VINTAGE READING GROUP:

DISGRACE BY J. M. COETZEE

STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION

1. Consider the role of dogs in Disgrace. How are they used to represent the vicious lawlessness of the landscape? What does Lurie's relationship with the young, injured dog at the end of the book suggest to you? 2. ‘…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.’ Consider the role of women in Disgrace. At various points they are objects of sexual desire, of punitive violence, and of earthy strength. Is it fair to describe Disgrace as sexist? 3. David Lurie is a particularly unappealing character. Yet after the attack, his abiding concern is for those more vulnerable than him: his daughter, Lucy, and the unwanted animals. How far do you sympathise with his situation? 4. ‘He sighs. The young in one another’s arms, heedless, engrossed in the sensual music. No country, this, for old men. He seems to be spending a lot of time sighing. Regret: a regrettable note on which to go out.’ What do you think J.M. Coetzee is trying to say about growing old? 5. Consider the stark beauty of Coetzee’s prose compared to the brutality of the events that take place. Is it possible to describe Disgrace as a ‘beautiful’ novel? 6. The essential Coetzeean concern is with the battle between the individual and forces beyond his control. Of escaping his times to live a simpler form of existence. Disgrace seems to take the view that political change will do nothing to eliminate the essential human condition. What do you see as the relationship between politics and the individual as represented here?

ABOUT THE BOOK Disgrace tells the story of a white academic and his long, self-imposed, fall from grace in post-apartheid South Africa. Having spent years teaching Romantic Poetry at the University of Cape Town, David Lurie finds himself outdated and old, no longer representative of the new South Africa growing up all around him. He is 52, divorced twice, and no-longer attractive. Increasingly desperate to find some beauty in the world, he has an affair with a nubile young student. But when the relationship turns sour, Lurie is denounced and brought before an employment tribunal. Obstinate to the end, he refuses to repent publicly, preferring to retire, and make himself a martyr for all that has passed.

Hoping that a spell of fresh air and honest work will silence the disquieting sense of loss which is beginning to engulf him, Lurie retreats to stay with his daughter, Lucy, on a ranch in the heart of the rural veldt. But they are victims of a vicious attack and suddenly all the transformations are brought firmly, inexorably, home. As he struggles to recover from the shock and find his place in this new country, Lurie comes to realise that age, like the progression of history, is not something which can be fought forever, that time waits for no man.

Disgrace is a novel about growing old disgracefully, because to grow old is a disgrace. It is about being left behind by history and finding oneself completely isolated in your home country. To read it is to take a journey into post-apartheid South Africa, and the very real heart of darkness which resides there.

Written with the near biblical simplicity of prose which runs throughout Coetzee’s fiction, Disgrace exhibits perfectly a unity between style and subject matter. It is beautifully written, quietly understated, poetic and evocative. With its unique and powerful narrative and sense of untamed regret in untameable conditions it is a work of almost unbelievable synchronicity.

QUOTES ‘By this late point in the century the journey to a heart of narrative darkness has become a safe literary destination, almost a cliché. Disgrace …explore[s] the furthest reaches of what it means to be human; it is at the frontier of world literature’ The Sunday Telegraph

‘A harsh story, told in prose of spare, steely beauty… exhilarating...It confirms Coetzee's claim to be considered one of the best novelists alive’ The Sunday Times

‘Coetzee captures with appalling skill the white dilemma in South Africa’ Justin Cartwright, The Daily Telegraph

‘Coetzee’s prose is chaste and lyrical…it is a relief to encounter writing as quietly stylish as this' Paul Bailey, The Independent

‘A masterpiece…perhaps the best novel to carry off the Booker in a decade.’ Boyd Tonkin, The Independent

‘It is in exploring weakness and defeat that Coetzee captures the divine spark in man.’ Nobel Prize for Literature Press Release, 2003

ABOUT THE AUTHOR John Maxwell Coetzee is one of the foremost authors of our generation. In a career that has spanned four decades, he has published eleven works of fiction, many collections of essays, and two works of fictionalised biography. He was the first of only two authors to win the Booker Prize twice – for Life and Times of Michael K in 1983 and Disgrace in 1999 – and in 2003 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Born in Cape Town, South Africa, on 7 th February, 1942, to a lawyer father and school teacher mother, Coetzee graduated from the University in Cape Town with degrees in English and Mathematics. Having relocated to London, he worked for a time as a programmer for IBM and then moved to the US to complete a Ph.D. in Linguistics. Having written his thesis on computer stylistic analysis of the works of Samuel Beckett, Coetzee took up a position as a Lecturer at the State University of New York. However, in 1971, when he sought permanent residence in the US, his application was denied due to his involvement in anti-Vietnam war protests. He then returned to South Africa where he lectured in Literature at the University of Cape Town through to his retirement in 2002. That year he relocated to Adelaide, Australia, where he is an honorary research fellow at the University of Adelaide. He became an Australian citizen in 2006.

Famously reclusive, Coetzee is a man who avoids the spotlight. Rain Malan, a South African journalist describes him as ‘a man of almost monkish self-discipline and dedication. He does not drink, smoke or eat meat. He cycles vast distances to keep fit and spends at least an hour at his writing-desk each morning, seven days a week.’ Like Samuel Beckett, John Coetzee seldom gives interviews.

