本書でブッカー賞史上初となる2度目の受賞を果たしたJ・M・クッツェー。2003年には、文学的功績を認められてノーベル文学賞受賞の名誉にも輝いている。簡潔で鋭い文章を武器にするクッツェーが描くのは、新旧の思想や力が混在する社会に暮らす人々の心だ。カフカ的な不条理な展開を軸に、若さと老い、欲望と道徳のはざまで揺れる人間を冷徹なまでにまっすぐ見すえながら、読後感は決して冷たくはない。
本書でも、主人公は性欲という泥沼の中で哀しいくらいこっけいにもがいてみせる。職も名誉も失いながら、それでも性欲に振り回されてしまう情けなさ。新しい価値観と古い価値観がぶつかり合う混乱の中で暮らす不安と無力感。だが、あまりにみじめな主人公に怒りすら感じながらも、読み手は物語から目を離すことができない。なぜなら、彼の弱さは人間(特に男性)そのものの弱さであり、彼が恥辱にまみれるとき、読み手もまた堕ちていく感覚を味わうからである。
われわれはそうした情けなさから逃れることはできず、彼と同じくもがきながら生きていかねばならない。クッツェーの救いのない小説に不思議な温かみがあるとすれば、人生を不毛だとしながらも、苦闘する人間そのものは否定しない姿勢に共感を覚えるからであろう。(小尾慶一) --このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。
Lurie pursues his relationship with the young Melanie—whom he describes as having hips “as slim as a twelve-year-old’s”—obsessively and narcissistically, ignoring, on one occasion, her wish not to have sex. When Melanie and her father lodge a complaint against him, Lurie is brought before an academic committee where he admits he is guilty of all the charges but refuses to express any repentance for his acts. In the furor of the scandal, jeered at by students, threatened by Melanie’s boyfriend, ridiculed by his ex-wife, Lurie is forced to resign and flees Cape Town for his daughter Lucy’s smallholding in the country. There he struggles to rekindle his relationship with Lucy and to understand the changing relations of blacks and whites in the new South Africa. But when three black strangers appear at their house asking to make a phone call, a harrowing afternoon of violence follows which leaves both of them badly shaken and further estranged from one another. After a brief return to Cape Town, where Lurie discovers his home has also been vandalized, he decides to stay on with his daughter, who is pregnant with the child of one of her attackers. Now thoroughly humiliated, Lurie devotes himself to volunteering at the animal clinic, where he helps put down diseased and unwanted dogs. It is here, Coetzee seems to suggest, that Lurie gains a redeeming sense of compassion absent from his life up to this point.
Written with the austere clarity that has made J. M. Coetzee the winner of two Booker Prizes, Disgrace explores the downfall of one man and dramatizes, with unforgettable, at times almost unbearable, vividness the plight of a country caught in the chaotic aftermath of centuries of racial oppression.
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