Great African Reads discussion

Hi all,

Belated best wishes for 2010. Although I'm not a regular contributor to discussions, I do drop in occasionally to browse the threads.

I recently posted a review of Coetzee's Life and Times of Michael K. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on book/review and will try to make time for any discussion that may ensue.

Warm wishes from snowy Amsterdam,

R.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61...

Richard wrote: "Hi all,

Belated best wishes for 2010. Although I'm not a regular contributor to discussions, I do drop in occasionally to browse the threads.

I recently posted a review of Coetzee's Life and..."

Happy New Year to you, too, richard!

A few paragraphs in to your review, i fetched the book from our collection at work. your initial question is quite compelling. i noticed the book is only about 250 pages...so i'll probably move it to the top of my stack. has anybody else already read it? i've read a couple of Coetzee books, but not this one.

It's a crystal clear, lightning read, certainly for a reader of your calibre.

I'll try to get it this week and read along.

After all, I'm only doing the Comoros book, Anna Karenina and Our Mutual Friend right now. Oh and No Ordinary Time for history group.

Richard wrote: "It's a crystal clear, lightning read, certainly for a reader of your calibre."

lol...thanks, richard. it's true, though, that the other two books of his that i've read, i've read in two sittings or so. i brought michael k. home with me from work yesterday and started reading it on the train. and now i'm home sick with a cold...but i'm trying to wrap up this other novel that i had set aside while i read "a fish caught in time." the novel is a fast read so i'm sure, as long as my cold cooperates and doesn't interfere with my eyes, i should finish it today or tomorrow morning and then should be able to read michael k. over the weekend. it's not exactly an uplifting read so i'm sure i'll thoroughly enjoy it...and then i'll finish reading your review of it, which i expect to also thoroughly enjoy.

Andrea wrote: "After all, I'm only doing the Comoros book, Anna Karenina and Our Mutual Friend right now. Oh and No Ordinary Time for history group."

yes, squeeze in michael k.! i mean, you should be just about done with the comoros book by now. and you are allowed to read anna karenina forever...that's what epic novels are for...so really that's just two other books in addition to michael k (and michael k will be short and fast).... so no problem for you, right? :D

i finished it today...i liked it a ton more than either of the other two coetzee books i've read. it was very melancholy and i enjoyed that. i read your review all the way through, richard, on my ride home...i'm curious though what you mean by "joy" of destitution...i'm not sure i'd call K's way of being joy-like...i think it is more a form of resignation to his lot in life. i thought his acceptance of loneliness and detachment from the rest of society turned into a type of contentment once he was completely on his own. i thought it was fascinating to read a writer's take on an intellectually challenged person's thoughts/perceptions/experiences of life. somehow Michael K was completely believable to me and his patience with the rest of us was rather humbling.

Andrea wrote: "After all, I'm only doing the Comoros book, Anna Karenina and Our Mutual Friend right now. Oh and No Ordinary Time for history group."

Shame on you, just four books at the moment? Honestly, I'd be embarassed to say so......
No, just kidding of course, to be sincere, just AK is enough for me at the moment, it's so rich and deep i can't imagine delving into anything else before finishing it - but reading more books at a time is a skill i've never developped unfortunately....

Joy, contentment, bliss - a sense of being at one with the world, far from its other inhabitants.

The issue of K's intellectual capacity has been raised in several other reviews here. I'm inclined to argue that he seems intellectually challenged to us because his priorities, decisions and responses are unlike our own. But that could also be a sign of superior intelligence. He does not wish to play our game. He does not care about our game. Like the "weird kid" in the playground, engrossed in a bottle cap, who is briefly swamped or disturbed by the playing horde and then returns to his own little universe.

i thought of that after i posted...that joy doesn't have to always be on the ecstatic end of the happiness spectrum. and "joy of destitution" definitely sounds better than "contentment with destitution" or "acceptance of destitution."
i also wondered about michael k's "real" intelligence...but nonetheless i'm impressed with coetzee's ability to express the being-ness of someone who is so different from most other people. my niece is one of those "weird" kids (she's on the autistic spectrum) but she is absolutely no dummy. i used to say she has an extra marble...sometimes i think she simply doesn't believe that anything people ask of her (doing her math worksheet, for example) is worth her time (so she refuses to do things and comes across as extremely uncooperative)...and often i think maybe she's right! lol.
anyway, i especially enjoyed everyone's misunderstanding of michael k's feelings toward his mother...and i liked the imagery of her with flaming hair (or however it was described...i don't have the book in front of me).