Disgrace

Reading novels is one of my greatest pleasures in life. Thus, I am somewhat thrown by a book like Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee, which won the 1999 Booker Prize for fiction. The central character in the book, David, is immensely unlikable. His daughter, Lucy, portrayed through David’s eyes, is distant, aloof, unknowable. Yet their story, for all of its brutality and ambiguity, I suppose reflects at least some aspects of post-apartheid South Africa, where Coetzee was born and raised, and where the story takes place.

David is middle aged (eek! he’s 52) college professor who gives into sexual desire even when it means debasing people around him. He admits to “taking advantage” of a student, but refuses to “repent,” and is dismissed in disgrace. That leads him to a long visit with his daughter, who lives on a farm by herself in the countryside where she takes care of dogs. A Black African man, Petrus, is her “co-proprietor,” who later becomes her protector when she herself is disgraced after a violent assault (and David is doubly disgraced as he fails to protect her). Only Petrus can protect Lucy from the people she has chosen to live with, and her decision to accept his protection as the only way she can continue to live in the Eastern Cape is both perplexing and painful.

Despite the dark and ugly story he tells, Coetzee writes beautifully and truthfully. When Coetzee won the Nobel prize in literature in 2003, the press release accompanying the announcement captured his point of view as reflected in Disgrace: “…he is a scrupulous doubter, ruthless in his criticism of the cruel rationalism and cosmetic morality of western civilisation. His intellectual honesty erodes all basis of consolation and distances itself from the tawdry drama of remorse and confession.”

On the Sea of Memory

Between 1998 and 1999, Jonathan Cott received electroconvulsive therapy (ECT… shock treatments) 36 times for severe depression. The repeated delivery of some 200 volts of electricity though the frontal lobes of his brain permanently erased 15 years of memory, save a few “flashbulb” memories of emotionally charged events. He no longer recognized good friends, no longer remembered films he saw, books he read, or even books he wrote. Gone too were memories of “the world as it was (the end of the Cold War, the Oslo peace accords, the abolition of apartheid, the massacre at Srebrenica).” When a friend recited the names of people who had died during those “lost” years, Cott wept upon learning that John Lennon had been killed.

A poet and author of 15 books about musicians, composers, actors and other artists, as well as other topics, Cott set out on a journey to discover what he lost and what is known about memory from a scientific as well as spiritual perspective. The result is a fascinating book called On the Sea of Memory: A Journey from Forgetting to Remembering, which essentially consists of a series of interviews with a neurologist, neuroscientist, psychologist, spiritual scholars, authors, and an actress. They discuss how the brain encodes memory, false and recovered memories, memory enhancement, Alzheimer’s disease, the role of memory and remembrance in a variety of religious and cultural traditions, and how actors tap into emotional memory. In the afterword, Cott discusses his condition with Floyd Skloot, who suffered from a similar memory loss as a result of a viral infection. Skloot has written a series of essays about his own experience, which he collected in a book called In the Shadow of Memory (which has moved to the top of my “must read” list). Both authors suffered irreversible brain damage which has severely impaired their ability to think and write, yet both have produced books that provide amazing insight into the nature of memory and memory loss.

In the preface, Cott states that “Without memory, it is exactly one’s being that is erased.” While he provides extensive proof to back up this statement, I think the book itself is a testament to the fact that his “being” survived the erasure of his memory. This thought provoking book is both terrifying and beautiful, and I highly recommend it.

Sightings

I have been trying to figure out what it is that I liked so much about Sightings by Susan Trott. It doesn’t have great character development, which is usually what snags my interest. And it isn’t written with the kind of richly detailed descriptions that I love to read over and over, hoping that by osmosis I will absorb the talent to write like that.

I did not have to look far to remember that what makes this book so wonderful is the story telling. This is how Trott opens the book:

“My mother adored my father. So did I. He was a famous man but also a nice man. As a high school graduation present he sent me to Paris and that’s where I was, age eighteen, when I heard he had run away with my friend Chris, a girl my age, exactly – my best friend, who I’d known since kindergarten! And what about Mom, who adored him? She ran away too. First!

When Daddy’s call came, I was in bed with Masefield, a spy…”

In this brief passage, Trott sets up a mystery, written with humor and pathos, that she spins into a compelling but quirky tale of a family haunted by a tragedy that plays itself out in unexpected ways. And though the characters are not richly drawn, they are memorable.

Published in 1987, Sightings is out of print and hard to find, as are several of Trott’s other highly praised books. It is definitely worth seeking out.