It's admirable, what you do, what she does, but to me animal-welfare people are a bit like Christians of a certain kind. Everyone is so cheerful and well-intentioned that after a while you itch to go off and do some raping and pillaging. Or to kick a cat.

At the beginning, it appears pretty easy:

- To hate David Lurie.
- To take Coetzee’s writing for granted.
- To assume that everything would fall in its right or may be wrong place.
- To anticipate a letdown feeling by just another Booker prize novel.
- To learn the same old lessons we have confronted since the original sin was committed.
- To read another long-winded definition of Disgrace.

But talent rarely hails from Planet Obvious and Coetzee, a talented writer he is, knows very well what it takes to write a good book. Disgrace left me pleasantly surprised and severely shocked. Surprised at the simplicity of narrative which resulted in a powerful fiction and shocked at the impact it had on my psyche. David Lurie, an aging Professor at a University in Cape Town, SA, who is best friends with Eros is getting reckless with a young girl student of his. I rolled my eyes after reading this because more notes on a trite scandal was something I didn’t want to read about but I gave my snobbery a break. The pace of the book helped and quickly we’re introduced to David’s daughter, Lucy. She has turned into a perfect country girl with no inclination towards dressing up or looking attractive and would rather tend her farm and take a walk with her dogs. At this point begins a surge of impressive writing and one can say that Coetzee is home. He knows his South Africa well, he knows the plight of its citizens and above all he knows how to put across various points by using myriad symbolisms and allegories to tell the story of a big, unfortunate world in a small, splendid novel.

Disgrace knocked at Lurie’s door at an age when conventionally one look forward to a calm life without any burden of expectations but if we ever try to chart out the blueprint of our future then the joke is on us. Lurie wasn’t prudent to say the least but to come face to face with his immediate past in a brutal fashion is something he didn’t prepare himself for and neither did the readers. Coetzee slowly takes off the layers after layers and tells us that:

- Beauty is indeed only skin deep.
- It’s not what it looks like.
- God works in mysterious ways.
- Welcome to The Karma Café. There are no menus. You will get served what you deserve.

'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.'

Lurie also got what he deserved. But was it fair? What he did? What her daughter did? Whatever they had to experience? From one point it was completely unfair but the history of Africa is an example of unfairness and to live there, to find a place one can call home even if the price to pay is through disgrace, acceptance of fate and be at peace with whatever we are left with to move on with our lives is something one can’t deny no matter how much it infuriates us. If at times the characters seems a bit distant then it's solely because we would never want to be in their shoes and experiencing this feeling, the pathos this book is able to create is something which makes it a great read.

Update: $1.99 Kindle special today ..... for those who can handle reading this book .... the writing - and story gets inside you and doesn't leave quickly.

"Disgrace" is a perfect title.

David Laurie, professor, father, divorced, (twice married), jobless after and inappropriate affair, temporary farmworker, is a 'disgrace'.

David dips into a downfall transgression with himself and his daughter, Lucy.
Racial tensions run high....violence is on the rise....brutal.....in South Africa. ( and this was post apartheid). .....
It was easier for me to understand the "disgrace-of-David".....than it was for me to understand Lucy's train of thought after the horrific things that happened to her.

Step into Africa with J.M. Coetzee.....complex, controversial, personal & political.....
Choices to cringe over ....yet compassion is circulating in our thoughts.

Powerful --- winner of the 1999 Booker Prize

*note.... readers who are extremely sensitive to animals abuse, may not want to read this --- or skip over parts.

رواية مذهلة وموجعة وعميقة. “إنه سرّ لوسي، خِزيه هو” ـ جون كويتزي.

Roberto Bolaño’s ‘2666’ still holds first place on the podium for the most disturbing book I’ve ever read, but this one, running eight hundred pages shorter, came very very close. Actually, its length was the most impressive thing about it, and I believe Coetzee’s “Disgrace” should be taken as an example by all those authors out there filling their pages with pop culture references and other unnecessary rubbish.

This was one of the best books I’ve ever had the uncomfortable pleasure of reading. As unsettling as one of your worst nightmares, this thought provoking work of genius will grab you from it’s very first sentence and it will not lose its grip. It’s going to shake all your convictions and beliefs. It’s going to beat you up to the point where you wish you were asleep, just so you could wake up and find yourself sitting comfortably on your sofa without a single thing to worry about!

