Sacred Hunger

This is my first re-read in my Booker challenge, so I have to admit to already knowing I love this book.  I think this might have been my fourth time through, but having the focus of needing to write a blog post helped me enjoy the writing in a new and deeper way.

This is a novel about the triangle trade in the mid 1700s, and is it about the struggle between greed, profit, humanity, enslavement, liberation and civilization - some pretty heavy themes that I traditionally associate with American literature (though Unsworth is British).  So much about this book is exquisite:  the depth of the characters, the fluxuating narration style, the the vivid metaphor and rich language, and the incredibly moving story.  The juxtaposition of Erasmus and Paris was a perfect tool in playing out the contradictions and moral pitfalls of the various aspects of the slave trade.  And even though there are probably a hundred named characters in the novel, each character, no matter how minor, came across as a complete and real person, with a purpose in the narrative.

One of the aspects of the writing that really struck me this time around was the prevalence of metaphors related to slavery, and the various ways in which people and even objects can be shackled, caged, and enslaved - including and especially the drive for profits, the Sacred Hunger of the title: 

It is always through arbitrary combinations that experience enslaves the memory.  New shackles were being forged here, in the light-filled loft, amid smells of oil canvas and raw hemp and tar, the creeping fringes of the sail-cloth, his feelings for Sarah Wolpert and for his father.

I first read this for part of an interdisciplinary college course called "Slavery and Labor in Film and Literature" - and it was by far the best part of that class.  It is still one of my favorite of all of the Bookers I have read - and I couldn't recommend it more highly.

Bitter Fruit

Set in post-apartheid South Africa, the Ali family's broken relationships are on display in this miserable little novel.  The Bitter Fruit of the title is Silas Ali's warm beer of escape, white Kate and Julian's newborn democracy in which they are no longer wanted, and, most especially, Lydia Ali's son Mikey, born after her rape over 19 years ago.

Achmat Dangor's expression of all of this bitterness is in the various troubled sexual activities, encounters and desires of his cast of characters.  They include the violence of rape, the apathy of unwanted marital sex, inappropriate seduction between age groups, infidelity, homosexuality (female and male), and incestuous urges and actions of all kinds: father/daughter, mother/son and nephew/aunt.  After a while, these sexual encounters lost their shock value - and did not appear to have any other important value.  This theme seemed like a badly-contrived plot device in lieu of an actual story or compelling characters, and I was over it long before it was over.

Other themes that I might have found interesting emerged late in the story, including the amorphous definition of race and the plurality of religion possible within a single family in modern South Africa.  Perhaps because I was not a native reader, I had a hard time figuring out each characters racial identity - and I couldn't determine whether this was because of my ignorance in picking up on cues particular to the country, or whether it was intentional on behalf of Achmat Dangor.  Religions seemed a bit more obvious, and the way each character is liberated and  also confined by his or her religious upbringing was teased out nicely. However, it wasn't enough in the end to encourage me to care about the characters at the climax of the action, or to care about the unresolved pieces.

Disgrace

While excellently written, and clearly qualifying for its Booker prize, J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace is not a book I will be revisiting anytime soon. 

Getting older really sucks.  And it especially sucks for the main character of Disgrace, 52-year old white, elitist David Lurie living in Cape Town, South Africa.  An entirely unsympathetic man, Lurie experiences or causes almost every definition of the word Disgrace I can think of.  Beginning with rejection by his regular prostitute, Lurie suffers career termination, inquisition, sexual scandal, physical abuse, imprisonment, the rape of his daughter, theft, rejection by family, ridicule and ultimately winds up with a long term position assisting in the euthanasia and disposal of unwanted dogs.  Pretty Heavy Stuff.  And I'm sure that if I had the perspective of approaching old age and a better understanding of post-apartheid race relations in South Africa it would only add to a complete understanding of the many ways in which disgrace is possible and experienced.

It is no accident that an overwhelming amount of the disgrace in this novel arises from interracial interactions, with the whites suffering disgrace at the hands of  non-whites.  There is some poetic justice here, but I don't understand enough of the context to grasp more than that.  South African readers... help?

His disgrace also stems frequently from a narrow view of women and gender relations.  His sexual needs are  placed above the needs and desires of others, and the words he uses to describe the women in his life - including his own daughter - reveal him to be fundamentally misogynistic.  He reasons with Melanie that she "ought" to sleep with him

"Because a woman's beauty does not belong to her alone.  It is part of the bounty she brings into the world.  She has a duty to share it."

He is unrepentant and unapologetic even after he is tried and dismissed for his actions, which makes him even more distasteful.  The flames of passion he describes led to him being literally lit on fire.  His only repentance seems to come through writing his opera about Byron and his Italian mistress - an opera with no artistry and for which there will never be an audience.  And in the end he has fallen so far that he compares his workwith the dogs to that of a harijan - an Untouchable of the Indian caste society.  And it is very hard to feel pity for him, or to feel that he has not invited this fate.