Rating:  Summary: Disgrace: A Disciplined Glimpse Review: David Lurie is hardly an extrodianary human being by any standard. He has had two unsuccessful marriages and one daughter Lucy. At an age of fifty-two he is beginning to contemplate is his own mortality, but it is an uphill battle. The story takes off when he gets fired from his job as a professor at Cape Town University. The rest of the book is one of the most fascinating pieces of literature. One where he truly goes on a exploration of self discovery that many of us go on for our whole lives and never complete.The part of his confronting his inner psyche is the most honest look at how people think when they are not only angry, but what they are angry at and what to do to remedie it.. After getting attacked which is definitley the "climax" of the story, he realizes that his staunch minded thinking has got him to this point. In the end he finally realizes what his natural response; when he doesn't want to accept reality for the way it is he either blames his problems on someone else or doesn't accept it. I would certainly recommend this particularly to anyone who would like to possibly read a book about human psychology or emotional triggers.
Rating:  Summary: An excellent, multi layered novel Review: J.M. Coetzee's "Disgrace" is a fascinating examination of sexual politics and gender roles in comtemporary South Africa, a novel that is both an easy read and an exercise in complex, multi layered narratives. Although much has been made of its story being about the class structure in South Africa, it is just as much about one man's depressingly misguided life. David Lurie teaches Romantic Poetry and Prose at a Cape Town univerity, and seems to consider himself worthy of the heroic outlook and life of his hero, Lord Byron. The reader knows that Lurie is a decidedly second class version of his hero, since he seems to lack the sensitivity and aethetics of a poet, and his worldview is without refreshing insights. He is a misogynist, seeing women strictly in terms of what they offer to him. This leads to disaster when Lurie engages in an affair with an impressionable coed, which leads to his dismissal from the university. Lurie heads to a provincal farm co-op, run by his lesbian daughter. Here the novel veers into an examination of class conflict in South Africa. Lurie's daughter faces a life altering tragedy, and David is at loose ends to help her. Lurie's daughter, Lucy, faces the tragedy that befalls her with bewildering stoicism and passivity. This is the novel's most debatable character -- what are her motives for acting the way she does? Is she a victim, consumed with white guilt, or so without direction that she is willing to do what she decides for herself? Or, like the rest of the characters, is she a symbol of one of the forces at work in this kind of racist,hierarchical structure? Hard to say for sure. "Disgrace" is a terrific effort; well worth the read.
Rating:  Summary: Life as is Review: This stroy tells about life bare and naked. It is a story that shows the horrible price you can pay just learn a simple lesson...and at the end you find that there is no lesson to be learned...it is just life...it can crush you, burn you, destroy you inside out for no reason...or no apparent one at least...the only thing you learn is that at the end you must let go...you must go on...with hope or with out...beaucse you have no choice but to go on
Rating:  Summary: Let down with the ending Review: This book cover almost everything that we deal with day to day...from work, to sexuality, to race, rape, and violence... My only dissapointment was that the dialogue of ever character sounded the same, like, David Lurie...and the ending... but still...it was still written well.
Rating:  Summary: Maybe It's Me Review: I don't get it. Maybe it's just my lack of knowledge concerning South African culture. Or Maybe this story line is just undeveloped. So this 52 year old professor has a soft spot for the females, especially the ones younger than his daughter, and gets involved with a student (not for the first time, mind you). But the relationship is almost creepily abrasive on his part and the girl's actions are strangely lingering between those of a victim, a daughter, and a lover. In theory, this complication seems fantastic, but it just didn't seem to make sense on paper. Then, much later, after lawsuit, dismissal, and, well...disgrace, the professor has dinner at the house of this girl's parents and not one of them seems to have a problem with this, even the girl's dad who had sworn against the professor in his office. These are just a few examples of the strange ambivalence in this novel that I simply don't understand. And believe me, there are many more situations which leave you asking "What in hell would they do that for?" and to which Coetzee gives no apparant answer.
