Shame On Lurie?

What do you think of the protagonist, David Lurie? Is he a sympathetic figure or just revolting?" is the question I chose to answer. After whooshing through the first 10 chapters of the novel (quick and interesting read, I must say), Lurie's degenerate and sex-driven character is plain for the reader to see. The voyeur-like manner in which he tends to describe those around him is questionable. It makes one wonder about his intentions. His needy behavior and his thoughts, so full of self-doubt and indecision, makes one feel sympathetic towards Lurie for his naiveté which can somehow be endearing.

The opening line of the novel makes reference to his sexual frustration: "For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well." (1) At first, his attachment to the courtesan, Soraya, and to his student, Melanie Isaacs, seems revolting. "He doesn't act on principle but on impulse" (33); this quote makes his behavior more understandable. It points out that Lurie is, in fact, not the "bad guy" but a confused and rather gloomy soul.

David Lurie's character seemed like very much of a deja vue to me. It didn't take me long to notice the similarities he shares with the character Lester Burnham played by Kevin Spacey in the movie "American Beauty". Burnham is a depressed father in a mid-life crisis who decides to turn his life around after developing an infatuation for his daughter's attractive friend. Both characters share this disturbing quality: their interest in relatively young schoolgirls.