Coetzee has a difficult relationship with his homeland. The landscape of South Africa runs throughout his fiction, weaving and winding in and out of his characters lives. Yet repeatedly he has left the country, and sought citizenship abroad. He refuses to speak about the political situation in his home country but many of his books deal with the stark inhumanity of racial relations in South Africa. He appears to see the problems as entrenched and impossible. In Disgrace , his most nakedly political book, there is a clue to his opinion, and it is extraordinarily despairing. Lucy, contemplating the wreckage of her life, says that she is prepared to start again, ‘with no cards, no weapons, no property rights, no dignity’. ‘Like a dog,’ Lurie says. ‘Yes, like a dog.’

But whether this is Coetzee speaking, or the voice of his characters, is impossible to determine.

A film adaptation of Disgrace, starring John Malkovich as David Lurie, was released in 2008.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW ‘Whites in South Africa are in shock. At the deepest level, many still haven’t understood or accepted that life cannot go on as it did before’ J.M. Coetzee, 25th October 1999, New Statesman

Disgrace reminded me of Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country . It is as though they are carrying on a conversation across the years, one pre-apartheid, and the other post-apartheid. In each of them you have the terrible impossibility and the hesitant optimism, the struggle against forces greater than the individual, yet the individual, personal life being the only way of living. Was this conscious? J.M. Coetzee: No, this was not a unity I was trying to make. But they are both about South Africa, separated by many years of history; if they relate to each other, then it is because of this.

You have always been focused on the relationship between the individual and great powers beyond his control. Yet for many years books were subject to censorship in South Africa. How do you feel censorship has impacted on you as a writer?

J.M. Coetzee: I have an interesting story there. The relationship between censor and writer is both intensely intimate and yet undesired, like having a stranger’s eye upon you. When I began publishing in South Africa in the 1970s there was an official censorship bureau which sought to demonstrate and maintain the power of the state, and to preserve the moral integrity and purity of South African society. Essentially, its task was to maintain the dichotomy between good and evil, white and black.

However, in 1994, following the end of Apartheid, the national archives were opened up. And in 2007 I received a phone call to say that they had come across the internal censors reports on some of my books and would I like to see them. “Of course,” I replied.

The contents of the reports held few surprises. There were 13 passages of In The Heart of the Country which were found to be questionable, mostly dealing with sex across the racial divide. Waiting for the Barbarians had 22 . And yet, the books were recommended to be published, principally, it seems, because it was believed that they would not be widely read, that they were too intellectual. It seems absurd that censorship should only be for the simple. But what was most surprising was the names of the censors who reported on my books.

They were not Orwellian bureaucrats who wore dull suits and trudged to work in bland, concrete office buildings where they punched in at 9 and out at 5.30 to trudge home to their solitary lives. They were my colleagues and contemporaries! One was the mother of one of my colleagues at the University of Cape Town. I had met with her many times. Two others were lecturers at the University, one when I was a student, the other as a colleague of mine. I had been to their houses for barbecues, shared hotdogs with my censors!

Who would have thought that something like censorship could be so invisible, even when censors themselves are all around you?

That is amazing. It must be very strange to think back on those times from your life in Australia. Do you have any desire to return to South Africa?

J.M. Coetzee: No. I don’t expect to return to South Africa.

Do you have any lingering desire to write about the South Africa landscape? J.M. Coetzee: No.

What about the Australian landscape?

J.M. Coetzee: No. I moved there too late in life to have an understanding of that landscape.

Your latest novel, Diary of a Bad Year is set in Australia and is a strange sort of hybrid between fiction and non-fiction, with the narratives completely interlocked. It is difficult to know exactly how to read it. Did you have an idea of how you wanted it to be read?

JMC: No. The purpose of it was to leave that completely for the reader to determine.

Of all your many novels, is there one which stands out as your favourite?

J.M. Coetzee: No. I don’t think it is good to have a favourite. An author’s favourite book should always be the next one you are going to write.

So what is your next project?

J.M. Coetzee: I am just finishing off a sequel to Youth . It should be published sometime in 2009 or 2010.

In Youth you question the relationship between prose and poetry. Your character asks himself: “Is that what prose secretly is: the second best choice, the resort of failing creative spirits?” Is this really how you feel about prose?

J.M. Coetzee: Yes it is. I think writing prose is much easier than poetry. When you are writing a novel and the dialogue and plot are working well, you can almost go into automatic pilot. With poetry one has to be in a state of existence at all times, if you come out of it then the rhythm is lost.

John Coetzee, many thanks.

OTHER BOOKS BY J.M. COETZEE Dusklands In the Heart of the Country Waiting for the Barbarians Life & Times of Michael K Foe Age of Iron The Master of Petersburg Boyhood: Scenes from a Provincial Life The Lives of Animals Disgrace Youth Stranger Shores: Literary Essays 1986-1999 Elizabeth Costello Slow Man Inner Workings – Literary Essays 2000-2005 Diary of a Bad Year

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer The Trial by Franz Kafka Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie