Writing through the Lens

Towards the end of 1979, soon after the Waiting for the Barbarians manuscript had been completed, Coetzee began thinking about his next book and embarked on a lengthy writing process that would eventually result in the publication of Life & Times of Michael K (1983). As discussed more fully in Chapter 4, the influence of photography and film on Coetzee’s second book, In the Heart of the Country , was formative and pervasive and was also acknowledged by Coetzee. 1 But it is not generally recognised that this interest in the montage effects of avant-garde cinema persisted in subsequent fictions. Precisely during the formative period of the genesis of Life & Times of Michael K , Coetzee was drafting a screenplay version of In the Heart of the Country , and these parallel creative writing processes, in different genres, led to fascinating intermedial entanglements that were ultimately generative for the emerging novel. While writing Life & Times of Michael K , Coetzee was re-envisaging his earlier novel as a film, in effect re-imagining its story through the cinematic lens.