Book review: Disgrace (J.M Coetzee)

From the dais of Swedish noble prize academy, in his banquet speech coetzee said:
"Mommy, Mommy, I won a prize!"
"That's wonderful, my dear. Now eat your carrots before they get cold."
That’s very much like him. He is master of making an ordinary moment steer throuh your conscince, exactly when you thought it should have passed just like that. And when you thought “now surely this is going to stay, this is a turning point”, he will walk away with a vaccant, void look to that extraordinary.
Coetzee novel, disgrace is story of David Lurie, a professor at Cape Technical University in South Africa. The first sentence of the novel claims that: "For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well." However, in the first half of book, he his exactly trying, miserably, to solve this problem. Perhaps looking for sex and intimacy, he fails to get both from single person and makes a considerable mess out of it. With soroya, the prostitute, he found sex but she rejected any effort of his for intimacy. With his student, Melanie Isaacs, the professor in him was able to find some intimacy, but when the men tried to get sex, he really screwed it up. (by the way, David was already twice divorced). Earlier the cost has to bear in form of divorce, this time it was disgrace.
Lurie is charged with sexual harassment. He chooses not to defend himself: "I plead guilty. That is as far as I am prepared to go." The university, indeed contemporary society, demand more: remorse and an admission that he understands he has done something wrong, but Lurie is only willing to say he did what he did. If he wanted, he could be forgiven: a token punishment and then everything probably pretty much back to how it was before. Lurie isn't willing to go along with the charade, and he forces them to impose the harshest punishment, and he leaves the university in disgrace. Perhaps, David believed that he committed an act of “sex” with Melanie but not of “harassment”. Coetzee has also very sensitively presented the interaction between David Lurie and parents of Melanie. Parents choose to respond to this event by “tolerating” since now…. the past cannot be changed.
Lurie flees to his daughter, Lucy, who has a plot of land in the countryside and lives by selling flowers at a local market and boarding dogs. here coetzee describes the things again in his characterstic style. When lurie things “ what kind of life lucy was living in farm, toiling, taking care of dogs and selling flower” he writes in bracket “ what else you thought life to be!” Hhhmmmmm…….J
Pages after pages, cotzee potrays how does disgraced Mr. David tries to come to life by engaging himself with ordinary life. But with coetzee that peak, that high, that surprise and that devastation is only a line away!
On one fine day, three hoodlums enters the house and they rape Lucy. The father locked in bathroom, trying to shout at peak of his voice, cursing his old age for lack of strength. The way coetzee has describe the helplessness of a father is really heart rendering. However, when lucy opens the gate of bathroom the rage in his eyes did not find a similar expression in his daughter eyes. Here comes a big lesson in david’s life. Throught his life he has been thinking and desiring for love as pleasure and intimacy. With lucy incidents he knows that sex can be used also for “ subjection and subjugation”. Lucy also chooses not to tell the police that she was raped, only that her father was attacked and some property stolen. As her father did in his case, she does not believe the authorities and the systems in place are equipped to deal with what happened to her. She explains to Lurie:
'The reason is that, as far as I am concerned, what happened to me is a purely private matter. In another time, in another place it might be held to be a public matter. But in this place, at this time, it is not. It is my business, mine alone.' 'This place being what ?' 'This place being South Africa.'
on rest of the canvas, coetzee sensibly painted the interplay of power, powerless, how lucy learns to respond to her pain by tolerating it and in the end she goes to the home of petrus, the fellow who made the whole plot of rape for acquiring lucy’s plot of land!
However, exactly when we thought that coetzee has reached limits of his understanding of human psyche, he changes role….from a novelist to a poet. The metaphor of street dog’s life leaves a profound impact on reader’s mind. About to day, its pretty certain that sooner rather later they will die….. but still lets work to reduce the pain.
I haven’t captured even 1% of what cotzee has said and the way he has said. So guys, get one copy of “disgrace” and go thru it. You will certainly appreciate how writing can be made to shift from one plane to another in just matter of few lines, few paragraph and nothing may happen in writing of 10 pages.