What is disgrace by jm coetzee about

In the new South Africa, the man who was once the kaffir calls the shots. His help must be asked for and his protection sought, particularly by a woman living alone, and it may be that his ambition is to take over the land rather than share it.

All this is regarded as just, or at least historically inevitable, but there are patterns that seem to magnify and distort the minor disgrace that did for Lurie in the city; oppression from someone whose role is to protect, sexual predation without even his excuses. Any novel set in post-apartheid South Africa is fated to be read as a political portrait, but the fascination of Disgrace— a somewhat perverse fascination, as some will feel—is the way it both encourages and contests such a reading by holding extreme alternatives in tension.

Salvation, ruin. Even a single paragraph can accommodate the transformation of hope into its opposite. There is more in Disgrace than I can manage to describe here. The perfective, signifying an action carried through to its conclusion. Disgrace continues. Why is he so drawn to Byron? What ironies do you see in the fact that Lurie composes the music for his opera on a banjo and that he considers including a part for a dog? From virtually the first page to the last, David Lurie suffers one devastating humiliation after another.

He loses his job and his reputation. He is forced to flee Cape Town to live with his daughter on her smallholding in the country. There he is beaten and burned and trapped helplessly in the bathroom while his daughter is raped. Finally, he ends up ferrying dead dogs to the incinerator. Is there a meaning or purpose in his suffering? Is he in some way better off at the end of the novel than he was at the beginning? How has he changed? What effect does this method of narration have on how the story unfolds?

How would the novel differ if told in the past tense? What does the novel imply about the larger themes of retribution and forgiveness and reversals of fortune?

About the relation between the powerful and the powerless? Learn More About Disgrace print. Related Books and Guides. The Childhood of Jesus.

Joyce Carol Oates. Bridge of Sighs. Richard Russo. American Rust. Philipp Meyer. We Cast a Shadow. Maurice Carlos Ruffin. John Williams. Sometimes a Great Notion. The meat of existence is unbending and immovable.

And it goes on View all 20 comments. Apr 03, Brina rated it really liked it Shelves: man-booker , race-relations , nobel-prize-winner , south-africa. All of Coetzee's novels have received multiple awards or prizes, and Disgrace is the first of his novels that I have read. Although short in length, this introduction reveals to me the brilliance of Coetzee's writing. David Lurie is a fifty two year old professor of communications at Cape I read Disgrace by Nobel Laureate J M Coetzee with a few friends in the group reading for pleasure.

Having been divorced twice and struggling to get inspired by his courses, Lurie engages in one affair after another with either prostitutes or women passing through town. Lurie's last affair left a bad taste in his mouth, and for the first time he decided to sleep with a student. Although this is hardly unheard of, Lurie is caught and forced to resign his position. In the throes of both a scandal and midlife crisis, he moves in with his grown daughter Lucy.

A child of the city, Lucy has decided to live in a rural farming community on the eastern cape. A young, determined woman of the younger generation, Lucy allows her father into her homestead but from the onset it is obvious that she would rather be left alone.

The generation gap is evident as she calls her father by his first name and does not bestow any respect on him. Determined to do a better job as a parent as a middle aged man, Lurie feels the inherent need to parent Lucy at this trying time for both of them. Coetzee's writing delves into what an affair and a rape is like for both the man and the woman, across lines of race and class.

Set in post apartheid South Africa, it is evident that blacks are still struggling in their relations with whites and feel the need to turn the tables on them.

Likewise, the younger generation that Lucy is a part of also does not see a need for white male protection. In striving to erase these lines, Coetzee writes in third person and refers to all characters, even in passing, by their first names.

He treats all his persona with the same respect regardless of age, gender, or class, even the animals at the clinic where Lucy and later David work. As a result, as a reader, I am able to feel empathy for all of the characters, even the stubborn ones like Lucy and the disgraced David.

For an introduction to Coetzee, Disgrace is a poignant novel. After reading only women authors during women's history month, it was refreshing to read a novel written by a male author that shows empathy toward strong women characters. The writing is powerful and deserving of its praise.

I am now inspired to read more of Coetzee in the future to see firsthand the work that merited him the Nobel Prize. Solid 4. View all 28 comments. A savage, ruthless book. At the onset of this Booker winner, I thought I was reading the story of 52 year old Capetown romantics poetry professor David Lurie, who has an affair with a student over thirty years his junior.

I was in awe of the storytelling, of how Coetzee was able to show much by saying little, about the two sides of that affair. Lurie, a man who identifies as a Byron-esque lover, who has been twice divorced and who enjoys the services of prostitutes, isn't exactly likeable.

