I come across good representations of these kinds of experiences in literature and other art forms, but I guess this makes sense. Illiterate people with little power or resources don't have much opportunity to create their own literature, and there are clear limits to knowledge of and empathy for these experiences by people who haven't lived through them. Okay, so to be fair I probably miss some good books about this, since I don't seek out that kind of literature and even consciously avoid it most of the time. This is in part because by the end of the day I'm a bit sick of the topic, but also because I do feel many treatments of this subject seem naive, insincere, idealized, unrealistic, or condescending.
Not this book!
I've known some guys over the years whose existences seem so fascinatingly horrible, but also almost miraculous and even kind of (uh, sorry) weirdly beautiful. I'm not generalizing here about the majority of my homeless clients, but thinking specifically of a few who just clearly weren't made for this earth. Like the HIV+ homeless schizophrenic who heard the voice of angels and looked like a saint, and it was just so unfathomable that he lived in a shelter among all this awful, sickening, dirty sad stuff that just had no relevance to him, dressed in gorgeous, outlandish outfits and cheeking his antipsychotics and antiretroviral drugs and talking to God.... Then those other ones, street-homeless for years, guys with mild mental retardation or traumatic brain injury and serious drug problems, who just don't have anything and there's no one who cares about them, and they wander through all these hells and horrors that you've got to think no one could ever survive, let alone someone with the mental capacity of a kindergartener.
But really, it turns out, the world's full of these people, out there navigating streets filled with drugs and violence or being shuttled in and out of mental hospitals and jails and other institutions. It's pretty wild and disturbing stuff, and it seems almost impossible to imagine what kind of sense they make of these experiences that I could never fathom undergoing myself. This book pushed me further than my own imagination could towards a theory of what it might be like to exist while maintaining some part of oneself amidst levels of chaos and cruelty beyond my comprehension. I mean, this from a girl who gets pushed near complete mental breakdown by rude public cellphone use, or girls who spread their stuff out all over the bench in the gym locker room and won't share the space, or people getting uncivil on Bookface -- I mean, I've got an extremely low tolerance for any evidence of man's inhumanity (a questionable term -- "brutality" being similarly problematic) to man, and thinking about what it might be like to exist in war-torn, apartheid South Africa really does strain the limits of my gentle mind.
But Coetzee sent me there, and pushed me through it.
The Life and Times of Michael K hooked me at the beginning with its chillingly plausible description of homelessness. It's rare that reading a novel now, as an adult, can become the completely immersive, empathic experience that reading was for me as a child, but this book did that, and it did it starting in a situation I've spent a lot of time thinking about, but never lived through myself. Michael K follows the journey of a man who was born at the bottom, once the bottom falls out, and even though his situation's much worse than any of my clients', that was one place where it gave a possible answer to some long-standing questions I've had about the people I mentioned above. The book gave me an idea of what it might be like to experience things that are nearly impossible to convey in words. But as far as I'm concerned, Coetzee conveyed them!
Another place it resonated with my professional experience was the second part of the book, which is from the perspective of a doctor who tries to care for Michael K in a work camp. Relating this to my own position as a social worker was such an intensely personal experience that I don't know if I can really get into it here. I'll just say that I'm really astounded by Coetzee's ability first to cultivate empathy like crazy, then to smash the reader brutally into its limitations. At least, that was one way I experienced it.
This book presented a vision of individuals, systems, and societies that really is beyond the grasp of my own language abilities to describe or even comment on in a meaningful way. It also was just so successful in transporting me into another person and a different world, which is on the most basic level what any successful novel should do. I can't begin to guess at how this guy Coetzee's mind works; meanwhile, though, I'm intimately familiar with how his character Michael K's does! Yeah, so it wasn't vastly entertaining or necessarily a lot of fun all the time, but this book was pretty good, all right. Its author is, IMHO, among writers what Catherine Ndereba is among marathoners. That is to say, I can't pronounce either one of their names, and I have no idea how they do what they do, but I gotta admit that it's pretty amazing.
