Disgrace

Rating:
Summary: The failure of communication and the fall into disgrace
Review: "Disgrace", Coetzee's latest work, probes the psyche of post-Apartheid South Africa. We are introduced to Dr David Lurie, Professor of Communications (at a university that sounds surprisingly like UCT), who is having an affair with a student. When the inevitable scandal breaks, Lurie has the chance to save his career, but chooses not to do so. His failure to communicate sees him fallen into a state of disgrace.

He retreats to his daughter's Eastern Cape farm where he becomes immersed in the daily routine of farm life. But the former Professor of Communications is confronted everywhere by his inability to communicate: with his daughter, with his neighbours, with himself.

A brutal attack on the farm forces Dr Lurie to confront the demons lurking beneath the surface of his relationships. And in so doing, it shows us something about the country we live in.

Coetzee paints an intricate and powerful picture of the tensions and myriad complexities of post-Apartheid South Africa. His language is exact and exacting, his prose pointed and precise. Like Coetzee's previous works, "Disgrace" is an illuminating and compelling commentary on life in contemporary South Africa.

Rating:
Summary: appropriate title
Review: disgrace is a disgrace. even more of a disgrace is whoever gave it an award

Rating:
Summary: Nothing disgraceful about this gem!
Review: I bought this book because I heard it won the 1999 Booker Prize. It has to be good if it won a prize, right? Well, the book is undeniably good, and it gave me the opportunity to discover a talented writer whose work I hadn't come across before. Disgrace is the story of David Lurie -- a middle aged, twice divorced, disillusioned, burned out professor of literature at a university of Cape Town. After an impulsive affair with a student, Lurie loses his job. He moves to a farm somewhere in South Africa to live with his daughter for a while. Once he settles in, Lurie and his daughter have to deal with the harsh realities of post-apartheid South Africa on a day to day basis. Their difficult father-daughter relationship doesn't facilitate things. More details would spoil the reading of the book; suffice to say that there are various twists throughout the novel.

First of all, J.M. Coetzee's writing is beautiful, precise, sparse and to the point, and those are a few of the good reasons to read this book. The reader has to read between the lines to understand and empathize with David Lurie. Feelings and relationships are not described in detail -- you just have to use your own thoughts and feelings in order to step into the world of Disgrace. It's a very earnest story. It's about human frailty, mistakes, even about sins. There is no easy conclusion, no easy redemption, no rising above the disillusionment. But the moral of the story is letting go of the past and the hope for a new beginning, at least that's what I think the moral of the story is. All in all, Disgrace is a book that can be read on many different levels, not only because of the great information about South Africa, but also because of its honest, almost brutal portrayal of a "fallen" man who's struggling to go on living. The fact that this book won Mr. Coetzee a Booker Prize makes it extra appealing, but it is by far not the most appealing thing about this novel. J.M. Coetzee is a great author and I shall look forward to reading more of his work. Highly recommended...

Rating:
Summary: A true modern masterpiece; the best Booker winner I've read
Review: I cannot recall a book so rich in theme and symbol and yet with plot and character so grounded in the here-and-now. Charting one man's fall from--and reclamation of--grace, "Disgrace" weaves metaphor that is ironic, blunt, disturbing and, ultimately, timeless around two events that could not be more contemporary: sexual harassment of a co-ed by an aging professor; and an attack by native South Africans on a white farm.

David Lurie is a professor of "Communications" at a Cape Town university. His specialty is Romantic poets, in particular Byron. At age 52, twice divorced and finding gratification, if not fulfillment, in orchestrated liaisons with prostitutes, Lurie is a trivial version of the Byronic hero he studies. Despite his professorship, Lurie, by his own admission, is no teacher. He prefers the tag "scholar." He is in fact a manipulator, a controller.

One evening he has a chance encounter with one of his students, a 20 year-old co-ed named Melanie. He invites her for dinner and seduces her. Melanie is quickly repulsed by the idea of romance with a man more than twice her age. Lurie, though, pursues her with what he perceives to be heroic ardor. Melanie soon falls into depression. Her tatooed, goateed boyfriend-another Byronic cartoon-and her fundamentalist father--another teacher by profession, controller by action--confront Lurie and urge Melanie to file harassment charges against him. In an act of deluded Romantic martyrdom, Lurie confesses without apology to the affair, practically daring university authorities to dismiss him from his post. They oblige.

He finds refuge at his daughter Lucy's farm in the rural East Cape. There he strongly resists adaptation to country life. The dirt, the smells, the absence of stylized beauty and decorous behavior disgust him. He wrongly fears for his daughter's happiness and rightly, as it turns out, for her safety. He mistrusts and resents her African tenant, Petrus, a purely natural force with his two wives (one who is half his age-see Melanie) and inexorable ambition to gain sway over the white woman he must labor for. Lurie is even vexed by the most heartfelt of Lucy's emotions, her simple love of animals and her warm regard for the physically repugnant Bev Shaw, an amateur veterinarian ironically qualified only to perform euthanasia on the stray and discarded pets she volunteers to take in and nurture.

