Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a well written and enchanting book. Coetzee tells a tale of the falling of the old guard. A professor in an ivory tower, one who has all he needs in his old age, materially, status-wise, and so on… Thrown out of routine when he gets too close to his familiar prostitute, he pursues a student too young, too innocent for him, and this opens an opportunity for him to take a stance, to be someone meaningful again.
Given that he has everything to lose, he does so, even though the university, going through the motions to save face, implicitly offers an unofficial protection of him, so he could keep what he has. But instead of doing what his peers expect him to he throws everything away rather than merely saying the politically correct lines.
This seems like it should be enough for him, but it isn’t. In the middle third of the story, he stays with his daughter who is robbed, raped but refuses to go to the police. Instead she stubbornly stays on her farm. He thinks this is a lesson to him, “what men do to women” but she refuses no. It’s not. She, like him, takes a stance to risk everything, including her life and public dignity, eventually agreeing to be another man’s third wife, a man who only wants her farm, a man who she does not love… just so she could keep living in her house. He thinks this too is a lesson; he wants to rush in and save his daughter but she refuses him, refuses to recognize his authority, refuses to let him meddle in her life…
The last third of the book revisits the first two parts, as if the first time we went there was not enough. He apologizes to the dad of the student he molested. He revisists his home to see it vandalized. He revists his daughter to see her stubbornly refuse to leave, now pregnant with the child of the rapist… he throws away the last of his money to settle in a town he doesn’t care about and take a job he does not like.
He gives his daughter up to her deed, convinced that she is a fool, but also convinced that he cannot save her, he is not her father anymore.
What he does not see is that he is just like her. And as it turns out, he is just like his students. He thought his teaching wasted on them…he thought his wasted teaching taught him humility but it does not. “The irony does not escape him: that the one who comes to teach the keenest of lessons, while those who come to learn learn nothing.”
This line in context refers to how teaching humiliates him, how his lofty ideas are wasted on those who just want a passing grade. In fact, this is quite the opposite; it teaches him that he can say anything, and get away with it. But then he doesn’t get away with anything in the book, even though he thinks everything is fine.
In the end, he ends with a dead end job, euthanizing dogs that no one wants… he feels their pain, can’t stand the horror. But does so, in the end even euthanizing the dog he likes best. This is the rarest irony here, that life wastes its lofty ideas on him, giving him a “graceful” way out of each situation — yet he continually chooses the wrong situation — he chooses to be himself, to stand not for values but simply for his own will and desire, whatever that may be. This is how he could not fathom his daughter’s will, as she gave away her image, she chose not to live as a proper white woman (in holland or anywhere else) but instead, chose living among angry South Africans, in a hostile rural area. Likewise, he too gave away his image of being a dignified college professor, and then being a powerful father, impotent in the rage of the post-colonized.
All tragedies only work as tragedies because the singular one stands before the universal, to take in all of its fury… and falls short of mastering it… and are conquered by it, and eventually learn to embrace it, giving everything up to chaos and loss. In essence, this professor chooses to learn the keenest of lessons himself, he chooses to learn nothing… the very nothing that he is.
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