But that’s not going to happen, I’m afraid. You’ll get to the last page only to realise that it wasn’t just a bad dream. All that pain and blood were real, and you’re never going to be able to forget it.

Consider yourself warned.

Durante aquella época de mi febril admiración por Fiódor Dostoievski, unos años atrás, admiración que cuya llama no se apaga, tuve la oportunidad de leer el libro "El maestro de Petersburgo", de J.M. Coetzee y ver en la tapa que había sido premiado con el premio Nobel en 2003 auguraba una interesante lectura.
Me sorprendió en el acto y gratamente la manera en que se mete en la piel del genial escritor ruso, en una novela atrapante donde Dostoievski, luego de años de exilio vuelve su querido San Petersburgo para averiguar que sucedió con Pável, su hijo fallecido.
Coetzee crea una ficción en la que nos narra cómo el la miseria y la pobreza petersburguesa de las clases más baja con la misma maestría que el viejo Fiódor. Ese libro me encantó y lo releeré algún día.
Ahora bien, mucho tiempo después, decido encarar la lectura de "Desgracia", al que siempre veía en las estanterías de las librerías y que de algún modo me llamaba con su tapa tan especial, la de ese perro flaco mirando hacia un camino de tierra. Informándome del resumen de la contratapa, podría percibir una historia fuerte y así fue.
Realmente, la prosa de Coetzee es profundamente convincente, sin retruécanos ni rodeos y va al hueso. Es directo, visceral por momentos y no le da miedo meterse con temas escabrosos, fuertes y de apabullante actualidad como lo son el abuso de menores, el acoso sexual, o la violación.
Es que Coetzee pinta una cruda realidad que abofetea al lector sin aviso.
Mientras uno lee el principio del libro, cuando David Lurie sacía sus necesidades con Soraya, la prostituta que frecuenta hasta que decide ir a visitar a su hija Lucy, no espera que la historia gire hacia una dirección inesperada a partir de un suceso puntual que sucede en la granja de Lucy y a partir de esto la acción se desarrollará sin pausa y luego de lo sucedido comenzarán a aflorar las miserias de los personajes, las culpas y las peleas.
Es que David y Lucy congenian poco. Siendo un padre ausente, todo lo que sucede entre ellos a partir de su llegada a la granja se torna forzado y complejo.
Durante todo el libro se narra todo lo que le sucede a David, este profesor devenido en ayudante de una veterinaria que sacrifica perros, pero que en realidad nunca sabe que hacer con su vida. Ha fracasado en dos matrimonios y a los cincuenta y dos años su vida naufraga entre el hastío y la indecisión.
Para mí el libro se divide en tres partes bien claras: en primer lugar, todo el asunto del affaire con su alumna Melanie Isaacs, un tema que lo salpica de lleno y que lo perseguirá hasta el final, en segundo termino el episodio violento en la granja de su hija Lucy, que no voy a contar para no generar spoiler y en su devaneo existencial final, su vuelta a su ciudad, mucho peor de como se fue y de sus inciertos planteos de cara al futuro, especialmente respecto de sus intentos de terminar una ópera que está escribiendo sobre Lord Byron, "Byron en Italia".
"Desgracia" es una historia fuerte, sin tapujos que el lector no puede esquivar, puesto que se le viene encima de golpe. Narrada por Coetzee con aplomo, sin pausas y como aclaré antes con mucha convicción.
Ese es el término que define a "Desgracia": es una historia convincente, con un acercamiento psicológico de los principales personajes muy logrado. Nuevamente ha sido de sumo placer para mí leer a Coetzee.
"Todo esto no ha sido otra cosa que una desgracia, una verdadera desgracia", dice su ex esposa Rosalind.
Y sí, David. Deberías haber sabido que todo terminaría así.

Although I did enjoy elements of this book and found it to be both symbolically rich and multi-dimensional, I could not look past the silencing of women's voices.

