Disgrace

Disgrace is the first book by South African writer J.M.Coetzee that I have read. Coetzee is a frequent award winner. Among his notable wins are two Booker Prizes and a Nobel Prize. In 1984 he won the Booker Prize for The Life and Times of Michael K and in 1999 he won The Booker again for Disgrace. In 2003 he was awarded The Nobel Prize for Literature. The judges motivation for the Nobel Prize win was put into a sentence describing Coetzee as someone " who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider". Hmm...... whatever that sentence really means. My interest is peaked when Coetzee is described as a reclusive and avoids publicity to such an extent that he did not collect either of his two Booker Prizes in person. I always feel a camaraderie with individuals who shunned the limelight, who are not much into small talks, who tend to be quiet and who need solitude in order to recharge their energies. Coetzee most probably is an introvert too.

I finished this book at the end of 2015. Have taken the synopsis from various sites on the net. Lazy to write it myself. Seven months have passed since I last read the book and I have forgotten some parts of the plot or I am mixed up as to what comes first and what comes next in the story.

My Take On This Book
Love the book even if it is bit dark for me. It is about a South African English professor David Lurie who is not a very nice person. He is a randy old man who keeps a prostitute and even tries to be romantically involved with her even when she rebuffs him.In my opinion he has the habit of making people do whatever he prefers even if that person is reluctant to comply. And he doesn't feel bad about that. He is arrogant and conceited. He has sex with a woman and then simply dumps her off. He has sex with a woman, even when he finds her unattractive. He even manipulated and seduced a young female student. He diligently pursues her even when it is clear that she is reluctant and he was then threatened by her boyfriend.

There are a lot of questions on my mind as to why David's daughter, Lucy, refuses to report the attack on her homestead as well as her rape to the police. She even refuses to abort the baby she was carrying as a result of the gang rape. The horrible incidence however prompted David into apologising to the parents of Melissa Isaacs, the student he had seduced.

Synopsis of Disgrace
David Lurie is a South African professor of English who is twice-divorced and dissatisfied with his job as a 'communications' lecturer, teaching one class in romantic literature at a technical university in Cape Town in post-apartheid South Africa. Lurie's sexual activities are all inherently risky. Before the sexual affair that will ruin him, he becomes attached to a prostitute and attempts to have a romantic relationship with her (despite her having a family), which she rebuffs. He then seduces a secretary at his university, only to completely ignore her afterwards. His "disgrace" comes when he seduces one of his more vulnerable students, a girl named Melanie Isaacs, plying her with alcohol and later, when she stops attending his class, falsifying her grades. Lurie refuses to stop the affair, even after being threatened by Melanie's erstwhile boyfriend, who knocks all the papers off Lurie's desk, and her father, who confronts him but whom David runs from. This affair is thereafter revealed to the school, amidst a climate of condemnation for his allegedly predatory acts, and a committee is convened to pass judgement on his actions. David refuses to read Melanie's statement, defend himself, or apologize in any sincere form and so is forced to resign from his post. Lurie is working on an opera concerning Lord Byron's final phase of life in Italy which mirrors his own life in that Byron is living a life of hedonism and excess and is having an affair with a married woman.

He is dismissed from his teaching position, after which he takes refuge on his lesbian daughter Lucy's farm in the Eastern Cape. For a time, his daughter's influence and natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life, for example, in attending farmers markets where Lucy sells her wares, and in working with Petrus, a polygamously-married black African whose farm borders Lucy's and who nominally works for Lucy as a "dog-man" (Lucy boards dogs). But the balance of power in the country is shifting. Shortly after becoming comfortable with rural life, he is forced to come to terms with the aftermath of an attack on the farm. Three men, who claim to need Lucy's phone to call for aid for a sick sister, force their way into the farmhouse. The men are armed with firearms, rape Lucy, and attempt to kill David by setting him on fire. In addition to these actions, they also shoot a collection of caged dogs which Lucy is boarding, in an action which David later muses was done since black people in South Africa are taught to fear dogs as symbols of white power and oppression. The men drive off in David's car: it is never recovered and they are never caught, although police once contact David to come pick up "his" car, which is in fact evidently not his car (different colour and registration number). Newspapers spell Lurie's name inaccurately ("Lourie"), meaning nothing will tie his persona of disgraced academic to the attack.

