25 Mar 2009

Disgrace by Coetzee

Hello

I just finished the book Disgrace by JM Coetzee. I loved his simple style and the way he used plain sentences that drew the reader into the narrative. The opening line is just superb about how this character has solved the problem of sex, for a divorced man of 52. Characterisation like this is enviable. His whole personality is expressed in this beginning and the novel unravels his demise at it progresses. Basically, he rapes a young student in his course at university. I found him detestable in the beginning of the novel but by the end not so horrible.

HIs faults became moderated and I think he achieved some self knowledge, even in the fact that he realised he had little self knowledge that is a form of honesty in itself. People living in denial do not know they are doing so, if they did know then they would no longer be living in it. :)

It was mentioned at university that he doesn't change throughout the novel. I do not agree with this. When I read the end of the novel he shows he has changed. Ever so slightly, but he has changed, his perspective, he starts to use the word love and he starts to believe animals have souls and he wants to protect his daughter. He has sex with an older lady who is not beautiful and starts to realise that his desires will not always be able to filled. He still has them but he resigns himself to a different life.

A novel that I didn't particularly like in the beginning did engage me by the end. The women characters seemed to be somewhat oppressed throughout the novel. Except for his daughter, who the reader feels slightly annoyed by for some of the novel but by the end she seems to make sense. She is seeking to be different, kind, and peaceful, and these things seem ridiculous when faced with violence and brute force. However, she is the most together character by the end of the novel.

There is a wonderful beauty in her embracing the ugliness of the situation around her and a wonderful scene where she is picking flowers in the garden and the sun is shining on her back. I think this novel - though it shows black African people as cunning and conniving, achieved some very subtle characterisation with the main characters.

The two African men and the down trodden African women in the book are less desirable characters. In fact the main black African character - David Lurie likes him in the beginning but in the end cannot abide him. So I know there will be racist interpretations about this. Sometimes though there are characters of certain racial backgrounds that we create that are not nice but this does not mean it is inherently racist. These were the particular characters in this story.

The white professor is not spared, he is violent in his own way, he takes sex from women and then drops them back onto the street. He is no better than the men who rape his daughter. So I think this is Coetzee's point. It is the women who have to put up with this situation. They are the wives, daughters, students, and veterinarians helping animals.

I cannot work out whether he has painted them with dignity or not, there is a comment on women and their subjugation that is a side issue, however, maybe as a woman these things are heightened for me. Women seem victims in this book but some of them rise above it, like his daughter, like the vet, like his ex wife, who seems strong and some don't I guess that is real. In some ways, they seem to make more sense than the men who are acting on impulse and their animal desires.

No wonder it won the Booker Prize, however I can also see that people could really dislike this book, for many reasons. But overall it has had a lasting effect on me. One thing was there was not a lot of beauty in it. But the characters stood out as real, and compelling and that is a major accomplishment!

9 Mar 2009

Novel Idea (Noodle)

Why do they call it a novel noodle? I am not sure. Well I have to take a novel idea to university today and it is clear my novel idea is no longer the same. Over a year ago I had a clear novel idea and had developed this idea fully and written a plan and everything and then major events happened in my life and now this novel has changed. It has to change.

I no longer wish to write the narrative that I had devised. But now I am a little bit lost with whether I should try to tweak the idea and still use it or start a new one.

I seem to have these commitment issues to novel ideas. This happened when I did Veny's Year of the Novel. The problem for me at the moment is that I have lots of short story ideas and the longer piece is eluding me. But I need to take something. So I am feeling a little apprehensive about the fact that it is not fully formed.

The tutor tells me you can use an idea you have right now but everyone in my tut are so sure about their narratives and so well into the novels. As usual I am the one who is artistically unsure of which one to commit to or rather had one that I cannot write anymore. It has changed but to what?

Anyway, it's all interesting and crazy. Maybe I just like living closer to the edge or something. I have to have an idea I am sure of and that I love otherwise how will I be able to present it to the tut class? In the tuts they make you share out loud writing and ideas, however writers are interior people. I don't understand why we have to be exposed every week, when most of our lives if we get published will be discussing final products that have been edited and worked on for years.

Why should we read out something we have scrawled in a few minutes and feel so vulnerable when if we become published authors, journalists like me will interview us and we can comment on what we have done, not write something half baked for the journalist to snigger at in the interview.

I will keep you posted. If anyone else has had doubts about their novel. Let me know. I should get back to my Novel Noodle they call it. Why Noodle? Anyway it's all fun and games...

7 Mar 2009

Rules of Attraction by Easton Ellis

Wow, supremely depressing but something more..makes you wish you could cry about their world but you couldn't if you tried.
Easton Ellis paints the characters as shallow, mean, nasty and frankly, stupid, but somehow he shows something that draws you to them at the same time.

Sean, I really liked him. He made the book for me, even though he was a fool, a drug dealing user, but he loved someone and she didn't love him. Lauren, is also stupid. She loves a guy completely unworthy of her love. Why do we do that? It's a question I cannot answer.