The whole story rotates around the rapes of two women: David Lurie's rape of Melanie and his daughter, Lucy's, rape at the hands of three criminals who invade her home and attack her. Yet, there are few moments where women discuss their own rapes - Lucy refuses to do so, given only a few lines of dialogue to describe what happened to her and how it is she feels; Melanie's testimony silenced, due to David Lurie's decision not to read her statement. I understand the creation of a character like David Lurie and the reasons he would choose not to read such a statement or to avoid acknowledging his own complicity in such behaviour - I also acknowledge Coetzee's attempts to rectify such culpability with Lucy's dialogue "Maybe, for men, hating the woman makes sex more exciting. You are a man, you ought to know" - Here the reader and David Lurie himself are made painfully aware of his own complicity in committing the same atrocity against another human being. But Melanie's story is never heard, her words are never given the same respect as David's, or as Lucy's, which holds both gendered and racial weight within this story. In fact, the rape of Lucy becomes more of a political metaphor for post-Apartheid politics : "a history of wrong. Think of it that way, if it helps. It may have seemed personal but it wasn't. It came down from the ancestors. Women's experiences and voices, here, become metaphors for the redistribution of land and property in the wake of the apartheid ere, with Lucy's rape aligned with Petrus' desire to take her land. In the end, it is Petrus' complicity in the rape, Lucy's pregnancy, that allow him to take control of her, to demand that she "marry" him and hand over her land, in return for his "protection." Lucy becomes isolated, within the domestic sphere, and Coetzee does nothing to rectify this, to question this, to philosophise on what this means.

In fact, throughout the story Coetzee's descriptions of women, through David Lurie's eyes, leave little to be desired. He describes his daughter's breasts and buttocks as "ample," he describes Bev as a woman who "make[s] little effort to look attractive," and despite the fact that this is an element of David Lurie's character, there is little to redeem Coetzee's presentation of women. David Lurie's epiphany at the end of the novel is to reassert his own use of the word "enrinched," to reinforce the idea that the women in his life have enriched him. He says nothing of their pleasures, their desires, their humanity, it is their impact upon his life that is important to David, they have enriched him "even the least of him, even the failures," even plain women like Bev have had an impact on his life, regardless of their own humanity.

The problem with this representation, isn't the characterisation of the abhorrent David Lurie but the complicity of Coetzee in this attitude. Lucy tells her father that she is not a "minor" character within his life, he is not the major player and she simply a character in his story, she has her own life, desires, thoughts, feelings. Yet, Coetzee doesn't let us see these, he characterises Lucy as just this, a secondary player in David Lurie's story, and moreso, in the story of South Africa. Her body, and the body of the silenced Melanie, become terrain over which men battle - David and Petrus battle over his daughter's body, while she fights to retain control but doesn't ever really manage it. Coetzee returns to the trope of "virgin" terrain - emphasising this through Lucy's sexual orientation "no wonder they are so vehement against rape, she and Helen. Rape, god of chaos and mixture, violator of seclusions. Raping a lesbian worse than raping a virgin: more of a blow." Here, Lucy's sexuality becomes a modern interpretation of "virgin" soil. SHe is a lesbian, untouched by men, has "no need of men," but has been trespassed upon - these men have taken her territory, she has become the virgin soil of colonialist tropes - her body representative of the land that Petrus, and the other Black South Africans in the post-apartheid world - want to take ownership over, want to dominate.

Coetzee doesn't rectify this idea. He uses women's body to create an image of South African in the post-apartheid setting; he returns to the "virgin soil" trope and reminds his readers that women's bodies, objects, clothing, land, are all property to be taken, to be damaged, to be dominated by the men of the world. He uses David's rape of Melanie to mirror Lucy's rape, to draw attention to the racial differences and similarities, that both Lucy's rapists and David are attempting to dominate women's bodies, to dominate the land. Yet he doesn't give women voices; the women are silenced by the men's attempts and domination and, in the end, men speak for both Lucy and Melanie and Coetzee himself takes no efforts to free them from this bond.

