'Stone upon Stone' by Wiesław Myśliwski (Review)

After all the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize business was completed, I was planning to read the winner of the Best Translated Book Award, to see how the two laureates compared.  Of course, that idea was shelved when the BTBA winner turned out to be Satantango, a book I'd already reviewed...  Instead, I turned back to 2012, to see how last year's American choice matched up to the IFFP winner, Blooms of Darkness.  Seconds out, it's round two in the IFFP-BTBA duel of champions ;)

*****
Wiesław Myśliwski's Stone upon Stone (translated by Bill Johnston, published by Archipelago Books) is a hefty novel, but a surprisingly smooth read.  It consists of eight thematic chapters, all narrated by Szymek Pietruszka, an elderly farmer in the Polish provinces.  In effect, the book is a lengthy monologue, one in which Szymek tells stories about life, land and family - and he certainly knows how to tell a story...

From the initial tale of his struggles to find the time, money and materials to build a family tomb, Szymek takes us on a trip through time, recounting stories of his days in the Polish resistance during the Second World War.  While it's difficult to keep the narrator on a path free of digressions, the patient reader is eventually rewarded with more glimpses of what came between the end of the war and his current situation.  If Szymek appears to be a lonely old man stuck on a farm in the middle of nowhere, there are reasons for the way he has ended up.

Szymek is a man heading towards the end of his life, and his stories help us to see how society has progressed in his home country.  While modern comforts have made life a little easier, on the whole, Szymek thinks life has gone downhill since his youth.  The best example of this comes from the chapter 'The Road', where the newly-surfaced route through the village allows people to drive to neighbouring towns in comfort.  Unfortunately, the farmers now find it hard to get their horses and carriages across the road with the harvest (traffic lights were obviously a later invention...):

"There's no more peace to be had in our village.  Nothing but cars and cars and cars.  It's like they built the road for cars alone and forgot about the people.  But are there only cars living in the world?  Maybe a time'll come when there won't be any more people, only cars.  Then I hope the damn things'll kill each other.  I hope they have wars, worse than human wars.  I hope they hate each other and fight and curse each other.  Till one day maybe a Car God will appear, and it'll make him angry and he'll drown the lot of them."
pp.67/8 (Archipelago Books, 2010)

The narrator (and perhaps the writer) also feels uneasy about the loss of connection with the land.  In his father's day, the land was everything, coming before school, illness or hunger, and it was the farmer's duty to tend to it - man is short-lived, but the land goes on forever.  When the war starts, Szymek's father uses this as an excuse to try to stop his son leaving the farm:

"What do we have to fight about?  We plow and plant and mow, are we in anyone's way?  War won't change the world.  People'll just go off and kill each other, then afterwards it'll be the same as it was before.  And as usual it'll be us country folk that do most of the dying.  And nobody will even remember that we fought, or why.  Because when country folks die they don't leave monuments and books behind, only tears.  They rot in the land, and even the land doesn't remember them.  If the land was going to remember everyone it would have to stop giving birth to new life.  But the land's job is to give birth." (p.156)

However, now it is the land's duty to make man a profit, and the farmers follow whatever trend will make the most money in the shortest time, even if this has negative long-term consequences.  Fields are sown with unsuitable (but lucrative) crops, and liberal sprinklings of nitrates are used to increase yields.  Worst of all, the younger folk are abandoning their homes for the city, leaving the land to the mercy of the old and frail.

While the land plays an important role, the heart of the book is the enigmatic Szymek though, and it is his personal story which fascinates us.  Despite his measured, friendly tone, we gradually learn that he's not quite as nice as he may appear at first glance.  He's a drinker, a fighter, a user of women, a man we shouldn't really warm to.  He's a charismatic old bloke though, and he does have redeeming features (quite apart from his war hero status) and the more we learn, the more we understand about why he grew up that way, and why he is still alone...

Stone Upon Stone is an excellent read, and a fairly easy one at that.  I wolfed it down in four days (not bad for around 560 pages), and that is due in part to the fairly simple language used in the book.  In the excellent interview with Scott Esposito (available as a Two Voices podcast), Bill Johnston talks about how the key to translating the book into English was finding the right way to bring Szymek's voice across into the new language.  His solution was to avoid complex Latin-based words, sticking with simpler Germanic-based vocabulary.  Whether that's the reason for the success or not, the voice definitely works.

