Disgrace

by J.M. Coetzee

published

April 6th 2000 (first published 1999) by Vintage UK

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binding

Paperback, 224 pages

literary awards

Booker Prize Winner 1999; 1999 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

isbn

0099289520 (isbn13: 9780099289524)

description

David Lurie is hardly the hero of his own life, or anyone else's. At 52, the protagonist of Disgrace is at the end of his professional and roma...more

[close] David Lurie is hardly the hero of his own life, or anyone else's. At 52, the protagonist of Disgrace 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: <blockquote> 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. </blockquote> 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 Disgrace 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.

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 Disgrace 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, The Lives of Animals, 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.

Disgrace 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. --Kerry Fried [close]

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Eleni rated it:

(review of isbn 0143036378)

04/28/08

I am traveling to Tanzania this summer with a group of seven other students and in preparation for our trip, we were assigned to read two books written by African authors. I choose the novel Disgrace by John Maxwell Coetzee, a South African author who won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Disgrace is the story of David Lurie, a white professor of English at a technical university in Cape Town, South Africa. He is a lonely man, twice divorced, who craves adventure because of his discontent in his m...more I am traveling to Tanzania this summer with a group of seven other students and in preparation for our trip, we were assigned to read two books written by African authors. I choose the novel Disgrace by John Maxwell Coetzee, a South African author who won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Disgrace is the story of David Lurie, a white professor of English at a technical university in Cape Town, South Africa. He is a lonely man, twice divorced, who craves adventure because of his discontent in his monotonous job. He finds adventure and pleasure in sexual interactions with women, usually prostitutes, who help to overcome his otherwise pretty boring life. After encountering his “regular” prostitute outside of their scheduled times, he finds himself cut off from her services and looking for a new sexual encounter. He identifies one of his students, Melanie, as a possible romantic interest and pursues her intent on sleeping with her. Melanie is a naive girl who does not know how to deal with Lurie’s infatuation with her and passively submits herself to him while he goes quite near the line of taking advantage of her. After their encounter, Melanie does not show up in class and Lurie covers for her. The board at the university catches drift of his affair with Melanie from her parents and the board calls him to stand before them and give them reason not to dismiss him and although they attempt to make sense of Lurie’s testimony, they decide to dismiss him. Lurie moves to the countryside to live with his daughter, with whom he never had a close relationship with, and learns to live in a completely different environment than in the city. While he is with Lucy, his daughter, a terrible incident occurs at the farm transforming their relationship as well as Lurie’s view on his mannerisms and people.
Throughout this book, Lurie questions his place in life and how he fits into other people’s lives. At first he is an egotistical middle-aged man who does not realize how lonely he really is, but because of his dismissal from the university he begins to understand the importance of relationships with those you truly love. His relationship with his daughter is strained and is not easily repaired but the longer he lives with her, the more he begins to appreciate her way of life and her ideology. He cannot comprehend some of the incredibly selfless things that she does on a regular basis as well as her reaction to the brutal act that is taken out on her by three black men when they attack the farm. Lurie realizes that he will never be as good a person as his daughter is but he finally understands this and becomes a better person because of this understanding.
Although Lurie is the protagonist of the novel and his is the story that is followed throughout the whole book, Lucy’s character is the martyr to Lurie’s selfish egotistical character. She takes in dogs that are not wanted and cares for them as best she can. And when the three men attack, she does not hold them responsible as she feels that it is repayment for the mistreatment of black people during apartheid in her country. Lucy’s character does not appear complex at first but as the novel progresses, different layers emerge revealing a woman with a big heart. She is a white woman as well as probably being lesbian (I say this because the book mentions a former female companion) in a predominantly black community in the countryside. Her way of life contradicts that of the father whose absence during her childhood is reflected when she refers to him as simply “David”. Lucy’s way of life perplexes her father until he understands the meaning of the simple things in her life. As he becomes involved at the animal shelter, he does not understand how the woman who works there is able to put the numerous abandoned dogs to sleep but as he spends more time there he begins to understand that it is simply what has to be done and that even though she is essentially killing the dogs, she provides them with as much love as possible before they are killed. This realization by Lurie allows him to accept that not everything is black and white, most of the time it is grey, with no clear answer.
Understanding and realization becomes a strong theme in the novel as Lurie progresses through his journey after his affair with Melanie. He becomes a better man because of his evaluation of his daughters’ strengths and weaknesses and learns from her interactions with other people. Every Sunday Lucy takes the flowers and vegetables she cultivates to the market to sell and Lurie is astonished by how much more mature she is compared to him, “So: a new adventure. His daughter, whom once upon a time he used to drive to school and ballet class, to the circus and the skating rink, is taking him on an outing, showing him life, showing him this other, unfamiliar world.” (p.72) It is not as much a story of Lurie as a middle-aged man but as a man who never learned how to be his own person with mature, responsible and good intentions.
As with the theme, the tone of the novel shifts as Lurie’s journey shifts. At the beginning the tone is somewhat melancholic but by the end of the book, the author seems to have hope for Lurie and that somehow Lurie is going to be a better man. The tone directly connects to the title, Disgrace, which can refer to Lurie’s disgrace of his affair in Cape Town but more likely represents the disgrace that Lurie feels when he cannot protect his daughter from the brutal attack. He cannot come to terms with how she does not do anything about it and in a way it hurts him even more because of the responsibility he feels towards her. This moment in the novel completely changes the way that Lurie sees his Lucy, he no longer sees her as merely his kin but begins to truly care for her wellbeing. Through the disgrace of not being able to save his child from being hurt he is able to love again and live for the simple things once again.
I enjoyed the ending of this story but did not find the initial half of the book to be nearly as good. The ending gave me a sense of hope and made me care about what happened to the characters because of the image that you were left with. I would recommend this novel to someone who enjoys cynical books or someone who has the patience for a hopeful ending.