Rating:  Summary: Pure Perfection Review: The New Yorker says of "Disgrace"... Coetzee's sentences are coiled springs , and the energy they release would take other writer's pages to summon---- I felt the springs snap,jerk, twitch, break. Disgrace begins with an affair. Professor David Lurie, 52, crosses the uncrossable line when he has this affair with one of his students, Melonie, 19. Proffessor Lurie has no remorse. "I will not issue an apology which I may not be sincere of, sir." He says to the University Committee. He is rightly fired, shunned by friends, family, and co-workers. He retreats to his daughter, Lucy, on the Eastern Cape (South Africa) where he helps on her farm and in the animal shelter disposing of unwanted dogs and cats. He trys to be the father he never was, and once again fails. "If man cannot follow his instinct, he might as well be shot." He says this in a conversation with Lucy as they talk about the male dogs. He thinks it is outragous that they are beaten when they chase the [female dog]. It is as natural for a man as it is for a dog. You could say David is also a dog. A dog who will not change or redeem himself of past sins. A dog who can't stop chasing [female dogs]. Young ones. He does not understand what is happening to him. Until now he has been more or less indifferent to animals. He cannot tell whether by nature he is cruel or kind. He is simply nothing. Just when we think David is changing, he is still simply, nothing. Indifferent and unchangable. Although I believe he wanted to become something utterly new, he remains the same. And in that, he loses himself, who he could have been. He opens the cage door. "Come" he says, bends, opens his arms. The dog wags his tail, licks his cheeks, his lips, his ears. He does nothing to stop it. "Come." he says. "I thought you were going to save him for another week." Bev Shaw says. "Are you giving him up?" "Yes, I am giving him up." And David gives him up. Gives up. Gives up. Damn it. I was waiting for redemdtion, love, something tender. But David gives us hopelessness. Giving up on himself. "Yes, I am giving him up." What the reader gets is layers upon layers of brilliant writing, metaphor, and poetry. "Disgrace" is absolutely the best book I've read this year!
Rating:  Summary: Depressing yet refreshing Review: Like many other readers, I found this book very readable while increasingly depressing. However, I didn't mind the bleakness, as so often novels vere down a dark path only to come out into the light at the end in order to provide a sense of hope or reprieve. "Disgrace" does not provide that usual thread which was refreshing. The brevity of the novel helped...another 220 pages may have killed it for me. David Lurie is unlikable for the most part, but I saw some hope in him as we are only provided a view of his current character. The writer relies on the reader to build a character based on stereotypes of the middle-aged intellectual divorce who has fallen down the slippery slope of inpropriety both personally and professionally: the reader is given very little in the way of past emotional history on which to base the current Lurie's character. He must have been lovable and appealing at some point in his life, to have been married twice and still be in touch with his ex, but those attributes have withered away with no real explanation other than age and cynicism. I felt that maybe, just maybe, he could develop enough in later life to be redeemed, that this was a deep yet possibly temporary state of disgrace. All of the characters are of similar ilk: we are given little nuggets of what they may have been like in the past but we see them as they are now, their backstory weak and always filtered through David. The characters are portrayed as having given up somehow, settling into their destiny, however shabby, with no sense of where they will end up other than right in the spot where we leave them as readers. One aspect of the book I found interesting is the conflict between contemporary and traditional social models. David is a conservative middle-aged father of an independent lesbian daughter whom he tries desperately but rather pathetically to understand: old world versus new, never the twain shall meet. But then late in the novel Lucy surprisingly, yet not unrealistically, denies her contemporary self-image by giving into the tradition of letting a man take her on as his wife in order that she may survive on the land: only by giving into patriarchy can she survive independently, a paradox to be sure. Petrus is the only one who seems comfortable and thriving while caught in a dual world: he improves his lot in life by owning land and building a home, not possible during apartheid, while retaining traditions of having multiple wives and protecting "family" members at all costs, even when horrific crimes have been committed, relying on tradition to never have to face up to a modern "white" justice system. He has the best of both worlds and he knows it. The book continuously raises contradictory worlds -- country vs city, black vs white, intellectual vs labourer, extended vs broken families, disgrace vs vindication -- providing no real answers, which can be frustrating as a reader but does represent the real world. Hypocrisy throughout the novel reflects the true state of affairs in the post-apartheid South Africa, as well as end-of-the-20th century society at large: no clear answers, no clear roads to follow, but no reason to give up entirely. A good read, leaving one with a lot more to ponder than the novel's brevity would imply.
