March 2011 Wrap-Up

Another month gone, a few posts done at least (including a rather serious vlog effort), but the time for individual reviews has long passed - sigh...  Which makes my monthly wrap-up even more important!  Pay attention at the back there...

Total Books Read: 15
Year-to-date: 37

New: 15

Rereads: 0

From the Shelves: 3

From the Library: 6

On the Kindle: 6

Novels: 13

Novellas: 1

Short Stories: 1

Non-English Language: 5 (2 German, 1 Japanese, 1 Czech, 1 Russian)

In Original Language: 2 (2 German)

Books read in March were:
1) Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
2) The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes by Dan Holloway
3) Autofiction by Hitomi Kanehara
4) The Gift of Speed by Steven Carroll
5) Faces in the Water by Janet Frame
6) The Rector & The Doctor's Family by Margaret Oliphant
7) The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera
8) Tonio Kröger by Thomas Mann
9) The Bone People by Keri Hulme
10) Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
11) Short Stories by Franz Kafka*

12) The Rope of Man by Witi Ihimaera
13) Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow by Jerome K. Jerome 
14) Plumb by Maurice Gee 
15) Rudin by Ivan Turgenev

* A bunch of random selected free e-texts - 
In der Strafkolonie, Der Kübelreiter, Ein Landarzt, Ein Hungerkünstler, Großer Lärm, Betrachtung, Der Bau, Das Urteil

Murakami Challenge: 0 (1/3)

Aussie Author Challenge: 1 (4/12)

Victorian Literature Challenge: 3 (9/15)

NZ Reading Month Mini-Challenge:  5/1

Tony's Recommendations for March are: Steven Carroll's The Gift of Speed and Keri Hulme's The Bone People

My reading appears very anglocentric this month, due partly to my being English and partly to the NZ Reading Month Mini-Challenge I decided to participate in.  Honourable mentions to Maurice Gee's Plumb (a wonderful book which I hope to say more about in an NZ round-up post!) and Thomas Mann's short but sweet Tonio Kröger.

The Gift of Speed, the sequel to Carroll's The Art of the Engine Driver, is a superb book and was always going to be a contender, especially for its poetical sections on former West Indies skipper Frank Worrell (I don't like cricket, oh no...).  However, it had to share top spot with Keri Hulme's tour de force, a stunning mixture of kitchen-sink drama, Maori mythology and Christ complex.  Sorry, not going to choose a winner here :)

That was March; see you next month...

Oliphant, Oliphant (not an Elephant)

Here's another lengthy Vlog to keep you all going, this time discussing why I bought a Kindle and the similarities between the best-known works of Anthony Trollope and Margaret Oliphant Oliphant ;)

Feel free to sleep through it...

Oops.  In the Vlog, I make mention of the University of Iowa - it should be the University of Illinois! Mea culpa...

Salem Chapel links:

Volume 1 & Volume 2

Other links:

Manybooks.net...

There's Something about Agnieszka...

Back in 2009, Dan Holloway, author of the excellent Songs from the Other Side of the Wall, blogger, indie publisher and generally someone with way too much time on his hands, started an intriguing project, deciding to write (and publish) his latest novel on the discussion pages of his Facebook group.  Twice a week, after some preliminary teasers and explanations, a chapter was released, and members of the group applauded, booed or pointed out typos as they saw fit.

As the novel neared its end, Dan took a break to concentrate on one of his many other projects, and the novel stayed suspended there, almost complete (at least in a draft form, anyway), until he finally got around to adding the finishing touches to the story, honing the draft into a finished form and releasing it electronically in various formats.  Mainly because I kept nagging him to get it finished :)  The result is the wonderful (and wonderfully-named) The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes.

Aggie, as it is familiarly known, is the story of Dan Griffiths, a photojournalist with the job of finding a new angle on a famous story; the tragic (and unlikely) demise of Agnieszka Iwanowa, a young Polish businesswoman living in London.  Thanks to a youtube video of her accident, along with a publicity stunt by the elusive artist Ludwig, the images of Agnieszka being dragged to her fate have become pop-art icons, and it is Dan's mission to find a way to put a fresh spin on the story.

Dan, however, has suffered his own loss, and the pursuit of the truth behind Agnieszka's fate leads him to confront the unresolved disappearance of his daughter Emma.  As his journey leads him into a painful underworld where art, politics and murder merge into a surreal parallel existence, the search becomes less and less about the Polish icon and more about his own, personal suffering.

As with Holloway's earlier book, Aggie has several nods to Haruki Murakami, with the search for a missing person and the blurred lines between the real and imaginary worlds reminiscent of both The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Sputnik Sweetheart.  However, this novel is decidedly darker and, with its focus on pain and suffering, is closer in style to works by other Japanese authors, such as Ryu Murakami, Natsuo Kirino or Hitomi Kanehara. 

Why mention all these Japanese authors (you may ask)?  Well, firstly, I happen to know that Mr. Holloway is a big fan of several Japanese writers; and secondly, one of the principal characters is Japanese...  You see, Shuji Nomoto, a teenage recluse and one of the main protagonists of the novel, lives in Kobe and, quite conceivably, could have come straight out of a story from Murakami's post-Dai-Hanshin-Earthquake collection, after the quake.  Shuji, just like the unfortunate Agnieszka, the elusive Ludwig, and the AWOL Professor Sydney Byfield is one of the many people tangentially, but inextricably, linked to Dan, and his missing daughter.

Dan (Holloway, that is) is obviously obsessed with art, and this comes across in the writing, with many a visual metaphor or leit-motif.  The role of lines is prominent in the novel, whether they be artistic (the style used in paintings or the contours of sculptures), human (there are many descriptions of people with a focus on the sharpness, or blurriness, of their outlines) or metaphorical.  In particular, the idea of crossing lines and boundaries, transgressing against moral norms or even crossing into alternative realities crops up frequently.

Associated with this is the idea of entropy, or (as a well-known author once wrote) the fact that things fall apart.  Faces sag, make-up hides wrinkles and scars (unsuccessfully), minds creak and snap under pressure - as do tendons and sinews...  The city itself seems to be falling into a spiral of dirt and decay, a natural consequence of the pain and fatigue felt by the people who live there.   Things. Fall.  Apart.  In the best possible way, of course.

As you might(!) have gathered from the post, my objectivity may well be a little compromised in reviewing this novel, but if you're a little hesitant about trusting my slightly-biased view, there's some good news - it won't cost you much to check it out.  The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes is available as an e-book for just UK70p, or US99c, from Amazon UK, Amazon US and (for those of you without Kindles) Smashwords, where you can get PDF or ePub versions.  That's not much of a gamble now, is it?

Biased as I am, I was very happy to finally get the finished version of the book, and I am grateful to Dan for including us in the creative process - and for putting us out of our misery!  Rest assured, if you're looking for an entertaining, thought-provoking look at how media affects how we see life in the twenty-first century (one that doesn't mention Charlie Sheen), The Man Who Painted Agnieszka's Shoes is well worth a read.

Did I mention that I was a little biased?

February 2011 Wrap-Up

You may (or may not) have noticed a silence around my computer activities over the last few weeks, and (sadly) that's not coincidental.  Unfortunately, I am once again being forced to abandon my blog, hopefully temporarily , owing to my usual aches and pains.  For the time being, at least, this monthly wrap-up will probably be all he wrote, so I'll do my best to be informative - and brief...


Total Books Read: 11
Year-to-date: 22

New: 9

Rereads: 2

From the Shelves: 3

From the Library: 3

On the Kindle: 5

Novels: 7

Novellas: 3

Plays & Short Stories: 1

Non-English Language: 4 (1 Japanese, 1 German, 1 Russian, 1 Chinese)

In Original Language: 1 (German)

Books read in February were:
1) Beijing Coma by Ma Jian
2) Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
3) Plays and Petersburg Tales by Nikolai Gogol
4) Salem Chapel by Margaret Oliphant
5) Monkey Grip by Helen Garner
6) Rabbit, Run by John Updike
7) Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata
8) Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
9) An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
10) Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome
11) Sanctuary by Edith Wharton

Murakami Challenge: 0 (1/3)

Aussie Author Challenge: 1 (3/12)

Victorian Literature Challenge: 4 (6/15)

Tony's Recommendation for February is:  Ma Jian's Beijing Coma

I had Beijing Coma down as my February pick right from the start, but I did waver a little towards the end of the month.  Thousand Cranes was beautiful (but very short), and Siddhartha was intriguing (but also short).  However, it was Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World, with its wonderfully unreliable narrator and a gradual, insidious slide into uncertainty and confusion which almost changed my mind.  In the end though, I decided that Ma Jian's depiction of the events which took place around Tiananmen Square in 1989 was the winner by a nose!

That was February; I wonder what March will bring...

Political Sleepwalking

There are some events which are so wide-reaching that it seems incredible that anyone could be unaware of them, yet a couple of years back I had a slightly unnerving conversation with a young Chinese student I knew.  It was the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square incident, and I asked them if they had seen any of the coverage of the anniversary on television.  Not only had they seen nothing in the news, they actually knew nothing about the occurrence at all - and, initially at least, thought I was making the whole thing up.

To understand how something like this could happen, you need to find out more about the country, and the incidents of June the 4th, 1989, and there are few better ways to do so than by reading Ma Jian's celebrated novel Beijing Coma.  The story is told from the viewpoint of Dai Wei, a young student who is in a coma after being shot in the head after the students occupying Tiananmen Square were forced to leave by the army.  Through Wei's reflections on the events leading up to his shooting, and the little he grasps from his sick bed, we are given two parallel stories of life in China: the tumultuous build up to an infamous historical event and the following decade of corruption and denial.

The happenings in Tiananmen Square are certainly impressive.  A group of students somehow mobilise a demonstration which grows and grows, gaining support from the common people of Beijing and students elsewhere in China.  At its height, Dai Wei, a security officer assisting the real stars of the movement, looks across the square and estimates that he's looking at around one million people...  Of course, dictatorial regimes are not as easy as all that to shift, and as the weeks pass, not only does the revolutionary fervour dull a little, but the regime starts to quietly plan the protests' end.

Meanwhile, back in Dai Wei's flat in the future, he lies on his solid iron bed, almost fully aware of what is happening around him but unable to communicate with the outside world.  From visits from friends (and his mother's increasingly bitter and confused ramblings), he gleans information about the aftermath of the protests and the consequences for his friends.  With the passing of the years, although the state's interest in him wanes slightly, there is a new threat to his safety.  The Chinese government wants to attract the Olympics to Beijing, and old, decrepit buildings like Dai Wei's home need to be knocked down in order to make way for a new, shiny capital...

At one point, the author makes a telling comparison, saying:

"Your body is a trap, a square with no escape routes." Beijing Coma (2008), Chatto & Windus, p.266

These parallel versions of the story, with Dai Wei trapped and besieged both in the square and in his bed, make up the most important message that Beijing Coma has to offer, namely that in a totalitarian state nowhere is safe.  You have no home when the state can kick down the door at any time.  You have no family when many parents will deliver you to the authorities themselves.  However, the coma could also be seen as an allegory for the whole Chinese populace, who know what democracy is (and want it) but are unable to do the slightest thing about it.  Ma Jian's book is really a portrayal of a whole country trapped in its sleep.

In contrast to the oft-quoted 'Tiananmen Square Massacre' label, most of the students were funnelled out of the square by the enormous number of soldiers who went in to clear it, and Ma Jian makes this very clear in the book.  Nevertheless, this novel is (as far as I'm aware) banned in China, where any mention of the 'June the 4th Incident' is strictly taboo.  In my opinion though, the writer's criticism is focused less on the events leading up to the clearing of the square and more on the blatant human rights violations both before and after the crackdown.  For those of us living in (imperfect) democracies, it's only when we read about what actually happens in other countries that we realise how lucky we are to live in a country where two groups of professional politicians take it in turns to sort out the country and make snide comments at each other.

While the criticism of the ruling party is a given, what is a little more surprising is the way Ma Jian handles the demonstrating students.  Instead of a desperate, freedom-seeking gang of desperadoes, what we instead see is a horde of power- and publicity-hungry egomaniacs, each one afraid of being left behind in the latest shuffle of organisations and functions.  Dai Wei's low-ranking role enables him to observe the power games from the inside and the outside, the ludicrous screaming matches over who is really in charge (while the tanks slowly roll towards the square) are reminiscent of the Iraqi Minister for (mis)Information's denials of allied successes.

In many ways, this portrayal of the inevitable corruption of the students' ideals is very similar to what happens in George Orwell's Animal Farm - in Beijing in 1989, some animals students are definitely more equal than others.  As the student leaders lose their heads, arguing amongst themselves, changing their minds on an hourly basis and (some at least) kowtowing to the government, Dai Wei, the foot soldier of the student elite, strides through it all, hard-working, uncomplaining.  Just like Boxer in Animal Farm (and we all know what happens to him...).

Part of the beauty of Beijing Coma though is its pictures of normal life carrying on in less-than-normal circumstances.  They may be taking part in one of the most famous revolutions of the twentieth century, but that doesn't stop the students from looking around for someone to spend a few quiet moments in a shady corner with.  Dai Wei himself is guilty of spending more than a few moments lusting after a fellow student (although when you think of what is to happen, you can hardly blame him).

Sadly, at the end of it all, we know what happened, and we know what is still happening.  Despite the protests, Tank man and the loss of the 2000 Summer Olympics, little has changed politically in China, and there seems little prospect of any progress in human rights issues in the near future.  However, if the Chinese people are looking for hope, they could do worse than look a few thousand miles to the West.  The current events in Egypt show that people will only put up with repression for so long...

First and La(te)st

I've been very busy at the library recently, so I thought I'd bring you up to date with a double review of Ian McEwan books. What with my Saturday review a short time ago, you'd be forgiven for thinking that I'd deliberately set out to get through his back catalogue as quickly as possible, but the truth is that his name seems to have stuck in my wife's head, and she is forever bringing back one of his novels for me from the library (he seems especially popular in the large-print section...).  Today's offering then combines something old with something new, both are borrowed and definitely blue (with McEwan, it's always a little blue!).

*****
The Cement Garden, written in 1978, was McEwan's first novel, although it's probably more of a novella, reaching as it does barely 173 pages of (very) large print.  It's a cheery little tale, involving death, cross-dressing and incest - clearly McEwan decided early on that he wanted to write about the darker side of life.  After the death of their father, the life of Jack, Julie, Sue and Tom starts to disintegrate, as their mother slides into disease and depression.  Without a parental influence, they begin to unravel gradually, their grief showing itself in different ways.  When Julie brings home a boyfriend one day, the scene is set for everything to fall apart once and for all...

It's difficult to discuss this book without giving away too much, and the events, shocking as they are, are what makes the book enjoyable.  The Cement Garden is not up there with McEwan's later work, but it does explore some interesting areas, following the effects of trauma on unformed adolescent minds, and the concept of social dislocation. It is the self-imposed isolation of the family which allows events to unfold as they do, with no guiding adult hand in sight, until Julie brings her boyfriend Derek into the fold.

It's probably one for readers who have already tried a few of McEwan's works (I don't think you'd be rushing out to stock up on his books after reading this one), and if you've read Atonement or On Chesil Beach, you'll see traces of the style used in later books in this first effort at a novel.  Again, there's the one awful, pivotal moment, which sets the tone of the rest of the story, something which was beginning to annoy me, but which I've resigned myself to now; again, there's gore and sexual tension aplenty; again, you feel slightly dirty reading it.  I'll leave it there...

*****
Solar, on the other hand, is a very different kettle of fish.  Michael Beard is a slob of a man, a paunchy fellow with several failed marriages (and one on the rocks), a miscreant with little conscience and not much of a heart.  Oh yes, and he has a Noble Prize for Physics.  Over a decade of deterioration, both in the earth's climate and Beard's physical state, McEwan guides the reader gently through the contradictions of public brilliance and private catastrophe - and it's an intriguing journey.

This novel represents another trip into the science domain for McEwan, after his neurosurgery-led Saturday, however Solar is anything but a dull read.  I didn't have high hopes for it after some less-than-positive reviews, and the usual earth-shattering moment of change (involving a polar bear) had me rolling my eyes at his predictability, but the longer the novel went on, the more I started to enjoy it.

The main reason for this is that the novel is more about Beard than about the actual plot, and he is a brilliant character.  Larger-than-life is a fairly common cliché, but one which is fully justified when discussing McEwan's plump, disgusting protagonist.  Unable to bring himself to do anything as energetic as throwing a sandwich wrapper in the bin (or even just not dropping it on the floor in the first place), his flat undergoes a similar decay to his appearance, leaving him wishing he could just incinerate the whole thing.

