The more things change the more they remain the same. History repeating itself, though in a more modest vein. Perhaps history has learned a lesson.

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

*many many many spoilers ahead*

I've been on a blissful reading spree for the past four books, reading books that resonate with me in the best ways. In A River Runs Through It, On Writing, History of Love and History of the Rain, I found characters who eloquently voice how I feel about family/writing/reading/life in general. I connected with Norman MacLean, Stephen King, Alma Singer and Ruth Swain to higher-than-average extents.

Yet because the serious reader should not only stick to reading what makes her/him comfortable, I decided to read a novel that has been on my to-read list for ages and definitely tackles dark themes: J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace.

Our protagonist is the 52-year old and twice-divorced professor David Lurie, who goes through life teaching classes in which he has no interest (with the exception of his one course on romantic poets) and picking up scores of women who help him maintain a "moderated bliss." His one rule, "follow your temperament," is echoed in Byron's Lara, which David teaches to his class:

"... in some strange perversity of thought,

That sway’d him onward with a secret pride

To do what few or none would do beside;

And this same impulse would, in tempting time,

Mislead his spirit equally in crime;"

And thus it is by this "impulse he could not resist" that David begins a short-lived affair with one of his students, is later found out, brought to court, and eventually resigns, leaving civilization to visit his daughter, Lucy, in her farm in South-Africa.

By the way, the court case reminded me very much of Meursault's. Both demonstrate an absence of guilt and the eccentricity of the accused. As David says,

There is a difference between pleading guilty to a charge and admitting you were wrong. Repentance belongs to another world, to another universe of discourse.

And as someone who believes that

No animal will accept the justice of being punished for following its instincts,

David is even able to rationalize the unnecessariness of a issuing a formal apology. He makes the following remark about the women he meets:

“A woman's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is a part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it.”

So by this expert foreshadowing and in a striking turn of the plot, the tables are cruelly turned on David as his daughter - strong, independent, purposeful Lucy - becomes the victim of a double-rape. (I know that Wordsworth, one of the poets frequently alluded to in the novel, often wrote of a Lucy who was young, pure, but died an early death. After her rape, Lucy says that part of her has died, and David grieves for her as Wordsworth did for his Lucy. I can't help but notice the parallel).

Here is where the novel truly takes off, highlighting the grim depths of racial tensions, generation gaps and gender differences Coetzee explores. David has been "disgraced" by his scandal and now his daughter is disgraced by men she never laid eyes on. Men who, in a bitter stroke of irony, share David's views on the forgivability of an impulsive act and the commodification of women.

In the aftermath of the incident, the word "rape" is scarcely mentioned, but it need not be for readers to infer what Lucy suffered. Most troubling/shocking of all is her reaction to the incident, her initial apparent indifference and staunch refusal to raise criminal charges against anyone. Roles reverse as the steadfast Lucy seems maturer than David, who is absorbed by anger, saying, "'I want those men to be caught and brought before the law and punished. Am I wrong? Am I wrong to want justice?'" Again, how ironic is it that he, who was just trialled in court and pit against colleagues demanding an apology, is now begging his daughter (with similar fruitlessness) to accept his advice? How ironic is it that the professor of communications has lost the ability to connect with his own daughter, who does not even address him as 'dad,' but rather David?

The theme of generational gap is captured by David's inability to understand Lucy - her determination to stay on the farm, her love for women (as opposed to men), her decision to not report the rape. With the last point, however, Coetzee points out more troublingly the problems of South-Africa during the post-apartheid era, during which many homes of white farmers were trashed and robbed. Lucy's unwillingness to report the rape is tied to the fact of "this place being South Africa." Perhaps she feels that the rape is too "private" of a matter to be reported? That the rapists' act is in some twisted way rationalizable? That reporting will only bring her further trouble in a troubling society? Early on, David says that "there is a limit to sympathy," but his daughter's limit clearly extends much further than his does.

