NO.

A vida é como um tabuleiro de xadrez – um jogo de subsistência, em que cada peão tem um papel fundamental, regido por um conjunto de regras, balizadas por duas liberdades (a própria e a de outrém). Entre esses extremos, desenham-se estratégias que permitem a existência em sociedade, num estado de graça global. Mas o desejo de conquista emerge a miúde e, com ele, a degeneração da semente humana. Há movimentos erráticos, peças surpresa e xeque-mates dilacerantes, culminando numa amálgama de cacos irreconhecíveis… é que ninguém nos avisa que o tabuleiro é de cristal!

David Lurie é um “lobo solitário” (quiçá, amante de xadrez, em potência) que, entre as suas aulas de literatura, gosta de ceder às suas necessidades carnais, sem sentir culpa nisso. Numa jogada, que não é de mestre, vê-se envolvido num escândalo e, sem demonstrar qualquer remorso ou intenção de mudança da sua conducta disruptiva, aceita hipnoticamente uma pena capital: o desterro. Resolve, então, cumprir o veredicto na propriedade rural da filha, longe da azáfama rotineira de uma grande metrópole. No entanto, eles demonstram ser dois desconhecidos, ligados por uma herança genética de incompreensão; duas almas abandonadas, em busca de salvação.
Quebrando as barreiras biológicas, um elo de sofrimento vai unir todas as personagens, numa descida progressiva aos círculos mais recônditos de um inferno pessoal e terreno.

Para adensar este clima de trevas, em que embebeu o seu livro, Coetzee faz uso de uma escrita de guião de cinema (mas não cinematográfica): não há grandes descrições nem cenas rocambolescas; tudo se resume aos diálogos assertivos e necessários, com discussões fundamentais, e o mínimo de desenvolvimento, para que o leitor consiga acompanhar o enredo. Tudo o resto processa-se na mente de quem lê, dando-lhe apenas o combustível necessário para reflexões cabais, sobre assuntos intemporais – a misoginia, a segregação, a luta de classes, a xenofobia, o perdão. Numa perspectiva antagónica, os capítulos curtos e repletos de diálogos não podem ser lidos a um rápido ritmo, sob pena de a sinestesia literária, das cenas descritas, ditar uma pena nefasta: uma emése incontrolável.

Chegados ao derradeiro movimento final, a expressão “morto matado” reverbera na nossa mente. Por vezes, só a morte poderá dar descanso a uma alma arrebatada e ela poderá surgir antes mesmo do fim da vida. Como cães sem dono, alguns começam a vaguear perdidos por esses quadrados brancos e pretos, sem um rumo definido, entre a eira e a beira. Desejando apenas uma única coisa: a (des)honra (título mais apropriado?) de um digno final.

"Sem nada. Não com alguma coisa. Sem nada. Sem cartas, sem armas, sem propriedade, sem direitos, sem dignidade.
- Como um cão?
- Sim, como um cão."

n  This is all very quixotic, Professor Lurie, but can you afford it?n

We've started going over the terms of tragedy in one of my classes, working through the definition before setting off on our reading of Othello. One of these delineations uttered by my professor went along the lines of the difference between 'unfortunate accident' and 'tragedy', the death of the main character's lover and said main character's succumbing to a fatal flaw, respectively. I say, if that is indeed the linguistic case, one must put more effort into identifying when a tragedy is not ineptly fueled by too many flippantly composed unfortunate accidents. Women in Refrigerators Syndrome, a particularly rampant example of the old adages of esteemed literature working themselves out in unacceptably lazy fashions.

As much as I love literature, I know better than to look to the pasts calcified in both deed and color for a lifelong methodology. The past is a different country, and this disgraced David Lurie is a dinosaur of the worst sensibilities. Despicable, and yet quiet, riding the degraded rails of an older world in a passable sort of grace so long as his mum's the word, exemplifying one of my main tenets for the freedom of speech: there is no change without communication. Communication isn't moral or immoral. Humanity is, and will not learn the difference between the two if interchange is in any way restricted.