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Liza rated it:

(review of isbn 0143036378)

02/10/08

Read in December, 2007

I would like very much to be able to coherently refute this novel. After finishing it I felt as though I had maybe been taken in because while reading it I accepted its premise(s), but afterwards I wondered if what had seemed true really held up to the glare of daylight.

There was a review by James Wood that I liked a lot, and here is a quote from it: “But people like novels that, however intelligently, tell them what to think, that table ideas and issues - novels that are discussable. Abo...more I would like very much to be able to coherently refute this novel. After finishing it I felt as though I had maybe been taken in because while reading it I accepted its premise(s), but afterwards I wondered if what had seemed true really held up to the glare of daylight.

There was a review by James Wood that I liked a lot, and here is a quote from it: “But people like novels that, however intelligently, tell them what to think, that table ideas and issues - novels that are discussable. Above all, and most depressingly, people like allegory, and Coetzee's books always incline toward this mode. Coetzee is very subtle and refined, so that much of the time he does not really seem to be telling us what to think; better still, his novels self-consciously display an involvement in their own modes of presentation, so that Coetzee will often seem to be telling us what to think about being told what to think (which is still a species of telling people what to think, of course). Disgrace, which is a kind of South African version of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons - an issue novel about the generation wars - is a novel with which it is almost impossible to find fault. Precisely because he is a very good writer and not a great writer, Coetzee emits prize-pheromones.” The full review is here: http://www.powells.com/review/...

It does seem, in a way, to be too good without being good enough. It goes straight, if anything too precisely, to the jugular on some very particular issues: men and women, family, colonialism, rationality and its limits, irrationality and its dangers. Then (and I feel a little bit nervous about how there doesn’t seem to be more mention of this) at moments it really does offer something very much like a cheap form of redemption, doesn’t it? The protagonist goes on his knees before the family of the woman he has (in my opinion) mistreated. Literally goes on his knees. And what good does that do anyone? He rescues dogs and then gives them up to the inevitable slaughter. Come on, now. If you have been so seemingly brutally offering up such a dark version of the truth, what could you mean by these sorts of images? They seem either mocking or appeasing, and neither seems right.

Now here is a review I found even more disturbing than the book itself: http://www.salon.com/books/rev.... Here is a part that really stuck in my gullet: “Readers may well be repelled by David's arrogance, and his conduct with Melanie has fallen only a little short of rape. But judging him is not a simple matter. He is a student of Romanticism whose unrealized ambition is to write a chamber opera about Byron's life in Italy. No matter how little of our sympathy David may command, he has a point: If he genuinely believed his passion for Melanie was the real thing, the flame he had been waiting his whole life to feel, then how could he not pursue her avidly?” Oh, come on. Come on! Perhaps this is beside the point, but now that the question has been raised, can’t we agree that he pursued her not avidly enough? He didn’t even take the time to seduce her properly, and so the point becomes, in my book, not that he was a student of Romanticism but that he wasn’t a very good student of Romanticism.

Then this sticks maybe worse, from the same review: “If David actually reclaims some dignity by the end of "Disgrace," it is only because he gives up everything, gives up more than a dog ever could -- his daughter, his ideas about justice and language, his dream of the opera on Byron and even the dying animals he has learned to love without reservation, without thought for himself.” Looking for this kind of resolution! It’s where we get a little too book-of-the-month, if not a little too 700-club. (For starters: is it really virtuous that he has given up his daughter?) And I am stuck trying to refute this book review, because in all honesty I couldn’t say that the book itself presented anything quite reducible to these platitudes. But it came too close, too close. And if you’re going to do a thing like that, it only seems right to go all the way or not at all. All the same, I would recommend it because it is at least interesting enough to disagree with. ...less

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Shannon rated it:

05/27/08

bookshelves: 2007, bookclub, contemporary-fiction, favourite

Read in September, 2007

I had had no interest in reading 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 many political, cultural, racial and social issues and is definitely worthy of some in-depth study at college or university level.