Whether you're interested in twentieth-century Poland or just a sucker for a good story, this is a book for you.  Szymek's rambling tales, with digression following digression until the chapter (and, eventually, the whole book) comes full circle, are entertaining and thought-provoking, whether they are stories of joyous drunken rampages or suspense-filled moments in the cold, Polish forests, waiting for the enemy to appear.  In the end, it's a book about life - but one, that begins, and ends, with the inescapable image of a tomb...

...that is, if he can get the cement.

*****
In terms of BTBA v IFFP then, I'd have to say that the score is 2-0 to the American prize.  While the 2013 contest was a close one, with Satantango just edging out The Detour in a battle of very, very different styles (Krasznahorkai's never-ending sentences against Bakker's stripped-back prose), the 2012 bout was a no-contest.  I have made no secret of the fact that Aharon Appelfeld's Blooms of Darkness was one of my least favourite books on the 2012 IFFP shortlist, and Stone Upon Stone is simply a far better novel.

I quite like the idea of a transatlantic translation showdown - watch out for more BTBA-IFFP battles in the future ;)

'Blindness' by José Saramago (Review)

Recently, I read my first book by José Saramago, and the success of that venture inevitably led to a second look at the Portuguese Nobel-Prize-winner's world.  While Raised from the Ground is perhaps a lesser-known work, today's review looks at what might be his most famous novel.  As always though, the question is, is it any good?

*****
Blindness (translated by Giovanni Pontiero, some revision by Margaret Jull Costa) is a great example of literary speculative fiction, with the whole premise of the book hinging on one single 'what if'.  The novel begins with a queue of frustrated drivers at a set of traffic lights, angry at a man who is sitting in front of a green light.  When someone comes to see what has happened, the explanation is unexpected - the man has gone blind.  But he's just the first...

Slowly, the blindness begins to spread, first to those around the blind man, and then to all the people they have contact with.  Before long, the government is forced to lock those affected in an old, abandoned mental institute in an attempt to stop the spread of the blindness before it is too late.  However, one of the people detained in the makeshift hospital-cum-prison has a secret - you see, she seems to be immune to the sickness...

It's a great premise and a great book, the story of an unprecedented epidemic and its consequences.  Even the type of blindness is unusual: not only is it contagious, but also milky-white...  As the first man to go blind says:

"He had even reached the point of thinking that the darkness in which the blind live was nothing other than the simple absence of light, that what we call blindness was something that simply covered the appearance of beings and things, leaving them intact behind their black veil.  Now, on the contrary, here he was, plunged into a whiteness so luminous, so total, that it swallowed up rather than absorbed, not just the colours, but the very things and beings, thus making them twice as invisible."
p.8 (Vintage, 2005)

The doctor's wife, the only person untouched by the epidemic, acts as the reader's eyes in this world of the blind.  Through her, we can see how, after initial panic and imprisonment, society starts to crumble as people come to terms with the thought that this may not be a passing event.  What would we do if everyone eventually went blind?

One of the most fascinating aspects of the story is the action taken by the authorities.  Those affected are immediately isolated from the rest of society as the government tries desperately to halt the possibility of an epidemic.  Despite claims that those afflicted would be looked after, the ethical dilemmas of the situation mean that they are effectively abandoned, with those outside struggling just to keep their sight.  The recorded loudspeaker announcements each day (the only way many of the 'patients' have of marking time) become increasingly ludicrous.  In claiming that "everything is going to be all right" if the blind people cooperate, there are obvious allusions to Nazi labour camps...

The scenario also allows the writer to explore what happens when people are unable to look after themselves.  Trapped in the hospital, with no supplies of any kind (and with soldiers ready to shoot them if they set foot outside the building), the norms of hygiene quickly disappear.  The floors are covered with human waste, and very soon other diseases begin to spread.  However, things are no better outside: cities are soon brought to a standstill (driving, for obvious reasons, is decidedly tricky), and the streets fill with rubbish and filth.  It doesn't take long for society to revert to a system of small groups or clans, each looking out for its own interests.

While the physical degradation is bad enough, the effect the blindness has on people's morals is worse.  The inmates immediately descend into squabbles and try to cheat each other out of food.  The soldiers outside loathe and fear the people (or things...) they are guarding, and once it becomes clear that the outside world is not going to get involved in matters inside the hospital, things get very ugly indeed.  This is a book which can be very disturbing in parts...

