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Aug 2020
7:49am, 30 Aug 2020
46,719 posts
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McGoohan
1-star: packaging was damaged and book got wet as postman left it in rain. Cannot recommend.
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Aug 2020
7:50am, 30 Aug 2020
46,720 posts
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McGoohan
(Spoiler alert - actually I have also given it an 8)
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Aug 2020
12:06pm, 30 Aug 2020
52,593 posts
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Diogenes
I’ve been thinking about this book all morning, working out my thoughts. I think this is going to be one I write sitting down in front of a keyboard- there is a lot to unpack.
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Aug 2020
9:36pm, 30 Aug 2020
52,607 posts
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Diogenes
So, not at a keyboard, but here goes. I’ve tried to avoid making too many explicit spoilers, but there are some details in there you might not want to see if you haven’t finished the book.
This is a powerful and important novel, full of ideas and serious themes. Superficially, it is a familiar story - a professor (who specialises in the Romantic poets) leaves in disgrace after an inappropriate relationship with a student. He finds himself in an unfamiliar environment having to reassess everything, including his own self-worth.
Set in post-apartheid South Africa, this is all about seismic shifts in power, about what happens when the dynamics of a society undergo a fundamental change. It is about sex, race, and culture. And, of course, it is about disgrace.
David Lurie is in disgrace because what he has done is now considered wrong. He is happy to accept that he has transgressed but he doesn’t accept he should be penitent. He simply accepts the facts and the consequences. Disgrace is a judgement, not a condition. The suggestion is that the apartheid years are a disgrace in the same way, that there is some leeway in acccepting the conditions to which one is raised.
When we first meet Lurie, we learn that he is in his early fifties, twice-divorced, and enjoys the services of an escort once a week. When his favourite quits, his attention turns to a student of similar type. His ‘seduction’ of her is quite unpleasant (and unbelievable, but I’ll come to that later), possibly amounting too rape as Melanie is quite passive in the moment. It’s unclear if we should be despising this anti-hero, or rooting for him. It is part of Coetzee’s skill that he can draw such a complex character. Lurie is much more than a one-dimensional figure standing for all the wrongs of the white male hegemony.
Lurie leaves Cape Town for his daughter’s small holding in the country. Here she grows flowers Which she sells once a week at market, and boards dogs. Her father helps her with these tasks, alongside a black man named Petrus. He has taken advantage of a government scheme to buy some land of his own from Lucy. David finds himself working with Petrus, under his command. The balance is shifting.
He also helps out at an animal welfare centre run by Lucy’s Friend Bev Shaw. Bev is an short, plump, freckled woman about his age who Lurie dismisses as uninteresting. He does not recognise her as a women as she is not sexually attractive to him. One of the jobs he takes on is helping despatch the dogs they are forced to destroy. After witnessing the stiffened corpses being beaten with shovels to make them fit into the incinerator, he personally deals with this part of the process. He finds a vocation is seeing that old dogs have a dignified and peaceful end. He is not a sentimental man, but he is not cruel.
Lucy is a strong, independent woman, not afraid to challenge her father who, though not controlling, fears for her and wants to protect her, wants her to lead a more conventional life. Then there is a shocking incident, a violation that leaves David injured and Lucy damaged and permanently changed. It also causes the relationship between father and daughter to break down. He cannot understand the decisions she reaches and she is frustrated by his inability to understand.
Those who have come to power are as bad as those who held it before, perhaps more. There is a sense that there are reparations to be made and therefore many wrongs can be overlooked as making up only a small part of the debt owed, the disgrace that must be felt.
Petrus has two wives, one elsewhere, and a new younger wife who is carrying his child. Lucy, who used to employ him comes to rely on him to help out, that she is almost a third wife who relies on his protection.
David begins an unlikely affair with Bev Shaw, one that begins as sexual but by the end is more about companionship. He is reassessing his needs and coming to terms with his pursuit of youth and beauty as ridiculous and unbefitting in a man of his age. The scene where he and Bev first make a physical connection is as unconvincing as the words Lurie uses when he first tries to lure the student Melanie into a relationship with him. I thought these were the only two weak points of the book. For a while I also thought the Byron side-story was superfluous but by the end I came to appreciate how it informed and underpinned the narrative.
Lurie’s long-planned but unstarted work on Byron is shelved in favour of an opera based on part of the poet’s life in Italy where he seduced the young wife of a nobleman who he subsequently comes to detest, resulting in him fleeing to Greece where he dies. To his surprise, Lurie finds he gets further with this project when he abandons writing the lyrics in favour of composing the music, especially when he switches from piano to a banjo. His acceptance of his new status, the simplicity of his circumstances spark his creativity as the outlet for his romanticism finds an outlet other than sexual conquest.
There is no happy ending, but it is not without hope, despite the references to Jude The Obscure (“because we are too menny“). Adjustments are made, not so much truth and reconciliation, but acceptance. In the end lame dogs must be put down.
It’s not often a book can keep one thinking so long. It’s also a a good sign when you can write about it from memory (which would also explain any errors above). I’m really glad Baz chose this as I wouldn’t otherwise have read it.
Finally, I really shouldn’t have written this on my phone.
