K's dominion is the 'real', that which according to Lacan, 'resists symbolisation absolutely'. The real is that which paradoxically gives meaning to the symbolic order and, at the same time, fundamentally escapes symbolisation. Human beings cannot thrive in the order of the real. They simply suffocate by an absence of meaning. The Life and Times of Michael K. is a philosophical thought experiment: Coetzee has created an avatar which he sends out on the vast and dark ocean of the real to study how he survives in the face of this immensity. What we are reading then is a phenomenological study of a human being who tries to carve out a foothold of utmost symbolic precariousness ('mother', 'earth') at the treshhold of the great black hole of meaninglessness.
I am convinced that Coetzee's argument is basically metaphysical, not ethical. The South African context has led to a strong and unjustified moral and political bias in the reading of this author. J.M. Coetzee is not Nadine Gordimer. Nowhere in this book is there a condemnation of the ravages of war. The violence is simply there, as an inevitable part of the symbolic order. Michael K. is not a pacifist: for him the war simply does not exist.
It is difficult to evaluate this book. As a novel it has enormous merit but also a number of flaws. What troubles me most is the difference in mood and style between the brief second part (narrated by the rehabilitation camp doctor) and the two other sections (where the narrative is told from K's point of view). I believe that Coetzee added the final two parts to show how the human, symbolised world deals with the mystery of K's appearance. Clearly, neither force nor bribery allow to neutralise the disquieting impact of the 'real'. From a didactic point of view this narrative strategy may work, but I am less certain that it enhances the quality of the book as a novel.
The philosophical mind and the writerly imagination are subject to different laws and dynamics. It is very difficult to have them work in sync. Kafka and Nietzsche could do it. Coetzee is not (yet) in the same league. His scintillatingly clear prose and his philosophical acuity are still forming a somewhat uneasy marriage. But this only fuels our hope for a definitive, 21st century masterpiece by this very gifted artist.
I felt that the uneventful ending was effective in portraying the hardship and the struggles of K's life. It almost acts as nastalgic look over his life and im plies that this will continue and will be the life of Michael K.
My three unit english techer brought up an interesting point. How has the least dialogue in the book?(Michael K) Whose voice do you remember most? (Michael K).
This book is an excellent throw back to post coloninailists, for colonised, for the peole in the margins to speak up, to be given a voice, to tell what colonisation is like for the michael k's of this world.
This was an insightful book with a message for us about ourselevs and our world.
After Dino Buzzati and others, this is a new version of Franz Kafka's K, but it falls way behind the original masterly 'Trial' of Joseph K.