In such a disturbing world, it's the little things that help.  Rather than money or jewels, people just want some food, a bath, clean clothes.  Even water is becoming a luxury, one to be savoured when it is available:

"This time she took the lamp and went to the kitchen, she returned with the bottle, the light shone through it, it made the treasure inside sparkle.  She put it on the table, went to fetch the glasses, the best they had, of finest crystal, then, slowly, as if she were performing a rite, she filled them.  At last, she said, Let's drink.  The blind hands groped and found the glasses, they raised them trembling.  Let's drink, the doctor's wife said again.  In the middle of the table, the lamp was like a sun surrounded by shining stars.  When they had put the glasses back on the table, the girl with the dark glasses and the old man with the eyepatch were crying." (p.262)

It's a nice moment, but one which is surrounded by (a milky-white) darkness.  Surely, this can't go on for ever?

The story, in itself, is impressive enough, but Saramago's style gives it a little something more, making the novel even more fantastic.  Although there are chapters, most of them consist of fairly long paragraphs, full of unbroken sentences, streams of thoughts connected by commas.  There are no quotation marks, and a change of speaker is indicated by a comma and a capital letter - long, quick-moving conversations can be very tricky to follow.  Blindness has no real names for its characters, with each being described by their function or distinguishing features (the first blind man, the doctor, the girl with dark glasses), a choice which intensifies the (deliberate) feeling of disorientation.

"...we're so remote from the world that any day now, we shall no longer know who we are, or even remember our names, and besides, what use would names be to us, no dog recognises another dog or knows the others by the names they have been given, a dog is identified by its scent and that is how it identifies others, here we are like another breed of dogs, we know each other's bark or speech, as for the rest, features, colour of eyes or hair, they are of no importance, it is as if they did not exist..." (p.55)

In the land of the blind, voices are much more useful than names...

Returning to my question - is it any good?  Of course it is - it's a wonderful novel.  Credit must go again to the translator, this time Giovanni Pontiero, for the excellent work done in bringing this unique style across into English.  I can't wait to read more of Saramago's work, in particular Seeing, the sequel to Blindness.

I do like it when I find another great writer who's written lots of books :)

'Sixty-Nine' by Ryu Murakami (Review)

Today marks the third stop on my Ryu Murakami tour, and it's time to get away from the capital.  This time we're on the southern island of Kyushu, with a schoolkid who just wants to have fun.  Oh, and we're heading back to the sixties...

*****
Sixty-Nine (translated by Ralph McCarthy, review copy courtesy of Pushkin Press) is the story of a year in the life of writer Kensuke Yazaki.  At the ripe of old age of thirty-two, he is looking back to his final year of high school in 1969, a time of music, free love and university demonstrations.  Well, in Tokyo perhaps - things are a little different in the provincial town of Sasebo...

Stuck in a small town miles from anywhere, where the only people having fun are the sailors on the US navy base, Ken wants to rebel and comes up with a couple of crazy ideas.  His first plan, a barricade of the school, brings him a certain notoriety, and he then decides that what Sasebo really needs is an arts festival, a celebration of all things cultural (it is the sixties, after all).  He has little clue how to do it all, but he is definitely of the 'if you plan it, they will come' school of thought.  Ken is a young firebrand, a rebel with a cause - the cause just happens to be impressing the beautiful Kazuko Matsui...

Sixty-Nine is a great read.  It's hugely entertaining, very funny in parts, a reminder that our school years weren't quite as bad as we sometimes imagine them.  While the writing occasionally slips into teen fiction, there's always a little more beneath the surface (and Murakami is most definitely an adult writer...).  The story takes us back to the end of the sixties in the sticks, where the kids are desperately trying to imitate what they think is happening in major world centres.