Es A savage, ruthless book. Especially when he has the opportunity to save his career by simply issuing an apology, but doesn't, on principle. His hubris is cold and unwavering. I thought the book would revolve around his fall from grace after being forced to resign from his position. A terrible attack occurs, fuelled by hatred. So yes, it is a story about disgrace - but Coetzee casts his net far wider than an aging philanderer who abuses his position of power and loses face in the academic community.

It is more about the disgrace of rape. The disgrace of misogyny. The disgraceful violence, resulting from Apartheid. It is about aging, loss of virility, and death. I am disturbed by the brutality of life in this part of the world. She refuses to leave the farm after the attack. Transformed into a walking dead, she is at the mercy of her attackers, becoming a peasant in the fields she once mastered. I wasn't a fan of David Lurie, womanizer, objectifier, general dick-head.

But I found myself pleading along with him, begging his daughter to choose something else for her life. Instead, she loses herself, laying down in submission, much like a dog undergoing euthanasia. Coetzee is merciless in his depictions, pointing an accusing finger.

View all 74 comments. Sep 13, Nate rated it it was ok. I'm afraid for me, this book suffers from what I call the Booker disease. I've read very few books that won the Man Booker prize that I've enjoyed. But not one of those comments talked about Coetzee's horrible dialogue. All of his characters speak like a phlebotomy textbook, and they are all just an obvious soundboard for the author's opinio ummm All of his characters speak like a phlebotomy textbook, and they are all just an obvious soundboard for the author's opinions.

What's the point of making an idea a piece of fiction if the author just uses all of the characters to spout off his views on rape, class, prostitution? There were no distinctions in tone or vocabulary between the characters. I think his points would have been better taken if he had just let the characters work out the issues themselves and not filled them with political rants. I felt nothing for David, or Lucy, or Bev - the only emotive element that haunted me was the killing of the dogs every week.

The author sets his narrator on fire and the dogs are the only thing that got me. View all 14 comments. Feb 03, Steve rated it really liked it. An ill-advised affair with a student spoiled all that. With its setting in post-apartheid South Africa, a race angle was virtually inevitable. As far as I know, Disney had no role in producing the movie version of this raw and hard-edged book.

Despite the lack of uplift, I did appreciate the writing and the plausibility of the angst. Evidently, the Booker committee did, too, since they gave this one their fiction prize in View all 30 comments. I decided I do not want to read stories written by men about men who are misogynistic pieces of shit and also rapists.

I can and will happily go without the pretentious literary value these books want to teach me. David Lurie, 52, professor, seduces a student. The power dynamic between them, the disparity of authority, is foregrounded. Later, Lurie's daughter is raped by intruders, and violently. She is white; her assailants — three of them — are black.

We are in South Africa. An investigating committee asks him t David Lurie, 52, professor, seduces a student.

An investigating committee asks him to issue a statement of contrition and regret, but he refuses to do so on principle. He insists on accepting his due punishment.

Later, David's daughter refuses to report her rape. She refuses to take medical precautions. She refuses to seek vengeance against one of the men when she sees him in the neighbourhood. She, too, insists on remaining silent. She, too, bases this on a moral principle.

This book, published in , is set after apartheid has ended. There are many animals in this book. The way people talk about animals sounds a lot like the way that white South Africans once talked openly about black South Africans. We are of a different order of creation from the animals. Not higher, necessarily, but different. The answer is the novel, and it can't helpfully be further distilled. What makes Disgrace so impressive is precisely that it is no simple allegory, but rather a series of dynamics that echo and echo against each other in painful and confusing ways.

But Coetzee suggests that the two might be — if not quite synonymous, at least tightly bound together. He writes about sex in an extraordinary way: unsentimentally, even anti-sentimentally, to the point of misanthropy. Libido is described in terms of complex proteins swirling in the blood, distending the sexual organs, making the palms sweat and voice thicken and the soul hurl its longings to the skies.

That is what [Lurie's regular prostitute] and the others were for: to suck the complex proteins out of his blood like snake-venom, leaving him clear-headed and dry. You are a man, you ought to know.

When you have sex with someone strange — when you trap her, hold her down, get her under you, put all your weight on her — isn't it a bit like killing? Pushing the knife in; exiting afterwards, leaving the body behind covered in blood — doesn't it feel like murder, like getting away with murder? Coetzee's words hit like whiplash. Only the monosyllables can still be relied on, and not even all of them.

This is a very grown-up book it reminded me a lot of Max Frisch's Homo Faber. But it isn't a hopeless one — it expresses confusion, anger, and sometimes despair, but also a certain sense of searching that at least imagines a different future. Perhaps, as one of the characters thinks, it is necessary, in order to build something up, for everything to be first brought down to nothing.

