Disgrace

by J. M. Coetzee

After the last book, I wanted to read something well-written and interesting. So I turned to the UT Summer Reading List and thought this one looked good AND it happened to be at the library.

It was great. Interesting thoughts, interesting characters. And the author had a way with words. It's about a professor who has an affair with one of his female students, and when found out, is forced to resign. Academic disgrace, which he's actually ambivalent about. Then he goes to live with his daughter, and after a traumatic event that he's unable to protect her from, the word becomes real to him. The ways that he interacts with his daughter are fascinating, and it's good to see a book where doing "what's best" means different things to different people.

"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. It is a feature of his profession on which he does not remark to Soraya. He doubts there is an irony to match it in hers."

"In spite of which he feels at home with Petrus, is even prepared, however guardedly, to like him. Petrus is a man of his generation. Doubtless Petrus has been through a lot, doubtless he has a story to tell. He would not mind hearing Petrus's story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa. Stretches of English code whole sentences long have thickened, lost their articulations, their articulateness, their articulatedness. Like a dinosaur expiring and settling in the mud, the language has stiffened. Pressed into the mould of English, Petrus's story would come out arthritic, bygone."

"There is a pause. 'I think they have done it before,' she resumes, her voice steadier now. 'At least the two older ones have. I think they are rapists first and foremost. Stealing things is just incidental. A side-line. I think they do rape.'
' You think they will come back?'
'I think I am in their territory. They have marked me. They will come back for me.'
'Then you can't possibly stay.'
'Why not?'
'Because that would be an invitation for them to return.'
She broods a long while before she answeres. ' But isn't there another way of looking at it, David? What if... what if that is the price one has to pay for staying on? Perhaps that is how they look at it; perhaps that is how I should look at it too. They see me as owing something. They see themselves as debt collectors, tax collectors. Why should I be allowed to live here without paying? Perhaps that is what they tell themselves.'"

6/17/2005
Found a reading guide for this book that had some interesting questions.