He lies, philanders, cheats, plagiarises, disappoints... and yet, McEwan pulls off the feat of making him appear a loveable rogue, a rather genial fellow, before a sleight of hand every once in a while pulls his nasty side back into view.  The blurb on the back uses the word 'satirical', which I suspect is a way of saying that a writer known for his serious novels has produced something amusing for once, and there was certainly a lot to smile at here.  By the end of the novel, I was very interested in Beard's fate - which is not to say that I wanted him to get off scot-free :)

Of course, there is a more serious side to Solar, and it is the idea that we are all doomed because of the human race's inability to be truly altruistic, forward thinking and (above all) organised.  If our greatest minds are more concerned with making millions of dollars from patents and are prepared to lie, cheat and steal to prevent the move towards cleaner energy, how are we ever going to actually tackle the problem of climate change?  Especially if we can't even keep our living rooms clean...  Saturday made a lot of the idea of our world as an ageing person, with clogged-up arterial roads and decaying buildings leading to a rotting planet, and Solar is no more optimistic (although a lot more cynical and funnier).

The writing, as always, is crisp and elegant, despite the occasional jarring moment caused by the American version which my Australian library has somehow acquired.  As well as the expected spelling changes, the odd vocabulary choice leaped out at me, disturbing my concentration (I am fairly sure that no English writer, especially one like McEwan, would really have used the word 'dumpster'...).  While I'm not really surprised that Solar didn't make the cut for the Booker prize shortlist, it is nevertheless a lot better than I expected, a confident, relaxed, mature work from an accomplished writer (and very different from The Cement Garden!).

It culminates in a cliffhanger ending, with Beard beset with troubles on all sides.  As the paunchy physicist looks desperately for a way out of his problems (in a scene which is less high literature than Benny Hill), the reader wonders just how he's going to talk himself out of it this time.  The bigger question of course is planetary, rather than personal.  Just how are we going to get ourselves out of the mess we've made of the Earth.  This, along with Michael Beard's messy dilemma, is a problem for another day...

January 2011 Wrap-Up

In the first (and, quite possibly, the last) post of its sort, here is my monthly rundown for January, 2011.  Peruse, analyse, comment - enjoy :)

Total Books Read: 11

New: 10

Rereads: 1

From the Shelves: 5

From the Library: 5

On the Kindle: 1

Novels: 7

Novellas: 3

Non-Fiction: 1

Non-English Language: 4 (3 Japanese, 1 German)

In Original Language: 1 (German)

Murakami Challenge: 1 (1/3)

Aussie Author Challenge: 2 (2/12)

Victorian Literature Challenge: 2 (2/15)

Japanese Literature Challenge: 3 (12/1)

Tony's Recommendation for January is:  Kenzaburo Oe's The Silent Cry

Fire and Ice

After 120 minutes of action at the weekend in the Asian Cup Final, Australia's national team, the hapless Socceroos (after dominating play and chances), went down 1-0 to Japan's national selection, the Blue Samurai.  Some would say that this post presenting some literature from both countries is a timely homage to the event: others, more cynical, might argue that it was complete coincidence that I read an Australian book and a Japanese book around this time.  Whatever your thoughts, here it is :)

*****

We'll start with the Australian contender, and my second read for this year's Aussie Author Challenge is Tim Winton's debut novel An Open Swimmer.  Set in Perth and on the West Australian coast south of the capital, it focuses on Jerra, a young twenty-something who has recently dropped out of uni and is on a camping trip with his best mate Sean (note: using the word 'friend' in reviews of Australian books is frowned upon - 'mate' is the preferred expression).  A chance encounter with an old bloke living near the beach (note: as above, 'bloke' not 'man') has repercussions for Jerra, for whom the trip is less of a holiday than an attempt to run away from the past.

The story is divided into three parts: the first describes Jerra and Sean's short camping trip; the second follows Jerra's attempts to create a normal life for himself back in Perth; the third sees Jerra taking off again in the vain hope of finding some answers back where he started.  It's a short work, and if you were expecting all the answers to be set out for you by the end of it, you'll be sadly disappointed.

Winton is very adept at revealing his stories little by little, teasing the reader with half-sentences thrown away, hinting at a dark secret buried in the past (but liable to surface, rising up from the deep, at any minute).  We slowly find out that Jerra's drifting is connected with several events: a pearl found in the head of a large fish; his relationship with Sean; and a connection with Sean's mother, Jewel.

The prose, what little of it there is, switches between elegant, poetical descriptions of the sea and short, stark simple sentences, one per action, focusing the reader's attention in on Jerra. A lot of the text, however, is dialogue, real, spoken Australian, jumping around, using slang, something which contributes to the sometimes maddening feeling that there's something happening beneath the surface which the reader can't quite fathom.  Along with the constant fishing jargon, the use of local idiom makes this a book which non-natives would probably struggle a little with unless they are willing to go with the flow.  If this book ever made it into an American edition, I suspect that it was a fairly gutted, unrecognisable version of the original...

For a first novel (written at uni!), it's a stunning effort, but I suspect that it's not for everyone.  An Open Swimmer requires a lot of thought and concentration, and it's not the sort of book that gives up all its secrets in one reading.  If that sounds like your kind of read though (and especially if you've already tried - and liked - some of Winton's other works), I heartily recommend it.  Just get a dictionary of fish names handy first...

*****

Opaque as it is though, An Open Swimmer could have its themes written ten-feet high in purple crayon in comparison with my next book.  Yasunari Kawabata's Snow Country, one of the works cited by the Nobel Prize committee in bestowing that award, is a typically beautiful piece of Japanese writing, meaning (of course) that the majority of the sub-text went floating far over my head.  But I digress.

Shimamura, an idle Tokyoite, takes a train journey to the mountains in the north, returning to a small village where he met the intriguing Komako, a geisha in training, earlier in the year.  On the train, he sees another beautiful young woman, caring for an unwell fellow passenger, and when he arrives at his destination, he learns that the young woman (Yoko) lives in the same house as Komako.  Throughout the rest of the short novel, he crosses paths with Yoko, never quite spending time together, always on the periphery of genuine communication.

I'd talk more about the plot if there was one; the book consists merely of Shimamura's two visits to the mountains (his married life in Tokyo is largely ignored...) and the time he spends there with the irascible but charming Komako.  It's all about the pictures Kawabata paints with his words, the portraits of the vivacious Komako and the reserved Yoko, the images he puts in our mind of the stark, wintry landscape - effortless and enjoyable to read.

However, I feel that this one is a little too sub-textual for my liking.  I felt myself constantly sensing that there was something there, something I should be getting, grasping around for some little allusion, some point the writer is making (and concealing).  While part of the beauty of Japanese literature is this sense of the unstated (and understated), Snow Country was a little too much of a good thing in this regard.

I was also comparing it in my mind with another Japanese book I read not long ago, Natsume Soseki's Kusamakura, and, unfortunately, Kawabata's book by no means came off best.  Kusamakura could be a summer version of Snow Country (without geishas), and it's a book I enjoyed more, combining the elegance of style with a disarming humour and frequent quotable bon-mots.

Before you all get the wrong impression, I did enjoy Snow Country, but I think (and hope) that his later work will impress me more (this was his debut novel, if you can stretch these pages out to a novel).  Of the two Japanese Nobel Laureates, Oe has impressed me more - so far: there's a lot more to read before that decision is final though ;)

*****

This was my final review for Belezza's Japanese Literature Challenge 4.  I managed to read twelve Japanese books in the time allotted, well more than the single required work!  My collection of Japanese literature, which has become a bit of a hobby, now almost stretches across one whole three-foot shelf, and before long, it will have colonised the whole space for itself.  This challenge saw me read numerous works by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki and Natsume Soseki, and I have just scraped the surface with Kenzaburo Oe and Yasunari Kawabata.  Thanks again to Belezza for hosting this wonderful challenge, and I'll definitely be joining in the next one, whenever that may be :)

Ironic/Electronic

As some of you may already be aware, I recently caved into the desire to get an e-reader and purchased a Kindle of my very own.  I've been playing around with it a bit, but I haven't given it a name; that's a bit of a girly thing to do and also seems to be the first step towards madness (one day you're calling your i-Pod Trixie, the next you're talking to Betty the kettle and holding a funeral for Charlie the toaster, whose filaments burned out at such a tragically young age).

My reason for getting an e-reader was to be able to download, and read, tons of free classics, and I've managed to find a lot of favourites and save them to the memory of my new toy - Victoriana, French- and German-language classics, you know the drill.  So here's a review of my first foray into hand-held electronic reading: guess who I chose to start off the new era of literary enjoyment...