Then, though, there are the Paula Radcliffes and Haile Gebrselassies of the world. Elite athletes' two-hour-and-change marathons aren't exactly inspiring to me in any normal or useful sense, and describing them as humbling is so understated as to be meaningless. What these runners do doesn't fall under the same classification as what I and most other people do when we run. These runners' bodies do not seem human: they accomplish feats that aren't physically possible. There is barely a relationship between their "running" and my "running," and that's where inspiration in its normal sense stops, and beyond even just being impressed with the individuals themselves, there's not much left to do except sit there and marvel that such things occur.
Anyway, sometimes I feel like this when I'm reading. In the same way that I can't actually believe Radcliffe's human legs are capable of what they have done, I don't quite understand how Coetzee's brain manufactured this book.
In my professional capacity, I've come to know some people who one might describe as being among the wretched of New York City. I'm talking about impoverished, chronically homeless, physically and mentally ill, largely powerless, pitied, and despised people who spend decades being shuffled through systems and slipping through cracks, sleeping in Port Authority tunnels and on trains and sidewalks, living under conditions that most other people can barely imagine. For a long time I've been impressed by how infrequently I come across good representations of these kinds of experiences in literature and other art forms, but I guess this makes sense. Illiterate people with little power or resources don't have much opportunity to create their own literature, and there are clear limits to knowledge of and empathy for these experiences by people who haven't lived through them. Okay, so to be fair I probably miss some good books about this, since I don't seek out that kind of literature and even consciously avoid it most of the time. This is in part because by the end of the day I'm a bit sick of the topic, but also because I do feel many treatments of this subject seem naive, insincere, idealized, unrealistic, or condescending.
Not this book!
I've known some guys over the years whose existences seem so fascinatingly horrible, but also almost miraculous and even kind of (uh, sorry) weirdly beautiful. I'm not generalizing here about the majority of my homeless clients, but thinking specifically of a few who just clearly weren't made for this earth. Like the HIV+ homeless schizophrenic who heard the voice of angels and looked like a saint, and it was just so unfathomable that he lived in a shelter among all this awful, sickening, dirty sad stuff that just had no relevance to him, dressed in gorgeous, outlandish outfits and cheeking his antipsychotics and antiretroviral drugs and talking to God.... Then those other ones, street-homeless for years, guys with mild mental retardation or traumatic brain injury and serious drug problems, who just don't have anything and there's no one who cares about them, and they wander through all these hells and horrors that you've got to think no one could ever survive, let alone someone with the mental capacity of a kindergartener.
But really, it turns out, the world's full of these people, out there navigating streets filled with drugs and violence or being shuttled in and out of mental hospitals and jails and other institutions. It's pretty wild and disturbing stuff, and it seems almost impossible to imagine what kind of sense they make of these experiences that I could never fathom undergoing myself. This book pushed me further than my own imagination could towards a theory of what it might be like to exist while maintaining some part of oneself amidst levels of chaos and cruelty beyond my comprehension. I mean, this from a girl who gets pushed near complete mental breakdown by rude public cellphone use, or girls who spread their stuff out all over the bench in the gym locker room and won't share the space, or people getting uncivil on Bookface -- I mean, I've got an extremely low tolerance for any evidence of man's inhumanity (a questionable term -- "brutality" being similarly problematic) to man, and thinking about what it might be like to exist in war-torn, apartheid South Africa really does strain the limits of my gentle mind.
But Coetzee sent me there, and pushed me through it.
The Life and Times of Michael K hooked me at the beginning with its chillingly plausible description of homelessness. It's rare that reading a novel now, as an adult, can become the completely immersive, empathic experience that reading was for me as a child, but this book did that, and it did it starting in a situation I've spent a lot of time thinking about, but never lived through myself. Michael K follows the journey of a man who was born at the bottom, once the bottom falls out, and even though his situation's much worse than any of my clients', that was one place where it gave a possible answer to some long-standing questions I've had about the people I mentioned above. The book gave me an idea of what it might be like to experience things that are nearly impossible to convey in words. But as far as I'm concerned, Coetzee conveyed them!