In a story replete with irony, perhaps the greatest is Lurie's repulsion at the realities of the Romantic ideal he so ardently embraces. The Romantics believed that grace could only be attained in nature, the more primitive the better. Lurie, against his own developed taste, encounters, both by horrible chance and by engineered design, nature's nasty, brutish but ultimately regenerative forces. Along the way, his long-held notions of beauty, art and love ebb, inflate, distort and evolve, until Lurie emerges quite literally) from the ashes, re-formed: no longer teacher, but learner: no longer manipulative, but accepting; no longer taking, but giving.

To fully appreciate this book, I found myself charting the inter-woven relationships of Lurie and Melanie, Lurie and Lucy, Lucy and Petrus, Lucy and Bev, Lurie and Bev, Lurie and Byron, Byron and his mistress Teresa. Three general kinds of love in widely varied shades dominate: Romantic love; parental love; and "natural", "elemental" love. Duality abounds: art and artifice; scholarship and reality; brutality and tenderness; torment and succor. This is a book so dense with ideas that I had to write a review just to organize my thoughts and try to appreciate its scope. A true modern masterpiece, and the best Booker winner I have ever read (apologies to Salman Rushdie, Keri Hulme and Kashuo Ishiguro).

Rating:
Summary: Excellent prose, disturbing and depressing as well
Review: I could hardly put this book down. It was my introduction
to the work of Coetzee. As soon as I was done, I went and
bought Life and Times of M K. There was a chapter in Disgrace
which affected me so much that it was difficult to sleep that
night. I lack the literary background to understand the references to Byron, however. The people Coetzee writes
about are flawed but have a conscience. To be white in South
Africa these days and to have a conscience means to be troubled
by that country's past or at least trying to come to terms
with it and perhaps trying a bit to redress those sins.
Coetzee's prose is compact and seemingly every sentence packs
a punch. I wish I had read him sooner! To me he is the next
step up from, say, Graham Greene.


Rating:
Summary: Great writing, good story, bad ending
Review: I gave up fiction long time ago. There are not enough good writers that keep me interested in a story until it's conclusion. Coetzee proved me that they are still writers out there that can make me appreciate language as a means for entertainment and not just about conveying information.
I don't believe the story is anything special. I've seen worst in real life. People compromising their professional ethic and livelihood for sex, the rather extreme view of rape from a woman's perspective (although I don't think any sane person can be that extreme), one person's view about people and animal ethics and racial tensions that exist not just in South Africa but anywhere (move back the calendar 40 or 50 years and the farm incident could have happen in the southern US but with a more realistic ending for the perpetrators). The writing made it special and I'm thankful for it.
Why did Coetzee left the story where it did? Why not give us a conclusion? I felt a little cheated. Like if the author decided that there is nothing more to say. I felt that there should be more to it. Coetzee can you finish the story please?


Rating:
Summary: Imperfect (really 3 1/2 stars)
Review: I read this book because it did win the Booker Prize. I had read only one other book by Coetzee (The Life and Times of Michael K), but made myself the project of reading as many Booker shortlists as possible.

Coetzee's novel is thoroughly fascinating. It is a character study of a man who refuses to feel any regret or apology for his 'transgression', and refuses to deal with it. He visits his daughter, an adult woman living on a farm, where she has a 'disgrace' of her own. In a sense, she is as cold as her father, but the reason for it seems much more realistic. In fact, Coetzee succeeds with her where he failed with Lurie; he made a sympathetic character, who's choices one could understand. Lurie is a deeply flawed character, and he seems to be more a character, a figment of the authors imagination. This book reminds me of Amsterdam, 1998's winner of the Booker. They both had the same flaws and similar strengths. However, Coetzee's strength is his beautiful and very restrained prose. He doesn't write more than necessary, and that isn't very much (that's not to say longer works are too long, but if this book had been longer, it would have been quite poor). His language is masterful and unflawed.

All in all, this book is worth a read, but it didn't deserve the Booker Prize over Headlong (a deliciously funny tale) or Our Fathers (a wonderful, but under-rated book).

Rating:
Summary: "Passionate recrimination."
Review: In J.M Coetzee's brilliant novel, "Disgrace" David Lurie is a professor of communications at a Cape Town University. David is 52, and divorced (twice). He's never had a problem finding women, but now, rather suddenly, he discovers that women aren't quite so ready to fall into his lap: "without warning his powers fled." David has turned to the services of a prostitute, and this is a very satisfactory arrangement. His once-a-week meetings are defined very clearly, and he is free from any emotional responsibility while able to create whatever fantasies he pleases. But when this convenient arrangement comes to an end, David rather abruptly initiates a liaison with a young female student.