Rating:  Summary: Disgrace Review: Disgrace is an impotent novel-though the same cannot be said about the main character David Lurie-lacking vivacity or a clear sense of purpose. Jace Clayton's (a columnist)opinion that, "Disgrace is a sheer pleasure to read", couldn't be any more out of touch with the reality of the read. The book was painfully distasteful and lacked any sort of redeeming qualities. When finished with the novel I came away with the view of South Africa as a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah. If this was Coetzee's purpose, he has made a gross over simplification. Though the characters are well shaped, evolving and changing through the events of the novel, they prove to be offensive and grotesque. Coetzee's cheap attempt to liven up the characters with risqué attributes, such as David Lurie's sexual escapades and Lucy's alternative lesbian lifestyle, only alienate the reader because of their blatant lack of purpose. As for his commentary on the social attitude or condition of South Africa none was perceivable, unless he intends for the reader to believe that the majority of white South African citizens are liberal, tree hugging, hippie commune dwellers and the majority of black citizens are twisted criminal gang rapists. In closing the novel proved to be an utter waste of time and I walked away feeling grimy and unclean. When J.M. Coetzee titled his novel Disgrace, he unwittingly gave an ironically accurate assessment of his own work.
Rating:  Summary: Frustrating, but fasinating Review: I kept trying to like the protagonist, kept trying to feel some sympathy. But he is an extremely dislikeable man - one you would instinctively avoid if you were a savvy woman. And yet a man many would be taken in by. And so I kept reading, a sign of good writing, I think. A good read, if you understand life does not always end happily ever after.
Rating:  Summary: A book without an end Review: In a sense this novel does not have an ending. Not that all novels have an end. Yet in this novel the end, such as it is, comes rather abruptly. Were it not for the physical form of the book that gives the game away, one would hardly guess that the next page will actually turn out to be the last page in the story of Professor David Lurie. Not that one is disappointed by the creation of any expectations of a different or a more satisfying ending to this story. No matter how you view this novel, this is the story of a particular man at a particular stretch of his life. Not a very pleasant stretch. It begins pleasantly enough. Yet without the calm how would we know the difference once the storm hits us. Merely, by reading this story one is made to feel to a rather intense and disappointing degree the pointlessness of our life as human beings. Let us begin by just looking at the title. Disgrace. Yet, of course, the story does extend beyond mere disgrace and its consequences. This is the story of the beginning of the fall and decline of a man. Or so it seems. A man who, even though not the most content of men, in fact, begins his story with contentment as the most evident aspect of his existence. Now, whether that be sexual pleasure or mere complacency with his daily, or rather weekly, routine, contentment remains one's first impression of the life of this man. After all, he is described as a man who ''lives within his income, within his temperament, within his emotional means'. That by 'most measurements' makes him a happy man. Yet, happiness, as always, never seems to last. Not even in this novel. In fact, it is an attempt to heighten this happiness that leads to its seemingly total destruction. Or, at least, the destruction of this prior form of happiness. The happiness of complacent contentment that Professor Lurie was aware of until the moment that he begins to tumble down from the very heights of what seemed to be the unbelievable emotional and physical fulfillment of a middle-aged man who finds himself involved in an affair with a young girl. Who, unfortunately, also happens, in a sense, to be in his care. For she is also his student. That is to be the beginning of the downfall of Professor Lurie. The rest is really a description of how life can gradually lose all the sense of meaning that up to a certain point it has held as its very purpose of existence. By no means am I going to ruin the sheer pleasure of reading this book by revealing what happens once this divorced and middle-aged man's affair with this young student begins. Suffice it to add that not a single word is wasted in this novel. Furthermore, it is a rather brief novel. I have, in fact, managed to read it twice, once a couple of years ago and once over the past three days. Not a second spent reading this novel can be considered a waste of time. Life in other senses may be considered rather pointless. Unless one is allowed the pleasure of partaking even as a bystander an insight into the workings of the mind of a man such as Professor Lurie. Something easily done since the novel is written in the first-person. Not that he is a hero of any sorts. Not that he is a man that one can either emulate or admire. Yet he is portrayed as a man, a real human being not a role-model of any sort and that perhaps is the secret of the success of this novel. The impression that the reader has of this man is that of a solid and real presence in one's life and not of some cardboard character in a sitcom or soap opera. Opera in fact or rather the composition of one, seems at some point to be the only source of meaning in this man's life. As well as the sudden awakening of his dormant fatherly instincts of protectiveness towards his daughter, the sole offspring of his two failed marriages.
|