A dumpy, bustling little woman . . . that dumpy little women . . . growing dumpy in middle age . . . dumpy little widow — Coetzee

On the Neglected "Major Work"

The ecumenical inquest as major plot device in Doubt (the play) is no longer vitiated by the notion that the child, a suspected homosexual, may have invited the priest's sexual advance. Perhaps, in the 'Dubya' (Bush) era, we would still be accepting Doubt as an invitation to the heady play of significations of guilt at the expense of the child-character, never depicted, and already spoken for. There's a certain wisdom in the stupidity of simply calling something what it is. One hopes that reading Disgrace twenty-five years later we can appreciate the professor's idiomatic, "How dare they (tell me what to do)!" as the archetypal mental maneuver in Reactionary sediment-formation i.e. something we are already rejecting as a matter of axiomatic disagreement. (A trick for centering: if you find yourself thinking the phrase above, you can reject the whole thought and choose to listen instead.) Most graduate-level literary research is the equivalent of talking-about-the-weather in how it manages to invest the minutia of a text while evading these kind of central concerns. Is a different response possible when confronted with the literary equivalent of the Screaming (Meemies) Uncle.

"On Identity and Difference in the Dog Motif in Coetzee's Disgrace"

For the sake of my thesis, I feel compelled to comment on the use of dogs in the text. In brief: Dogs as protectors of property, leisure animals, lapdogs, purebreds. Entangled as weapon-functionary in history of Apartheid. Our good-humored farm bulldog incidentally having been trained to savage black bodies (memory of this history inscribed incognito in the unspeaking brain of the dog-as-witness), guard dogs also simultaneously pets as recipients of care within one's possession as a kind of sterile child. Overdetermined by their coding as a functional object and therefore also capable of being wanted-by-no-one when not providing a use value. Narratively operating as a Pathos device (for the American reader where dogs now nearly outnumber guns). Bare life, acceptably dispensed with at the discretion of a violent authority (e.g. the robber-gunshot (thisis notably not the disgrace-ful crime referenced in the title of the text; dog-shooting is already re-inscribed as violation of a kind of white-authority) and the veterinary-injection which kills far more). Dog(s) are Black :: Black(s) are Dog :: goD is (s)kcalB (scab / black).
On Disgrace

James Wood's review of Disgrace, notes how the text is placing sexual assault into a relation of exchange, "She does not want to press charges, and refuses to move away from the area, in part because that will seem like a defeat, and in part because she begins to see the rape as the necessary price for her continued occupation of the land. The attack is a kind of historical reparation."(Wood, 219) In addition to some dismissive remarks on Coetzee's prose, Wood, like many reviewers, is occasionally playing with the parallels between the chief characters' responses to sexual assault and disgrace in the context of post-Apartheid struggle. Wood ascertains that both responses to "the attack" (reactionary and "progressive") implicate a "liberal white fatalism" which normalizes rape as the expected outcome of an ongoing historical process. He is unable to get past this problema, which he lets settle as the aporia at the heart of an insoluble conflict.

Wood's inability to get beyond Disgrace in Disgrace closes the analysis at the critical moment, which is the moment of the rejection of the exchange. What he reads as the liberal acquiescence of the daughter, who plans to raise the rapist's child rather than sell her estate, is really an obstinacy that is immovable even past the point of disgrace. This character is invoking a kind of slave-resistance (from master-slave dialectic) which is already dispensing with bodily autonomy and the (non disgraced) status which would expect "equal treatment" within a liberal power structure, all in a Dogged refusal to be moved. This resistance is actually drawing strength from disgrace, which it's putting to use as a kind of nutritional substrate: "That [disgrace] will not pass away, has not passed away, that I can turn back and go behind it, and there I shall find everything as it once was" (Sebald, Austerlitz, quotation modified). For certain, this is a delusional motivation, but it's also the "apocalyptic" perspective from which anything is possible (though this usually just means an infinite number of defeats in succession). (I intend "apocalyptic" in Northrop Frye's sense, i.e. accessing "metaphor as pure and potentially total identification, without regard to plausibility or ordinary experience.")

Coetzee himself, as author, is eliding this potentiality, which would have let him do something more interesting with the novel. The concluding scene in Disgrace involves the euthanization of a beloved, useless dog. Our chief character could save it, along with the implication that reconciliation is possible (but not for you), however we understand this plot is Blocked because we are reading "a novel of literary merit," which, most of all, is afraid of becoming a Happy Dog Story. That Coetzee doesn't have the courage to disgrace himself by writing something unexpected in this way is somehow reassuring. (Thank goodness these awful chauvinist professors remain vulnerable (because they still fear Disgrace).) Though what we're left with, despite adherence to literary convention, is something kind of Dumpy. ( )

Top-notch writing from JMC. This man can fit in so many layers of emotional complexity and nuances beautifully and smoothly in a book which isn't voluminous at all, is bizarre. The lust, guilt, redemption, despair, forgiveness and acceptance, this dude has (in my humble opinion) nailed it. ( )

"A los cincuenta y dos años, David Lurie tiene poco de lo que enorgullecerse. Con dos divorcios a sus espaldas, apaciguar el deseo es su única aspiración; sus clases en la universidad son un mero trámite para él y para los estudiantes. Cuando se descubre su relación con una alumna, David, en un acto de soberbia, preferirá renunciar a su puesto antes que disculparse en público. Rechazado por todos, abandona Ciudad del Cabo y va a visitar la granja de su hija Lucy. Allí, David, verá hacerse añicos todas sus creencias en una tarde de violencia implacable. Desgracia, que obtuvo el prestigioso premio Booker, no dejará indiferente al lector". (Descripción editorial).

He just doesn't get it!

The He in question is David Lurie a college lecturer in the university of Cape Town in South Africa. A white male of 52 years old who sees himself as a sort of Byronic figure. He readily uses his power and position to satisfy his sexual needs; only now as he gets older his main concern is that he may be losing his appeal. He has always been disgraceful, but when he seduces a 20 year old female student of his, he faces the wrath of an investigating committee, after her family make a formal complaint. He readily admits his guilt, agrees that he has done wrong, but sees no reason why he should apologise or seek help. He will lose his job and his reputation, but sees no reason to change his behaviour. When faced with a more difficult position when his daughter is raped and he is beaten up, he still demonstrates that he has a total inability to see another persons point of view or 'walk in their shoes'. He is selfish, egotistical and remains so until the end of the novel. He just doesn't get it. This is not a bildungsroman.

This novel published in 1999 won Coetzee his second Booker prize and in my opinion it was a very worthy winner, because not only is it a good extremely well written story, it throws up so many themes and issues around post colonial Africa, women's equality and even animal rights in just over 200 pages, that it could keep college lecturers in employment until the end of this century (assuming they could keep their sex in their pants or their knickers, while at work). There have been many fine reviews, analysis and expositions of the story line and so I don't want to add another one to the list, but there have also been many thoughts expressed that I think are wrong headed. In my opinion this is not a book that shows, or even hints at, some sort of redemption for David Lurie. He is clearly a man out of his time. This is important because as a reader we see almost everything through David Luries' eyes, although it is written in the third person. Lucy his daughter cannot explain to him, her fears and concerns after the attack, because she knows he will not be able to grasp the reasons that she behaves the way she does. He will only make it worse. He will not understand. He will not get it. It is best that he keeps himself occupied with his pointless attempts to write an opera on Byron's final years. Just because he shows empathy towards an injured dog in the final paragraph of the book doesn't mean he is on the path towards redemption.

A brilliant novel 5 stars. ( )

A stunning, disturbing novel of a father and daughter and their changing lives in the South Africa of today. ( )