stains_of_blue

Book 43/50: J.M. Coetzee - Disgrace



Disgrace is the story of a university professor in Capetown/South Africa who's life is turned upside down by an affair with a student. He pursues her, sleeps with her and after a few complications she fails a harassment complaint with the uni. He, unwilling to apologise publicly and humiliate himself by agreeing to counselling, just pleads guilty and looses his job.
Because of the scandal and because he needs a break, he goes to visit his daughter who has built a nice and simple life for herself on a little farm, taking care of people's dogs, selling flowers and proteus on a nearby market. At first everything goes rather well but then they are attacked and that lets all their problems come out as well.

Its a really enjoyable read, not very long and beautifully written, but I think its one of these books that I'll have to read again because it has so many layers. Its a lot about politics about the situation of the white minority in South Africa after the Apartheid was abolished, about how to deal with a past like that. How different generations deal with it incredibly differently because of their respective experiences. I must say that this part of the story touched me deeply, because my country, too, has a horrible history and I, too, know how the different generations (my grandparents who have actually lived in the war, my parents, who lived with the guilt of their parents, and my generation, who still find it hard to have a real emotional bond to their country) experience these things differently. There is a lot about how to deal with that accumulated guilt and how that affects every relationship.
Then it is of course also about the old man, who is too proud to say he is sorry. Who doesn't fight for his position, who is driven away. He is so intimately described, you almost feel like you shouldn't know that much about a human being, like some things, some dark places and not so nice sides should be private. And then of course you tell yourself that he's not a human being but a fictional character... a lot like the former though. Very real and very fleshy and 3-dimensional.
He writes on something that he calls an opera - with a banjo - and that is the part that I will have to reread the book for to understand. How that fits in the story, why it is talked so much bout it and what the way he writes it tells us about him. Because I think I didn't understand that yet. But who knows, I might just reread it in a few month and have an epiphany.

And i decided that today I'll go get a library card. It may be expensive but lately I'm reading too much to buy all the books. I'm reading myself poor lol, especially because foreign language books are so much more expensive here, especially those that i want to read.