Wednesday 19 August 2015

J.M. Coetzee


This is odd, but Coetzee has come closest to making me walk out of the cinema halfway through the show. Either him or John Malkovich or whoever was responsible for the film adaptation of Disgrace.

A great novel, one of the greatest in recent memory, completely deserving of its Booker Prize, but Christ is it a gruesome viewing. Literary form spares you somehow, gets you off the hook and allows you to do something else (look out of the window, talk to your wife, feed the cat, go to bed), but the screen just freezes you dead. The screen destroys you. As does Disgrace

Its warmth is didactic and its humour (you don’t need much, you only need a little) is nonexistent. The girl I was with nudged me and implored me to leave with her red crying eyes. I stood up and we walked to the aisle. Maybe stay? She thought for a while and nodded uncertainly. We stayed. And survived, for another hour or so.