Disgrace (1999)

Took me 4 years to read this a second time. Just as good as the first. ( )

I don't think I ever saw such a mixed range of stars but where the majority had such deep emotions about a book. It makes me want to read it. But ... the subject.. is a major trigger to me. So for now it goes on my maybe list and maybe in the future I can handle a story that seems to evoke such intens emotions.

I've rarely come across a book this evocatively written, with such well-developed characters, set in such a distinctive setting, and probing such (arguably) fundamental questions, that I felt so tepidly about.

Perhaps it was the protagonist -- an objectionable guy, a literature professor who practices his hedonism with total disregard for his effect on others. But despite the way he exploits and "Cat Person"s his student, and despite his neglect of his daughter, blindness to her needs, and denial of her autonomy, the professor is someone I identified with. He is in a constant state of thought, always trying to balance his desires and actions with the way they fit into his framework of the world.

But perhaps this was the problem -- this "framework", the character's constant and seemingly offhand attempts to observe and understand the society around him. E.g., a foreshadowing:

A risk to own anything: a car, a pair of shoes, a packet of cigarettes. Not enough to go around, not enough cars, shoes, cigarettes. Too many people, too few things. What there is must go into circulation, so that everyone can have a chance to be happy for a day. That is the theory; hold to the theory and to the comforts of theory. Not human evil, just a vast circulatory system, to whose workings pity and terror are irrelevant. That is how one must see life in this country: in its schematic aspect. Otherwise one could go mad. Cars, shoes; women too. There must be some niche in the system for women and what happens to them.

Yes, his thinking is often dirtied by puerile and even despicable ideas, as demonstrated here. That's not the part that bothered me. I think what bothered me is how the character eventually became so useless, so isolated, so nearly irredeemably disgraced so as to render all of his ideas -- not just the barefaced despicable ones -- as silly and trivial. His redemption (is there a redemption? This seems like a question ripe for book club consensuses) is unbelievable; his trials and tribulations feel "sloppily" plotted -- maybe in the way that life can resemble a rambling course, but more in the way that symbols and motifs and moments of buried character insights flow out casually.

Anyway. 3.5 stars for a book I can acknowledge as great. ( )

So what can I say? Actually I didn't quite understand the idea of the book. It tells us about the university teacher who gets fired because of the affair with his student. And then there are a lot of reflections about his disgrace, about what happened to his own daughter, about animals' lives... And no ending.

I didn't like neither book nor the main hero. Main hero's thoughts were disgusting for me, I don't think I'll be able to understand such people even later. Not my topic, not my hero, not my genre. ( )

A skillfully written book from which I I derived no enjoyment at all. Yes, I did learn something about the tensions of post apartheid South Africa, but otherwise I could only dislike the male chauvinism of the lead character. He judges all women by their looks, and does not hesitate to pursue those whose looks he likes. And he is completely confounded by his inability to control the decisions of his daughter in determining her own life. Meanwhile, as an unpleasant background, there is much dwelling on the killing of dogs. ( )