6 - Life & Times of Michael K (1983)

Summary

J. M. coetzee’s fourth novel, Life & Times of Michael K, is in many ways a distinctive work in his early fiction. Not only is it set in an exact geographical location in South Africa, but it also represents a specific reaction to dramatically escalating political developments in that country in the 1970s and 1980s, developments that signaled an approaching apocalypse to many white intellectuals. Apart from approximating fairly closely the political situation in South Africa at the time, Coetzee’s novel also engages directly with the work of Franz Kafka. The name of the hero of this fictional biography makes this clear by gesturing toward the protagonists of two of Kafka’s novels, Josef K. in The Trial and K. in The Castle. Coetzee’s familiarity with Kafka’s work is evident from his essays. “Translating Kafka” (SS, 88–103), for instance, presents a detailed examination of a translation of The Castle; his 1981 essay “Time, Tense, and Aspect in Kafka’s ‘The Burrow’” (DP, 210–32) is focused on Kafka’s use of language. Coetzee has not denied the close relationship of his novel with Kafka’s work, but he has never been very specific about it, either. In one interview he said:

You ask about the impact of Kafka on my own fiction. I acknowledge it, and acknowledge it with what I hope is proper humility. As a writer I am not worthy to loose the latchet of Kafka’s shoe. But I have no regrets about the use of the letter K in Michael K, hubris though it may seem. There is no monopoly on the letter K; or, to put it in another way, it is as much possible to center the universe on the town of Prince Albert in the Cape Province as on Prague. (DP, 199)

There is no doubting Coetzee’s deep respect for Kafka. Writing as a linguist, he demonstrates this in his analysis of time in the short story “The Burrow,” and in his introduction to the German translation of Kafka’s essays he comments: “Franz Kafka is a writer of enigmatic power, whose texts I read with reverent admiration but also with an attentive ear for his language. The more carefully I read the short story ‘The Burrow,’ first in the English translation, then in the original, the more captivated I became by its use of time.”