*****
The Three Clerks is one of Anthony Trollope's early novels, published between Barchester Towers and Doctor Thorne.  It follows the fortunes of three young men, gainfully employed in the service of their country at various public offices in London.  Harry Norman, a very respectable fellow, is joined at the Weights and Measures by the clever Alaric Tudor, whose cousin Charley Tudor is taken on at the Internal Navigation office.  Just down the river lives a distant relative of Norman's, Mrs. Woodward, a widow with three young daughters, and the three young clerks become quite intimate with the ladies of the Woodward family.  It does not take a brain surgeon to see where this story is going...

Admittedly, this early work is not up there with Trollope's best novels, but it's an entertaining read and worth trying for a couple of reasons.  The first is the light it sheds on what is to come in Trollope's fiction throughout the remainder of his career, as The Three Clerks, seen in retrospect, is filled with pointers as to future themes and characters.  The duo of the ambitious Alaric and the dastardly Undecimus Scott, a nasty Scotch nobleman who uses Tudor's ambition to further his own interests, are surely prototypes of Mark Robarts, the 'hero' of Framley Parsonage, and the very persuasive Nathaniel Sowerby.  The Woodward sisters would remind any fan of the Barchester Chronicles of the Dale sisters, first seen in The Small House at Allington, while Charley Tudor is most certainly reincarnated as Johnny Eames in the same book.

The areas covered in the novel are also revisited later in Trollope's career, forming the background to some of his finest work.  The seed of The Way We Live Now, Trollope's epic tale of greed, is sown in The Three Clerks, where Trollope first explores the dire consequences of dabbling with stocks and shares, and the extraordinary characters who manage to make a living from it.  Of course, the political side of the novel, only briefly mentioned, will eventually lead to the Palliser novels, perhaps the finest portrayal of politics in British literature.  It's also a warning to anyone who is thinking of running for office - a warning Trollope himself ignored...  Ever yearning for acceptance, Trollope stood for parliament later in life, coming (as expected) last of the four candidates, and gaining nothing from the experience but more room in his wallet, but it's hardly surprising when you read his eulogies in the novel to serving the Empire in this way.

And this is the second reason for reading The Three Clerks: its autobiographical nature.  Charley Tudor is Anthony Trollope, just as David Copperfield is Charles Dickens, and the difference in the way these two famous authors deal with their youthful alter-ego is telling.  Copperfield's journey to manhood is sedate, and he appears to have been born mature and ready to face the world.  Tudor is a disaster waiting to happen, a likeable, lazy lad, thrown into the world of adults before he is ready, able to drink, flirt and joke around at work - yet with a good heart and a burning sense of what he really should be doing.  I know which one I find more interesting.

In An Autobiography, Trollope discussed the art of novel writing, claiming (bound by Victorian morals as he was) that the writer is torn between the moral imperative to portray good behaviour and the writer's need to liven up his story, saying that good literature trod the fine line between the two sides.  Of course, today we don't share the Victiorian requirement for every villain to get his come-uppance, but The Three Clerks shows the truth in Trollope's words.  Harry Norman, morally by far the superior of our three young friends, is easily the most boring; the other two flawed men capture the reader's attention and carry the story along, and the treacherous Undy Scott, entertaining as he is, is doomed to be punished by the everpresent Victorian Nemesis of fate.

There are several flaws in The Three Clerks - the ridiculous names (Sir Gregory Hardlines, Mr. Oldeschole, the lawyer Gitemthrouit), the predictable plot, and the rather lengthy and trying start to the novel.  However, Trollope always comes good and, at times, pokes fun at his own failings.  In Charley's literary attempts, the writer parodies his own style, when Charley repeats his editor's pleas to start the book in the middle of the action, claiming that once the reader has committed themself to the first volume, the writer can describe people and places at whatever length he desires.  If Trollope had taken his own tongue-in-cheek advice, it would probably have improved the novel; nevertheless, for Trollope aficionados at least, it's still one which is well worth the effort.

*****

And what of the Kindle experience, I hear you ask (no, you did, I heard you).  Well, it's not all good.  I was forever adjusting the font, trying to get as much as possible onto the screen without the text becoming too small to actually read.  I'm also not a big fan of the need to click to turn the page, especially as you're reading twice as many pages (at least) as in a paper book.  The biggest issue, however, was probably due more to the free classic than the format - without a cover page, introduction and notes, the novel seemed a little bare and uninviting.  It was free though :)

All in all, the jury's still out on the Kindle - watch this space...

Down in the Deep, Dark Forest...

Despite my frequent forays into Japanese literature over the past couple of years, there are still a couple of glaring gaps in my J-Lit C.V., namely my lack of reading of novels from the country's two Nobel Laureates, Kenzaburo Oe and Yasunari Kawabata.  The latter is on the agenda for the next couple of months, but today's post sees me tackle the first of these giants, with a review of Oe's novel The Silent Cry (translated by John Bester) - which is (un)strangely familiar...

*****

The novel is centred on two men, the reserved Mitsusaburo Nedokoro and his charismatic younger brother Takashi.  The two brothers have had their share of problems in life: Taka fled to America to escape the guilt felt after his mentally-disabled sister's suicide and his role in violent student riots; Mitsu is emotionally drained, crushed by the double blow of the arrival of a mentally-disabled son and the unexpected, somewhat bizarre, suicide of a close friend.  Therefore, when Taka returns from the States, suggesting a return to their small hometown in Shikoku, Mitsu is happy to go along with his plan.  However, the past has a funny way of returning to haunt the present...

The Silent Cry is a superb book, packing a tremendous amount into its 274 pages.  Oe draws the reader through his thoughts on suicide, family ties and mental illness, using a series of parallels reaching back in time.  The original Japanese title Man'en no Gannen no Futoboru (Football in Year One of the Gan'en Era), actually refers back to 1860, a time when Japan was making its first, tiny efforts to communicate with the outside world again, and the year in which the Nedokoro's ancestors took part in events which are then repeated a century later.  For those concerned about the use of a sporting word in the title, fear not - sport plays an insignificant role in the book, to the extent where I only found out afterwards, via Wikipedia, that the 'football' involved was actually the American, relatively kicking-less, gridiron version...  The English title comes from a comment Mitsu makes, comparing the last actions of his late friend to a silent cry; not for help, however, but more for communication, letting people know of his feelings

The setting of the novel adds to the mood Oe creates, with the Nedokoro's hometown being a valley completely surrounded by a dark, menacing forest.  The approaching winter, and the promise (or threat) of heavy snow which it brings, along with the damaged bridge cutting off the only road in or out of the village, heighten this sense of isolation, mirroring the feelings of the main characters, each of whom is trying to come to terms with their own issues, in their own way.  Events naturally build to a climax, but the reader is never sure exactly what that climax will bring.

From the very first page, two things were very clear to me.  Firstly, that I was going to like this book (just as with Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy, which I read recently, I was sucked straight into the writer's world); secondly, that the Oe influence on Haruki Murakami which I had read a little about was clearly evident.  From Mitsu's very first action of getting up, going out to the garden, and descending into a hole, Murakami fans are in very familiar territory.

In fact there are many features of The Silent Cry which impact on Murakami's work , especially his early novels.  In addition to Mitsu's predilection for doing his thinking underground, the nickname of 'the Rat', given to Mitsu by one of Taka's friends, and Mitsu's stoic, almost passive attitude to the events unfolding around him, some of which are actually rather humiliating, are reminiscent of Murakami's early nameless protagonists.  Even the Japanese title provided inspiration for the younger writer, whose second short novel was entitled 1973-nen no Pinuboru (Pinball, 1973).  Even the idea of the isolated valley could be seen, if we were stretching the point (and, where Murakami is concerned, I usually am), as the model for the Town in Hard-Boiled Wonderland...

Murakami influences aside, this is a book which demands to be read and reread, which I'll no doubt be doing at some point, especially as I don't think I paid this book the attention it deserves.  It took me a week to get through it, mainly because of the demands of starting a new job (and looking after an unexpected visitor from overseas!), and that was too long for me.  If I'd read this in three or four days, as I had expected to, I suspect that the narrative would have flowed a lot better, and the mood Oe created would have held up more; the start-stop approach meant that I often took time to get back into the book when picking it up again.

So, just as 2009 was the Year of Yukio Mishima, and 2010 was the Year of Natsume Soseki and Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, 2011 may well be the year of Kenzaburo Oe.  But will it also be the year of Yasunari Kawabata?  Well, I'll have to get back to you on that one...