Disgrace

Rating:
Summary: "Graceful," in its way.
Review: This book already has many excellent plot summaries and analyses of symbols on these pages, and certainly does not need additional ones from me. However, one aspect that I have not seen mentioned anywhere here is the importance of the title in giving additional significance to the book's various levels of meaning. It is here, I think, that the full measure of Coetzee's overriding vision of "dis-grace," or absence of grace, is most easily seen.

In its most superficial, obvious dictionary meaning of grace, the main characters' lives lack "beauty and charm," as they try to deal with the fates they've been dealt in the aftermath of apartheid (Lucy on her farm, Lourie in his changed college faculty position), their fates as the result of individual actions by other characters (Lourie and Melanie, Lucy and Pollux, et.al.), and their fates as the result of their own actions. The characters are also unsure, often, of what constitutes "right" or "proper" actions and often unable to make themselves do what they believe to be right. Their definitions of rightness itself have been called into question, and Coetzee's view of them and their fates is dark and uncompromising.

The characters lack "thoughtfulness" to others and show little "mercy" or "clemency" as they go about their lives. They often act spontaneously and selfishly. Lourie's behavior towards the dogs is more merciful than his behavior toward his fellow humans, and Coetzee may be offering this as a ray of hope for the future--one has to start somewhere to deal with the changing issues of power vs. compassion. Whites collectively abused power and Lourie individually abused the power of his faculty position; they cannot expect compassion from the people whose lives they affected, now that they are no longer in power.

Now that apartheid is officially over and a new black society is growing and, at times, exacting tribute for past abuses, one can say that the "grace" period has expired, something all too obvious to Lucy in her efforts to farm her land. Her decision to raise a child in this environment brings another sense of resolution, and possibly another a ray of hope. Unfortunately, one cannot help but wonder whether the grace of God will shine equally on all the characters, making them equally strong and pure of heart. One wonders how much an "eye for an eye..." will be the preferred judgment, both politically and in the personal lives of the characters.

Coetzee's prose is unadorned, plain, lacking in "grace notes" which give life and brilliance to music but which sometimes mask the message when applied to prose. It is probably not coincidental that Lourie's planned Byronic opera changes in the end from a broad, orchestral accompaniment to that of the honest and uncompromising plink-plink of a banjo. Somehow it seems not only appropriate but a "graceful" denouement to this complex book.

Rating:
Summary: The most thought provoking of novels
Review: Excited at the prospect of reading a serious, contemporary novel, I leapt into the first pages of "Disgrace". Making an episode of "Eastenders" look like a comic masterpiece, this novel is a dark, miserable and distressing piece of soul-destroying fiction.

Although I found lead character David Lurie's behaviour at the trial a little unlikely, the themes studied briefly around generation relationships, prostitutes and teacher-student confidence were at the very least thought provoking and at most mind blowing. The differences between the attitudes of the men and the women at the trial, for example, are massive and yet Coetzee sums them up in one small sentence that generates extensive thought from the reader.

It is Coetzee's very abrupt and sparse writing style that is the revelation of the book. The strong racial issue of South Africa is hardly ever touched upon, but the reader is made completely aware of its existence with hardly a word uttered. Lucy's attack at the farm is never described, but you know exactly what has happened. Or, more precisely, you know exactly what David knows which means you are thinking the exact thoughts of a father traumatized by his daughter's trauma. Brilliant.

So what is wrong with "Disgrace"? Although mine are rather small concerns, I fear they held back the book significantly. David's unusual behaviour, from start to finish, always left me frowning. I think David's fall from grace, engineered rather unlikely by himself, is simply too big. Surely an intelligent man would never have so little foresight to create his situation. Surely such a serial philanderer would never get a conscience as fast as David Lurie does. Surely a woman such as Lucy would never react to her situation as she does.

I found myself thinking more and more about what each situation symbolized rather than what was actually happening. Finding only tenuous links in my own mind left me feeling unsure of the whole plot and story. The worst culprit of this confusing symbolism is that which comes with the ending. I really do not know what Coetzee is trying to say in the last chapter or so. At least, what I have come up with seems weak.

It is for me a disappointing end to a fantastic book. From the start the reader knows that they are reading genius. Throughout the reader is swept along on a bed of human tragedy. But finally the reader is defeated by just too much being left unsaid by Coetzee.

I certainly recommend this book to anyone and I wish I could give it a really good score, but the author simply lost me too much.