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Aug 2020
9:21am, 31 Aug 2020
52,612 posts
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Diogenes
Oh, a few more things I forgot in my not-so-much-a-review-as-summary:
David’s ineffectual striking out at the ‘troubled’ black youth, after which the boy says “I will kill you.” Certainly, he will, boys like him will be the end of men like David.
The symbolism of David helping Petrus lay a pipe in the earth...
David’s ill-advised visit to the parents of Melanie, the student who brings about his downfall. They, a deeply religious, teetotal family welcome him to join a family meal which the mother grudgingly serves. He takes wine. The father wants to here him apologise and ask God for forgiveness. David is not a believer and just wants to tell his side of the story. There is no reconciliation. Meanwhile, Melanie has resumed her studies and also her interest in the theatre - she is quite an actress, good at playing a role, taking direction, such as that from the jealous, angry boyfriend who preceded David and forced her complaint. There is a suggestion that Melanie was coerced by propriety to satisfy the expectations of her boyfriend and parents. The young, radical white man is as much of a threat to the older generation as the black men.
I notice that I use the word ‘force’ a lot in these remarks. People are forced to do things, forced to accept other thing. Force is used to compel, to right wrongs that have been allowed to continue for too long. In this society two wrongs, many wrongs, even, are considered to make right what has gone before.
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Sep 2020
8:28am, 7 Sep 2020
31,018 posts
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LazyDaisy
I will out myself as the one-star reviewer. I read this for my 'A book for every year of my life.'
I loathed David. I found many parts of the story unconvincing. For me to like/enjoy/approve of/feel positively about there needs to be some light and shade, or a character I like and would root for (I had no qualms about whether I should root for David - emphatically not, in my view). Disgrace left me with a feeing of distaste. You could call that great writing but is not, for me, great novel writing.
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Sep 2020
8:34am, 7 Sep 2020
122,386 posts
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GregP
~applauds~
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Sep 2020
9:02am, 7 Sep 2020
17,451 posts
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Bazoaxe
I finished Disgrace last night and scored the book an 8.
I did find the choosing of a book to be quite a difficult thing to do as I wanted to choose something that would work for the majority.
On the whole I found it to be a book that I found easy to read and I enjoyed. There were a number of areas that I wasnt sure about though.
The whole seduction of Melanie was a strange series of events. There was though the odd an unexplained arrival to stay at his place for a while which I wasnt sure what went on and why and we seemed to move on from that to the complaint quite quickly
The tribunal seemed to be very odd, not accepting his guilty plea and wanting something more.
The visit to Melanie's family was also odd and barely believable. The situation with Petrus and Pollox was also unusual and Lucy seemed to have a real blind spot.
I did feel that David always wanted to do the right thing albeit he wasnt always a likeable character and was having to right his own wrongs.
The whole Byron thing confused me towards the end though.
I am now starting to question why I went as high as an 8. The answer probably was that I looked forward to finding an opportunity to opening the book back up to see what happened.
Anyway , thats me now moving on to the B choice I selected of American Dirt which I think will be equally controversial but in a different way.
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Sep 2020
12:52pm, 7 Sep 2020
34,487 posts
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Night-owl
I also finished this book last night. Well around 1am this morning.
A quick read definitely. But not enjoyable so agree with LD above that some would argue that was great writing.
I always find it weird whether in books or TV when a child even an adult child calls their parent by their first name. Maybe that's me
The storyline the attack and Lucy's reaction could not understand but then the culture of the place at the time i have no experience of
Baz i too got weirded out if that's the right phrase about the Byron thing near the end.
Book also seemed to finish in mid air but maybe that's the point.
I will score it a 6 and i think that's generous
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Sep 2020
9:17am, 8 Sep 2020
46,814 posts
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McGoohan
Disgrace
First some potential negatives.
1. I was wondering as I read, whether this book would have the same plaudits in a post #MeToo world. Despite not having a very likeable subject and told in the third person, we do see everything through his eyes. I guess there’s not much in the way of a redemption arc to his story.
2. I thought the portrayal of the young was a bit… wrong. It was an old man’s view of how young people talk and behave. The angry boyfriend was particularly poor, hanging around at the back of the theatre with his leather jacket. What is he? The Fonz?
3. I felt I was being bombarded with ‘subtext’ at certain points. The word ‘dog’ started to appear every other word in some allegorical form or other. Ditto ‘Byron’.
But…
The positives
1. The subtext kind of won me over. There was a greater story going on with this farm and the home invasion just a single example within the ongoing South Africa story. I just went with it.
2. The quality of the writing. Coetzee writes in a deceptively simple style which is probably not so easy to write. It absolutely flows from beginning to end with a grim inevitability.
3. The ending. I felt this worked really well indeed. All the themes: dogs, Byron, different types of disgrace came together. Then they were not so much tied up in a bow, more taken out back and shot.
Other stuff…
Baz - the ‘trial’ reminded me of L’Etranger so I re-read that immediately afterwards - both commit a crime but are more condemned for not conforming to the way the justice systems wants them to, rather that for the crime itself.
In the end, the positives far outweighed any negatives. I hovered between a 7 and an 8 but I’ve gone with the higher mark. Great read Baz. Not so much thought-provoking as thought-roughing up 
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