For that, you need disgrace. And Coetzee offers that to everyone in the book — and everyone reading it. View all 33 comments. I don't think if someone described the plot of this book to me I would think that this is a book that I would enjoy yet here we are. I'm not sure how to even explain what about this book appeals to me. I think it's that the writing felt really wonderful and every word felt meaningful and right.

I can't stand overly verbose prose and nothing about this felt this way. I think I also just really enjoy flawed characters, and David, the main character, clearly has his flaws. I just enjoyed the humani I don't think if someone described the plot of this book to me I would think that this is a book that I would enjoy yet here we are.

I just enjoyed the humanizing way we see David grapple with his faults and limits, and his disposition towards romanticism and passion are things I can also empathize with. It's just one of those times where I've read a book and everything I've read felt like it added it to the book and just the writing and characters were so human and easy to embody when reading.

I really really enjoyed this one. View all 9 comments. It's admirable, what you do, what she does, but to me animal-welfare people are a bit like Christians of a certain kind. Everyone is so cheerful and well-intentioned that after a while you itch to go off and do some raping and pillaging. Or to kick a cat. At the beginning, it appears pretty easy: - To hate David Lurie. But talent rarely hails from Planet Obvious and Coetzee, a talented writer he is, knows very well what it takes to write a good book.

Disgrace left me pleasantly surprised and severely shocked. Surprised at the simplicity of narrative which resulted in a powerful fiction and shocked at the impact it had on my psyche. She has turned into a perfect country girl with no inclination towards dressing up or looking attractive and would rather tend her farm and take a walk with her dogs.

At this point begins a surge of impressive writing and one can say that Coetzee is home. He knows his South Africa well, he knows the plight of its citizens and above all he knows how to put across various points by using myriad symbolisms and allegories to tell the story of a big, unfortunate world in a small, splendid novel.

Coetzee slowly takes off the layers after layers and tells us that: - Beauty is indeed only skin deep. There are no menus. You will get served what you deserve.

Not with nothing but. But was it fair? What he did? What her daughter did? Whatever they had to experience? If at times the characters seems a bit distant then it's solely because we would never want to be in their shoes and experiencing this feeling, the pathos this book is able to create is something which makes it a great read.

The question is not, How can we keep the imagination pure, protected from the onslaughts of reality? The question has to be, Can we find a way for the two to coexist? Coetzee said a lot in a condensed, page novel.

The style reminds me of Salinger's in Nine Stories. Through live memorable imagery there is conveyed a lot of inner world, moral, ethical and political issues without dense or complicated language, written in a very readable form, with laser precision, balanced, smooth, no word wasted. Writing is so good you don't even notice it as you become immersed in the story. I was very similarly shocked and devastated after reading Nine stories, as they are unforgettable as Disgrace is.

Gods of showing not telling. The subjectivity of one's experience and self-delusion as central parts of the novel are visible in the sarcastic opening sentence.

Salinger , Coetzee says even more with the unsaid than with what is written. He also writes violence with such dignity and contemporary writers could learn a lesson from him on how to write about brutality in a meaningful, not pornographic way with unnecessary details of molestation. The imagery of violence is strong yet subtle and described aggression serves as a window to geopolitical, social, race, gender complex issues and deep psychological and existential conflicts considering sexuality, identity, meaning and death.

Coetzee does not shy away even from most forbidden taboo topics, from animal violence to incestuous connotations and aggressive deep end of sex drive. When it comes to men and sex, David, nothing surprises me any more. Maybe, for men, hating the woman makes sex more exciting. When you have sex with someone strange - when you trap her, hold her down, get her under you, put all your weight on her - isn't it a killing? Pushing the knife in; exiting afterwards, leaving the body behind covered in blood - doesn't it feel like murder, like getting away with murder?

The reading experience alone shifts the perspective of the world on a new level. This book is well-loved and I see why, it is a masterpiece that serves as an axe on a frozen sea. David is both piteous and repulsive as oftentimes we are to ourselves in our deepest hidden desires. He is immature, regressive, delusional, maladjusted, yet, evokes empathy. The perpetrator becomes a victim in the endless suffering cycle of life. In fragments of the story of each human life, there is the history of the land and political and social dynamic embedded, as the context of post-apartheid Africa veils and very much defines tension in the main characters' lives.

In another time, in another place it might be held to be a public matter. But in this place, in this time, it is not. It is my bussines, mine alone. Coetzee holds a mirror not only to us, but to the soul of humanity, and disgrace is universal. View all 4 comments. Disgrace, J. Coetzee Disgrace is a novel by J.