David Lurie is a white Professor at Cape Town Technical University; s...more I had had no interest in reading 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 many political, cultural, racial and social issues and is definitely worthy of some in-depth study at college or university level.

David Lurie is a white Professor at Cape Town Technical University; shunted out of the classics and into "communications", he can teach one subject of his own choosing each year. This year, he's teaching Romantic Poetry - he's a Wordsworth buff and is trying to write a book on Byron's time in Italy.

He's twice divorced at 52, with a daughter, Lucy, in her mid-twenties living on a farmstead in the country. He's a womaniser, and when he isn't sleeping with a colleague or a tourist backpacking through South Africa, he resorts to prostitutes. He styles himself as a servant of Eros, a slave of desire, and believes that a woman's beauty should be shared - with him.

So it's no surprise when he seduces, in a faintly creepy, dirty-old-man kind of way, a student in his romantic poetry class. She's unreceptive, but does little to dissuade him or resist him, while he is simply following that flutter of lust he gets when he looks at her. Soon the scandal is out, and he does not even try to keep his job.

He empties his fridge, packs up his car and goes to stay with Lucy. This is where the book gets really interesting. The farm struggles on dog kennels, market produce and cut flowers, while Petrus, once a typical black farm worker and now with a grant of land (bought off Lucy), two wives and a house in the works, helps out. David, bored, helps at the clinic where they put down dogs and cats left abandoned or injured - the dogs themselves become a powerful theme throughout the novel.

Then David and Lucy become victims of a horrible crime and tensions escalate. David suspects Petrus of some kind of involvement, while Lucy seems to give up on life. No progress is made on the farm or David's book and the relationship between father and daughter gets worse and worse, while Petrus builds his house and harbours one of the men who perpetrated the crime.

David is not a sympathetic character, yet I felt sympathy for him, or maybe it was pity. He argues so well, and believes in himself so deeply, that you cannot help but be drawn in by him even as you are repulsed by him. And he does love his daughter, you can't fault him for that. He is stripped of everything: his job, his home (broken into and thoroughly cleaned out while he is away), his daughter, his hair and half an ear, his book which becomes an opera which, while the passion is there, is going nowhere. He is reduced to spending his days at the clinic on a camp stool with a little heater, keeping the dogs company, or they him.

I would not know where to start in discussing imagery or themes or politics, but I would have loved to study this one. It's also an interesting glimpse into life in post-apartheid South Africa. The earlier scenes in Cape Town could have been set anywhere, while the scenes at Lucy's place are more alien, more out-of-control, harsh yet fragile. Precarious. It's a loosing battle, and which side is right? Lucy talks about the absolute hatred she saw in the faces of the three black men who abused her, and David suggests it's ancestral. Does that make it right? The novel certainly does not posit that. Does that make it wrong? Again, the novel makes clear that things are so very much more complicated that a simple matter of right or wrong, that there are so many underlying forces at work in the country, all tangled up together, that what happens to one young woman on a remote settlement is bad but not the worse thing that could happen.

I wish I had the book with me for some good quotes, it's a very quotable book. Ah well, I'll just have to hope I've encourage you to read it for yourself. Though the subject matter is "heavy", the way it is written will draw you in and the speed at which you will read it gives you the chance to escape the other end without harm, if you that's what you want. I myself am interested in reading more fiction set in Africa, and if you have anything to recommend I'd love to hear it....less

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Maria rated it:

(review of isbn 0143036378)

07/20/08

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

I've spent some time thinking about this book and I don't yet fully grasp it, but I'll venture to conclude that it is about dealing with the disgrace brought by people unto themselves through exploitation. There are three kids of exploitation that this book unpacks: exploitation of animals by humans, of blacks by whites, and sexual exploitation of women by men. In each case, disgrace calls for a penance in the form of giving oneself to the former object of exploitation.

David, an self-center...more I've spent some time thinking about this book and I don't yet fully grasp it, but I'll venture to conclude that it is about dealing with the disgrace brought by people unto themselves through exploitation. There are three kids of exploitation that this book unpacks: exploitation of animals by humans, of blacks by whites, and sexual exploitation of women by men. In each case, disgrace calls for a penance in the form of giving oneself to the former object of exploitation.