Lurie is restricted. The use of the phrase 'political correctness' in the summary, right there at the forefront of what countless use to determine whether they will read this book or not, says that plainly. If that doesn't prove it, his later actions confirm without a doubt. Hypocrisy, double standard, bigotry. The same old words, the same old story, the only difference being in how Coetzee handles this fallen hero of his, this old geezer who spends people as easily as money, especially women. For there is no sympathy here for any of that, and woe to any fed full on the public bursting of that usual single souled rot who have come here expecting more of the same. If you find yourself in concurrence with this David Lurie, well. You said it, not me.

In that manner, Disgrace fails to be a tragedy. The main character is dislikeable on an instinctive level, enough that his supposed fall from grace appears as obviously very much his fault and his alone. Appears, as it is true by technicality that he is "overcome by a combination of social and psychological circumstances". Appears, as this is my personal reception of this piece, and if you've been reading me long enough you know where my biases lie, and how I feel the need to express them. So, perhaps not so much a failure of a tragedy after all, but one that snips away at the base of ancient definition and shreds the decrepit ways of black and white to pieces. For there is black and white here as well, but in a sense that is constantly straining to escape the usual context, never offering the same meaning twice to both reads and rereads. A favorite facet of mine.

Much as the idea of ending the review with only Lurie having been discussed to any extent annoys me, I don't have much to say in terms of the other characters. Then again, I usually don't have much to say about characters in general, so it is most likely an inevitable side effect of the single standpoint of narration. Be sure, though, that the refrigerated women will have their say.

Also, the tragedy. All that hamminess in the limelight that never extended the fault outside of the characters and into the author. Despite the cloying ease with which the text spools out, it remains clear at every instant that Coetzee is not writing himself out in some pleading exercise of explanation. A breath of fresh air, in a convoluted, reflexive sense of the phrase.

Redemption, you ask? Mm. Depends on your predilection for happy endings, as well the structure of the story itself. If you wish to redeem any of them, you would needs deliver Lurie first and foremost. It's only fitting in the linguistic sense of this tale. Whether 'tis fair or just or correct is another matter entirely.

I finished this book a little over a week ago and for the first time I couldn’t decide how to rate a book, much less write a review about it. So here I am still mulling it over, reading through my notes and trying to type some sort of articulate thoughts into my laptop. I don’t really think I ‘liked’ Disgrace. I respected the writing; it made me think … a lot. I had trouble finding any beauty in it; and I think that is where the problem lies with this book for me. If a book touches me emotionally, or if I learn something by reading it, then I can truly say I loved it. However, the only real emotion I felt was anger if anything else. I didn’t really learn much – except that unfortunately maybe I am correct in that life can be really crummy at times and people sometimes unpleasant or in some cases downright despicable. How does one get into a state of disgrace and is it possible to move back into a state of grace afterwards? Perhaps.

Professor David Lurie is a man I disliked right from the start. "… a woman’s beauty does not belong to her alone. It is part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it." Okay, there’s that. And then there is the fact that he has an affair with one of his students, a young woman that could be his own daughter, who is in fact younger than his daughter, Lucy. This is where I had some trouble – raising my own daughter that is still school-age and under the influence of her own teachers and others that have positions of ‘power’ over her – this perhaps makes me a poor audience for this book! When David is faced with harassment charges, he will fall into a state of disgrace. But what exactly does disgrace mean to David? He has no regrets for what he has done. He says to Lucy, "One can punish a dog, it seems to me, for an offence like chewing a slipper. A dog will accept the justice of that: a beating for a chewing. But desire is another story. No animal will accept the justice of being punished for following its instincts." Disgrace to him is not loss of his job, loss of respect, or loss of face. Rather for him it is the process of aging, losing that magnetism that attracts others, even perhaps not leaving behind a legacy for which he can be proud. When David leaves Cape Town to stay with Lucy in Salem in the Eastern Cape of post-apartheid South Africa, he will have time to ponder the state of disgrace and all of its inherent meanings. Lucy and David do not see eye to eye, but I have to give David some credit for trying to understand his daughter and the life she has made for herself on her farm and with the animals under her care. When violence erupts and becomes personal, David is placed in a position that prompts even further self-reflection.

