Falling Down

IN DISGRACE, J.M. COETZEE traces the slow fall of David Lurie--not that he had that far to fall in the first place. At the start of the novel, this twice-divorced 52-year-old professor at the recently reorganized Cape Technical College in South Africa has been stripped of his job lecturing on the modern languages, and instead must teach Communications 101 to a group of students who don't even remember his name. After a prostitute breaks off their Thursday-afternoon engagements, he desperately tries tracking her down at home. When that attempt fails, he turns his attention to one of his students, whom he successfully seduces after obtaining her number and address from the department file cabinets. When this affair is uncovered, Lurie resigns under duress. Fresh off these debacles, he travels to see his daughter Lucy who makes a living by boarding dogs and raising produce on her five-hectare farm.

With Disgrace, South African author Coetzee picked up his second Booker Prize last month, receiving critical praise for a searing glimpse into the political and societal turmoil that still permeates postapartheid South Africa. To be sure, the political implications of the hard-edged plot pose difficult questions about South Africa's history, and its future, too. Shortly after Lurie arrives on the farm, he and Lucy fall prey to an attack by three local black villagers. Lurie, set on fire and then locked in the bathroom, is powerless to stop the men from raping his daughter in another room.

In the wake of this trauma, Lurie and Lucy grapple with the meaning of what has happened--often slipping into discussions that feel almost mechanical, their significance somehow too close to the surface. "'It was done with such personal hatred. Why do they hate me so?'" Lucy asks her father. "'It was history speaking through them,'" Lurie replies. "'It may have seemed personal, but it wasn't. It came down from the ancestors.'"

The fear of such grisly crimes today grips white South Africa; unpredictable violence and a sense of powerlessness have long been a fact of life in ghetto townships. Yet examining Disgrace only for its contemporary political resonance may cause one to miss the greater accomplishment in this book--the presentation of a character collapsing on the inside as he's buffeted by the crises around him. This transformation comes out slowly in the novel, while remaining hidden from Lurie himself. The fallen professor seems only barely able to comprehend that his troubles have been brought on by his drive for self-gratification: When he thrusts his way into his student's apartment, he takes note that the only thing defining this interlude as consensual sex is the fact that she slightly raises her hips as he undresses her. He also realizes that he becomes aroused when she starts sobbing.

Ultimately, there is no innocence to be recaptured in Disgrace. Late in the novel, Lurie runs into one of the rapists and begins to beat him, along with a dog that has gotten loose from the kennels. What Lurie's motives are in this incident remains artfully conflicted. Was this an act of love performed to gain justice for Lucy? Or was this father acting selfishly, trying to repair an ego damaged when he couldn't help his daughter in the first place?