David is fired after a sexual harassment complaint. He decides to write a long-planned book on Byron, so he travels into the country to see his only daughter, Lucy. Lucy maintains a small holding where she boards dogs and sells produce. David rather begrudgingly begins volunteering at the local animal refuge. It's a simple life--one that Lucy is apparently attached to, but after a hideously violent event occurs, David finds himself re-evaluating his life, and in particular, his relationships with women.

Coetzee presents two Africas--there is the city of Cape Town--a place that has its own rules of society. And it's a society full of upstanding people who all agree that David no longer belongs amongst them. The second Africa exists in the country, and it's a totally different world. The law has no place here, and the area is returning to tribalism. Lucy's role in this new South Africa is troubling, and David struggles against the inevitable encroachment of tribalism. David must come to terms with his role as a father, and also that role's limitations. Both father and daughter are equally stubborn about the moral stands they chose to take. In spite of the fact that David believes "his temperament is not going to change," he learns some lessons about giving and accepting love--something he's avoided his entire life.

"Disgrace" is beautifully written. My impression of the novel prior to reading it was that the story centered on a professor who is fired after having a relationship with a student. But that is just the starting point of this eloquent, rich novel. "Disgrace" is about understanding your past before you can really make sense of who you are. The novel is at once disturbing and riveting, and I recommend it highly--displacedhuman


Rating:
Summary: A masterful blending of substance, style, and message
Review: In my short lifetime of reading, I have found that a good book generally distinguishes itself by one of three key elements: substance, style, or message. Some books are a pleasure to read simply because of their gripping plot; others because of the author’s gifted prose; and yet others because they make an important statement about society or human nature. It is rare to come across a book that masterfully blends all three elements together, and such a book is rightfully called not simply good, but great.

J.M. Coetzee’s novel Disgrace, recipient of the 1999 Booker Prize, is a gem of a book that begs to be read and re-read. It is tightly written, filled with meaning, and suspenseful throughout. In its short span of 220 pages, we develop an at times painful compassion for Professor David Lurie, a fifty-something divorcé in Cape Town, South Africa, whose more or less ordinary existence suddenly falls apart through a series of unfortunate events. First his successful career is threatened by accusations from a young student with whom he has had a brief affair. Seeing his professional life going up in flames, he retreats to his daughter’s farm for a short visit that soon takes on a feel of indefiniteness. But while he is there, the two of them fall victim to a violent attack, the consequences of which threaten to tear the two of them apart.

The novel is an unflinching examination of human desire and emotion. We follow David through his lustful affairs, his loneliness, his anger and resentment, and his stubborn defiance in the face of threat and opposition. And somehow along the way we find ourselves caring for this seemingly unsympathetic character. For despite his moral flaws, he is a character who holds to his principles and perseveres. And whether he is wrong or right in the reader’s mind, it is clear that his heart is in the right place as he struggles for what he believes is right.

On a broader scale, the novel is also a frank portrait of modern South Africa, a country riddled by racial issues in a new, emerging era in which old paradigms no longer exist and new models have yet to be defined. Coetzee depicts this phenomenon at a very personal level in his account of the seemingly cooperative relationship between Lurie’s daughter and her African neighbor who assists in the management of her farm. Despite the cordial ties between the two and the sense that they operate as equals, there is a thick, underlying tension throughout the narrative. While her neighbor outwardly displays friendship and caring, there is a persistent uncertainty about his true intentions and where his loyalties lie. And beneath the surface of their relationship, there are deep social issues that point to a society in transformation that is far from discovery racial harmony.

Ambitious, compassionate, at times harsh, and courageous throughout, this is the kind of book that reminds readers of what great literature can achieve.

Rating:
Summary: the master
Review: in reviewing this book, i could wax philosophical about coetzees treatment of the post-colonial society of south africa and its effects on the relationship between man and daughter, man and society, black and white, man and beast, etc... but unfortunately, the themes in this novel run so deep and are so vast that i would simply be doing coetzee an injustice. when reading this novel, the reader cannot help but compare the themes that pervade it to a gigantic iceberg floating in the sea. not much is visible on the surface, but you know that a behemoth lurks under the waves, obscured by dark waters. such is the nature of coetzees prose. not since hemingway has a writer squeezed so much meaning from every word he commits to the page.
i suppose all i can say in reference to this book and to coetzee in general is to read him. you may not understand all of what hes getting at (i seriously doubt that more than a few on our planet do, and i certainly am not one of them), but you will have become a better person for attempting, and perhaps that is the purpose of reading in the first place.