The centre of the book is the character of Ken, and he's the best one Murakami has come up with in the three books I've read so far.  He's brilliantly selfish, completely shallow - and yet he's an irrestible, loveable kid.  Typically hormone-driven, his mad quixotic plans are fuelled by lust, and he'll run any risk (and offend any onlooker) in an attempt to impress the object of his desire.  Cast her in the lead role of his play?  No worries.  Steal a friend's LP to 'lend' to his potential girlfriend?  Done ;)

He's also fairly clever and more than a little sardonic, constantly suckering the reader into believing his tall tales before pulling the rug out from under their feet:

"The winter I turned sixteen I'd run away from home.  My reason for doing so was that I'd perceived a fundamental contradiction in the entire examination system and wanted to get away from my home and school and out on the streets in order to better think about this and to ponder the significance of the struggle that had developed that year between the student radicals and the aircraft carrier 'Enterprise'.  Sorry.  That's not exactly true.  The truth is that I didn't want to take part in a long-distance race at school.  Long-distance running had always been a weak point with me.  I'd hated it ever since junior high school.  Now that I'm thirty-two and wiser, of course, I still hate it."
p.21 (Pushkin Press, 2013)

However, he's not quite as all-knowing as he claims; he's good at talking the talk, but he doesn't always walk the walk (he knows a lot of books, but he's never read them...)

His energy gets things done though.  It's the old miracle of youth - Ken walks through fire and somehow always comes out unscathed, whether he's up against school teachers, political groups or hulking schoolboys with big wooden swords.  While his friends Adama and Iwase help sort out the logistics, it's Ken who is the big thinker, the one who always comes up with the vision (usually an impressive one).

While Sixty-Nine is essentially a humorous book, there are some serious moments.  Ken's rebellion often comes from his libido, but it has a serious side too.  He is rebelling against a stifling world order as he doesn't want to become another drone, and this leads him to question the filtering system Japan's education department uses.  In a world where adults are the enemy, any support is welcome:

"I felt tears brimming up.  Ever since the bust, we'd been under constant attack from adults.  My father was the first to offer any sort of encouragement.
     "If the revolution comes, you boys could end up being heroes, and the principal could be the one hanging from a rope.  That's the way these things go."
     He started waving the sparklers around again.  Sparklers burn themselves out in no time at all...
     But they're beautiful." (pp.106/7)

It's a touching moment, one of several which pop up unexpectedly throughout the story.

At times though, Sixty-Nine is just plain funny.  The chapter on the school barricade is a great one, even if it does descend into toilet humour at one point (and I chose those words very carefully...).  Other scenes are just, well... judge for yourself:

"Whatcha gonna do with 'em?" said the man who ran the place as we walked around inside.  He was a small, bald, middle-aged guy who looked exactly as you'd expect a chicken farmer to look.
     "We're going to use them in a play."
     "A play?  What is it, a play about a poultry farmer?"
     "No, it's by Shakespeare.  And there's just no way to stage it without chickens." (p.170)

Chickens - just priceless...

The novel is typical R. Murakami style, but much lighter than the previous two I've read.  Whether you're into heavy literature or pulp fiction, you'll love it, and you'll be hoping Ken can pull off a miracle and make the festival a success (and get the girl to boot!).

See - he can write a novel without destroying Tokyo ;)

*****

"Ryu Murakami has no connection with Haruki Murakami"

This sentence comes from a press release that came with my copy of From the Fatherland, with Love (a book I'll getting to fairly soon), and I can understand how poor Ryu must be sick of the questions and comparisons ;)  But...

...a few things struck me after finishing the book.  Let's compare Sixty-Nine with one of H. Murakami's most famous works...

Norwegian Wood was published in 1987, but was set in the late 1960s.
Sixty- Nine was published in 1987, but was set in 1969.

In Norwegian Wood, a loner reads books, avoids political events, and drifts into sex with nice girls.
In Sixty-Nine, a gregarious school-kid pretends to have read books, makes things happen, and chases impossibly gorgeous girls.

Perhaps that sums up the similarities and differences better than any essay ever could ;)
But if you want more sweeping generalisations...

This is Toru Watanabe:

This is Kensuke Yazaki:

And do you know what?  There's room for both in this world ;)

'The Feast of the Goat' by Mario Vargas Llosa (Review)

I'm not a big believer in coincidences, but sometimes it's hard not to believe that the universe is trying to tell you something. On the same day I was to start my latest venture into Spanish-language literature, several sources reported that the book had been voted best Spanish novel of this century so far. I was a little confused by the news, as I was fairly certain that Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa was actually Peruvian...  As it turns out, he has Spanish citizenship, so he's eligible to be on that list - but does the book deserve it?  Let's find out...