Another place it resonated with my professional experience was the second part of the book, which is from the perspective of a doctor who tries to care for Michael K in a work camp. Relating this to my own position as a social worker was such an intensely personal experience that I don't know if I can really get into it here. I'll just say that I'm really astounded by Coetzee's ability first to cultivate empathy like crazy, then to smash the reader brutally into its limitations. At least, that was one way I experienced it.
This book presented a vision of individuals, systems, and societies that really is beyond the grasp of my own language abilities to describe or even comment on in a meaningful way. It also was just so successful in transporting me into another person and a different world, which is on the most basic level what any successful novel should do. I can't begin to guess at how this guy Coetzee's mind works; meanwhile, though, I'm intimately familiar with how his character Michael K's does! Yeah, so it wasn't vastly entertaining or necessarily a lot of fun all the time, but this book was pretty good, all right. Its author is, IMHO, among writers what Catherine Ndereba is among marathoners. That is to say, I can't pronounce either one of their names, and I have no idea how they do what they do, but I gotta admit that it's pretty amazing.
February 16, 2010
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 look at this one sentence:
But most of all, as summer slanted to an end, he was learning to love idleness, idleness no longer as stretches of freedom reclaimed by stealth here and there from involuntary labour, surreptitious thefts to be enjoyed sitting on his heels before a flowerbed with the fork dangling from his fingers, but as a yielding up of himself to him, to a time flowing slowly like oil from horizon to horizon over the face of the world, washing over his body, circulating in his armpits and his groin, stirring his eyelids.
His tough wisdom:
When my mother was dying in hospital, he thought, when she knew her end was coming, it was not me she looked to but someone who stood behind me: her mother or the ghost of her mother. To me she was a woman but to herself she was still a child calling to her mother to hold her and help her. And her own mother, in the secret life we do not see, was a child too. I come from a line of children without end.
In manmade squalor there is beauty to be found; in the doltish, something special to offer the world; in the darkest despair, new levels of hope can be reached. As we go forward planting the seeds of who we are, especially in times of peril, if we stay true to ourselves, the beauty of our unique human condition makes its mark; meaning is carved out; life is strengthened and affirmed, and it all sprouts from what is inside us. Michael K. knows this.
If you're thinking of reading Life and Times of Michael K. -- and I think you should -- be sure to read the reviews by David and Donald. They do this novel far more justice than I ever could.
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Coetzee amazed me....take a look at this one sentence:
But most of all, as summer slanted to an end, he was learning to love idleness, idleness no longer as stretches of freedom reclaimed by stealth here and there from involuntary labour, surreptitious thefts to be enjoyed sitting on his heels before a flowerbed with the fork dangling from his fingers, but as a yielding up of himself to him, to a time flowing slowly like oil from horizon to horizon over the face of the world, washing over his body, circulating in his armpits and his groin, stirring his eyelids.
His tough wisdom:
When my mother was dying in hospital, he thought, when she knew her end was coming, it was not me she looked to but someone who stood behind me: her mother or the ghost of her mother. To me she was a woman but to herself she was still a child calling to her mother to hold her and help her. And her own mother, in the secret life we do not see, was a child too. I come from a line of children without end.
In manmade squalor there is beauty to be found; in the doltish, something special to offer the world; in the darkest despair, new levels of hope can be reached. As we go forward planting the seeds of who we are, especially in times of peril, if we stay true to ourselves, the beauty of our unique human condition makes its mark; meaning is carved out; life is strengthened and affirmed, and it all sprouts from what is inside us. Michael K. knows this.
If you're thinking of reading Life and Times of Michael K. -- and I think you should -- be sure to read the reviews by David and Donald. They do this novel far more justice than I ever could.