David, an self-centered womanizer, accepts an affair with unattractive, middle-aged Bev for her sake, as a gift to her (“His thoughts go to Emma Bovary strutting before the mirror after her first big afternoon. I have a lover! I have a lover! Sings Emma to herself. Well, let poor Bev Shaw go home and do some singing too.”) He says to himself that he has been “succoured” by this woman. Relieved. This time, however, he is not relieved of his desire but of his sexual hedonism, since he is the one who is giving himself without a reward for himself. The opera that he had been thinking about writing, about Byron's bohemian life in Italy, ends up focusing on Byron's abandoned mistress Teresa. [Also, there's something about sex as charity in Elizabeth Costello:]

Also, volunteering at an animal clinic, David suddenly feels compelled to act as an undertaker for the euthanized dogs - “offering himself to the service of dead dogs”. It becomes significant to him that the bodies are handled by somebody sensitive to animal death rather than the workers at the incinerator who beat the corpses with shovels to make them “more convenient for processing”.

Finally, David's daughter Lucy, traumatized by a gang-rape and assault on her farm by three black men refuses to leave the unsafe place even though she knows more attacks are likely to come. Moreover, she accepts to marry her neighbor Petrus, a black farmer who apparently had a lot to do with the attack (his desire to take over Lucy's land was transparent, and one of the criminals turns out to be his relative), which really amounts to entering an alliance: her land for her safety. She admits to outraged David that the conditions are indeed humiliating but insists on accepting them because she wants to begin a new relationship with Petrus and his kind with zero advantages (“No cards, no weapons, no property, no rights, no dignity. ... Like a dog”). So, Lucy seems to be offering herself to the formerly oppressed.

David is scandalized by Lucy's choice. Part of his anger, it seems, comes from his understanding that Lucy's offering will be under-appreciated. Petrus will see it as a personal victory, not as a sacrifice for the sake of a new beginning for inter-racial relations. In other words, the giver alone (Lucy) understands the meaning of the offering, since for the taker the concession has an entirely different significance. Similarly, David is the only one who ascribes meaning to the ritual with the dead dogs: it is, again, a one-way relation. I'd really like to believe that the novel is trying to stress the appropriateness of this offering in David's case (since no response can be expected of dogs, let alone corpses), but not in Lucy's, but I'm not sure about this. Mainly because I'm not sure whether I'm entitled to distance Coetzee's voice from David's voice in the last chapter of the book, where he looks at Lucy serenely, as if he has accepted her decision. Or should that scene be read with reservation, as yet another manifestation of David's tendency to romanticize things? Finally, going back to the basics, I should reformulate Lucy's problem in terms of disgrace. It's not out of place for David to act as an undertaker for the dogs because he is in a state of disgrace for having been insensitive to animal death for so long. But is Lucy in a state of disgrace? Also, David's experience at the animal clinic (and with women he mistreated) made him realize his faults. But did Lucy's experience as a farmer reveal any fault of hers? Among the few things she tells David about her rape, she says she was horrified by the three men's hate for her. Does this mean, then, that the rape revealed to Lucy her fault before the black race?...less

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She-Who-Reads rated it:

(review of isbn 0143036378)

07/24/07

bookshelves: academia, africa, animalrights, disturbing, gender, literary, race, rape, sexualpolitics, thoughtprovoking, worthrereading

Read in July, 2007

I literally just finished this book a few minutes ago, so I have not by any means worked though all of my reactions to it yet. It is written in a very spare, emotionally distanced style, even though it deals with very emotional topics. It is a page-turner, an absorbing, fast read that keeps you anxious to find out what happens next -- but that seems almost incidental, besides the point. I thoroughly disliked the main character, David Lurie -- he is unbelievably arrogant and chauvinistic -- bu...more I literally just finished this book a few minutes ago, so I have not by any means worked though all of my reactions to it yet. It is written in a very spare, emotionally distanced style, even though it deals with very emotional topics. It is a page-turner, an absorbing, fast read that keeps you anxious to find out what happens next -- but that seems almost incidental, besides the point. I thoroughly disliked the main character, David Lurie -- he is unbelievably arrogant and chauvinistic -- but that seemed less and less important as the novel went on, and totally irrelevant by the end. In fact, I don't think there is a single likable character anywhere in this book, not even Bev Shaw (she is admirable, I think, but not likable). But these characters and their lives have so much to say to the reader that their likability just doesn't even enter into it.

This is an extremely complex book, with a lot going on -- I haven't even begun to unpack it all. At its core, it's about race, specifically about race relations in modern-day South Africa. But it also has a lot to do with gender politics and with animal rights (or, if not animal rights exactly, the treatment animals receive at the hands of human beings). Lucy, David's daughter, becomes the focal point for most of these issues, yet she, as a character, would eschew the whole notion of "issues". She doesn't deal in abstractions, only in the concrete necessities of daily life. She is -- all of these characters are -- hard to wrap your head around, hard to understand their motivations. Honestly, Lucy disturbed me even more than David disturbed me. David is an arrogant jackass who constantly romanticizes everything around him. Lucy, however, is a victim, a voluntary martyr. It is the role she has adopted for herself, the price she has decided she has to pay for being a white woman living in the South African countryside. She is powerless and oppressed -- not by other people, not by the society she lives in, but by herself. She may be trying to live a good life and be a good person, but I cannot imagine that anything good could possibly come out of the stance she chooses to take. She takes self-loathing to new and extreme levels, in my opinion.