Coetzee, published in David Lurie is a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his own daughter. He is twice-divorced and dissatisfied with his job as a 'communications' lecturer, teaching a class in romantic literature at a technical university in Cape Town in post-apartheid South Africa.

Not that I'm in the slightest way bothered, but this happened to be my very first Booker Prize novel. I generally have zero interest in when books get awards, and I only found out on the day I purchased this that Disgrace bagged the Booker back in Whether or not it deserved it, and how significant the Booker is, I have absolutely no idea.

All I do know is that I really liked this. But that doesn't all of a sudden mean I'm likely to go on a frantic search and stack up on Booker prize novels, Not that I'm in the slightest way bothered, but this happened to be my very first Booker Prize novel.

But that doesn't all of a sudden mean I'm likely to go on a frantic search and stack up on Booker prize novels, because I'm not. This is a one off.

For now anyway. As novels go, it ticked a good few boxes for me. A good length, it felt expansive in nature but not in the page count, what it needed to do it did surprisingly well, without the need to drag it out, an interesting story with plenty of compelling plot developments, characters I really cared for and wanted to cuddle, characters I despised and wanted to push into a live volcano, and a feeling of immediate satisfaction once all was done.

Also, I found it multi-layered, things that hit me straight away whilst reading, and deeper issues that lingered strong after I finished it. Cape Town lecturer David Lurie, on whom Coetzee visits a contemporary catalogue of humiliations, is a fairly average, twice-married, fiftysomething, who, accused of sexual misconduct with one of his students he the bear, she the honeypot chooses not to defend himself but rather to suffer his fate with a noble, slightly grumpy, stoicism.

In his mind, Lurie has committed no offence; he prefers to get fired and suffer the disgrace than endure a politically correct process of rehabilitation. A feeling of hope started to settle in, before it was suddenly ripped away, the prospect of stability is replaced by the fact that the conflicts of South Africa will never truly go away. Disgrace finishes quickly with the question of judgment; its real interest lies in what comes after, when all one's days are stamped with the word of its title.

And the way the novel develops suggests that it is perhaps Coetzee, despite his resistance to a historically conditioned realism, who has the more deeply political mind. On the contrary, I thought about it strangely often. It was more like a feud I felt unable to resolve.

The novel follows David Lurie, a middle-aged English professor in Cape Town who has an affair with a younger student, Melanie. After she breaks it off and makes a formal complaint to the university, David is — partially through his own refusal to apologise, like a sort of inverted John Proctor — exiled from his job, and goes to seek refuge on a small farm owned by his daughter Lucy.

Returning from a walk, father and daughter are stopped by three strangers who break into their home and attack them. While David is locked in a toilet, Lucy is victim to a terrible sexual assault for which she can never seek justice, thanks to indifferent authorities and her complicated relationship with a neighbour whose complicity in the event is never fully revealed.

Returning to it this year, the mastery of plot somehow, it is only pages long and the perfect weight of his prose are no less startling. That propulsive, disorientating scene in particular, so vivid and haunting in its details — the grass in a shoe viewed from the floor, the splash of toilet water over singeing hair, the youngest of the attackers gleefully scooping ice cream from a tub — is a masterpiece within a masterpiece, a writer at such peak powers the book seems to tremble slightly in your hands.

The novel is told very much from his old, white, male perspective, and the final pages are a portrait of a man so utterly ineffective and out of step with the world he can find solace and purpose only in assisting in the euthanasia of stray dogs.

At the time of its publication, Disgrace was lauded primarily as a searing examination of racial tension and the legacy of apartheid in South Africa, a contemporary classic of postcolonial literature. After finally deciding to revisit it in , I wonder if it might serve us just as well as a critique of male entitlement. After accosting Melanie on campus, David invites her back to his flat where, to strains of Mozart, he insists she drinks wine and pontificates about Wordsworth before, inevitably, forcing himself onto her with a kiss.

Do you have any literary passions? He simply ignores her and starts banging on about The Prelude again. The comic irony of Melanie listing writers David could stand to learn a lot more from than the long-dead Lake poets he venerates is followed quickly by a far more disturbing scene, in which he forces himself onto her again, this time to have sex:. She does not resist. All she does is avert herself: avert her lips, avert her eyes[ It reminded me of the way, just a year earlier, year-old Monica Lewinsky was been portrayed as a femme fatale who brought down a helpless president.

That Disgrace now seems prescient about the re-examination society is undertaking of our attitudes towards sexual assault, and the experiences of younger women with older, powerful men in particular, is no accident. David Lurie is, to my mind, one of the most unlikeable protagonists in literary history, as self-pitying as Victor Frankenstein, as lacking in empathy as Humbert Humbert and as pompous both.