The conclusion to this critique could easily be summed up through Coetzee's own words, that come through David when he is contemplating his daughter's rape, "he can, if he concentrates, if he loses himself, be the men, inhabit them, fill them with the ghost of himself. The question is, does he have it in him to be the woman?" David doesn't wonder if he can put himself in his daughter's place, empathise with her feelings as a victim, he asks if he can be the woman, if he can put himself in the shoes of a woman and understand her experiences, as a general contemplation. He can imagine being a rapist, a violent one at that, but he can't imagine being violated, being the victim, being a woman, in general - in all that being a woman represents. I would argue, that this line sums up Coetzee's own position within this novel. He can describe a rapist, he can understand a rape, he can present the internal monologue of a man both raping and dealing with the rape of someone he loves, but he can't, he doesn't have it in him, to be the woman. It is enlightening that David eventually is able to write as a woman, through his Opera, which develops through the voice of Theresa, Byron's lover, but Coetzee himself fails to do this - he doesn't ever give Melanie a voice, or Lucy enough of one. He remains unable to "be the woman," to see his story through another's eyes. Instead, it is through his, Coetzee, the white South African's eyes, we see this story and we see this battle. His terrain and his story is the body of women, but women are merely that, terrain, land, property, voiceless and dominated, and the whole thing left a bitter taste in my mouth.

JM Coetzee writes allegories. His books always work on at least two levels. So while the plot of this book is that a professor fucks his student and is disgraced for it, that's not what it's about.

It's about post apartheid South Africa, Coetzee's home country. Whites, in charge for so long, lose power. Blacks, furious, punish them. People struggle to find a way forward. Out of it all, inevitably, a biracial baby is born. Coetzee (rhymes with "book see") uses rape as a metaphor, which seems to be a thing for him. Tony D'Souza calls Disgrace "the definitive work on South Africa’s present state."

Coetzee writes exact books. He knows what he's doing. He has a point, and every sentence aims at the point. His work is powerful but manicured. There are no unruly digressions. They are strict. And nasty, too: violence and rape are Coetzee's recurring themes. Coetzee seems to have more sympathy for women than for men. His protagonist here, ex-Professor Lurie, is awful. His daughter Lucy is sympathetic and complicated, the soul of the book. "You behave as if everything I do is part of the story of your life," she tells him.

You are the main character, I am a minor character who doesn't make an appearance until halfway through. Well, contrary to what you think, people are not divided into major and minor. I am not minor. I have a life of my own, just as important to me as yours is to you, and in my life I am the one who makes the decisions.

There's some metafiction here, as there always is in Coetzee. He knows what he's doing with this plot. "Half of literature is about it," he points out. "Young women struggling to escape from under the weight of old men." The book is about the struggle, not the weight.

Well-written literary fiction about substantial, and potentially disturbing, topics – power dynamics, sexual harassment, rape, reputation, guilt, shame, animal euthanasia, and the aftermath of Apartheid in South Africa.

In 1997, protagonist David Lurie is a professor at Cape Technical University and a scholar of Romantic poets. He admires Lord Byron and wants to write an operetta about him and one of his mistresses. He is 52 and feeling ambivalent about his life. He pursues a sexual relationship with one of his students. He travels from Cape Town to his daughter’s house in the countryside in the Eastern Cape to get away from the scandal. While there, he and his daughter are violently attacked but his daughter does not want to report anything more than a robbery.

It is narrated in third party limited, and we are privy to David’s thoughts, but only actions of the other characters. For an erudite man, David is surprisingly clueless about his own actions. He is horrified by what happens to his daughter but does not see (or is in denial) that he has committed a similar act against his student. It is a stark story with a number of complex undercurrents, including racial issues related to the legacy of Apartheid. Much of the racial storyline lies between the lines.

There is a lot of suffering and sadness in this book. I cannot say I “enjoyed” it, but I appreciated the writing, the depth of themes, and the literary references. This book contains plenty of room for meaningful contemplation. It won the Booker Prize in 1999.

This was one of the most powerful agonizing books I have read in a long time. There is so much in this mere book of 220 pages. First of all the writing is absolutely superb. Mr. Coetzee deserves every accolade he has received. This book grabbed me right away and never left my thoughts when I wasn't reading it.
The title Disgrace is such a perfect title for this book. David Lurie is in a state of disgrace after an affair with a student. But he is not the only one who will or should feel disgraced by the end of this book. The author manages to make David a sympathetic character, even though we feel antipathy towards him. I can't say this enough, but what a tremendous writer Coetzee is!!
Once David joins his daughter on her farm, the author captures the undercurrent of South Africa, with the underlying hatred, distrust, fear and violence. He handles this subtly and skillfully.
Yes, there is violence towards animals in this book, but it does not detract from the story.
This book is a powerhouse of a novel. Honestly, I can't stop thinking about it. This book was that good!