So what is the disgrace that the title references? David's disgrace at the beginning of the book, being caught in an affair with a student? The disgrace Lucy feels from the rape? South Africa's disgraceful history of apartheid? The disgraceful behavior of the rapists and of Petrus, who is protecting them and may possibly have instigated the whole incident in the first place? Lucy's lack of self-respect? Her father's lack of empathy and connection with other human beings? Some other meaning I haven't considered yet? All of the above?

I don't know. But I know I will be thinking about this little novel for a long time to come. Haunting is, I think, the right word for it....less

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Jamie rated it:

(review of isbn 0143036378)

02/19/08

Read in February, 2008

recommended to Jamie by: Miina

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Without a doubt one of the most wonderful books I've ever read. I know this is not a book I would have been likely to have picked on my own--I tend to go in the opposite direction. However, the two "middle-aged male" novels I have allowed myself to read have both been wonderful. I think the mind of the middle-aged man is such an intriguing thing for me. Naturally, who am I to say it's authentic, but it does completely pull me in and consume me.

In addition to be one of the most s...more Without a doubt one of the most wonderful books I've ever read. I know this is not a book I would have been likely to have picked on my own--I tend to go in the opposite direction. However, the two "middle-aged male" novels I have allowed myself to read have both been wonderful. I think the mind of the middle-aged man is such an intriguing thing for me. Naturally, who am I to say it's authentic, but it does completely pull me in and consume me.

In addition to be one of the most spectacular books I'll ever read, I feel confident saying it was the most difficult, too. There were moments of sheer pain associated with this book.

Multi-themed and as plied as an onion, the associations of life and death, manifested in the ethanization of dogs as well as the brutal murder of six dogs, was nearly impossible for me. Several late nights were involved and I feel confident I've given myself a hand-full of new "concern" wrinkles between my brows.

However, the passages are necessary. Like reading information on the meat and dairy industry, avoiding this knowledge doesn't make it cease, and to read it seemed the only sensible thing to do. It was a perfect tie-in to the devistation of this book, the helplessness that's associated with these characters, so desolate, unstoppable, yet at some level there's a shard of relief to it--the only possible egress.

As a woman perhaps it would be more level-headed of me to focus on the demise of the character Lucy. Or, perhaps demise isn't the appropriate word, but surrender. Personally a plethora of mixed emotions accompanied every passage which revealed more of Lucy's personality. At one level I identified with her, her plight of solitude, to be her own person, rather than a "minor" character. On another level I despised aspects of her, but could not deny there was al ways a level of understanding involved.

To not beat one's head against same wall, to grow, to learn--perhaps there is a level of "giving in" required for aging gracefully, or becoming who we are destined to be.

In the end, I got the impression they all drown. Sad though it was, there was no other option, I suppose. Part of me was enraged with the last passage of this book--the notion of willingly giving up everything simply because you know eventually it will be stripped from you--while I understand the logic, I wanted nothing more than for David, Lucy, Bev and even the music loving dog, to rise up and fight--for rights, futures, happiness. The very idea that every man or woman (or dog) has the right to a pursuit of happiness--well, this book strips every man and thing of this idea. It is not a South African theme, but an American notion. These people are not happy, nor will they ever be, and, more over, they do not seem to have ever been. Perhaps that is reality.

This book was not a happy one, but incredibly thought provoking. I am very glad I've read it, it's definately one of the sorts that make you stronger, more in tune to who you are. But so hard....less

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Philip rated it:

(review of isbn 0143036378)

09/19/08

Disgrace is a novel of a man’s, even a family’s decline. David Lurie is a university teacher, the kind of teacher who was at home with academic material that current course requirements no longer demand. He is also divorced, twice, and even on his best form he has to grapple with the trials and tribulations that his frayed life and career present.

He needs regular sex and visits a prostitute with regularity, always the same one, and harbours suspicions that he provides her with more than ...more Disgrace is a novel of a man’s, even a family’s decline. David Lurie is a university teacher, the kind of teacher who was at home with academic material that current course requirements no longer demand. He is also divorced, twice, and even on his best form he has to grapple with the trials and tribulations that his frayed life and career present.

He needs regular sex and visits a prostitute with regularity, always the same one, and harbours suspicions that he provides her with more than just business. He also suffers from self-delusion. So when he has an affair with one of his students, he really believes that she wants him for what he is, despite his thirty years of seniority. He convinces himself that she is a willing participant. It turns sour. She reports him. There is a committee. He cooperates, perhaps, but not in the way required by mores with which he cannot identify. Conveniently, messily, he resigns. And he loses his benefits.

David goes off to live with his daughter in a rural area in the Eastern Cape. He discovers complexities in the relationship between white and black which were at least less apparent in the urban setting of Cape Town. He is willing to make compromises, but it is not going to be easy.

David and his daughter are then viciously attacked. Motives are clear, and then unclear. Relations between the father and daughter, and between the two of them and their black neighbours become difficult and strained. Old scores are being settled, perhaps. Older scores are being tallied. A new world demands that new details of inter-relation and inter-dependence be drawn, except that for David the art seems like freehand. No-one seems to be able to say what they want or what they feel.

To me, Disgrace seems to be about change and how we do or do not cope with it. It’s about how we want to continue asserting, for want of a better word, values – assumptions, perhaps – that might no longer apply. We would only know by reading the unspoken assumptions of others and interpreting them correctly. Disgrace is also about vengeance and punishment, about settling scores, about inclusion and exclusion. The story line is strong, but the overtones are stronger.

Disgrace is a book that presents individual experience and through that manages to comment on change within South Africa and its society, What has changed is not always for the better and what is retained is not always relevant. But these are reactions to assumptions, perhaps, rather than to any external reality, no matter whose it might be. On reflection, the overt simplicity of Disgrace is part of its complexity. ...less

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Marigold rated it:

(review of isbn 0143036378)

08/05/08

Read in August, 2008

Quite possibly the most depressing great book I’ve ever read! Still not sure what to think of this – it may take me quite a while to process it. This is a novel with no mercy. Setting – South Africa, just after the end of apartheid. I don’t even know where to start in saying what it’s about, without retelling the story. It’s about David, a 52-year old professor whose life is changed by disgrace and (perhaps) redemption. It’s about his daughter Lucy whose life is (perhaps) changed b...more Quite possibly the most depressing great book I’ve ever read! Still not sure what to think of this – it may take me quite a while to process it. This is a novel with no mercy. Setting – South Africa, just after the end of apartheid. I don’t even know where to start in saying what it’s about, without retelling the story. It’s about David, a 52-year old professor whose life is changed by disgrace and (perhaps) redemption. It’s about his daughter Lucy whose life is (perhaps) changed by violence; about his relationships with women and their lack of power; and her relationship to men and power. David: “Every woman I have been close to has taught me something about myself. To that extent they have made me a better person.” Lucy: “I hope you are not claiming the reverse as well. That knowing you has turned your women into better people.” It’s about Petrus, the African farmer whose land adjoins Lucy’s, & how his world impacts theirs. It’s about conflict between generations, between sexes, between races and classes, & about the parallels and differences between humans and animals (as represented by dogs - if you are a dog lover, read this book with caution). It’s a short 200+ pages about how deeply we can be separated from one another as human beings – yet how much the same we are – how deeply we are separated from one another by power structures in society – echoed by how deeply we are separated from, yet connected to, dogs like the ones that David becomes involved with during his stay with Lucy. It’s about fire and purification. (I have to admit I was sort of reading along as I started this book, thinking how much I really disliked David, & then page 96 happened! Phew.) It’s about the violator versus the violated; begging for and bestowing forgiveness. It’s about giving up and giving in, letting go and (maybe) starting over. This is a short & not particularly difficult novel in terms of readability – but incredibly challenging in ideas & philosophy. I still haven’t figured out if it’s hopeful or incredibly lacking in hope. I can’t honestly say that I loved reading it – but this is a book I’ll be thinking and talking about for a long time. OK – now I think I need to read “Bridget Jones” or something!
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Marguerite rated it:

(review of isbn 0143036378)