Much of this book is uncomfortable and harsh. There may be triggers for those that are distressed by cruelty to both animals and people, so I want to note that warning here. Coetzee did manage to make me side with David and pull for him partway through the book. I couldn’t really understand Lucy – I felt sympathy for her but her actions troubled me and left me feeling a bit hopeless. I’m not thoroughly convinced that David will transform, but I can envision the opportunity; I will continue to hope for that state of grace. As far as a rating, well I’ve finally settled on 3.5. The book is extremely well-written; no doubt about that. However, based on my own personal reaction to the book, I have to rate accordingly. I wouldn’t turn anyone away from this book (with the exception of the possible triggers noted above), but note that negative emotions got the best (or should I say worst) of me this time around.

I forget that not everyone has a potty mouth like I do, soDISCLAIMER a little bit of cussing coming up.

Disgrace was quite a challenging read, not because of the writing, which was excellent, but because of its content.

Arguably, it wasn't the best time to read this kind of novel.

This is a complex novel about post-Apartheid South Africa, where things are changing at a fast pace. This is about race relations, about men and women, fathers and daughters, about city vs country and so much more.

Professor David Laurie is fifty-two, twice divorced. His dalliance with a twenty-year-old is his professional undoing, as he is fired from the University. He takes refuge on his daughter's farm, in the East Cape region.

I disliked Laurie a great deal. He's an intellectual with no depth, no self-awareness, a misogynist, who sees women exclusively as sex objects. And doesn't he go on and on about women's appearance, the entitled white, swine man.

Because a woman's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is a part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it.

I found myself saying "FU, Professor" many times and wishing all kinds of misfortunes come upon him.

And they did come. Some horrendous things happen to him and his daughter. His relationship with his daughter is tenuous and strange. He doesn't really know her. He's such a shallow man, he couldn't even see his own daughter past her looks. FU, Professor.

He did try to help her once they went through the horrific event, but it wasn't easy, as Lucy is stubborn and unrelenting - to be honest, her choices didn't make sense to me in any way, I couldn't find any logical justification to her action or inaction, as it may be. Let's just say that she lacked that primal instinct that makes one run away from danger.

There is so much to unpack and analyse. The fact that Coetzee managed to fit so much in such a short novel is quite the accomplishment. It sure made my blood boil at times, so I guess that makes it a good novel, even though my reactions were unpleasant and uncomfortable for the most part.

Not that I'm in the slightest way bothered, but this happened to be my very first Booker Prize novel. I generally have zero interest in when books get awards, and I only found out on the day I purchased this that Disgrace bagged the Booker back in 99. Whether or not it deserved it, and how significant the Booker is, I have absolutely no idea. All I do know is that I really liked this. But that doesn't all of a sudden mean I'm likely to go on a frantic search and stack up on Booker prize novels, because I'm not. This is a one off. For now anyway. As novels go, it ticked a good few boxes for me. A good length, it felt expansive in nature but not in the page count, what it needed to do it did surprisingly well, without the need to drag it out, an interesting story with plenty of compelling plot developments, characters I really cared for and wanted to cuddle, characters I despised and wanted to push into a live volcano, and a feeling of immediate satisfaction once all was done. Also, I found it multi-layered, things that hit me straight away whilst reading, and deeper issues that lingered strong after I finished it. Coetzee’s intensely human vision infuses a fictional world that both invites and confounds political interpretation.

