Disgrace (1999)
Who wrote it?
John Maxwell Coetzee (1940-; active 1974-), born Cape Town, South Africa. A much-awarded novelist, with accolades including the Nobel Prize for Literature, he was the first author to win the Booker twice (in the chronological sense, at least) - with 1983’s Life and Times of Michael K taking the honours back in 1983.
Something of a polymath, he studied English before working as a computer programmer for IBM in London, and managed to combine the two by completing a computer-aided analysis of the language of Beckett for his doctoral thesis while in the US on a Fulbright scholarship. He was one of a small number of prominent white South African authors to overtly criticize Apartheid, and has a history of protest dating back to anti-Vietnam war protests and continuing through recent involvement in animal rights issues.
What's it about?
Disgrace is told from the perspective of David Lurie, a divorced literature professor at a university in post-Apartheid Cape Town. The first half of the novel details Lurie’s life as an aging academic and Byron obsessive, satisfying himself with weekly visits to prostitutes. He loses everything following his pursuit and eventual rape of a young female student, and subsequent refusal to co-operate with an enquiry that seems designed to protect him.
David moves to the country to visit his daughter, Lucy, which initially seems to offer respite, before Lucy’s world is shattered by a shockingly violent attack and rape by three young black men, who also try to kill David and shoot several of the farm’s dogs. David becomes increasingly estranged from his former life, from his daughter, and ultimately from the modern world, seeking solace in his attempts to write an opera about Byron, and less predictably, in disposing of euthanised dogs as a help to Bev Shaw, a friend of his daughter’s.
What I liked
This is an astonishing novel, in so many ways. It’s unflinchingly honest, and incredibly lucid. The writing is supremely well-crafted and minimal, with not a word going to waste.
It’s a novel whose morals and messages are impossible to reduce to simple summaries. It’s tackling massive themes around race relations in South Africa, life and death, father-daughter relationships, aging, and the terrifying truths of maleness. To me, it never felt like it was preaching or over-simplifying any of these issues.
It’s a provocative novel, in that David’s perspective is the only one we hear, and he is emphatically an awful person but he speaks in Coetzee’s alarmingly compelling prose. He is at least somewhat aware of his own failings, but seemingly powerless to do anything about them. Every attempt he makes with Lucy, in particular, only furthers her suffering. His lack of true self-knowledge and inability to adapt to a changing world means his only solution is ultimately to withdraw further and further from his life, and take himself out of situations where he is a danger to those around him.
Reading the novel in 2021, as many have pointed out, is an incredibly prescient experience. In the wake of the Me Too movement, are we closer to dismantling the systems that enabled characters like Lurie to evade real justice (if not their own conscience)? Jia Tolentino’s excellent article Reading Disgrace during the Harvey Weinstein Trial, from the New Yorker, is an intriguing read on the subject.
Ultimately, for all the horrors within, I couldn’t put this one down. It’s unsettling, disturbing, and at times horrific reading, but it’s supremely compelling for all of those reasons.
What I didn’t like
I have to be honest and say that personally, I found this an incredible read, up there with the absolute best of the Booker winners. I can absolutely see why others might not have had such a positive experience. It certainly will be a triggering novel for some, and it does not hold back on the brutality of the experiences it’s describing.
Some might also take issue with Coetzee, a white man, being the voice of these complex and divisive issues. However, I think this is satisfactorily acknowledged by the text - it examines the darkness at the heart of the male, white, middle class South African protagonist, who ponders whether he has it in him to put himself in the place of his daughter (or, by implication, his own victim/s.)
Food & drink pairings
Freshly slaughtered sheep, if you can face it…
Black coffee and breakfast cereal
Fun facts
Much controversy behind the scenes again, amongst 1999’s judges. John Sutherland, who was a supporter of that year’s favourite to win, Michael Frayn’s Headlong, went public to accuse two female judges (Shena Mackay and Natasha Walter) of pursuing a “feminist agenda” that led to a split in the panel and resulted in Coetzee’s novel being chosen as a compromise solution (presumably over Frayn or Desai)
Walter and Mackay wrote to the Guardian to criticize Sutherland’s comments and also deny that there was a gender split in the voting. In this they were supported by fellow judge Boyd Tonkin - who accused Sutherland of sour grapes as he didn’t get what he wanted.
