Though K was called a monkey by a farmer (a Boer, perhaps, for boer means farmer), two cops were also labeled as such by the angry blond captain.
In the camp for vagrants, an older man told K, "What they would really likethis is my opinionis for the camp to be miles away in the middle of the Koup out of sight. Then we could come on tiptoe in the middle of the night like fairies and do their work, dig their gardens, wash their pots, and be gone in the morning leaving everything nice and clean."
Although that describes Apartheid perfectly, that whites only want blacks for their labor, but otherwise to be mute and invisible, it is, again, reframed in Marxist terms, but only vaguely.
For a novel about South Africa, Apartheid, post-Apartheid or just general collapse, Life and Times of Michael K remains, ultimately, too abstract. For something much more grounded, thus more terrifying, we must turn to Disgrace, published 16 years later, when more evidence has been gathered.
In 1990, Mandela was released. In 1993, four blacks used hand grenades and assault weapons to kill 11 whites and coloreds inside Saint James Church in Cape Town. Fifty-eight more were wounded. In 1994, Mandela was elected president, marking the end of white rule. In 1998, the three surviving assailants of the Saint James Church Massacre were given amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Only one, Gcinikhaya Makoma, had been jailed, and only for 5 Â ½ years.
(In 2002, Makoma was arrested for robbing a cash truck, but the badly prosecuted case was thrown out. In 2007, this enterprising revolutionary was finally sentenced to 46 years for one more murder, also in Cape Town.)
Still in Cape Town, Coetzee published his masterful Disgrace in 1999. Written during the immediate aftermath of Apartheid, it introduces all the key themes, or problems, that still define South Africa.
For me, though, its beginning is not too inviting, for I'm not keen on having a professor as protagonist, especially if his sex life, yuck, yuck, yuck, is described. Sure enough, the lickably lekker coed shows up in chapter 2, right after the tall and slim colored whore in chapter 1!
Coetzee is not subjecting us to David Lurie, professor of literature, lover of Byron and amateur operatist, because he himself was an academic. If it is in any way a self-portrait, then it is a supremely detached and damning one. Though Lurie may be seen as an overly civilized man in a society turned barbaric, it's not quite that simple.
Lurie admits he hasn't "much of an eye for anything, except pretty girls," but that's alright, for one mustn't check one's passion. He quotes Blake, "Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." So well-read, Lurie can always spring some great line to justify anything.
Sometimes, just dropping a name is enough, for he can count on his audience to be culturally at sea, "Follow your temperament. It is not a philosophy, he would not dignify it with that name. It is a rule, like the Rule of St Benedict."
Saint Benedict actually advises, "Let him keep himself at every moment from sins and vices, whether of the mind, the tongue, the hands, the feet, or the self-will, and check also the desires of the flesh ["] We must be on our guard, therefore, against evil desires, for death lies close by the gate of pleasure."
Ah, but the temperament is fixed and set, Lurie's convinced. "The skull, followed by the temperament: the two hardest parts of the body." Unzipping his stiff temperament, Lurie cites a teacher of self-control. Coetzee seeds his text with lots of wicked irony. A seemingly casual word, gesture or concept can also boomerang much later to whack or torch you.
When the verb burn first appears, it's flameless, merely a figure of speech in discussing Wordsworth. Next, we have burning meat, but only at a braai in a farmer's market. Lurie then remembers his students' dullness to the perfective, as in burnt, "an action carried through to its conclusion." Lurie gets his perfective burning conclusion alright, when he's burnt. Just before it happens, Lurie even declares that real actions are needed instead of symbolism.
All that will come. Meanwhile, we're still with a middle-aged man extending his salad days. Set and hardened, Lurie can't help but seduce, and rather skillfully, given his experience with the pink chase, a student with "small breasts" and hips "as slim as a twelve-year-old's." "A child! he thinks: No more than a child! What am I doing? Yet his heart lurches with desire."
According to this poetry swooning professor, it is a crime against nature to snuff out desire, and many of us would agree, since it is the most enlightened and au courant stance. "'My case rests on the rights of desire,' he says. 'On the god who makes even the small birds quiver.'" Uninhibited, unchained and unleashed all sound good. Lurie doesn't rape his student, after all.
In the camp for vagrants, an older man told K, "What they would really likethis is my opinionis for the camp to be miles away in the middle of the Koup out of sight. Then we could come on tiptoe in the middle of the night like fairies and do their work, dig their gardens, wash their pots, and be gone in the morning leaving everything nice and clean."
Although that describes Apartheid perfectly, that whites only want blacks for their labor, but otherwise to be mute and invisible, it is, again, reframed in Marxist terms, but only vaguely.
For a novel about South Africa, Apartheid, post-Apartheid or just general collapse, Life and Times of Michael K remains, ultimately, too abstract. For something much more grounded, thus more terrifying, we must turn to Disgrace, published 16 years later, when more evidence has been gathered.
(In 2002, Makoma was arrested for robbing a cash truck, but the badly prosecuted case was thrown out. In 2007, this enterprising revolutionary was finally sentenced to 46 years for one more murder, also in Cape Town.)
Still in Cape Town, Coetzee published his masterful Disgrace in 1999. Written during the immediate aftermath of Apartheid, it introduces all the key themes, or problems, that still define South Africa.
For me, though, its beginning is not too inviting, for I'm not keen on having a professor as protagonist, especially if his sex life, yuck, yuck, yuck, is described. Sure enough, the lickably lekker coed shows up in chapter 2, right after the tall and slim colored whore in chapter 1!
Coetzee is not subjecting us to David Lurie, professor of literature, lover of Byron and amateur operatist, because he himself was an academic. If it is in any way a self-portrait, then it is a supremely detached and damning one. Though Lurie may be seen as an overly civilized man in a society turned barbaric, it's not quite that simple.
Lurie admits he hasn't "much of an eye for anything, except pretty girls," but that's alright, for one mustn't check one's passion. He quotes Blake, "Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." So well-read, Lurie can always spring some great line to justify anything.
Sometimes, just dropping a name is enough, for he can count on his audience to be culturally at sea, "Follow your temperament. It is not a philosophy, he would not dignify it with that name. It is a rule, like the Rule of St Benedict."
Saint Benedict actually advises, "Let him keep himself at every moment from sins and vices, whether of the mind, the tongue, the hands, the feet, or the self-will, and check also the desires of the flesh ["] We must be on our guard, therefore, against evil desires, for death lies close by the gate of pleasure."
Ah, but the temperament is fixed and set, Lurie's convinced. "The skull, followed by the temperament: the two hardest parts of the body." Unzipping his stiff temperament, Lurie cites a teacher of self-control. Coetzee seeds his text with lots of wicked irony. A seemingly casual word, gesture or concept can also boomerang much later to whack or torch you.
When the verb burn first appears, it's flameless, merely a figure of speech in discussing Wordsworth. Next, we have burning meat, but only at a braai in a farmer's market. Lurie then remembers his students' dullness to the perfective, as in burnt, "an action carried through to its conclusion." Lurie gets his perfective burning conclusion alright, when he's burnt. Just before it happens, Lurie even declares that real actions are needed instead of symbolism.
All that will come. Meanwhile, we're still with a middle-aged man extending his salad days. Set and hardened, Lurie can't help but seduce, and rather skillfully, given his experience with the pink chase, a student with "small breasts" and hips "as slim as a twelve-year-old's." "A child! he thinks: No more than a child! What am I doing? Yet his heart lurches with desire."
According to this poetry swooning professor, it is a crime against nature to snuff out desire, and many of us would agree, since it is the most enlightened and au courant stance. "'My case rests on the rights of desire,' he says. 'On the god who makes even the small birds quiver.'" Uninhibited, unchained and unleashed all sound good. Lurie doesn't rape his student, after all.
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