{"id":71,"date":"2008-07-18T00:01:27","date_gmt":"2008-07-18T04:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookse.wordpress.com\/?p=71"},"modified":"2017-09-23T17:21:34","modified_gmt":"2017-09-23T21:21:34","slug":"jm-coetzees-life-and-times-of-michael-k","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2008\/07\/18\/jm-coetzees-life-and-times-of-michael-k\/","title":{"rendered":"J.M. Coetzee: Life and Times of Michael K<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Life and Times of Michael K<\/em><\/strong><\/span>
\nby J.M. Coetzee (1983) <\/span>
\nVintage (1998) <\/span>
\n184 pp<\/span><\/p>\n

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[fusion_dropcap boxed=”no” boxed_radius=”” class=”” id=”” color=”#003366″]I[\/fusion_dropcap]’m pretty sure that even though it didn’t win the Best of the Booker J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace<\/em> was the runner up. To me, anyway, it was the second most substantive book on the shortlist, and it seemed like most people I talked to\u00a0who didn’t\u00a0vote for Midnight’s Children<\/em> voted for Disgrace<\/em>. At any rate, I thought it\u00a0might be nice\u00a0to take another look at an earlier Coetzee novel that won the Booker Prize but that was not considered for the Best of the Booker: Life and Times of Michael K<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Here we meet an apparent simpleton, Michael K. He lives near his mother in a city that is getting torn up by war. Though he’s comfortable in his routine,\u00a0K decides to hook\u00a0a cart\u00a0up to a bicycle so he can take his mother away, back to the village where she grew up. The book is divided up into three parts: Part I is from K’s perspective; Part II is from the perspective of the doctor who treats K; and the very short Part III is again from K’s perspective.<\/p>\n

As in Disgrace<\/em>, Coetzee’s prose is sparse\u00a0yet elegant, painful, and full of irony.<\/p>\n

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

Unfortunately — and it’s no surprise — K’s plans do not pan out. The consequences are ugly. But somehow, the book is beautiful. This is one of those rare works of art that by showing ugliness gets the reader (who pays attention) to recognize, more deeply, beauty. I’m not talking about catharsis here. This book doesn’t necessarily dwell on the tragedies that occur — they\u00a0are presented here\u00a0more like an inconvenience. I’m not sure how it happens, but while reading this book — this book about war and about one man’s physical decline as he attempts to become invisible — during the day I looked around me and saw so many wonderful things. Things looked brighter. I was happier. It was not because I was contrasting my life with that of Michael K. It was because in his life I could see some fundamental beauty which I could then recognize in my own. I would read the sad way Michael K passes time while alone or in captivity and feel some fundamental truth, some elemental beauty even among the ugliness of human nature. For example, this simple passage from early in the book is simple, its momentary bliss is rare, yet for all its simpleness it shouts a message louder than the ravages going on around the characters:<\/p>\n

[H]e was again able to take his mother, wrapped in coat and blanket, for a seafront ride that brought a smile to her lips.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I liked this book more than Disgrace<\/em>. In both, Coetzee has a way of using simple words in seemingly simple sentences, coming up with a fabulously understated style:<\/p>\n

He had a feeling that he was losing his grip on why he had come all these hundreds of miles, and had to pace about with his hands over his face before he felt better again.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But Life and Times of Michael K<\/em> felt more compassionate than Disgrace<\/em>. Because Coetzee had to recognize the fundamental beauty I talked about earlier, I felt more drawn to K and to the writer. Simple passages like the one here made me feel like Coetzee was not merely defending a character — as I felt in Disgrace<\/em>, where Lurie is almost completely unlikeable on the surface — but also working hard to get the reader to love a character that he loved:<\/p>\n

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

So far, I’ve written mostly about the beauty I found in Michael K. But here I want to look at some of the horrors I encountered along the way. When Michael K’s mother died his silence left me stunned. He was frightened of his mother, and it was interesting that because of this he is almost scared to grieve for her. Though he seems to be running away from the war to Prince Albert, I felt that mostly he was still trying to carry out her will, and not because he loved her just that much but because he was frightened of what would happen to him if he didn’t. This hold she had on him made him fairly impotent when she was alive. Now she’s dead and his body too begins to waste away.<\/p>\n

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

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