*****
The Feast of the Goat (translated by Edith Grossman) is a political thriller set in the Dominican Republic, one which looks at the end of the country's Trujillo dictatorship in May 1961.  The novel starts decades after though, when Urania Cabral, a New York lawyer (and the daughter of a Trujillo supporter), returns to Santo Domingo after thirty-five years of self-imposed exile.  She visits her father, paralysed by a stroke, and has dinner with relatives - but none of this is her real reason for returning to her home country after decades away.

Meanwhile, back in 1961, the seventy-year-old dictator is getting ready for the day, unaware that, in a third strand of the story, a small group of men is getting ready to put an end to both the regime and his life.  Over 400 pages, and three discrete strands, the reader will find out exactly what happened on the fateful day, and what the consequences were for the country.  We might also find out what made Urania stay in the US for so long...

The Feast of the Goat, despite its multiple strands, is a fairly straight-forward piece of historical fiction, with Trujillo, the great dictator, at the heart of the story.  Despite his age, he is still a formidable figure; however, sanctions and pressure from without (America) and within (the Catholic church) means that he has to be on his guard.  Initially, he comes across as a stereotypical sociopathic despot, one who has a whole country cowering. The more we learn though, the more subtle his depiction becomes.  While we could never condone his behaviour, Vargas Llosa helps us to understand what makes him tick.

The same can't be said for his family.  His two sons are blood-thirsty playboys, swanning around the world playing polo and sleeping with any woman they deem desirable enough, and his wife cares only for money (and revenge for any perceived slights).  The writer is careful to provide us with details of the excesses the ruling family allow themselves:

"The crowning events of the commemoration were the promotion of Ramfis to the rank of lieutenant general, for outstanding service to the nation, and the enthroning of Her Gracious Majesty Angelita I, Queen of the Fair, who arrived by boat, announced by all the sirens in the navy and all the bells in all the churches of the capital, wearing her crown of precious jewels and her delicate gown of tulle and lace created in Rome by the Fontana sisters, two celebrated modistes who used forty-five meters of Russian ermine to create the costume with a train three meters long and a robe that copied the one worn by Elizabeth II of England at her coronation."
p.98 (Faber and Faber, 2002)

It's little wonder that the Trujillos have enemies.  When you enjoy yourselves at the country's expense, you're always likely to be heading for a fall.

That fall is closer than the dictator realises.  A mixed bag of conspirators (some activists, some former supporters - one is even Trujillo's bodyguard) have decided that the time has come to redeem themselves and sanitise the land.  In the words of Antonio Imbert, one of the conspirators:

"It had been this malaise of so many years' duration - thinking one thing and doing something that contradicted it every day - that led him, in the secret recesses of his mind, to condemn Trujillo to death, to convince himself that as long as Trujillo lived, he and many other Dominicans would be condemned to this awful queasy sickness of constantly having to lie to themselves and deceive everyone else, of having to be two people in one, a public lie and a private truth that could not be expressed." (p.141)

The group hopes to take out Trujillo surgically and usher in a new era of peace in the Dominican Republic.  Sadly though, operations are rarely as clean and surgical as one would like...

While it's fairly easy for the reader to understand why Trujillo needs to be assassinated, the question of his popularity is not quite so clear.  The writer gradually helps the reader catch up with the region's history, detailing the occupation by Haiti, the push for independence and Trujillo's defiance of invasions and sanctions alike.  There's also the small matter of the Generalissimo's persona, as described by one of Trujillo's military commanders:

"He never allowed anyone to treat him with disrespect.  But, like so many officers, so many Domincans, before Trujillo his valor and sense of honor disappeared, and he was overcome by a paralysis of his reason and his muscles, by servile obedience and reverence.  He often had asked himself why the mere presence of the Chief - his high-pitched voice and the fixity of his gaze - annihilated him morally." (p.309)

We are witness to several examples of the effect the dictator's aura has on those around him - and with complete control of newspapers and radio stations, he has ample opportunity to show it to the rest of the nation as well.

Urania's story, of course, takes place long after the events of 1961, but her experience is somehow tied in with both of the other strands of the story.  What made her leave the Dominican Republic?  Did it have anything to do with her father's dismissal?  What is her connection with Trujillo?  While the answers to these questions are not really key to the main story, they do keep you guessing right to the end.