Rating:
Summary: A Fitting Title.
Review: Coetzee begins his novel as Professor David Lurie begins an affair with a student thirty years his junior. This young girl, Melanie Isaacs, ignites a fire in him that is insatiable and he falls into a lustful sort of trance lasting only as long as they are not found out. When the school board comes to him with accusations and requests a public apology, he responds arrogantly, as if it is they who are the unreasonable party. As a result, he is asked to leave and so leave he does, heading towards the hills of Africa where his daughter, Lucy, awaits him. The events that occur during his stay will change him forever. He becomes involved in a local animal shelter where he assists the lady veterinarian in many procedures, even helping her to put unwanted dogs to sleep, proceeding then to dispose of them so that the veterinarian does not have to. Coetzee notes "curios that a man as selfish as he should be offering himself to the service of dead dogs." I also found the transformation of roles curious and surprising. Roles also switch when Lurie finds himself pleading with his daughter to act with more sense, to react more like a woman naturally would to adverse circumstances. Yet she remains stubborn and foolish just as Lurie had before the school board at the University. Lucy is the one character I found hard to believe. She is so unlike most women in her responses as a victim (I cannot explain further without compromising the story). I have never met a woman like her. At any rate, all in all, I was captivated with the book. It was entertaining, suspenseful, thought-provoking and fully-deserving of its Booker prize. Many thanks to my friend who recommended it to me.

Rating:
Summary: Disgrace is a Disgrace
Review: Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee is one of the worst novels I have ever read. It does not have a clear message; there is nothing to learn out of it. It is better to spend the time watching a good movie or any TV program than reading this silly novel. It was the winner of the "1999 Booker Prize", what may me think that the "Booker Prize" is valueless.

Rating:
Summary: Restrained tale about guilt and denial.
Review: Disgrace is a story about a sinful nation that, because of its past sins, cannot feel justified rage at the new injustices that are now being perpetrated on the minority white population. Yes, it's elegant, sparse, economical, etc. but underneath this whited sepulchre (even the book jacket is a sparse, clean, white cover) is an ugly reality that the promised myth of peace and reconciliation isn't happening. The disgrace lies in the inability, or refusal, of people like Lurie's daughter to condemn the outrages of her attackers. I read the book over 7 months ago, so I'm working from memory. Maybe mine is a misreading. I believe that the author's restraint and sparse style are a fine stylistic technique, but I was ultimately left frustrated by the hopelessness that this style represents.

Rating:
Summary: deep, emotional character study; one of Coetzee's best
Review: Like Coetzee's other novels (Waiting for the Barbarians, Life and Times of Michael K.), Disgrace is a short yet intense study on individuals challenged by society/environment. However unlike his other novels, the story and characters in Disgrace are easily identifiable - and hence, it is perhaps the most moving novel of the lot.

Disgrace overviews the life of a disgraced university professor who, upon forced to leave his post, moves in with his estranged lesbian daughter on her rural "farm" (actually, a kennel out in the wilds of South Africa). While at the farm an incident occurs which makes the professor and his daughter re-evaluate their lives (..sorry, I really want to avoid divulging the story). The story is painfully plausible, and the complex characters and their interactions make this to be a fine read. And the modern South African setting only adds to the complexity and intrigue.

My only grumble with Disgrace is Coetzee's usage of symbolism at various points. I found such symbolism to be too obvious and utterly gratuitous. Otherwise I think most everyone over 18 would enjoy this book.

Rating:
Summary: who fell from heaven?
Review: Disgrace is a fairly short novel (220 pages) about the new South Africa. While this is the first of Coetzee's books that I have read, from the moment I picked it up until I finished it some four hours later, I almost didn't breathe. I refused to be interrupted except for the call of nature. When I finished the novel, I wanted to start to read it again so compelling was the telling of it.

Disgrace is nominally the story about the fall of professor David Lurie from grace; but the book feels like several stories spinning out indefinitely each deserving its own novel. Take for example the first chapter: we meet and then never see again, a young and beautiful Muslim woman who, we guess, in order to provide for her two young children, prostitutes herself to "gentlemen" callers by appointment on selected afternoons in an upscale brothel. It is in this brothel that we also meet for the first time the protagonist, Lurie. We are given to believe that Lurie, now fifty-two, is a self absorbed, on the downside of life leach, who has taken to paying for his sex rather than indulging in the parlor games of his more youthful contemporaries. The novel tracks Lurie, who has given up believing that classical education is a commodity still in demand, from his dalliance with a student, that clearly marks him for academic suicide; and that results ultimately in his expulsion by a university disciplinary committee, from disgrace to redemption.

With nothing to hold him in Cape Town, the twice divorced Lurie boards up his home and travels to the town of Salem in the Eastern Cape province to visit with the daughter of his first marriage, Lucy. Lurie plans to spend his forced sabbatical writing an opera about Lord Byron in Italy. The underlying theme of music supplanting language is the thread from which one can view the entire novel."Human society has created language in order that we may communicate...the origins of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the over large and rather empty human soul." Lucy runs a small farm: and while we never meet Lucy's female partner, we gather that Lurie doesn't really have an opinion about his daughter's alternative life style. We glimpse for a while the traditional tensions between the two generations of Lurie: neither father nor daughter communicates very well with each other."More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa...the language has stiffened." Her black neighbor Petrus, who by the way, covets Lucy's farm and probably an alliance of sorts with Lucy herself, ably assists Lucy in running certain aspects of her farm. Lurie is suspicious of Petrus and his intentions. Perhaps he is also a little envious of the relationship between the two; the communication between the two.