06/17/08

Read in June, 2008

I thought this was a beautiful study in black and white -- and not just the obvious skin colors in modern South Africa. Coetzee's David Lurie is a throwback in many ways, stuck teaching communications at a post-apartheid technical university after being a professor of languages/literature at a more ivory-tower institution. He's indifferent about his students, and he makes no impression on them -- until he beds one of them. Then he becomes an outcast and goes to his daughter's rural farm rather i...more I thought this was a beautiful study in black and white -- and not just the obvious skin colors in modern South Africa. Coetzee's David Lurie is a throwback in many ways, stuck teaching communications at a post-apartheid technical university after being a professor of languages/literature at a more ivory-tower institution. He's indifferent about his students, and he makes no impression on them -- until he beds one of them. Then he becomes an outcast and goes to his daughter's rural farm rather impulsively. (He's somewhat a prisoner of his impulses, but one who's capable of reflection on external events and people.) But, he's no more capable of understanding her than his students. Nor does he understand post-apartheid blacks and the country's changing racial/social/economic dynamics and values. He sees his own actions in black-and-white (rationalizing what could best be construed as date rape as something ordained by the gods) instead of shaded while pursuing vengeance against three blacks who raped and impregnated his daughter. He finds a sort of redemption in disposing of unwanted animals, though he's no less prone to impulse nor any better at understanding his daughter, other young people or his fellow citizens. His greatest understanding is reserved for an artistic endeavour: making an opera of the life of Byron's lover, Teresa, after the poet's death. All he can do, though, is give voice to her longings. But there's no resolution in art or life and he can't finish the opera. The resolution offered by the university is exile -- away from the shelter of the university and abroad in a foreign country whose culture he no longer knows. He makes an effort at reconciling with the father of the student he slept with -- but he's still attracted to her and her younger sister. In the end, it's the voiceless animals who seem to speak the most to him -- more than his family, his profession or his art. I particularly liked being privy to Lurie's process of musical composition. Coetzee's language is spare, but the story zips right along. I'll be looking for more of his work. ...less

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Felicity rated it:

08/06/08

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

My main problem with this much lauded Booker-Prize-Winning-Novel was that the story's protaganist was frankly, not very believable. Reading the book felt like constantly being in the presence of a very irritating, self-obsessed, navel-gazing old git with an unsavoury appetite for young women.

The only levels on which I found this book interesting or relevant were in its critique of the academic community (very well observed) and in its successful portrayal of what it means to inhabit a state of...more My main problem with this much lauded Booker-Prize-Winning-Novel was that the story's protaganist was frankly, not very believable. Reading the book felt like constantly being in the presence of a very irritating, self-obsessed, navel-gazing old git with an unsavoury appetite for young women.

The only levels on which I found this book interesting or relevant were in its critique of the academic community (very well observed) and in its successful portrayal of what it means to inhabit a state of disgrace. I felt 'disgrace' was excellently rendered by the author, but the character's route to this state was unconvincing.

While the facts are believable - an aged tutor gets into a coersive sexual relationship with a young student and then loses his job over it - the main character's internal reasonings are not. Whilst feeling suitably abject, his intellectual abstractions and inability to act in a self-interested way concerning the rest of his life are fiercely at odds with his reasons for the affair. On the one hand he seems to be fighting for the honesty of lust,(and self interest) and on the other hand, he seems to revel in the resulting state of abjection and in the subsequent unravelling of his life. I would find this a more believable account if the protaganist really was truly venal, or if some redeeming quality was revealed in his state of disgrace and abjection, but he is neither and the middle ground is not only uncomfortable, but also uninteresting. The protaganist really doesn't believe himself and has an irritating habit of falling back on opera and poetry to explain himself when uncertain.

It is awkward and impossible to reconcile the splits here (is it about self-interest or abjection? About redemption or disgrace? The honesty of lust or the pitiable nature of lust? The truth or abstraction of poetry?) and it feels at times as though this book is made of shards of china being shoved up against one another in hopes of becoming whole again.

Succinctly put, this is really a book for ageing men who regret how hard it's become to get any skirt in later years, and as such, it suffocates inside its own internal justifications.
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Ritz rated it:

(review of isbn 8497599446)

01/19/08

bookshelves: autor_c_d

Read in January, 2008

recommended to Ritz by: Alexis Romero

La quinta estrella me la reservo porque el libro me entristeció y no puedo decir que me guste completamente algo que me entristece.

Desgracia gira en torno a la renuncia. Es una lectura dinámica narrada en tercera persona que permite conocer al “erudito” Profesor David Lauri, aunque de un modo bastante íntimo el narrador se ahorra la descripción de ciertos pasajes mórbidos y sádicos, pero sin evitar el horror, el espanto, ni la desgracia.

Sabemos lo que sabe Lauri y vemos lo que...more La quinta estrella me la reservo porque el libro me entristeció y no puedo decir que me guste completamente algo que me entristece.

Desgracia gira en torno a la renuncia. Es una lectura dinámica narrada en tercera persona que permite conocer al “erudito” Profesor David Lauri, aunque de un modo bastante íntimo el narrador se ahorra la descripción de ciertos pasajes mórbidos y sádicos, pero sin evitar el horror, el espanto, ni la desgracia.

Sabemos lo que sabe Lauri y vemos lo que ve Lauri. De igual forma nos desesperamos con Lauri y sentimos pena e indignación con él.

¿A cuántas cosas debemos renunciar para seguir el paso que marca la vida? ¿A la pasión y el deseo, a la dignidad, a un empleo, a ser quienes somos, al criterio, a un pariente, a una casa, a un perro?