“Yet we cannot live our daily lives in a realm of pure ideas, cocooned from sense-experience. The question is not, How can we keep the imagination pure, protected from the onslaughts of reality? The question has to be, Can we find a way for the two to coexist?”

Raw, sharp, brave, soul-scattering, brilliant. Coetzee said a lot in a condensed, 220-page novel. The style reminds me of Salinger's in Nine Stories. Through live memorable imagery there is conveyed a lot of inner world, moral, ethical and political issues without dense or complicated language, written in a very readable form, with laser precision, balanced, smooth, no word wasted. Writing is so good you don't even notice it as you become immersed in the story. I was very similarly shocked and devastated after reading Nine stories, as they are unforgettable as Disgrace is. Gods of showing not telling.
The subjectivity of one's experience and self-delusion as central parts of the novel are visible in the sarcastic opening sentence.

“For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well.”

Everything lies in the open, but not everything is said. As J.D. Salinger, Coetzee says even more with the unsaid than with what is written. He also writes violence with such dignity and contemporary writers could learn a lesson from him on how to write about brutality in a meaningful, not pornographic way with unnecessary details of molestation. The imagery of violence is strong yet subtle and described aggression serves as a window to geopolitical, social, race, gender complex issues and deep psychological and existential conflicts considering sexuality, identity, meaning and death. Coetzee does not shy away even from most forbidden taboo topics, from animal violence to incestuous connotations and aggressive deep end of sex drive.

“Hatred . . . When it comes to men and sex, David, nothing surprises me any more. Maybe, for men, hating the woman makes sex more exciting. You are a man, you ought to know. When you have sex with someone strange - when you trap her, hold her down, get her under you, put all your weight on her - isn't it a killing? Pushing the knife in; exiting afterwards, leaving the body behind covered in blood - doesn't it feel like murder, like getting away with murder?”

The story is open for interpretation but ironically, you feel there is no interpretation needed. The reading experience alone shifts the perspective of the world on a new level. This book is well-loved and I see why, it is a masterpiece that serves as an axe on a frozen sea.
David is both piteous and repulsive as oftentimes we are to ourselves in our deepest hidden desires. He is immature, regressive, delusional, maladjusted, yet, evokes empathy. The perpetrator becomes a victim in the endless suffering cycle of life. In fragments of the story of each human life, there is the history of the land and political and social dynamic embedded, as the context of post-apartheid Africa veils and very much defines tension in the main characters' lives.

“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, in this time, it is not. It is my bussines, mine alone.
'This place being what?'
'This place being South Africa”

Sometimes only the shock of violence in the outer world can open our eyes to our own and set us on a transcendental journey. Coetzee holds a mirror not only to us, but to the soul of humanity, and disgrace is universal.

“Perhaps it does us good to have a fall every now and then. As long as we don’t break.“

n  " إنى غارق في حالة من العار ليس من السهل أن أتخلص منها . على العكس ، أعيشها من يوم لآخر، أحاول تقبل العار كحالة وجود .
أنى أعيش في العار بلا نهاية "n

ديفيد لوريي أستاذ جامعي يقيم علاقة جسدية مع تلميذته ،يرفض الأستاذ الاعتذار تاركًا عمله ليتحمل عاره كاملًا و يسافر ليقضى وقتا مع ابنته في مزرعتها فيتعرضون لهجوم من ثلاثة رجال يقوموا بسرقتهم وضربه واغتصاب ابنته ، وتصر ابنته على الإبلاغ عن السرقة لكن ترفض حتى الحديث عن الإغتصاب .