One day, three black men visit the farm. One of the three is barely a youth. The three brutalize Lurie and rape Lucy. Powerless to come to her aid, Lurie experiences Lucy's debasement as it occurs off center stage. Minimalist Coetzee doesn't let either the reader or Lurie see Lucy's rape; but the rape's fury is overwhelming. "It may have seemed personal but it wasn't."

After the rape, Lurie seems to be sensitized again. He reaches out awkwardly toward Lucy; he reevaluates his assessment of Lucy's friends (even cultivating a purely physical relationship with no-neck Bev). He helps Bev help discarded animals to "cross over", and in this sense moves toward some sort of personal redemption. Lurie also reevaluates the racial relationship between white and black Africans through his own confrontation with Petrus, who Lurie suspects had something to do with the Lucy's rape (it does become hers in a disturbing symbolical sense)... "In the old days he could have had it out with Petrus (but) ...the old dispensations no longer apply...it is a new world they live in..."

Lucy tells her father that he does not understand her or her life or what has happened to her. Frustrated and defeated by the recent events in his life, Lurie who can not convince his daughter to leave the land, goes back to Cape Town. On his journey back, Lurie stops at the home of the student with whom he had had the inappropriate affair: initially he is not sure of his own motives but suddenly realizes he is seeking pardon for his own arrogance. The meeting with his victim's family is masterfully but powerfully understated.

After a short stay in Cape Town; and, after literally viewing the wreckage of his past, Lurie returns to his daughter's farm. Upon his return he learns of Lucy's pregnancy, and the unholy alliance she has entered into with Petrus. With nothing to go back to now, Lurie takes up his old job with Bev in helping the helpless dumb creatures cross over with as much dignity as their situation allows.

The last part of the book's symbolism, a polemic about cruelty to animals, is a lasting lesson about the wages of sin. This book truly makes one ..."think of the world."

Rating:
Summary: Writer's Promise Unfulfilled
Review: In "Disgrace" David Lurie and his daughter Lucy were given realistic breath of life by Mr. Coetzee. I found the book masterfully written until the last few chapters. I believe the reader was cheated by the incomprehensible ending. I couldn't help thinking that Mr. Coetzee was under deadline and ended this once compelling, enlightening, unsettling study of a man, his daughter, and a changing world in the careless, unintelligible, and "too neat" manner that he did. I was very disappointed. I wanted to snatch away his "Booker Prize".

Rating:
Summary: symbolism smothers some of the emotional impact
Review: Coetzee's extraordinary skill, as shown in this book (my first of his), is in writing a book full of symbolic meanings through a precise realism. Except for one instance, there is no philosophizing beyond the limits of his limited main character. And it is about the new South Africa, from the point of view of an older Africaaner. His world seems to be turned upside down, with the dominance of whites over Blacks being overthrown and replaced by - for him - a kind of chaos of foreign-ness.

Coetzee tackles this rich material with symbolism, a complex network of contrasts and parallels, and suggestions of "applications" to that more generalized social and political milieu. So that Professor Lurie's "disgrace", his removal from his professorship because of a dalliance with one of his students is not unsimilar - we are to believe - from his daughter's being raped by three Black South AFricans. That he is a communications teacher has significance; that she is a lesbian has significance. That he helps Bev "put down" with humanity unwanted dogs whose owners are unwilling to sterilize them instead, has significance. That Lurie is middle-aged and urban, his daughter in the transitional generation and choosing a rural life, is significant. This is not to say that his novel is schematic, that is has the sort of one-for-one obvious symbolism. It is a symbolism of suggestion, of indirection. It is no more simple than the flawed main character. It is even beyond the simpler Blacks-good-Whites-bad viewpoint of a less precise and perceptive artist.

But it does make it seem, finally, intellectual. It does, finally, place a wall of the writer's making between the subject and the more direct emotions of the subject. It is, through the main character, rape without a response of active rage, being outcast without crying shame or outraged denial, a social system turned dreadfully upside down and inside out with a response of aging acceptance. So that it is, finally, not very exciting.

Rating:
Summary: A memorable morality tale
Review: Coetzee circles his subject much like a dog circles before finding a comfortable spot. The novel is all the more powerful because at first we think we're reading about a selfish man who uses women and despises his work. In fact, the story is building obliquely toward a profound exploration of the new South Africa: the charged relationship between the races; the treatment of animals; the compromises one must make to coexist in a charged environment. A very upsetting, thoughtful novel that is hard to forget. I'll take this book over Kingsolver's overwritten "Poisonwood Bible" anytime.