I started reading his novels a year before he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. Since then I kept devouring his books one after another, and the more I read the more fascinated I bacame by the world of his imagination and his amazing writing style.
"Disgrace" is said to be one of the best. It won the Booker Prize in 1999, the year in which it was published. A 2006 poll of "literary luminaries" by The Observer newspaper named it as the "greatest novel of the last 25 years" written in English outside the United States.[1]
The book, which is a bleak look at the country, was made into a film in 2008 with John Malkovitch as the protagonist.
"This is Coetzee's second book (after Life and Times of Michael K) where man is broken down almost to nothing before he finds some tiny measure of redemption in his forced acceptance of the realities of life and death. Coetzee has always situated his characters in extreme situations that compel them to explore what it means to be human.[7] Though the novel is sparse in style, it covers a number of topics: personal shame, a changing country, animal rights, and Romantic poetry and its symbolism.[8]" (Wikipedia)
Here you can read more about him and his biography, main works and so on.
Born in the 40s, this South African writer of Dutch origin, was bilingual from early childhood, as he spoke both English and Afrikaners. Later he studied French, and became an expert in French Literature and also an essayist and critic. Apart from being a great mathematician and linguist, Coetzee has always been a committed individual who has advocated against apartheid, censorship and animal cruelty.
"When he initially moved to Australia, he had cited the South African government's lax attitude to crime in that country as a reason for the move, leading to a spat with Thabo Mbeki, who, speaking of Coetzee's novel Disgrace stated that "South Africa is not only a place of rape".[21] In 1999, the African National Congress submission to an investigation into racism in the media by the South African Human Rights Commission named Disgrace as a novel exploiting racist stereotypes.[55] However, when Coetzee won his Nobel Prize, Mbeki congratulated him "on behalf of the South African nation and indeed the continent of Africa".[56]" (Wikipedia)
Fiction
* Dusklands (1974) ISBN 0-14-024177-9
* In the Heart of the Country (1977) ISBN 0-14-006228-9
* Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) ISBN 0-14-006110-X
* Life & Times of Michael K (1983) ISBN 0-14-007448-1
* Foe (1986) ISBN 0-14-009623-X
* Age of Iron (1990) ISBN 0-14-027565-7
* The Master of Petersburg (1994) ISBN 0-14-023810-7
* The Lives of Animals (1999) ISBN 0-691-07089-X
* Disgrace (1999) ISBN 0-09-928952-0
* Elizabeth Costello (2003) ISBN 0-670-03130-5
* Slow Man (2005) ISBN 0-670-03459-2
* Diary of a Bad Year (2007) ISBN 1-846-55120-X
[edit] Fictionalised autobiography / autofiction
* Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life (1997) ISBN 0-14-026566-X
* Youth: Scenes from Provincial Life II (2002) ISBN 0-670-03102-X
* Summertime (2009) ISBN 1-846-55318-0
[edit] Non-fiction
* White Writing: On the Culture of Letters in South Africa (1988) ISBN 0-300-03974-3
* Doubling the Point: Essays and Interviews (1992) ISBN 0-674-21518-4
* Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship (1996), University of Chicago Press [hence, US spelling "offense"] ISBN 0-226-11176-8
* Stranger Shores: Literary Essays, 1986–1999 (2002) ISBN 0-142-00137-6
* Inner Workings: Literary Essays, 2000–2005 (2007) ISBN 0-099-50614-9
(Wikipedia)
Websites:
BBC on Coetzee
(MM) Disgrace International Trailer - More amazing videos are a click away
3 comments:
This isn't really the kind of book I enjoy... the writing style was way too plain, specially in contrast with the disproportionately complicated vocabulary, or should I say the “unduly knotty lexis”? … see what I did there? I too can use fancy and uncommon words than don’t add anything to the text but reader’s confusion (or even anger, in my case)… but that’s not what writing is about! Writing is about conveying ideas and feelings, and in my opinion the author does neither very effectively. I couldn’t relate to any of the characters or even feel sympathy or pity for them, not to talk of extracting any message out of the story.
Nonetheless, I have to give credit where credit is due, and one thing that he does brilliantly is suspension of disbelief. Everybody in the novel and their actions felt completely believable at all times. Even when they were being unreasonable they still felt true to their selves.
Also, there are hidden gems inside the pile of senseless drivel and quasi masturbatory prose that plagues the book, such as the following:
"Why? Because 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." (Ch. 2)
“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.” (Ch. 1)
But those are few and far apart, too far apart and too few to make up for the rest of the novel, or to provide that feeling of “just one more page” really good books usually give you…instead the only thing I felt while reading this was the disgrace it was to have to keep turning pages to finish it.
TC
Department of unbiased book critics.
He has been steeling himself againts.
(ha sido fortaecido..)
She peers into his study
(analizar el entorno)
Is something the matter..?
(¿ocurre algo..?)
Like a thing of wood
(Rígido..)
To the matter at hand
(ir al grano)
He has his head screwed on right..
(Tener la cabeza sobre los pies)
Nil-all
(cero a cero)
He has never seen such a tessitura from close by
(No había viston cosa igual tan de cerca)
Personal review of the novel “Disgrace” writed by J.M. Coetzee
In these few paragraphs I will give my comments of the novel. It is not a summary, but a report of my thoughts about the book.
The author uses a learned English, sometimes difficult to understand for a student of English, but very useful to know new expressions and vocabulary.
In the first place, John Michael is showing us a man who is in several ocasions acting by the appeal of the physical instincts, forgetting the person as a unity.
On the other hand, the main character says: “We are of a different order of creation from the animals. Not higher necessarily, just different.” At first sight, the order of creation for him is not superior to the one of the animals, insofar as the sexual conduct refers.
Secondly, the author shows to the reader a sad opinion about this man of letters, who knows full well that “the fallen angel was condemmed to solitude”; he goes to the very same end with his behaviour. Furthermore, Lurie refuse the demand of the academic committe to admit his guilty publicly and to accept a change in his behaviour through a psychological counselling.
The fact that in the curse of the attack, Lurie is burned and blinded temporarily, in one eye, has a symbolic value about the real blindness that pursued his life, and inextinguishable fire.
Finally, at the last part of the novel the author presents the current history of his country. David is the ancien régime, Petrus takes the place of the black people, the poor that are taking the power, Lucy is the transition, Lucy child will take on the hope of a new country.
José Ramón Cavestany
La Eliana, April 26th 2010
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