El realismo de esta novela es perturbador, entristecedor en mi caso particular. Coetzee me llevó a Ciudad del Cabo en Sudáfrica, me metió por un rato en la cama con una prostituta, luego me llevó a clases en la Universidad, me tenía en la mente y en el cuerpo de un señor que desea escribir una opera sobre Byron (erudito el señor) pero sobre todo “desea” a las mujeres hermosas. Al menos durante un tramo del libro…

"..., según mi experiencia la poesía te habla y te llega a primera vista o no te llegará nunca. Hay un destello de revelación y un destello reflejo de respuesta. Es como el rayo. Como enamorarse."

Luego me tiró al piso y me arrastró cabizbaja a una granja donde todo vestigio de la ciudad: sus beneficios y perjuicios, quedó avasallado por una áspera brutalidad, al parecer "normal" en el interior de Sudáfrica.

¿Qué hacemos después de la Desgracia?

Eso no lo responde el libro.

En Wrapped up in books se lee sobre el libro algo que me parece más acertado de lo que yo pueda agregar: “Un camino que comienza en un equilibrio estático, rutinario y mediocre, y que va cuesta abajo hasta terminar en un estado digno de una foto en blanco y negro de un perro huesudo dando la espalda y un título solitariamente grande que reza la palabra Desgracia.”...less

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Andy rated it:

(review of isbn 0140296409)

06/19/07

bookshelves: readownedloved

Rarely have I read and loved so thoroughly depressing of a writer as Coetzee. That's an endorsement, isn't it? No, he's not so much depressing as it is that he does not sugar coat the stark and often unhappy nature of reality. Many of my friends and I have had discussions on the nature of "happiness", and what is it, and how elusive this grandiose idea of how we are supposed to be able to be "happy" and free to pursue it, etc...and then we have so much literature and cinem...more Rarely have I read and loved so thoroughly depressing of a writer as Coetzee. That's an endorsement, isn't it? No, he's not so much depressing as it is that he does not sugar coat the stark and often unhappy nature of reality. Many of my friends and I have had discussions on the nature of "happiness", and what is it, and how elusive this grandiose idea of how we are supposed to be able to be "happy" and free to pursue it, etc...and then we have so much literature and cinema and consumer culture that tries to set up these idealized scenarios where, supposedly, if this scenario happens, becomes reality to some extent, then we'll be happy, right? Well, Coetzee does NOT do this. Coetzee tells a story, a story very much like what can and does happen in the real world, situations where happiness is pretty nigh fucking impossible. Is that depressing? Sort of, but he tells the stories with such elegance, and his insights are so in touch with what really is going on (not the fabricated existence marketed to us by...well, people and things that market to us) that while reading you may (I did) feel overcome and amazed that these characters do indeed find it in themselves somewhere the ability to go on existing, and do so more aware of themselves, and life, and whatnot, than before. Or, maybe not so much more aware, but you may (I did) feel more aware because of it.

Disgrace, in particular, is about the title. The state of being disgraced, or feeling disgraced, and the various ways one can be/is disgraced in life, and how to go on with it, deal with it, whatever. In the specific context, however, of an older-middle-aged gentleman and his daughter, in their lives, this disgrace takes place and...well, this will make (for most people, I think) you rethink your ideas of disgrace, and what the word means. I can almost feel, while reading the novel, the author thinking, "And here, you thought you'd felt disgrace on some level or another? This is disgrace, to the core, this is really what that word means. This is the definition." It's a wonderful, wonderful novel. You should read it (I think)....less

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arjun rated it:

(review of isbn 0965216551)

03/11/07

Read in August, 2005

I just finished reading JM Coetzee's Disgrace. I have read 2 other books by him and think that he is an
excellent author. Disgrace is about an old white South-African
professor who has sex with his student and gets expelled as a
consequence. Later he goes and lives in the countryside with his
daughter, but even that doesn't end happily as her house gets burgled
by some Africans, and the daughter gets raped. There is some intense
description of what goes through the daughter's mind after th...more

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Suzanne rated it:

(review of isbn 0143036378)

07/14/08

Read in July, 2008

This is a brilliantly written, literary novel in the tradition of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The canvas is South Africa and South Africa's tragic history of racial strife and economic struggle. The location is essential to the narrative and provides the electrical current sparking the explosions of violence, violation, captivity, despair and acceptance?? as the main characters struggle against their inner "animalness".
The main character is a male English professor who teaches R...more

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Bryant rated it:

(review of isbn 0143036378)

09/10/08

Read in September, 2008

In this book, J.M. Coetzee refrains from sacrificing plot to ideas or vice versa. Both the story itself and the manner of its telling compel. Yet the coiled energy of Coetzee's prose, delivering up zippy asides all along the page-turning way, can also produce an unexpected convulsion that does not jibe with the celerity of the story: we want to turn the page to see what happens, but Coetzee's cogent commentary makes turning the page backward, re-reading, all the more necessary and appealing.
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Kathleen rated it: