Disgrace (Penguin Essential Editions)

I just finished reading Disgrace. This is a concisely written book about a man who is basically disenchanted with life and pursues a sexual escapade that becomes a doorway to another world. A world of pain, growth, aloneness, surrender and acceptance. The reason this book does not get more stars is that there is a certain amount of trust you put into an author. You are taken down certain roads that you accede to for entertainment and sometimes, enlightening purpose, but it's with an understanding that you will get something out of it that will help you to learn something realistic about the world. I appreciated David Lurie's journey and that is not what I have a problem with. I have a problem with the rape of his daughter and her ensuing reaction that I think is supposed to have a lesson in there somewhere. I think women reading this book would be enraged at the way the rape survivor lies down like a dog in regards to what happened to her. It's not even out of depression she does this, but out of some misguided notion that not pursuing her attackers will make the world a better place. It really, really disgusted me and was a horrible diversion from what I, otherwise, was getting a lot out of in terms of David's evolution. Some people enjoy books that make them sad or scared or happy... read this book if you want to be very frustrated by the time you reach the end.

This novel tackles an "important" subject -- race relations in South Africa. Somehow because of that, it gets elevated into greatness. It's a good novel, albeit a depressing one, with not very sympathetic characters. It seems to flow naturally, if depressingly along. But only the PC crowd, or those fascinated by train wrecks, will sing its praises.

Many reviews here have described the novel. I, however, just want to comment on a few essential reasons as to why this is a 'must read' for anyone interested in literature.

1. An extremely 'gracefully' written book, on some of the most 'disgrace'ful events that can occur in a man's life.
2. An in depth insight into the sufferings of the people of Africa, especially women. An eye-opener.
3. A non-animal lover turning into someone who cares for animals. How beautifully the transformation 'occurs - occured'.
4. Philosophy written with a fine touch of dark humor.
5. Some scenes are abhorable, you "should" hate the main character in the book, but there is something so enchanting about his personality that you actually end up liking him. He is not trying to please anyone. He is who he is and most importantly, he does not care what people think about him.

I could not put the book down once I started it. The Booker Prize was well-deserved.

As for J.M. Coetzee, he has a unique style of writing. A person who completely deserved the Nobel Prize (2003).

This book and its author have won a spot on my 'favourites' list.

A very disappointing while extraordinary depressing Novel. As an Ex-South African Coetzee's Book is a constant reminder to me that all to often Critic's award rubbish with accolades. I am not entirely sure how these Booker Prizes are handed out but perhaps the Educators are the same dim-wits that give the likes of Desmond Tutu a Nobel Peace Prize.

In this novel, Coetzee reveals that he is one of those all too few contemporary authors unafraid to address uncomfortable contemporary issues. A South African author who fought against the injustices of apartheid, he nonetheless paints a frank portrait of the society that has emerged in its aftermath. But this book is not simply about South Africa. Here, it is simply the most apt setting for a portrait of the world-wide death of white, male authority, and with it European high culture and art as the supreme social good. Coetzee explores what it means for a world not to be built on these values but for the only agreed thing of worth to be that of the equal right to pleasure of each individual. He exposes the absurd contradiction of such a world, in which reason and learning count for little, and yet which continues to treat animals with shameful barbarity. The learned professor and lover of romanticism discovers painfully what happens when an entire civilisation puts feeling before reason and not simply a few priviliged 19th century aristocratic rebels such as Byron or indeed present day white male professors of literature.

The juxtaposition of the professor's charge of sexual harrasment with the brutal gang rape of his daughter is not easy to interpret, or rather it can be read and interpreted in many ways. On the one hand, the actual rape of his daughter Lucy serves to show how vindictive and ridiculous the charge made against him of simply having consenting sex with an adult student was. It can also be read as an attempt to understand such viciousness in contemporary gender and racial politics, the excessive yet inevitable wish to redress the historical abuses wrought by the power of the white man.

In the end, language is seen to be a human tool, one which we use to justify and rationalize our all too animal needs and resentments. Language is indeed used to cover the bare human soul, not in order to sing but to allow ourselves to be in denial over our animal natures. That the professor finally learns to recognise the souls of the abused animals in his daughter's shelter is the novel's graceful moral.