Lucy becomes apathetic and agoraphobic after the attack. David presses her to report the full circumstances to the police, but she does not. She has become pregnant by one of the rapists, but ignores advice to terminate the pregnancy. She does not want to, and in fact does not, discuss the attack with David until much later. Meanwhile, David suspects Petrus of orchestrating the attack. This suspicion is apparently confirmed when one of the attackers, a young man named Pollux, attends one of Petrus's parties and is claimed by Petrus as a kinsman. Pollux ultimately comes to live with Petrus, and spies on Lucy bathing. When David catches Pollux doing this, Lucy forces David to desist from any retribution. David surmises that ultimately, Lucy will be forced into marrying Petrus and giving him her land, and it appears that Lucy is resigned to this contingency.

Returning home to his house in Cape Town, David finds that his house has been broken into in his long absence, by either looters or students protesting his affair with Melanie. Either way, his house is in shambles. He attempts to attend a theatre performance starring Melanie, but is harassed into leaving by the same boyfriend who had earlier threatened him. He also attempts to apologize to Melanie's father, leading to an awkward meeting with Melanie's little sister, and Melanie's father, who insists he stay for dinner. Melanie's father insists that his forgiveness is irrelevant: Lurie must follow his own path to redemption.

At novel's end, Lurie has returned to Lucy's farm. He works with Bev Shaw, a friend of Lucy's, who keeps an animal shelter and who frequently has to euthanize animals, which David then disposes of. Shaw has earlier had an affair with Lurie, despite David finding her physically unattractive. Lurie has been keeping a resilient stray from being euthanized, but at the end of the novel "gives him up" to Bev Shaw's euthanasia.

A Little Bit on J.M.Coetzee
John Maxwell Coetzee was born in Cape Town, South Africa, on 9 February 1940, the elder of two children. His mother was a primary school teacher. His father was trained as an attorney, but practiced as such only intermittently; during the years 1941–45 he served with the South African forces in North Africa and Italy. Though Coetzee's parents were not of British descent, the language spoken at home was English.

Coetzee received his primary schooling in Cape Town and in the nearby town of Worcester. For his secondary education he attended a school in Cape Town run by a Catholic order, the Marist Brothers. He matriculated in 1956.

Coetzee entered the University of Cape Town in 1957, and in 1960 and 1961 graduated successively with honours degrees in English and mathematics. He spent the years 1962–65 in England, working as a computer programmer while doing research for a thesis on the English novelist Ford Madox Ford.

In 1963 he married Philippa Jubber (1939–1991). They had two children, Nicolas (1966–1989) and Gisela (b. 1968).

In 1965 Coetzee entered the graduate school of the University of Texas at Austin, and in 1968 graduated with a PhD in English, linguistics, and Germanic languages. His doctoral dissertation was on the early fiction of Samuel Beckett.

For three years (1968–71) Coetzee was assistant professor of English at the State University of New York in Buffalo. After an application for permanent residence in the United States was denied, he returned to South Africa. From 1972 until 2000 he held a series of positions at the University of Cape Town, the last of them as Distinguished Professor of Literature.

Between 1984 and 2003 he also taught frequently in the United States: at the State University of New York, Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, Stanford University, and the University of Chicago, where for six years he was a member of the Committee on Social Thought.

Coetzee began writing fiction in 1969. His first book, Dusklands, was published in South Africa in 1974. In the Heart of the Country (1977) won South Africa's then principal literary award, the CNA Prize, and was published in Britain and the USA.Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) received international notice. His reputation was confirmed by Life & Times of Michael K (1983), which won Britain's Booker Prize. It was followed by Foe(1986), Age of Iron (1990), The Master of Petersburg (1994), and Disgrace (1999), which again won the Booker Prize.

Coetzee also wrote two fictionalized memoirs,Boyhood (1997) and Youth (2002). The Lives of Animals (1999) is a fictionalized lecture, later absorbed into Elizabeth Costello (2003). White Writing (1988) is a set of essays on South African literature and culture. Doubling the Point (1992) consists of essays and interviews with David Attwell. Giving Offense (1996) is a study of literary censorship. Stranger Shores (2001) collects his later literary essays.

Coetzee has also been active as a translator of Dutch and Afrikaans literature.
In 2002 Coetzee emigrated to Australia. He lives with his partner Dorothy Driver in Adelaide, South Australia, where he holds an honorary position at the University of Adelaide.