Coetzee
was the first author to win the Booker prize twice: first in 1983 for Life & Times of Michael K, about a young
South African man of color trying to leave a terrifying city life to return to
the country. One might say that Disgrace
is similar in a way, since it is about another man who retreats from the city
to a farm. However, Coetzee’s second booker winner (1999) reminds me more of
Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist (1974),
because both feature a privileged white South African man. Disgrace’s protagonist, professor of communications David Lurie,
has not chosen his retreat: he is rather in exile, or disgrace, for sexual
harassment of a student. This must have been one of the first novels to deal
with the growing political correctness that began to be felt in the 1990s.
After
David has his brief and selfish affair with a student, and refuses to cooperate
with the investigative committee, he resigns and goes to his daughter’s farm
and kennel. He begins to rebuild his life, volunteering and writing, until he
and his daughter are attacked by local thugs. The two crimes and their
aftermath are vastly different…or are they?
I
try not to read too much about a novel before I finish it, preferring to form
my own opinions. But as soon as I finished this one, I turned to the front
matter: a page of extracts from reviews. The words that jumped out at me were
“cold” and “uncomfortable”; “perplex” and “disturb.” I agree with all of those.
I also try to refrain from too much interpretation in these reviews, in order
to let my reader (readers, I hope!) form *their* own opinions. But I must say
that this novel, lean as it is, is rich with symbolic material about fathers
and daughters, crime and penance, even dogs and people. It is about a world in
which the sexes, races, and species are overcoming centuries of inequality. It’s
a slow and painful process.
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