Overall, The Feast of the Goat is an interesting book, one which people fond of historical fiction will like.  However, I had several issues with it, and I can't say that it lived up to the rest of my recent reading.  The prose was fairly pedestrian, with none of the sparkle of Saramago, the languid skill of Marías, or the dry, Borgesian elegance.  In particular, the first part was incredibly slow-paced,  full of info dumping, tedious in parts.  It's definitely not a bad read, but the best Spanish novel of last 12 years?  Not in my book...

I'm sure I'll give Vargas Llosa another go at some point (he is a Nobel winner, after all), but in my opinion this was just an OK book.  There's nothing wrong with that, I suppose.  It's just that (as you can see from my May wrap-up post) I really don't do ordinary ;)

'American Stories' by Nagai Kafu (Review)

Japanese Literature Challenge 7 has just started, and to kick off my contribution, I thought I'd review a book I received quite recently, but one I'd been after for a while.  When I initially requested a copy from Columbia University Press, the hardback had gone out of print, so I was delighted when a paperback copy unexpectedly dropped through my letter-box a few months later :)  The name of the writer is probably familiar, the book perhaps less so, but it does just what it says on the cover...

*****
Nagai Kafu's American Stories (translated, and with an introduction, by Mitsuko Iriye) is a collection of short works written during the author's time overseas.  While Mori Ogai chose to pursue medical studies in Germany (and Natsume Soseki had a horrid two years studying literature in England), Nagai's coming-of-age trip to the west took him to the United States - and (naturally) he decided to write about his experiences in a country he considered to be the new capital of the world.

American Stories is a strange book in many ways though.  While at times it reflects Nagai's own experiences (similar in tone to Heinrich Böll's Irish Diary or a more literary Bill Bryson), other parts are straight fiction, short stories reflecting the people and places he came across on his travels.  What links many of the stories is the way Nagai uses frame narratives and stories within stories, perhaps hiding his own opinions within a Russian-doll structure.

There are a few common themes the writer explores in American Stories.  One is the plight of poor immigrant workers, many from the west or south of Japan, who head to America in search of a more lucrative existence.  Sadly, many of them find themselves living in cramped, dirty, Japanese quarters, and Nagai has an almost unnatural interest in penetrating the darker regions of his new home.  'Night Stroll' recounts a nocturnal visit the narrator pays to a Japanese area of New York, while in 'A Night at Seattle Harbor', he visits a seedy bar over on the other coast.  In both stories, Nagai (or an alter-ego) comes across as a casual visitor, a scientist examining creatures of interest...

"It is strange how one develops a taste for evil.  Why is it that the forbidden fruit tastes so delicious?  Prohibition adds the sweetness and transgression increases the fragrance.  As the flow of a mountain stream does not become violent unless there are rocks, so too is man incapable of discovering the excitement of crime, the pleasure of evil, unless he has conscience and morality."
'Night Stroll', p. 207 (Columbia University Press, 2013)

Nagai is well-known for his stories of Tokyo night-life, and he often covers the same ground here.  Several of his stories revolve around men bewitched by ladies of dubious morals.  In 'Long Hair', a Japanese student enters into a relationship with a woman whose marriage ended because of her infidelity, abandoning his studies and becoming her plaything.  In a sign of what might be to come for that student, a later story, 'Old Regrets', has an old professor telling the story of how his marriage ended - after confessing to an embarrassing affair with a low-class actress.

The tales of sexual tension and frustration don't end there.  Many of the Japanese men featured in the stories appear to be struggling with balancing respectability and libido in a place far from home (you do start to wonder how much of this is autobiographical...), and we eventually move from extra-marital affairs to the pleasure quarters.  There is much talk of the difference between prostitution in Japan and the US, and in 'Ladies of the Night', the Japanese reader is 'treated' to an insight, in the form of one night in a New York brothel.

Rest assured that it's not all about sex.  Nagai does a great job of exploring the continent through the eyes of a newcomer, comparing the wide-open, continental expanses with his home landscape, and marvelling at the newly-built skylines of Chicago and New York.  In one of the final stories, 'A June Night's Dream', he describes a tender, doomed love affair, a last encounter with a woman (and the country) before he has to sail off across the Atlantic...

On the whole though, the stories look at characters with ambiguous feelings towards their mother country and their adopted home.  'Daybreak', set on one night on Coney Island, sees a young Japanese man explaining to the narrator why he has run away from his responsibilities and joined, if not the circus, the carnival at least.  'January First', set during a New Year's party of ex-pat Japanese, looks at the role of women in Japanese society, one which the main protagonist compares unfavourably to that of American women.

