Diary of a Bad Year
By J.M.Coetzee

It's a solemn piece of work. The themes running through are two-fold - the loneliness of old age, where you are losing the faculties of your body even as your mind is as sharp as it probably ever was; and the assault of a neo-conservative world where greed and a paranoid nationalism are negating everything a liberal would hold as good and true
. The format of Diary of a Bad Year is new and somewhat interesting. There are three threads running in parallel. The first is a book within a book. Mr. C is the old writer, reasonably well-known and successful, suffering from some form of Parkinson's. He is writing a series of essays contributing for a German book entitled Strong Opinions. This series of essays forms the first thread - and it makes for a very interesting read. Stretching from Mr. C's (and does it stand for Coetzee himself?) opinions on the war on terror, the nature of democracy and the West's capitulation to the Bush doctrine to music, Russian literature, travel and the English language, this thread manifests one part of the internal landscape of Mr. C - well-read, scholarly, intelligent. It portrays a strong belief that there are things going wrong with the world crafted by Bush's America.
The second thread is the second part of that internal landscape - Mr. C's fascination for Anya, a pretty young woman who lives with her banker boyfriend in the same apartment block. The fascination that is soon turning into something more, is that of an old man who looks at the beauty of youth with a longing that is at once fierce and unattainable. He befriends her and gets her to type out his manuscript for him. This second thread of the novel begins to unravel the beauty and the pathos of a relationship that cannot truly be defined by the normal world and its vocabulary.
The third thread is Anya herself - her thoughts on Mr. C, her boyfriend Allen and his callous scheme to exploit her growing friendship between her and the writer. Anya is a bit of a puzzle. We start by seeing her as a bit of a bimbette, with an unsophisticated mind, using her sexuality to draw Mr. C to her. Soon, she grows a bit more complex, just as her relationship with Mr. C grows complex.
As the three threads run parallel, we see the story develop - and the essays change as the relationships deepen. From a serious vein, Mr. C begins to lighten up - possibly the effect of Anya herself. And as the wickedness of Alan becomes more apparent, Anya is forced to come to terms with the nature of her relationships and her own sense of morality.
It is an interesting read. The essays in themselves are a book and can be read as one. To me, they proved the most absorbing part. Anya and Allen and Mr. C remain just that bit removed from the reader - maybe the format could not allow for more.
But Coetzee can be counted on to never be uninteresting.

Disgrace

By J.M. Coetzee

I am a sucker for Booker prizewinners. At least most of them. So I pick up the 1999 winner Disgrace, by the South African (now Australian, I think) writer J.M. Coetzee. And turns out he is also a Nobel Prize winner!

The title of the book describes the state David Lurie is in. 52 years old, twice divorced, Lurie teaches poetry at a Capetown University. In an impulsive Lolita moment, he starts an affair with a young student. He loses his job in the process and thus starts his descent into disgrace. David retires to his daughter Lucy’s home in the country hoping to clear his mind and see what can come out of a vague dream of writing a book on Byron.

Rural life in South Africa for a white man and his single daughter is not idyllic. That fact is brought home rather forcefully when strangers, who later turn out to be relatives of Lucy’s African neighbour and helper, render David and Lucy helpless in a rather violent attack against them. The difference in the way the older man and the younger woman react to the attack is telling. David is angry and wants his daughter to give up her land and go away, maybe away from South Africa itself. His daughter however decides to stay.

The burden of history turns out to be hard to bear for white South Africa. In the countryside they are forced to barricade themselves against a hostile world, and still end up with the possibility of a bullet in the back. Or they could choose to leave. Lucy’s generation is learning to start all over again, learning to adapt, to forge new relationships, start with nothing again. David cannot do the same, or won’t do the same and he is left to rely on his fledgling Byronic opera and his new-found love for stray animals (another species left with nothing) as substitutes for the strength to carry on.

It is a bleak novel, yet there is a sense of re-building as if from a wasteland. Just as Lucy’s child begins its life in her womb, a child born of violence and helplessness, David and Lucy have to begin life again in deepest Africa. All the dilemnasof white South Africa are brought to life in this short and sharp novel from a writer with an obvious talent for a layered tale. Coetzee is a new discovery, one I will explore more of.