Is There Joy in Utter Destitution?

Musings on The Life and Times of Michael K.

When I was thirteen, we moved out to a smallholding on the outskirts of Johannesburg. We still refer to it as “The Farm”, but only about a third of the land was arable, the rest was slate, covered with a thin crust of dust and scrub. There was a borehole and an orchard, a vegetable patch, chickens, three horses, two donkeys, a cow, and two pigs. There was also a family of nine – Wilson and Rebecca M. and their seven children – living in two small rooms behind the three garages that sheltered our Japanese sedans from the harsh African sun.

Within a month, my parents had arranged to build two extra prefab rooms, one for the boys and one for the girls, and had ensured that all the children could attend the little mission school behind the quarry. The warm winds swiftly spread word of this charitable new family and soon people from surrounding farms came limping in with sick and injured relatives in need of medical attention. Clothes, food, transport and advice were also liberally dispensed.

Let me stop there, because this is not intended as an ode to my parents’ compassion, but rather as a counterpoint to Coetzee’s vivid examination of the contention that there is freedom and even joy to be found in utter destitution. The author tempts the reader to ask himself: Do those who want or need next to nothing become irrelevant and therefore exempt from subjugation? Although it is risky to assign intent to the work of any author, this is the burning question I have taken from The Life and Times of Michael K – a book about a man who turns his back on an emaciated urban existence and seeks to return to the soil of his ancestors, carrying his dying mother on this back.

On his way, Michael encounters numerous obstacles in a war-torn country – roadblocks, robbers and a detention camp, where one of the inmates has a truly novel perspective on the sinister motives underlying the charity of a regime that cares for its poorest by incarcerating them:

“After that they started dropping pellets in the water and digging latrines and spraying for flies and bringing buckets of soup. But do you think they do it because they love us? Not a hope. The prefer it that we live because we look too terrible when we get sick and die. If we just grew thin and turned into paper and then into ash and floated away, they wouldn't give a stuff for us. They just don't want to get upset. They want to go to sleep feeling good.” (p. 88)

Food for thought, in more ways than one. To what extent is our own sense of charity fuelled by such selfish motives? Who hasn’t turned the sick and dying into paper and ash by simply switching channels on the remote? But Coetzee refuses to tread such beaten tracks. Instead, he takes the reader down the road less rutted. Michael escapes from the detention camp and makes his way out into the boondocks to the abandoned farm where his mother grew up. Here he finds a sense of place that lies somewhere between Freedom and Oblivion, digging a hovel for himself and living off the land, his sole purpose in life being the cultivation of pumpkins. This bucolic idyll is disturbed by a band of rebels, seeking to replenish their water supply at the farm, and later by a company of soldiers who capture and incarcerate Michael, because they suspect he is in cahoots with the guerrillas.

Later, we find Michael in a rehabilitation centre, where he becomes the object of fascination of the doctor who is in charge of guiding him back into society. The second part of the book consists of the doctor’s observations and musings, which again bear testimony to Coetzee’s ability to distil crystal-clear metaphors from murky realities, letting his characters do the thinking and talking:

“He is like a stone, a pebble that, having lain around minding its own business since the dawn of time, is now suddenly picked up and tossed randomly from hand to hand. A hard little stone, barely aware of its surroundings, enveloped in itself and its interior life. He passes through these institutions and camps and hospitals and God knows what else like a stone. Through the intestines of war. An unbearing, unborn creature. I cannot really think of him as a man, though he is older than me by most reckonings.” (p. 135)

All of which brings my back to The Farm, where Rebecca, Wilson and their children were tossed randomly from hand to hand like pebbles. Driven by curiosity rather than compassion, I went back to take a look several years after my parents had returned to the suburbs and I had emigrated to Holland. After negotiating passage with the farm’s new owner, I found Rebecca in her room behind the garages. She embraced me warmly and then gave me a bleak update on the rest of the family – the dead, the dying, the incarcerated, the subjugated – pebbles reduced to dust by poverty’s sledgehammer, a brilliant system of disenfranchisement that constantly reinforced the belief that some are destined to spend their lives as members of an underclass, a caste who could or should have no higher ambition than to seek joy in utter destitution.