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
August 6, 2016
لحن و فضای داستان اون قدر یکنواخت و یکدسته که با وجود همه ی اتفاقات ریز و درشت و همه ی فراز و فرود هایی که به سر مایکل میاد حین خوندن چیزی حس نخواهید کرد. همه چیز عادی به نظر میاد و از هیچ چیز شگفت زده نخواهید شد. فضایی که شاید برای خیلی ها خسته کننده به نظر بیاد
اوایل داستان بخصوص کل فصل اول من رو به شدت یاد "جاده" نوشته ی"کورمکارتی" مینداخت. سفر و جاده و تلاش برای بقا و تک شخصیتی بودن داستان و مهم نبودن سایر افراد. با این تفاوت که دنیای داستان جاده به اخر رسیده و دنیای داستان مایکل اسیر جنگ شده و محدودیت ها و مشکلات نه تنها از نقص های هوشی و ظاهری مایکل که از جنگ زده بودن هم ناشی میشه
یه جور بی اعتنایی به آدم های اطراف و قوانین و محدودیت هاش،عدم وابستگی و کسب استقلال که منجر به تنهایی هم میشه از همون ابتدای قصد سفر کردن مایکل شروع میشه و تو فازهای مختلف به صورت های مختلف خودش رو نشون میده. مایکل مجوز عبور نداره ولی راهی میشه. مادرش وسط راه می میره ولی مایکل به سفرش ادامه میده. وسایل زندگی و حتی لباس نداره. غذایی نیست ولی ادامه میده. دستگیر میشه به اردوگاه و سپس به بیمارستان فرستاده میشه ولی دوباره به سرزمین وحشی رجعت میکنه. به مادر اصلیش به زمین...چرا که آزادی و رهایی شاید تنها دغدغه ی ذهنی مایکله و در انتهای فصل دوم حتی در خیال و توهمات پزشک داستان، تبدیل به رهبری برای شاید نوع بشریت در جستجوی آزادی میشه
علاقه ی نویسنده به زمین با باغبان بودن مایکل و علاقه ی مفرطش به زراعت و بذر و محصولاتش قشنگ نمایش داده شده. انگار که واقعن زمین داره مادری مایکل رو میکنه.اون رو در غاری در اغوش خودش گرفته و خاک خودش و حیوانات ساکن روی خودش رو برای زراعت و تغذیه در اختیارش قرار داده.
قسمتی که مایکل درصدد تهیه سرپناه بود و همه چیز رو با مواد طبیعی ساخت تا بعد از مرگش اثری از هیچ چیز نمی مونه و همه ش به زمین برگرده هم به عنوان نشانه ای زمین دوستی مایکل یا شاید نویسنده نظرم رو جالب کرد
انگار این زمین دوست بودن قدرت بخش هم هست. اشاره میکنم به غلبه ی همه جانبه ی مایکل روی شرایط جسمی و روانیش با وجود همه سختی ها و اعتصاب غذایی های طولانی مدت و همچنان زنده و سرپا بودن
جنگ و توخالی و بی هدف بودنش هم خیلی جاها بخصوص تو فصل دوم و لابلای مکالمات دو پزشک بیمارستان هدف قرار می گیره
کتاب خیلی بیش از اینها حرف برای گفتن داره.فقط باید صبور بود و در مقابل روند داستانی یکنواخت نویسنده تسلیم نشد تا به لذت نهایی رسید
اوایل داستان بخصوص کل فصل اول من رو به شدت یاد "جاده" نوشته ی"کورمکارتی" مینداخت. سفر و جاده و تلاش برای بقا و تک شخصیتی بودن داستان و مهم نبودن سایر افراد. با این تفاوت که دنیای داستان جاده به اخر رسیده و دنیای داستان مایکل اسیر جنگ شده و محدودیت ها و مشکلات نه تنها از نقص های هوشی و ظاهری مایکل که از جنگ زده بودن هم ناشی میشه
یه جور بی اعتنایی به آدم های اطراف و قوانین و محدودیت هاش،عدم وابستگی و کسب استقلال که منجر به تنهایی هم میشه از همون ابتدای قصد سفر کردن مایکل شروع میشه و تو فازهای مختلف به صورت های مختلف خودش رو نشون میده. مایکل مجوز عبور نداره ولی راهی میشه. مادرش وسط راه می میره ولی مایکل به سفرش ادامه میده. وسایل زندگی و حتی لباس نداره. غذایی نیست ولی ادامه میده. دستگیر میشه به اردوگاه و سپس به بیمارستان فرستاده میشه ولی دوباره به سرزمین وحشی رجعت میکنه. به مادر اصلیش به زمین...چرا که آزادی و رهایی شاید تنها دغدغه ی ذهنی مایکله و در انتهای فصل دوم حتی در خیال و توهمات پزشک داستان، تبدیل به رهبری برای شاید نوع بشریت در جستجوی آزادی میشه
علاقه ی نویسنده به زمین با باغبان بودن مایکل و علاقه ی مفرطش به زراعت و بذر و محصولاتش قشنگ نمایش داده شده. انگار که واقعن زمین داره مادری مایکل رو میکنه.اون رو در غاری در اغوش خودش گرفته و خاک خودش و حیوانات ساکن روی خودش رو برای زراعت و تغذیه در اختیارش قرار داده.
