Still trying to figure out what it all means.
On the surface it’s not the most complicated story; a man, Professor David Lurie, is accused of sexual harrassment towards one of his students. When he is discovered, he is ousted by the university, though he is given opportunities to defend himself.
Ironically, later on he experiences a sexual offense in his immediate family: his daughter is raped by an unknown gang of local thugs. So through two tales told by the same person, you get to experience being both the offender and the victim.
Though this isn’t a simple fable where the man learns a lesson, of the dire consequences of his actions.
Because Prof. Lurie is a civilized man; he knew that there would be repurcussions for his actions once caught, and didn’t try to deny them. And so he accepts whatever punishment he receives. When pressed about giving a statement regarding how he feels about what he has done, he is visibly, and rather understandably, perturbed: why should he have to say anything else about his actions, other than that he accepts the consequences?
At his daughter Lucy’s farm though, he discovers the flip side of the coin: the men they have dealt with have no shared morals or conscience. Whether the blacks, including the thugs and Lucy’s neighbour Petrus, are motivated by the hatred for whites after the struggles of Apartheid is tickled at, but unclear. All we know for sure is that people like Lucy are not protected. Protection comes with a price, a consigning away of power.
Living in a first-world country, the rules and ethics seem so obvious that you never think about who installed them, who it was really meant to benefit, why it’s still being adhered to. Because if you really wanted to, you could fight for the opposition, make connections and the promises needed to keep them, instill fear in who you intend to dominate, because that’s how it must have all been like in the beginning anyways. So then in a strange way, you realize that whatever is the opposite of what I’ve described above, must be love. I believe that’s what Lurie realizes as well. Helping out with the euphanization center for dogs, disallowing the workers from smashing the bagged carcases with their shovels so they’re easier to disposess, sleeping with Bev, an aging and unflattering woman looking for warmth and perhaps excitement, you could attribute it to love.
But I also wonder if the same could be said for his moments of passivity, lack of action. That I think is what I am stuck on. Because hate, evil, is quite simple: you hope to destroy the other person, or exploit them of everything they have, use them like an object, and take the necessary precautions in order to never suffer consequences, retaliations. I have yet to fully understand why Lucy is afraid of reporting the rape to the police, but that is definitely not an act of love. It seems likely to be one of fear, fear of instigating the propagator.
I think I am so caught up with this question of what passivity signifies, because that’s how the book ends: it ends with Lurie giving up a dog to its scheduled euphanizing, when his plan was to try to have it live for another week. He has sold his house and possessions to live in a downtrodden apartment with a flatmate. He sees less and less of himself in Lucy, and predicts in further generations, there will be none of him.
And this all makes for the most depressing novel I’ve read in recent memory.
An immediate comparison was Elementary Particles by Houellebecq, obviously based on both plots being driven by sexual promiscuity, a crudely honest and consequently almost hilarious protagonist, and its commentary on sexuality as the root of the worst sufferings and a destructive force to a civilized society. But while with Houellebecq you just sometimes feel indifferent towards his theses because you’re not even close to being half as horny as he is; his immediate vision of the world is safely not one you share. There’s an emotional distance you get to enjoy.
This book is definitely deserving of a re-read.