And so Coetzee has led me down the path less-rutted, causing me to reassess my own memories, ideas, morals and motives. Yes, the author and I share a South African background, but I am convinced that any reader will find a great deal to ponder, enjoy and recognise in The Life and Times of Michael K.

Tomorrow, when I re-read this review, I will undoubtedly find much to be at fault or at best imprecisely surmised or argued. But perhaps that is greatest strength of Coetzee’s work: it cannot be pinned down and made to reveal its intentions, but continues to provoke new questions and interpretations by remaining always open to new perspectives.

واقعیتش از خواندن کتاب لذت بردم اما نه آنگونه که انتظار داشتم، به گمانم این پیش قضاوت‌هایی که از بعضاً از کتاب‌ها در ذهن داریم بیشتر ما رو نسبت به اونها حساس می‌کنه و نمیگذاره اون حظ وافر رو از کتاب ببریم. کتاب را با ترجمه مینو مشیری خوندم که ترجمه مناسب و روانی بود. هرچند موضوعی که نویسنده برای اثرش انتخاب کرده بود را دوست داشتم اما به نظرم اثر ضرباهنگ کندی داشت و تا حدی مخاطب را دلزده می کرد. بیش از امتیاز سه و نیم نمی تونم به این اثر نمره‌ای بدم و در پایان یک جمله یابود از کتاب :

چند نفر از آدم ها باقی مانده اند که هنوز نه زندانی اند و نه زندان بان؟

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.

1983-iais ši knyga pelnė Booker premiją.
Plėtojamos temos apie individo laisvę, pasirinkimus, gyvenimo prasmę.
Nuotaika slogi, veiksmas vyksta karo fone, daug beviltiškumo, neteisybės.
Skaitėsi sunkokai, Maiklas K - veikėjas, kurį nelengva pamėgti, gimęs su negalia, pažinęs valdiškų namų skonį nuo vaikystės, ir nenori būti pamėgtas. Taip pat nenori, kad jo gailėtų ir šelptų. Nori tik ramybės, deja, vis kam nors užkliūva. Tačiau,  atlikdamas savo beprotišką, o gal didvyrišką kelionę, bėgant puslapiams, laimi augančią pagarbą savo užsispyrimui ir siekiui užsitikrinti tokią laisvę sau, kokios nori pats, nepaisant to, ką mano kiti.

I read the first 20 pages out of 187 and desultorily skimmed the rest. I should really know by now that this is just the sort of book I hate: a spare, almost dystopian allegory that’s not really rooted in time or place and whose characters are symbols you hardly care about. The Childhood of Jesus was similar, as was Jesse Ball’s Census. I didn’t make it through those either. This starts off as Michael K’s quest to get his ailing mother to Prince Albert, but that’s very soon derailed, and with it my interest. I did like how the protagonist, generally referred to as “K,” gets caught up in Kafkaesque bureaucracy. “Why does it matter where they are taking us? There are only two places, up the line and down the line. That is the nature of trains.”

“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”

I cannot say that I really understood this book. Or, to be more precise, its main character. Michael is overall a decent fellow and I felt for him but not with him, simply because I lacked understanding. All Michael wants is to exist and to be left alone completely. He does not want to control the world around him and he does not want to be controlled. Which is a hard thing to achieve when you are starving yourself but do not want to die. Language cannot do it justice either. It's a pretty philosophical novel and I was unaware of its deeper meaning until our teacher pointed it out in class.
Apart from that I enjoyed the writing and the look into South Africa's past during the apartheid regime.

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Beautiful. Life and Times of Michael K is a ghostly escape book. A book that seems to exist in the spiritual space between Kafka and Buddha and perhaps even London (this book shares many prose poem similarities with 'Call of the Wild'). This is a book that can only have been crafted by Coetzee, but also seems like a story that predates Coetzee, language and time.

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.n  

“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.”

n
To escape the downpur the only choice it to vanish, get smaller and smaller…
n  

“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.”

nAnd,n  

“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.”

n
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.n  

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.

nHow 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.
n  

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.

nHe does not seem stupid, after all.

Coetzee è sempre una garanzia per me.
Ci ritrovo quei personaggi di stampo biblico presenti nei grandi romanzi Faulkneriani di cui mi innamoro follemente, ci ritrovo pathos e disperazione, il tutto condito con uno stile asciutto e mai sopra le righe, riflessioni sociopolitiche e filosofiche, ma che vuoi di più?
Uno tra i Nobel più meritati.