قسمتی که مایکل درصدد تهیه سرپناه بود و همه چیز رو با مواد طبیعی ساخت تا بعد از مرگش اثری از هیچ چیز نمی مونه و همه ش به زمین برگرده هم به عنوان نشانه ای زمین دوستی مایکل یا شاید نویسنده نظرم رو جالب کرد
انگار این زمین دوست بودن قدرت بخش هم هست. اشاره میکنم به غلبه ی همه جانبه ی مایکل روی شرایط جسمی و روانیش با وجود همه سختی ها و اعتصاب غذایی های طولانی مدت و همچنان زنده و سرپا بودن
جنگ و توخالی و بی هدف بودنش هم خیلی جاها بخصوص تو فصل دوم و لابلای مکالمات دو پزشک بیمارستان هدف قرار می گیره
کتاب خیلی بیش از اینها حرف برای گفتن داره.فقط باید صبور بود و در مقابل روند داستانی یکنواخت نویسنده تسلیم نشد تا به لذت نهایی رسید
August 3, 2020
"Una pietruzza dura, appena consapevole di quello che ha intorno, chiusa in se stessa e nella sua vita interiore."
"La prima cosa che la levatrice notò di Michael K quando lo aiutò a uscire dal ventre materno fu che aveva il labbro leporino."
Cosa significa vivere in mezzo a sguardi che si distolgono disgustati?
Meglio stare soli dunque e bastare a se stessi.
Un viaggio, tuttavia, cambia tutto.
Città del Capo diventa invivibile con l'infuriare della guerra e Michael costruisce un rudimentale carretto con cui trasportare Anna K, la madre malata, per raggiungere la campagna dove è nata.
Un progetto banale che, però, non fa i conti con la Storia che implacabile incombe sull'uomo semplice.
Il romanzo procede per sottrazione.
Voragini si allargano dentro e fuori il protagonista.
Presenze e bisogni si dissolvono con la leggerezza e la semplicità di un granello di polvere al primo alito di vento.
La madre,
la veglia,
la fame,
la libertà:
tutto pian piano scompare.
"Senza documenti, senza soldi, senza famiglia, senza amici, senza la minima idea di chi tu sia. Il più oscuro degli oscuri, così oscuro da essere un prodigio."
"La prima cosa che la levatrice notò di Michael K quando lo aiutò a uscire dal ventre materno fu che aveva il labbro leporino."
Cosa significa vivere in mezzo a sguardi che si distolgono disgustati?
Meglio stare soli dunque e bastare a se stessi.
Un viaggio, tuttavia, cambia tutto.
Città del Capo diventa invivibile con l'infuriare della guerra e Michael costruisce un rudimentale carretto con cui trasportare Anna K, la madre malata, per raggiungere la campagna dove è nata.
Un progetto banale che, però, non fa i conti con la Storia che implacabile incombe sull'uomo semplice.
Il romanzo procede per sottrazione.
Voragini si allargano dentro e fuori il protagonista.
Presenze e bisogni si dissolvono con la leggerezza e la semplicità di un granello di polvere al primo alito di vento.
La madre,
la veglia,
la fame,
la libertà:
tutto pian piano scompare.
"Senza documenti, senza soldi, senza famiglia, senza amici, senza la minima idea di chi tu sia. Il più oscuro degli oscuri, così oscuro da essere un prodigio."
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