Stasis and Solipsism

J.M. Coetzee’s novels try to be ponderous and literary. They try to address the big issues, twist themselves into knots with self-referential metafiction and overexerted turns of phrase. All they end up being is indifferent.

In Disgrace, David Lurie, a professor at a university in South Africa, is fired after having sex with a student. Now fallen from grace, he retreats from his city flat to his daughter’s smallholding in the country. He ridicules her small-scale existence but slowly slips into the country life. All seems to be normalizing, until three black men break into the house, robbing, beating David, and raping his daughter Lucy.

The book wants to be about racial politics. The book wants to be about desire and its suppression. It wants to be about the profound effect of art on people. It wants to be about the value of trust. It even wants to be about animal rights. Somehow, it manages only to be about one slightly whiny man for whom I could have sympathy but never empathy.

The ending of the book is rather puzzling as well; not because it doesn’t make perfect sense, but because a turnaround seems to occur in the last few pages. The entire book stubbornly maintains that David won’t change, that nothing really ever changes, until the last couple of pages where maybe something does.

I was intrigued by Slow Man, though not overly impressed, because there at least some of the metafiction worked to interesting effect. This book left me disappointed; I’ve really been turned off of the author, which for me happens very seldom. Also, I hate to make generalizations on the basis of two books—it’s really not fair—but Coetzee seems inordinately fond of passionate (read: sex-crazed), aging, malcontented male main characters.

However: I keep an open mind. The book is the local Barnes & Noble book club selection for the month, and I picked it up mostly for that reason. It’s been years since I’ve been to a book club meeting, and I’m planning to go tomorrow just to see what it’s like. I’m sure I’ll be writing a follow-up report on the dynamics of the meeting and whether anyone managed to talk me into more generosity towards this particular novel.