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.