This book, written so differently starting in mid sentence and finishing in mid sentence is definitely amazingly constructed and his detail about characters is something I need to learn from. At first it is difficult to get into the different points of view, every chapter, but then I found as soon as I started reading their voices, they must have been so well created that I knew exactly where they were and what they were doing.

It was interesting that - particularly with Sean and Paul how differently they portrayed their time together. Paul smitten by Sean and Sean barely acknowledging that he was even with Paul. It was tragic but very true to life. Perceptions of events by different people especially with love, is a fascinating and endless topic.

Paul says to Gerald a guy who likes him, "No one ever likes the right person," which could be described as the whole premise of the novel.

Sean loves Lauren, Paul loves Sean, Lauren used to love Paul, Lauren loves Victor, Victor loves Jaime, Paul used to love Mitchell, Susan loves Sean.

The other premise is everything is boring - they are constantly bored with everything, people have abortions, commit suicide, take drugs, have sex, attempt suicide, take cocaine, don't pay their drug dealers, and the characters are constantly bored with it all. There is no reaction or emotion towards it.

I mean the way Easton Ellis writes about all of the drug taking and sex etc ad infinitum the reader does feel bored and overwhelmed with it. Everything is meaningless and no one cares about anyone, except who they will have sex with or where they will score from next. The parts that keep you reading the novel are the parts where the characters actually reveal they have something more to them.

Sean tells Lauren he loves her, they agree to get married (which ends) actually that's probably it, except there are some scenes with Victor and empathy towards some people in the crowd that are good. Mainly, Sean has the scenes of something more to him, with his dying father and his overbearing brother. He, for me is the character that stands out in all of his ugliness he was something actually. He had something deeper to him, the way he describes Lauren and the way he loved Lauren.

One thing though it does become funny in some scenes where a girl talks about all the people who are sleeping with each other, cheating on partners it just sounds absurd. Which is the point I guess. There are constant 80s references that I love because I grew up then. It is amusing the references to the things they are wearing, swatch watches and tab and diet coke and radios and tapes.

There is a line at the end where Sean says and nothing has changed and they all seem to go back to their hopeless behaviour. Sean picks up a girl he's not interested in, Lauren goes off with Victor who is using her, Paul chases more boys...the meaninglessness of their behaviour continues.

This is a truth in some people's lives. Only through spiritual transformation can people change, but these people, there is nothing they wish to do beyond feed their physical desires. So their cycle goes around and around and sometimes it disgusts them like with Sean when he says he doesn't want to sleep around anymore only be with Lauren. But eventually her lack of love for him destroys that.

So anyway, this was a bit of a ramble but it's the kind of book you have to ramble about. You feel like you have to have therapy after the book or debrief or cleanse yourself somehow. I think it is the same with Less Than Zero. Life is so dirty and disgusting in this book and its all over you, and you need a bath.

It is great to read books like this. I will take a lot from Easton Ellis in techniques and I will admire what he has done. But my basic philosophy is different. Although, I think this book proves Easton Ellis is not really a nihilist he is showing the greed, futility, reality, shallow qualities and pain of the 80s. The funny thing is AIDS does not come into the novel. Maybe it was only just being discovered. Some of those characters in this book would have AIDS, and would probably have died in the following years of that or another STD.

This is a rich book. A book that completely enveloped me into its world. The characters are stunning to me in their abhorrence and depth and in the fact that he keeps you reading about people you don't even like! He is an exceptional writer. This book I could try to say I enjoyed it, but it is much more than that. So I could say, it was amazing.

A revealing deep book about shallow, self centered, people doing whatever they wanted. It is the result of believing in a nihilistic world. It is people living what they believe, with no spiritual framework for life. At least they are being honest and authentic, so many people believe nihilistic things and yet they live in a valued filled world, that is based on spiritual ideas.

Anyway now I am off the topic. Characters that are living without morals, come what may. That's the ugliness and sincerity of this book. It is honest, raw and gritty, and remains, lingers...impacts. whoa. I could say so much more but I will stop now.

Actually I just had a thought, and maybe someone can comment on this. Is Easton Ellis sort of commenting on the 80s the way Nick Hornby is also commenting on the 90s? I think they are doing similar things. I am so thankful that maybe this decade compassion for other people is not totally out of the question, I feel like there may be a different feeling now. Actually even in Hornby's novels this theme of self centered character who doesn't care about anyone actually decides to be different, so Hornby differs to Easton Ellis like that. The character in About a Boy changes at the end and in High Fidelity.

Anyway, I like the comparison with these authors. Also, I wonder who is writing for this decade? And indeed what would we write? Are we all just out for ourselves as usual? Of course it is the same but there are peculiarities that will be distinguised in this time over any other. There always are in history. Different world leaders, different economic climate, different wars being waged, threats or lack of threats.

Every era is different its human nature that stays the same.