false 6192 45 David Lurie is hardly the hero of his own life, or anyone else's. At 52, the protagonist of <I>Disgrace</I> is at the end of his professional and romantic game, and seems to be deliberately courting disaster. Long a professor of modern languages at Cape Town University College, he has recently been relegated to adjunct professor of communications at the same institution, now pointedly renamed Cape Technical University: <i>Although he devotes hours of each day to his new discipline, he finds its first premise, as enunciated in the Communications 101 handbook, preposterous: "Human society has created language in order that we may communicate our thoughts, feelings and intentions to each other." His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origins of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul. </i> Twice married and twice divorced, his magnetic looks on the wane, David rather cruelly seduces one of his students, and his conduct unbecoming is soon uncovered. In his eighth novel, J.M. Coetzee might have been content to write a searching academic satire. But in <I>Disgrace</I> he is intent on much more, and his art is as uncompromising as his main character, though infinitely more complex. Refusing to play the public-repentance game, David gets himself fired--a final gesture of contempt. Now, he thinks, he will write something on Byron's last years. Not empty, unread criticism, "prose measured by the yard," but a libretto. To do so, he heads for the Eastern Cape and his daughter's farm. In her mid-20s, Lucy has turned her back on city sophistications: with five hectares, she makes her living by growing flowers and produce and boarding dogs. "Nothing," David thinks, "could be more simple." But nothing, in fact, is more complicated--or, in the new South Africa, more dangerous. Far from being the refuge he has sought, little is safe in Salem. Just as David has settled into his temporary role as farmworker and unenthusiastic animal-shelter volunteer, he and Lucy are attacked by three black men. Unable to protect his daughter, David's disgrace is complete. Hers, however, is far worse. <p> There is much more to be explored in Coetzee's painful novel, and few consolations. It would be easy to pick up on his title and view <I>Disgrace</I> as a complicated working-out of personal and political shame and responsibility. But the author is concerned with his country's history, brutalities, and betrayals. Coetzee is also intent on what measure of soul and rights we allow animals. After the attack, David takes his role at the shelter more seriously, at last achieving an unlikely home and some measure of love. In Coetzee's recent Princeton lectures, <I>The Lives of Animals</I>, an aging novelist tells her audience that the question that occupies all lab and zoo creatures is, "Where is home, and how do I get there?" David, though still all-powerful compared to those he helps dispose of, is equally trapped, equally lost. <p> <I>Disgrace</I> is almost willfully plain. Yet it possesses its own lean, heartbreaking lyricism, most of all in its descriptions of unwanted animals. At the start of the novel, David tells his student that poetry either speaks instantly to the reader--"a flash of revelation and a flash of response"--or not at all. Coetzee's book speaks differently, its layers and sadnesses endlessly unfolding. <I>--Kerry Fried</I> 1882981 1999 Disgrace (Penguin Essential Edition) total:8962|5:2555|4:3428|3:2116|2:663|1:200| 8962 34361 11383 1087 5 25 false false Sun Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 23 12:29:26 -0800 2009 Fri Mar 13 10:49:44 -0700 2009 Twilight. Yes, Twilight: perfectly perfect young people falling in love and never growing old. God, I hope that’s what’s in store for me there. I need an antidote to Disgrace.
   It affected me more than I thought it could, in ways I hadn’t imagined possi...more...]]> 3 16 false false Mon Feb 23 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 27 06:30:00 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 23 07:39:18 -0800 2009 this review has been hidden due to hormonal, maybe not so justified, incoherent rants… click here to view

Because that’s what you’re about to get.

David Lurie is a playah. In the full urban dictionary sense ...more...]]> 4 11 false true Sun Jan 11 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 04 19:45:24 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 11 22:18:38 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 11 false false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Tue Jul 24 14:41:05 -0700 2007 Tue Jul 24 15:20:24 -0700 2007 more...]]> 3 9 false false Wed Dec 26 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sat Dec 22 19:15:32 -0800 2007 Sun Feb 10 11:42:08 -0800 2008
There was a revi...more...]]> 4 6 false false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Jun 24 19:15:46 -0700 2007 Fri Jun 29 14:14:11 -0700 2007 more...]]> 0 6 false false Wed Jan 02 11:30:25 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 02 11:30:25 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 4 false false Mon Sep 10 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 27 13:35:21 -0700 2007 Tue May 27 11:41:16 -0700 2008 Disgrace for many years but am now thoroughly glad I did, especially with the movie adaptation coming out (starring John Malkovich).

It's a quick read - I read it in about 6 hours (non-continual) - and very light on its feet. For all that, it deals with ma...more...]]> 2 4 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 13 15:15:59 -0700 2007 Fri Nov 16 09:13:06 -0800 2007
I looked through the GoodReads comments concerning this book and saw a lot of positive feedback. But not one of those comments ta...more...]]> 4 3 false false Thu Mar 19 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 16 00:44:46 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 19 09:25:19 -0700 2009 If you're a young white woman and choose not to leave the ground you were born on (i.e. South Africa), you pay...more...]]> 3 2 false false Mon Apr 28 07:54:36 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 28 19:49:11 -0700 2008 Disgrace...more...]]> 3 2 false false Tue Mar 11 12:35:13 -0700 2008 Tue Mar 11 13:29:35 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 3 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Wed Jul 11 20:53:20 -0700 2007 Thu May 01 16:39:50 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 2 false false Sun Sep 02 18:51:52 -0700 2007 Thu Jul 19 15:12:39 -0700 2007 Sat Aug 18 17:08:15 -0700 2007 And, what I foun...more...]]> 3 1 false false Tue Sep 29 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Sep 25 23:56:06 -0700 2009 Fri Nov 06 18:06:26 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3 1 false false Tue Aug 19 15:09:08 -0700 2008 Sat Sep 06 00:52:13 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Tue Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Jul 14 06:40:01 -0700 2008 Mon Jul 14 07:58:38 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Mon Jun 16 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue May 20 18:40:02 -0700 2008 Tue Jun 17 12:51:23 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Mon Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Oct 13 15:25:32 -0700 2007 Sat Oct 27 17:04:05 -0700 2007 more...]]> 2 1 false false Thu Aug 09 13:53:32 -0700 2007 Thu Aug 09 13:53:32 -0700 2007 more...]]>