Nobel Shmobel

Before jumping into the polemical racial issues raised by Coetzee's rightfully controversial novel, Disgrace, I must preface this post with a comment about Nabokov.

Nabokov's Lolita harbors one of the most disgusting characters that I have ever encountered in a literary text, Humbert Humbert. The novel, written from his point of view, attempts to justify Humbert Humbert's mad affair with Lolita (who is only 13-14 at the time). Nabokov never once takes a moral position throughout the novel as everything is left for the reader to determine. When I finished the novel I threw it against the wall because I was so enraged and sickened by what I had read. And then I marveled at the genius of Nabokov for creating a novel that could create such a powerful artistic effect. Unlike Dostoevsky, and other novelists, who selectively sway reader's judgments of their characters, stylistically, rendering their novels less potent, Nabokov allows his readers to decide everything for themselves, their good points and bad points, psychology, ethics, morality.

The reason that I'm making this preface is in order to put forward my position on literature: that the writer and the protagonist are never one and the same, even in autobiographical works, and a writer should never have to take a moral position on his or her characters, as that creates an impotent literary experience. Everything should not be spelled out for the reader. Moreover, if writers have to judge their characters then they can't ever authentically jump into their character's psyches. An essay may be written on this subject, which I will not do. Rather, I will point to Lolita as the quintessential example of artistic achievement in the literary arts without ever baring the mark of Nabokov's own opinion and judgment.

Having said that, let me turn to Coetzee. Coetzee's Disgrace is written from a third-person selectively omniscient narrator that follows David Lurie around, sometimes entering his thoughts, and sometimes turning the general narration into Lurie's thoughts themselves. Already a stylistically weak narrative structure, Coetzee, nevertheless builds his novel around Lurie's perceptions, experiences, and thoughts. Having purposefully mentioned Nabokov, Coetzee cannot be rightly indicted, or any author for that matter, for racism, sexism, etc, that seeps through their characters. Lurie is a repulsive character; however, on this account alone the novel cannot be judged to be racist. It is in the structure of the novel that racism may be uncovered. How this shitty, rather unoriginal book won the Nobel prize is beyond me, but that's not the point. The question is one of racism. And this novel is racist, but not overtly so. The racism is between the lines. In the narrative choices Coetzee has chosen to make within the context of post-apartheid South Africa.

The New York Times rightfully indicts Coetzee, by referring to literary professors and Nadine Gordimer who bring up a glaringly obvious fact: the lack of any fleshed-out black South Africans characters. A case for this can only be made because one of the major motifs within Disgrace is the clash between "whites" and "blacks" in South Africa, post apartheid. To really go into this issue, a non-racist author would have had to go much deeper into "black" mentalities, politics, lives. What Coetzee offers, through Lurie, is an excuse to avoid the questions: "More and more he [Lurie] is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa [...]." (117). If the novelistic choice, however, was to stay only with white perspectives, which is absolutely fine, then much stronger counter-arguments to David Lurie's position, that black South Africans are, for the most part, all out to get vengeance, need to be explored through other white South African characters.

Coetzee has such an opportunity with Lurie's daughter, Lucy. Who, presumably, should be educated, since she is the daughter of a professor, and should present a much stronger view and opposition to her father. Though she is strong in defending her own views, she does not offer any narrative counter-position to Lurie's views, rather, she seems to accept black African's vengeance as a common reality of South Africa. Coetzee has absolutely no excuse for not exploring the issue to the max, through whatever avenue his choice of narrative structure allows him to take, especially when considering that this is a novel, not a short story, where space is limited, not a novella, but a literary medium that offers the freedom and responsibility to explore complex issues to the fullest of a writer's capabilities. Because there is evidence that Coetzee is not a bad writer, for the most part, there is no one other than him to blame for the novel's failure to explore racial tensions to the best of Coetzee's ability (and if he lacks it, to not write about them in the first place). Having raised the subject, which was his choice, nobody forced him, he damn well better explore it to the max.

Furthermore, considering Gordimer's judgment about the reality of Petrus, a name which according to Wikipedia originates from the Greeks, meaning rock, a man who has no familial ties to the gang rapists, I too am led to question the reality of this racially loyal stoic. Excuse me Mr. Coetzee do you really expect me to believe that this character is the only way you could have portrayed a black South African? Certainly there are immoral shits of all races, but you choose to highlight this one, while never providing a contrast? Wait, wait. A whole banquet of people is in attendance, and implicitly, I'm to believe that they all share Petrus's view? Not even a murmur in the crowd? No dissent whatsoever?

And of course the part-time prostitute, you know, "only on afternoons," is so bloody believable. A suburban mother with kids and a husband, prostituting herself as an extra-familial activity? Just for kicks? Well, I don't know, do I? It was never explored in the novel. What could have led to such a strange juxtaposition, half-housewife, half-hooker, is utterly ignored, as if it were a common occurrence! It reads as if this is nothing out of the norm. Just an exotic adventure for Lurie, given his decadent suburban black neighbors.. Am I to really leave this novel believing that this is how suburban black women are in South Africa?

I've read everyone else's responses and would simply like to add, without replicating the argument, that Polly's point about Coetzee's disgraceful treatment of the two rape scenes in the novel is the last indictment of Coetzee's conscious or unconscious racism. Once again, the repute of the Nobel prize comes into serious question. To think that he wins, while Updike doesn't.