This book is somewhere between an under graduate text and a book I'd actually like to read. The fact that I actually finally read "Disgrace" is more attributable to my spying it at my parent's house (i.e. for free) then any other factor. I raced through it in about two hours, it's hardly a slog. More like a high lit version of a "beach book" then anything else. Which is not to characterize Disgrace as a beach book- far from it.

The subject matter- the story of a disgraced South African professor (non tenured) who is expelled from his life in Cape Town after a brief, benign affair with a student, only to land with his lesbian back-to-the-earth daughter in the east of South Africa, is a total bummer, but the writing is excellent and the message- the kind of an obverse version of a colonialist text- sits on the mind.

It's hard to really "review" a novel without giving away significant plot points- something that other good reads reviewers should take note of (like the other reviewers of this book) but the brevity and alarcity of the writing in Disgrace makes it a worth while read.

still trying to decide what i think about this book
on the plus side -- extremely well-written, concise. some of the events are shocking -- coetzee has no problem tackling hard topics like race, rape, sex, hatred, etc., he also writes with insight on male-female relationships, power and race.

on the other hand, it took me a while to warm up to david lurie, the main character. no doubt that is intentional but still hard to read about a character who is cold and unfeeling [though this changes as book goes on]. my biggest struggle is with how desolate this book as and how little hope it seems to offer. that may be precisely the author's point and yet personally i found it hard to relate to.

Disgrace is not about a rape. It is not about an University professor having affairs with students. The fact that he is 50sh, the fact that he has a daughter running a kennel in the countryside are not relevant.

The book is about the condition of living as a white in South Africa today. The rape is not an ordinary rape, it is a bloody premeditated vengeance on an innocent victim who must leave for ever. The living in the country is not an expression of freedom any more. It is nightmare that rapists, African rapists will come again and again and again, until David Lurie's daughter will have to leave.

She wants badly to stay. She even considers that raping is a price she now must pay, for privilege of staying on her property, in country she always lived.This exasperates her father, David Lurie. The hospital of the dogs is mostly doing euthanasia for dogs, while they lick the hands of their executioners, deluded that they will be cured. Professor Lurie, expelled from a decent teaching job, works as hireling in a veterinary clinic, not saving the dogs' lives. Is this the life he wants?

There is no doubt in my mind that this book explains clearly why the only Nobel prize writer had to leave South Africa. He went to Australia, where, Coetzee was received as a hero, after being denied a US residency by a real dimly-lit-minded bureaucrat from INS.

Coetzee achieves the amazing feat of disappearing in this book. The writing is neither brutally stark nor ornate; it's neither discursively descriptive nor abstract. It is just a stoy, plainly told. The characters are, mostly, neither heros nor villians. The story is clearly told, yet the story and its lessons are far from clear. To me, it seem like Hemingway without ego (imagine!) or a more narrative, story-telling, and hopeful DeLillo. 100% recommended.

Thinking that this would be another (yawn..) campus scandal involving yet another jaded professor who has lingered too long in the encapsulated academic environment, my first impulse was to donate the book to the local library. Instead, I found myself captivated, yearning to know more about South Africa.

Coetzee's disengaged and perversely libidinous David Lurie, whose scholarly interest is Byron, morphs into Byron, lost, at odds with himself, self-destructive and morally bankrupt. Professor Lurie's self-imposed exile is so deliberate that it is easy to forget that his muse was also a poet.

Coetzee is a trickster.

The writer creates emblematic characters, sometimes grotesque, at other times hollow, raw, and fierce, and plants them in squarely in a disturbed and distupted culture. He deftly plays out the drama of Apartheid, racial unrest and tense kinship bonds as he contrasts "civilized" Capetown and the harsh, brutal terrain just beyond the city. Coetzee's characters seem as minimal as his language; spare and brutal. When it appears that redemption is impossible for the inhabitants bound together in cultural war,the poet appears out of the dust.

The trickster is a Sphengali. I can't wait to read more.