More on farm attacks, a problem which persists to today, can be found here: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/30/15571149-killings-of-white-farmers-highlight-toxic-apartheid-legacy-in-south-africa

Disgrace haunts nearly all the main characters in the book - the seemingly incorruptible Bev Shaw (who turns out to be not so incorruptible after all), in some ways Petrus's wife (is her brother disgracing her?) and even the animals. At one point in the novel, David speaks of the death of the sick dogs at the animals welfare center as the "disgrace of dying." To be "like a dog," as we learn from David's conversation with Lucy, is "to start at ground level. With nothing. Not with nothing but. With nothing. No cards, no weapons, no property, no rights, no dignity." It is to be disgraced. And David is indeed "sunk in disgrace;" he becomes the "dog-man" who takes the corpses of dogs to the incinerator to be burned.

Yet in the final pages of the novel, he lets go. He gives up the dog to whom he was so attached. He even (in a bizarre way) manages to have dinner with the family of the student he seduced. Even though David insists at the beginning that "his temperament is fixed, set," and that he cannot change himself at this age, he proves himself wrong. Of course, this is the optimistic conclusion. One could equally say that the dog at the end of the novel is being released into the "disgrace of dying" (or being released from the disgrace of living). Yet with David's gentle treatment of the dog, his acceptance of Lucy's pregnancy (not as if he has a choice, anyway) and the somewhat-closure he achieves with his past, I'd like to think that he is less disgraced at the end of the novel than he was initially - that everyone is less disgraced.

Disgrace is best described as striking. It carries a brilliant and gripping plot, shocks us, and asks questions that have no definite answer but provoke important conversation. Should one be convicted for desire? Why does Lucy make the choices she does? Why do three assaulters get away so easily with rape, while David is brought before court in no time at all for seducing a student?

...We cannot live our daily lives in a realm of pure ideas, cocooned from sense-experience. The question is not, How can we keep the imagination pure, protected from the onslaughts of reality? The question has to be, Can we find a way for the two to coexist? 

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Des traces subsistent dans des registres et l'on ignore où ils sont cachés et quels gardiens veillent sur eux et si ces gardiens consentiront à vous les montrer

Rue des boutiques obscures by Patrick Modiano
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Je ne suis rien. Rien qu'une silhouette claire, ce soir-là, à la terrasse d'un café."

Ainsi commence (thus commences) Rue des boutiques obscures de Patrick Modiano - a blank, a void, a man without an identity.

Guy Roland is an amnesiac detective who, now retired, decides to embark on his most puzzling case yet - the search for himself. Along the way, a myriad clues serve as his compass. Some are factual information, like addresses and telephone numbers provided by Hutte (his old employer); others are vague sentences dropped here and there by strangers who are not as distant as they seem; and some are material, like an old photo of friends found in a box of memories ("tout finissait dans de vieilles boîtes de chocolat ou de biscuits. Ou de cigares.").

The reader is immediately pulled into our narrator's search for his own past. We scrutinize every hint he receives, sympathize with him when he loses a lead, and struggle to connect the constellation of people, places and locations that dots the obscure sky of his journey. In a way that adds nuanced layers to the storyline, Guy's memory seems to return as he makes progress: he recalls "des bribes" (snatches, fragments) of his past, and the road becomes less obscure.
Oftentimes, Guy is quick to believe that a certain man he learns about is him, only to suffer disappointment soon after (reinforcing my belief that the question of "who am I?" is one of the most poignant in literature).

At first, it seems that we are only dealing with a personal history (Guy's). As the novel evolves, however, and as more characters are pulled into the web of this complex search for identity, we are beset with mysteries from every angle: an assassination. A suicide. A couple separated in a snowstorm in 1943. Indeed, we come face to face with a vaster history still: the Nazi-occupation of France.

In English, this book is (unjustly) titled, Missing Person.  Perhaps this gives readers the expectation that the ending should bring around closure, and that a person should be found. Yet, as the French title fittingly reveals, we are still somewhat wandering "une rue des boutiques obscures" at the end of the novel. Such an ending (which I've become used to, in fact e.g. Murakami's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki), however, is always the most striking. With Guy pursuing a past that is still somewhat shrouded in a veil of obscurity, while heading to Rome to locate the exact "Rue des Boutiques Obscures" itself, the novel concludes with mystery - like it began - but also with renewed hope and purpose. Rue des Boutiques is a compelling narrative about memory, history, and uncovering what is deeply personal to us - despite the fact that our lives are quick to dissipate into the night, "se dissiper dans le soir."

“Je crois qu'on entend encore dans les entrées d'immeubles l'écho des pas de ceux qui avaient l'habitude de les traverser et qui, depuis, ont disparu. Quelque chose continue de vibrer après leur passage, des ondes de plus en plus faibles, mais que l'on capte si l'on est attentif.”

"I think we still hear, in the entrances of buildings, the echo of the footsteps of those who used to cross them, but have since disappeared. Something continues to vibrate after their passage, waves that grow increasingly weak, but that one picks up if one is paying attention. "

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All the Names

Senhor Jose is a clerk at the Central Registry, an establishment headed by the inscrutable and incontestable Head Register. Jose, like all the other employees who work at the Registry, is tasked with the job of "transforming life and death into mere paper;" of recording the date of births, marriages and deaths of all citizens.

With a myriad of files at his disposal, Jose begins a dangerously unconventional hobby - collecting the files containing the information of famous people. Then, he makes the discovery of the file of an 'unknown woman' that changes his life and puts his career at risk.

A recurring theme in Jose Saramago's novels is that of the unbreakable union of life and death; although this theme is definitely portrayed in All the Names, what I found most enlightening was the idea of order(almost Big Brother-esque)that is encapsulated in the workings of the registry. Everything follows orderly processions and unquestioned regulations - perhaps the most magical moment of the novel is when Saramago abruptly switches to the first person narrative, right after Jose 'spills the beans.' It is only in the wake of his emotional dispatch, one compressed for years, that Jose may become an individual only fugaciously free from the bonds of the Registry.

"In order to die, you need only be alive." It is not an amalgamation of life and death that Saramago suggests, but rather the inevitable nature of their non-mutually-exclusiveness. The dialogue, free of quotation marks, may send readers down a path as tortuous as that of the Registry's archives, but perhaps quotation marks are too 'lively' for this sinister novel.

...I really need to start reading novels that have likable protagonists.

 

As a result of a fall he might have lost his life, which would doubtless have a certain importance from a statistical and personal point of view, but what, we ask, if that life were instead to remain biologically the same, that is, the same being, the same cells, the same features, the same stature, the same apparent way of looking, seeing and noticing, and, without the change even being registered statistically, what if that life became another life, and that person a different person.

Fame, alas, is a breeze that both comes and goes, it is a weather vane that turns both to the north and to the south, and just as a person might pass from anonymity to celebrity without ever understanding why, it is equally common for that person, after preening himself in the warm public glow, to end up not even knowing his own name.

When we announce the beginning of something, we always speak of the first day, when one should really speak of the first night, the night is a condition of the day, night would be eternal if there were no night.

There are, after all, so many coincidences in life, for one cannot see any close or immediate relationship between that fact and a sudden need for secrecy, but it is well known that the human mind very often makes decisions for reasons it clearly does not know, presumably because it does so after having travelled the paths of the mind at such speed that, afterwards, it cannot recognize those paths, let alone find them again.

There are people like Senhor José everywhere, who fill their time, or what they believe to be their spare time, by collecting stamps, coins, medals, vases, postcards, matchboxes, books, clocks, sport shirts, autographs, stones, clay figurines, empty beverage cans, little angels, cacti, opera programmes, lighters, pens, owls, music boxes, bottles, bonsai trees, paintings, mugs, pipes, glass obelisks, ceramic ducks, old toys, carnival masks, and they probably do so out of something that we might call metaphysical angst, perhaps because they cannot bear the idea of chaos being the one ruler of the universe, which is why, using their limited powers and with no divine help, they attempt to impose some order on the world, and for a short while they manage it, but only as long as they are there to defend their collection, because when the day comes when it must be dispersed, and that day always comes, either with their death or when the collector grows weary, everything goes back to its beginnings, everything returns to chaos.

It has long been known that death, either through innate incompetence or a duplicity acquired through experience, does not choose its victim according to length of life, a fact which, moreover, let it be said in passing, and if one is to believe the words of the inumerable philosophical and religious authorities who have pronounced on the subject, has, indirectly and by different and sometimes contradictory routes, had a paradoxical effect on human beings, and has produced in them an intellectual sublimation of their natural fear of dying.