Bryant's review
Disgrace (Penguin Essential Edition) by J.M. Coetzee
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.
All the while treating us to the ruminations of his prodigious intellect, Coetzee uses this story, as he did in "Waiting for the Barbarians," to pit the vulnerability of the intellect against trauma, shock, bodily horror. After much indescribable occurrence--indeed, Coetzee chooses not to describe it--we learn only that for the protagonist "a vital organ has been bruised, abused--perhaps even his heart." He claims to be "tired of shadows, of complications, of complic...more
All the while treating us to the ruminations of his prodigious intellect, Coetzee uses this story, as he did in "Waiting for the Barbarians," to pit the vulnerability of the intellect against trauma, shock, bodily horror. After much indescribable occurrence--indeed, Coetzee chooses not to describe it--we learn only that for the protagonist "a vital organ has been bruised, abused--perhaps even his heart." He claims to be "tired of shadows, of complications, of complic...more
