Disgrace (Windsor Selection S.) (First Chapter S.)

by J.M. Coetzee

-- Disgrace -- one of only four works of fiction -- was chosen by the editors of the New York Times Book Review as one of the eleven Best Books of the Year
-- A New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, New York Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Village Voice Literary Supplement, Wordstock, Ingrain, and Independent bestseller
-- A Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and QuaLity Paperback Book Club
-- A finalist for The National Book Critics Circle Awards
-- Coetzee is the only writer to have been awarded the Booker Prize twice

• ISBN10: 0436204894
• ISBN13: 9780436204890
• Publish Date: 1 July 1999
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 30 March 2005
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Vintage Publishing
• Imprint: Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 224
• Language: English

Reviews

[gmcgregor]

Once upon a time, it seemed, there was a kind of script for powerful men who got caught behaving badly around women: vague apologies, crocodile tears, a trip to rehab, some sort of charitable contribution. A withdrawal from the scene. Then a carefully-crafted return. It worked for years. Then came the Me Too movement, and it didn't seem to work anymore. The failure of this established pattern is also at issue in J.M. Coetzee's Booker Prize-winning Disgrace, except in this case it's because the man in question specifically refuses to use it. David Lurie is a white professor at a university in Cape Town in post-apartheid South Africa. A frustrated scholar of the Romantic literary tradition, interest in his classes has dwindled and he finds himself teaching Communications. He's an unhappy man, twice divorced and mostly uninterested in developing actual relationships with other people. On a whim, he decides to pursue a beautiful student in one of his classes. They sleep together a few times, all at David's initiation and at least once when he's aware that she doesn't actually want to. Suddenly her boyfriend shows up in class, and shortly thereafter he finds himself accused of misconduct against her.

He's offered the standard-issue response: an apology, counseling, a break, but an eventual return assured. He refuses, simply capitulating, and leaves Cape Town for the countryside, where his daughter Lucy owns and runs a small farm. No sooner does he get somewhat accustomed to life there, though, than an episode of violence changes things forever. Three young black men attack David and Lucy, attempting to burn him and gang-raping her. The already-strained relationship between father and daughter becomes even more tense as both try to cope with their trauma in different ways.

It's obvious fairly early on that the characters and situations aren't intended to be always read as strictly realistic. There's a lot of allegory going on here about apartheid and the wounds that it left and the violence that was a crucial part of that system continuing to resonate. I found myself wishing I had more background in the history of South Africa, because I felt like there were layers and layers of meaning and some of them were out of my grasp. Disgrace is a fairly short book, not even 250 pages, but there is a lot going on in it because Coetzee is a master of his craft. Every word of this book was obviously carefully, deliberately chosen and he evokes so much by just letting his plot and characters speak for themselves. And speaking of characters, such a sticking point for me as a reader, this was a strange experience in that I didn't find anyone especially compelling but still found the book as a whole to be something that I was invested in.

So what I'm saying is that this is a very good book, but reader be warned: it is bleak. It is a story about a terrible person, who does some awful things. You almost wonder if he deserves it on some level, but even worse things happen to his daughter and she's just trying to live on her little piece of land and doesn't seem at first blush to be culpable. Or is she? Are all of those who benefit from systemic inequality culpable? There is a note of hope at the end with the promise of the birth of a biracial child, clearly meant to be symbolic of the way forward, but the circumstances leading to that hope are extremely cynical. This is a high quality book that I appreciated the experience of reading and am glad I read and have no plans to ever return to because it was hard. I would definitely recommend it, but go in expecting a downer (and be aware that there's violence toward animals/animal death in case you're sensitive to it).

[celinenyx]

Like many post-modern literary novels, Disgrace starts with sex. Professor David Lurie thinks he has everything worked out. Once a week he visits a prostitute, he teaches at the university, and once in a while he talks to his ex-wife or his daughter. An affair with a student makes his entire system collapse, and he is shunned from his life.

Disgrace is a double novel. We follow the disgrace of David, and the disgrace of his daughter. It's both about being human, and about being a human in post-apartheid South-Africa. The writing style is clipped and dry. I found the story of David's daughter, who lives as a white single woman in a black dominated countryside fascinating, though heart-breaking. Disgrace isn't a history lesson, but a tale of what it's like for some people to live in South-Africa. I can't really speak about its accuracy, but since Coetzee has won a Nobel Prize for literature I trust his judgement.