Embracing Disgrace: Writing from the Dark Side

J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace has been hailed as the greatest novel of the last 25 years written in English, and a novel with which it is almost impossible to find fault. Disgrace is a palimpsest of intertextual woven strands, and in Coetzee’s words, is dialogic in that it awakens the countervoices in oneself and embarks upon speech with them. Studying this novel can therefore teach us much about writing the counter voices of our own lives with honesty, courage and skill. In this paper, I demonstrate how Disgrace can be taught in Creative Writing programmes not only as a literary text but as an exemplar for narrative craft and technical innovation which will give our writing gravitas and resonance. © 2014 © 2014 Taylor & Francis