Cape Town lecturer David Lurie, on whom Coetzee visits a contemporary catalogue of humiliations, is a fairly average, twice-married, fiftysomething, who, accused of sexual misconduct with one of his students (he the bear, she the honeypot) chooses not to defend himself but rather to suffer his fate with a noble, slightly grumpy, stoicism. In his mind, Lurie has committed no offence; he prefers to get fired and suffer the disgrace than endure a politically correct process of rehabilitation.
Once the scenery changes by him going to the country to live with his daughter Lucy, and address the meaning of this self-inflicted injunction, It’s here that Disgrace, moved up a gear or too and began seriously to engage with the aftermath of apartheid. A feeling of hope started to settle in, before it was suddenly ripped away, the prospect of stability is replaced by the fact that the conflicts of South Africa will never truly go away.

Disgrace finishes quickly with the question of judgment; its real interest lies in what comes after, when all one's days are stamped with the word of its title. And the way the novel develops suggests that it is perhaps Coetzee, despite his resistance to a historically conditioned realism, who has the more deeply political mind. Lurie is an ironic man, but Coetzee's own irony has a surgical precision that slices through and beyond and around the character's own. The novel stands out for the way in which the writer's use of the present tense is in itself enough to shape the structure and form of the book as a whole. Even though it presents an almost unrelieved series of grim moments, where one could feel bogged down with a claustrophobic or depressing feeling, it actually works more for it's sublime exhilaration. Also it's impossible not to mention the dogs, Something I will only touch on, not go into, there is a profound meditation and a kind of otherness, when it comes to the lives and the rights of animals.

I still don't think this was as good as Waiting for the Barbarians, but on the whole I was impressed.

The Gray Areas Of Life

"Disgrace" is an eloquent book about changing and aging, told with thought and with understatement. It ties together two seemingly unrelated stories: the first dealing with the professional and libidinous difficulties of David Lurie, a 52 year old professor of English, the second dealing with the change in South African Society with the end of apartheid.

The story of David Lurie involves his liason with a prostitute, his subsequent seduction of a young student, and his consequent loss of his academic position.

The story of South Africa involves Lurie's daughter who is attempting to establish a life for herself in the rural areas of South Africa and who is brutally raped while her father is visiting her.

The most remarkable aspect of the book is its ability to present volatile issues and persons with a minimum of moralization and criticism. We learn to understand something of David Lurie and of South Africa and to control our predisposition to rush to instant, nonmeasured judgment.

Society and individuals both change and age for reasons internal to themselves. Some things must be learned and understood through time.

I think this is what this difficult book is about and it is beautifully conveyed.

Robin Friedman

To begin with, let me make something clear: J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace left me intellectually fulfilled and severely shocked. Fulfilled at the simplicity and beauty of its narrative which resulted in a powerful drama; shocked at the impact it had on my innermost self. This is not a book for the faint-hearted. If you lack faith in your fortitude, do not even start, read something easier. But that would be a pity, for you would be deprived of an experience that will only enrich your understanding of the world. If you stay, Coetzee will grant you a masterpiece. And there have been some moments of genuine awe in my reading experiences, but I can without any trace of doubt testify that reading Coetzee is always one of them.

Disgrace follows David Lurie’s fall from grace, a professor of poetry and communications, that is unable to fit in a tormented post-apartheid South Africa. David clashes with the University’s politically correct environment as well as with the land dispute barbarism in the country’s interior, where his daughter lives.

With an immaculate prose, in which no word is wasted, the novel is a plunge into a society lacerated by poverty, criminality and a social conduct values deadlock. Disgrace is a work of art, rare nowadays: that that refuses simple explanations, which reinvents and enriches reality.
n  

“But the truth, he knows, is otherwise. His pleasure in living has been snuffed out. Like a leaf on a stream, like a puffball on a breeze, he has begun to float towards his end. He sees it quite clearly, and it fills him with (the word will not go away) despair. The blood of life is leaving his body and despair is taking its place, despair that is like a gas, odourless, tasteless, without nourishment. You breathe it in, your limbs relax, you cease to care, even at the moment when the steel touches your throat.”

n At 52, twice divorced, David is solitary, resigned, erudite and sarcastic. He does not care for the disinterest of his students show his poetry classes.
n  

“He continues to teach because it provides him with a livelihood; also because it teaches him humility, brings it home to him who he is in the world. The irony does not escape him: that the one who comes to teach learns the keenest of lessons, while those who come to learn learn nothing.”

n He contemplates writing an opera on Lord Byron, but always postpones the project. He believes to have “solved the problem of sex rather well”: on Thursdays afternoons he visits a prostitute that could be his daughter, pays what he owes her and has the right to the oasis of one and half hours of his continuous and dreary mundane existence.

His life, bureaucratically justified, capsizes when the prostitute dismisses him and, even knowing the mistake it is, has an affair with one of his students. By disdaining political correct codes, accused of abuse, David falls in disgrace. He becomes an outcast and retreats to the country to his daughter Lucy's – the only person he has some affectionate bond – remote piece of land in the Eastern Cape. He comes, then, in contact with the post-apartheid South Africa, “country where it is a risk to own things: a car, a pair of shoes, a pack of cigarettes”.

In what is to come, he will face a brutal reality, made of vengeance, banditry, submission. Brutality against which occidental culture is simply worthless: “He speaks Italian, speaks French, but Italian and French are useless to him in Black Africa”.

J.M. Coetzee builds in Disgrace flesh and blood characters and, through them, weaves relationships between classes, between men and women, between parents and children, black and white, between a long exploration history and a present of explosive resentments.

Situated in nobody's land, where civilization and barbary mingle - a region well known by Brazilian readers, Coetzee slowly denudes realities and ultimately tells us that there are no just rewards, there are not even fairness.
n  

“'How humiliating, ' he says finally. 'Such high hopes, and to end like this.'
'Yes, I agree, it is humiliating. But perhaps that is a good point to start from again. Perhaps that is what I must learn to accept. To start at ground level. With nothing. Not with nothing but... With nothing. No cards, no weapons, no property, no rights, no dignity.'
‘Like a dog.'
'Yes, like a dog.'"

n____

David Lurie é um homem de meia idade, professor universitário, divorciado pela segunda vez,
divide o seu tempo entre os livros que escreve e universidade, os dias são todos iguais, sente falta de uma companhia, tem a Soraya que lhe vende prazer 90 minutos por semana, mas isso não chega, não é só de sexo que vive um homem, quer mais, quer: amor, paixão, arrelias, companheirismo, atenção e mimo.

Simpatizou com uma aluna, 32 anos mais nova, envolve-se com a aluna e comete uma fraude, avalia-a positivamente num teste que ela não fizera, a fraude é descoberta e Lurie é alvo de um processo disciplinar.
Assume o erro da fraude e a culpa de se ter envolvido com a aluna, mas para algumas vozes da Universidade isso não chega, querem castra-lo como homem, viam-no como um predador sexual que se empoderou da sua função para assediar a aluna. Aos olhos do professor foi apenas desejo, ele não a obrigou a nada, pelo contrário, estava convencido que a aluna também o amava. Demite-se.

Refugia-se na casa da filha, uma camponesa que vive do campo e dos animais, longe da cidade, mas algo terrível acontece e as desavenças entre pai e filha são constantes. Ele tenta que a filha venda a propriedade e saia daquele lugar inseguro, mas ela é teimosa e não quer partir.

A história situa-se numa zona campestre em África do Sul, onde os problemas raciais estão muito vincados e os brancos não são bem aceites. Lugar onde o homem é dono do gado e das mulheres, podendo acasalar com várias e em paz com todas elas, ora Lucy é branca, homossexual e proprietária de uma herdade. É demais para algumas mentes que a querem ver fora dali.

Lurie é um homem da cidade, erudito, letrado, gosta da luxuria, das pessoas bem-parecidas, bem arranjadas e perfumadas, habituado a um habitat contrário ao que a filha vive e convive. Pessoas rudes, feias, malvestidas, com as mãos sujas da terra e dos animais, mas com carácter forte, e fortes laços de amizade que os unem.

Após alguns meses volta para a sua cidade, mas nada ali tem, nada o espera, vende a casa e vai morar para perto da casa da filha, não a compreende, mas aceita a sua decisão.

A escrita é irrepreensível, simples e viciante.

John Maxwell Coetzee foi laureado com o prémio nobel da literatura em 2003, doutorou-se nos EUA em literaturas germânicas e deu aulas como professor universitário em Nova Iorque, Cidade do Cabo e Adelaide.

Coetzee recebe o prémio Booker em 1999 com o livro Desgraça.

A brilliant, nearly flawless novel. I don't know much about contemporary South Africa, but it's obvious this book has important things to say, through its story and its characters, about the state of the country. Actually, though it's a slim novel, it has a lot to say, period. For starters, there's the meaning behind words, including the title word. There's the indignities of life (and death) for animals and humans: growing older, becoming redundant, becoming too many.

Lurie is self-delusional about many things; but, all credit to Coetzee, he is still (though only eventually) sympathetic. Lurie is one of those men we wouldn't want to know in real life (an action he has completely deluded himself about is especially heinous) but perhaps you may find that he redeems himself, which is something you might not think about a 'real' disgraced person, and that in itself provokes thought.

This was my first Coetzee, and so my expectations were modest, as they usually are with a new author. Literature being so diverse, it usually takes a little time to connect with an author’s particular style and voice, and there is something of an act of persuasion as the author slowly reveals themselves and coaxes you around to his or her point of view. Not so with Disgrace, which immediately gripped me in its raw power and honest depiction of the decline and fall of David Lurie. In his portrayal of Lurie, Coetzee is able to create sympathy for the unlikable character by exposing his peculiar sense of morality and the logic of his mind. Though his actions are not admirable, one cannot help but respect a person who demonstrates such resilience in the face of hardship.

The central theme - disgrace – is in itself emotionally powerful. A disgraced person becomes the focus of total and enduring moral derision, the effect of which is social isolation and deep, personal shame. Issues of morality, responsibility, dignity, blame and regret come to the fore, and these issues permeate the novel, which intertwines these with issues of poverty and race relations in South Africa. The novel is in many ways about the inevitable and inherent failings of man (or more precisely, male-ness), which appears to be the underlying cause of much of the damage. The differences between male and female nature are contrasted here, both in their role as the cause of, and reaction to the various disgraces depicted. The questions of responsibility, dignity and respect, are paralleled again in man’s treatment of animals, and indeed in man’s animal nature. The overwhelming feeling is one of powerlessness: the unavoidable prices that must be paid – or perhaps it is only stubbornness: the refusal to pay the price (in this question, is dignity considered a value or a vice?). This is a book of remarkable depth, especially considering its length. Coetzee absolutely explodes the central theme of disgrace, and leaves it to the reader to work through the mess.

لم يكن هنا ثمة ورطة كبيرة ..أو مأزق عادي..بل كان الأمر برمته مخزٍ جداً....جداً...
عندما تعترف بذنبك فهذا لا يعني أنك تُقدم اعتذاراً بل عليك أن تدرك أن ثمة خيطاً دقيقاُ يفصل بينهما ، فكلاهما ليس واحداً...
لقد ادهشتني قدرة الكاتب " كوتيزي" في تصوير الخزي مشهداً حياً حتى يكاد يطغى على الكيان الوجودي لمن كان لهم الخزي عقاباً..بل تجاوز ذلك ليصبح وصمة تلتصق بالروح ، تهدد بفناءها ...، تطرق الى مسامعي دوي السقوط الهائل لأستاذ الجامعة الذي يلاحق أي امرأة يصادفها حتى وإن كانت إحدى طالباته ، الضعف الانساني في أقبح صوره عندما يصبح المرء أسيراً لرغباته ، يلغي كل ما دونها ، لا يمنح أي فرصة لسلطة العقل أن تمارس قدرتها عليه ..
رجل عندما منحه القدر فرصة أن يفعل ما يرقى بروحه ، أفلح فى أن يُبدي اعتذاراً ولكنه لم يكف عن ممارسة اللعبة ولم يعلن نهايتها .....