È come una pietra, un sasso che, essendosene stato tranquillo là dove stava, a occuparsi solo di sé dall'alba dei tempi, ora viene improvvisamente raccolto e passato a caso di mano in mano. Una pietruzza dura, appena consapevole di quello che ha intorno, chiusa in se stessa e nella sua vita interiore. Passa attraverso istituti e campi e ospedali e Dio solo sa cos'altro come una pietra. Attraverso le viscere della guerra. Una creatura che non doveva nascere, e che non è ancora nata.

A tavola senti di nuovo il bisogno di parlare. Si aggrappò al bordo del tavolo e se ne stette seduto dritto e rigido. Aveva il cuore pieno, voleva ringraziare, ma non gli venivano le parole. I bambini lo fissarono; nessuno disse più una parola, i genitori volsero lo sguardo altrove.

Non pensava a se stesso come a qualcosa di pesante che lasciava segni dietro di sé, ma casomai come a un granello sulla superficie di una terra sprofondata in un sonno troppo profondo per notare il graffio di una zampa di formica, lo stridere dei denti di una farfalla, il cadere della polvere.

Ogni granello di questa terra verrà lavato per bene dalla pioggia, si disse, e asciugato dal sole e spazzato dal vento, prima che ricominci un nuovo ciclo di stagioni.
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.

Ci danno un vecchio ippodromo, una quantità di filo spinato e ci dicono di produrre un cambiamento nell'animo delle persone. Non essendo esperti di anime ma presumendo, cauti, che abbiano qualche connessione con il corpo, mettiamo i nostri prigionieri a fare le flessioni e a marciare avanti e indietro.

رواية مهمة وبديعة بقلم كاتب عملاق.
قد يجدها البعض مملة في بعض المواضع وخصوصاً في الفصل الأول الأطول من الفصلين الآخرين في الرواية المؤلفة من ثلاثة فصول, ولكن ذلك كان مقصوداً على ما أظن من المؤلف, الإطالة والوصف التفصيلي لبعض الأحداث والأماكن, وذلك لإيضاح الفكرة التي يريد أن يوصلها عبر الاسترسال في الكلام عن ذلك الشخص الغريب, مايكل ك , وحياته الحزينة. بؤس الإنسانية وفقرها الروحي, ظلم البشر لبعضهم البعض وعدم قدرتهم على فهم المختلفين عنهم, العبثية في الحروب والموت الناجم عنها.
رواية جديرة بالقراءة حقاً.
ملاحظة:
النسخة التي قرأتها غير موجودة في الموقع, وهي بعنوان: عصر مايكل ك وحياته.
إصدارات : المركز القومي للترجمة _القاهرة_ 2015.
ترجمة: سمير عبد ربه.

دوستان، با نویسنده‌ای بسیار عجیب رودررو شدم و از این بابت خیلی زیاد خوشحالم.
آقای «کوتزی» برای من شخصیتی رو خلق کرد که امکان نداره تا مدت‌ها فراموشش کنم. اون برای من «مایکل ک» رو خلق کرد.
شخصیتی که همیشه توی کتاب‌ها دنبالش میگشتم، شخصیتی که برام غیرقابل باور بود و هر لحظه از کتاب من نمیتونستم خودم رو جای مایکل بذارم بلکه من کنارش بودم.چون نویسنده با قدرت تمام سعی داشت هنرش رو در توصیف اتفاقات و حوادث به رخ خواننده بکشه و من هرلحظه احساس میکردم کنار مایکل هستم، کنار مایکل بودم وقتی به دنیا اومد، وقتی مادرش برای اولین بار اونو دید، وقتی بزرگ شد و مدرسه رفت یا وقتی باغبونی میکرد، وقتی که جنگ شده بود و مجبور بود توی سرما بدون پتو باشه و توی گرما بدون آب.
گاهی دلم میخواست کتاب رو ببندم و داد بزنم؛ مایکل، من همراهتم.
و من همراه مایکل بودم.
چون تاثیری که آدم‌ها بر دیگری می‌گذارند در نظر من بسیار قابل ستایش هست.
و مایکل روی خیلی‌ها تاثیر گذاشت.

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

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

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


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


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