Sam Jordison at the Guardian’s usually excellent Booker blog had a very different experience of Disgrace to me - finding it straightforward and credulity-stretching. For possibly the first time in this run-through, I feel like we must have been reading completely different books. Have a read though, if you fancy an alternative perspective.
Disgrace was filmed by Australian director Steve Jacobs in 2008, an adaptation which starred John Malkovich in the central role of David Lurie. It has generally favourable reviews, and I’m actually relatively intrigued to check this one out. Has anyone seen it?
Vanquished Foes
Anita Desai (Fasting, Feasting)
Michael Frayn (Headlong)
Andrew O'Hagan (Our Fathers)
Ahdaf Soueif (The Map of Love)
Colm Tóibín (The Blackwater Lightship)
Any recommendations from this selection?
The Orange/Women's Prize was won in 1999 by Suzanne Berne for A Crime in the Neighbourhood. Once again, its shortlist had no overlap with the Booker's.
Context
In 1999:
Boris Yeltsin resigns as Russian President on Dec 31st, leaving PM Vladimir Putin as acting President
Columbine High School massacre
Establishment of the Euro currency on 1st Jan
Bill Clinton acquitted in impeachment proceedings
Official opening of Scottish Parliament
Nail bombings by neo-Nazi David Copeland target minorities in London
TV presenter Jill Dando shot dead in London
East Timor votes for independence from Indonesia in a referendum
Australians vote against replacement of the Queen with a President to make the country a republic
Sovereignty of Macau transferred from Portugal to China after 442 years
Far right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones creates InfoWars
Debut of peer-to-peer music download service Napster
Tracy Chevalier, Girl With a Pearl Earring
Joanne Harris, Chocolat
Tony Parsons, Man and Boy
Julia Donaldson, The Gruffalo
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
The Matrix
The Sixth Sense
Notting Hill
Eminem, The Slim Shady LP
Dr Dre, 2001
Moby, Play
Destiny's Child, The Writing's on the Wall
The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs
Life Lessons
I’m not even going to attempt this one, I’m afraid…
Score
9.5
Up there with the best. Page-turning, compelling, rich and sparse at the same time.
Ranking to date:
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (1989) - 9.5
Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie (1981) - 9.5
Disgrace - J. M. Coetzee (1999) - 9.5
Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively (1987) - 9
Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth (1992) - 9
Oscar & Lucinda - Peter Carey (1988) - 9
The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch (1978) - 9
Life & Times of Michael K. - J. M. Coetzee (1983) - 9
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy (1997) - 9
Schindler’s Ark - Thomas Keneally (1982) - 9
The Bone People - Keri Hulme (1985) - 8.5
How Late it Was, How Late - James Kelman (1994) - 8.5
Troubles - J.G. Farrell (1970, "Lost Booker") - 8.5
Possession - A. S. Byatt (1990) - 8
Saville - David Storey (1976) - 8
The Siege of Krishnapur - J.G. Farrell (1973) - 8
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje (1992) - 7.5
Rites of Passage - William Golding (1980) - 7.5
Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald (1979) - 7.5
Last Orders - Graham Swift (1996) - 7
The Elected Member - Bernice Rubens (1970) - 7
The Conservationist - Nadine Gordimer (1974) - 7
Holiday - Stanley Middleton (1974) - 7
Heat & Dust - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1975) - 6.5
In a Free State* - V.S. Naipaul (1971) - 6.5
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle (1993) - 6
G. - John Berger (1972) - 6
The Famished Road - Ben Okri (1991) - 6
Something to Answer For - P. H. Newby (1969) - 5.5
The Ghost Road** - Pat Barker (1995) - 5.5
Staying On - Paul Scott (1977) - 5
Amsterdam - Ian McEwan (1998) - 5
Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner (1984) - 4.5
The Old Devils - Kingsley Amis (1986) - 4
*Read in later condensed edition.
**Third part of a trilogy of which I hadn’t read pts 1&2
Next up
I’ll be taking another week off and recapping my thoughts on the 90s Booker winners. After that, it’s into a new millennium with Margaret Atwood’s first winner, The Blind Assassin.
