Disgrace (1999)

I bought a copy of this novel shortly after J.M. Coetzee won his Nobel in 2003, so once again everything takes a long time. It was actually my first by the white South African writer and it’s quite good, complicated, nervy, and tense. Our main guy is a pretentious 52-year-old English professor. At the start he is teaching as an adjunct. He is twice divorced and a creepy self-serving philanderer, which is where the trouble starts when he is dismissed from his job after an affair with a student. This guy’s sexual habits are compulsive and self-destructive and it is obvious he is learning nothing from even his increasing consequences. His pride and rationalizations are so transparently delusional you want to scream. He goes to live with his daughter in the country where she owns and operates a small farm in a small community. She is in her 20s, a lesbian, and something of a “back to the land” hippie, though the story takes place in the present time when the novel was published, not long after the end of apartheid. Then a terrible event takes place, a brutal home invasion, and the rest of the short novel is about attempting to put the shattered pieces back together. In a lot of ways the first half of Disgrace veers close to a thriller, and it’s quite effective. I thought of Elmore Leonard in terms of the compressed, direct language and extreme events reported with sparse, telling details. The second half has some scenes and plot points that felt more strained. I never really cared much for the main guy, David Lurie, even as he changes and a kind of redemption takes place. I’m very tired of bed-hopping main characters, but at least Lurie’s sexual compulsions are not really normalized. They have a definite edge. It’s pretty clear something is wrong with him. Animal deaths are a key part of the story but it’s a nuanced take with multiple levels. The worst is kept offstage and in many ways the novel turns on a heartbreaking euthanasia operation. I shouldn’t complain about the sex here because it’s such a huge part of Lurie’s personality, but his way of moving from partner to partner (woman to woman) is familiar from TV shows and I’m tired of it even when done well. Mostly I was impressed with Coetzee’s lean and powerful language, and also his ability to create scenes of great tension. I’d like to look into more of him, but first impression is that Coetzee warrants the hype and hoopla. He’s good.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.