Disgrace

by J.M. Coetzee

He shrugs. ‘These are puritanical times. Private life is public business. Prurience is respectable, prurience and sentiment. They wanted a spectacle: breast-beating, remorse, tears if possible. A TV show, in fact. I wouldn’t oblige.’

He was going to add, ‘The truth is, they wanted me castrated,’ but he cannot say the words, not to his daughter. In fact, now that he hears it through another’s ears, his whole tirade sounds melodramatic, excessive.

One can’t plead guilty to charges of turpitude and expect a flood of sympathy in return. Not after a certain age. After a certain age one is simply no longer appealing, and that’s that. One just has to buckle down and live out the rest of one’s life. Serve one’s time.’