" لماذا لا تريدين أن تتكلمي ؟ جريمة . لا خزى في أن تكوني ضحية جريمة. لم تختارى أن تكوني الضحية . أنت الطرف البرئ "



إنتابتنى الكثيرا من المشاعر مع رد فعل ابنته لوسي وتعاملها مع الأمر ، رغبت في احتضانها ، وتألمت من أجلها ومعها، تفهمت صمتها وتقوقعها على نفسها وإستسلامها ، تفهمته وكرهته في ذات الوقت . كرهت صمتها وتركها للمجرمين بلا عقاب ، كرهت إستسلامها وصمتها وكرهت ما قررت فعله في كل ماحدث معها بعد ذلك ، شعرت بالغضب منها بشدة وفي ذات الوقت بداخلى جزء يتفهمها جيدا ، جزء يعرف جيدا معني الخوف والتألم في صمت وعدم المواجهة والإستسلام . جزء يعرف جيدا ان رد فعل وتصرفات من يعيش الحكاية يختلف كثيرا عن رد فعل وتصرفات من ينظر للأمر من بعيد .


"- انت على حافة خطأ خطير .تتمنين ان تقهرى نفسك أمام التاريخ . لكن الطريق التي تسلكينها الطريق الخطأ . ستجردك من الشرف تماما، لن تستطيعي العيش مع نفسك .

- لم تستمع إلى . لست من تعرف . أنا ميتة ولا اعرف بعد ما يعيدني إلى الحياة ."



لكن لماذا في أغلب جرائم الإغتصاب تكون الضحية هى الملامة على ما حدث ؟ ولا أقصد لوم الآخرين ولا المجتمع بل أقصد لماذا تعاقب هى نفسها ، لاتنتظر معاقبة أحد بل تعاقب هى نفسها !


هناك عار تشعر به حين تقوم بفعل مخزى لكن المجتمع سيظل يجلدك على هذا الفعل وسيقوم بنبذك ويطلب منك الاعتزال ويشمئز من النظر إليك ويرفض التعامل معك . لكن إذا كنت شخصا مهما ومؤثر في المجتمع فسيغمض المجتمع عينيه عما فعلته بل وقد يقف بجانبك ويحميك ، وهذا الشخص لا يشعر بالعار من الأساس . وهناك عار آخر يشعر به المجني عليه ويستسلم له ويعذب نفسه قبل المجتمع وربما يُجبر على تقديم فروض الطاعة والاستسلام لمن قام بالاعتداء عليه .



" تكاد تخبئ وجهها ، وهو يعرف السبب . بسبب العار . بسبب الخجل . ذلك ما فعله من اعتدوا عليهما ، هذا ما فعلوه بهذه المرأة الشابة العصرية الواثقة من نفسها . تنتشر القصة مثل بقعة في المقاطعة . لا تنتشر قصتها بل قصتهم: أصحابها . كيف وضعوها فى مكانها، كيف أروها ما خُلقت له المرأة "




هناك جملة ربما تصلح للبعض لكن بالنسبة لي اكرهها بشدة ( ان الضربة التى لا تقتلك بتقويك )
لا ، ليس صحيحا ، الضربة التى لا تقتلك فعليا ، تقتلك من الداخل ، او على أقل تقدير تتسبب في موت جزء بداخلك . الضربة التى لا تقتلك ، تؤلمك ، تعذبك ، تسلب منك الأمان .
نعم الضربة التي لا تقتلك بتقويك ظاهريا، تُجبرك على التظاهر بالقوة والصلابة في الوقت الذي أصبح بداخلك جزء هش وضعيف وربما ايضا مدمر.



في المجمل الرواية جيدة . لكن للأسف يوجد بعض الخلل في الترجمة في بعض الأماكن مما أساء لتركيب كثير من الجمل وجعلها صعبة وغير مفهومة بشكل جيد .

١٠/ ١٢ / ٢٠٢١

[little bit of spoilers but not really tbh no worries you're not missing out]

listen. i can find thought-provoking themes in this book. it's not badly written. there's a lot going on sub textually when it comes to culture and racism and misogyny. but i cannot get over the fact that this main character is one of the least sympathetic people ever. i'm not even trying to be dramatic but nothing he did or thought in this entire book made me like him even a teeny tiny bit. he was a creepy, 50-year-old rapist who got turned on by the fact that his student's hips were "narrow as those of a 12-year-old's" and literally said that he did not value women who did not try to look good for men. honestly go die in a fire. safe to say it did not make this a pleasant read. the most awful thing might be that this guy is a personification of probably a fuckload of real men walking around every day.

i'm sort of curious what our lectures will have to say about it. i'm more than ready to go fume about it with my english lit group. bring it on.