"I rejoice each time I see a young woman taking a big bite out of a sandwich or an unpeeled apple at a spring picnic in the fields, or married women drinking champagne and chattering away at a restaurant late at night after the opera or the theater with little regard for their husbands or the other men in their group, or even more extreme examples; at least they are enjoying themselves, having fun, and are happy.  Because I never saw a mother or a wife in a happy state, such scenes are so soothing to me." 'January First', (p.141)

Translator Michiko Iriye does a good job, even if the dialogue is a little too faithful to the original at times (I would have preferred a bit more realistic, earthy dialogue considering some of the people who are talking...), but where she excels is in the introduction.  It contains a great background to Nagai's travels and an excellent explanation of the state of Japanese literature at the start of the twentieth century.  In contrasting Nagai's style with what was in fashion at the time, she allows the reader to see why these stories would have been seen as a breath of fresh air.  And perhaps still are :)

*****
I loved this collection, and I'm hoping to dip into it again from time to time, but I do have a word of caution for anyone thinking about picking it up on my recommendation.  The stories were written right at the start of the twentieth century, and a century later some of the casual racism and sexism may be startling.  There are comments about Negroes, women, sweaty meat-eating westerners and even his fellow Japanese - Nagai certainly wasn't afraid of speaking his mind.  I wouldn't let it put you off - just bear in mind that these stories were written in very different times...

Welcome to Japanese Literature Challenge 7!

It's June, which means that it's time for Bellezza's Japanese Literature Challenge 7!  As a new blogger, this challenge four years ago (JLC3) was my first real blogging event; now, my personal J-Lit library is nudging triple figures.  I suppose I thould thank Bellezza for that...

As a first post this year, rather than spamming the new Linky with a lot of recent posts (as I've tended to in the past), I though I'd write one with links to all my J-Lit reviews since the end of JLC6 (and January in Japan!).  After that, I'll let you know what's coming up on the blog, J-Lit-wise, over the next few months.

Ikimasen-ka?

*****
In February, I reviewed Phantom Lights by Teru Miyamoto (Kurodahan Press), a collection of short stories set in the Kansai region centred on Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe.  It's a nice collection of stories from a writer I hadn't encountered before, even if I wasn't always sold on the translation.

In April, I reviewed Kenji Nakagami's The Cape and Other Stories from the Japanese Ghetto (Stone Bridge Press).  This book contains an Akutagawa-Prize-winning novella and a couple of related short stories, all featuring the Burakumin, the Japanese 'untouchables'.  Well worth a read, it's an insight into a side of Japan we seldom hear about...




...as was my first May J-Lit review, Ryu Murakami's Popular Hits of the Showa Era (Pushkin Press)!  One of four recent R. Murakami releases from Pushkin, it's a mad-cap romp featuring loser nerds, middle-aged women, guns, rocket-launchers and karaoke - what's not to like?





Finally, my most recent J-Lit post was Blue Bamboo by Osamu Dazai (Kurodahan Press), a wonderful collection of short stories.  While the Dazai I'd read up to then had been very cynical and depressing, this collection is full of adapted myths and fairy tales.  I loved the collection, and Ralph McCarthy (who also translated the Murakami book) did a great job with his revised work :)





*****
That's what's happened recently - what's coming up over the next few months?  Well, I've been lucky enough to receive a few more review copies, so expect to see posts on Nagai Kafu, Tomoyuki Hoshino and Ryu Murakami.  From the shelves, I expect to be having a look at classic works by Yukio Mishima, Natsume Soseki, Shusaku Endo and Naoya Shiga at some point, and to even up the gender balance, I'll probably be reading some Banana Yoshimoto, Yoko Ogawa and Hitomi Kanehara.  Oh, and I've got a couple of anthologies to get to too :)

This year though, Bellezza has announced that there will be a monthly theme, and the one for June happens to be children's literature...  Hmm - I'm sure if I search my shelves hard enough, I might just find one for that too ;)

*****
That's all for now, but stay tuned - my first review for JLC7 will be out very soon :)

May 2013 Wrap-Up

May has been an unexpectedly busy month - but I have nobody to blame for it but myself.  I decided to educate myself a little in the area of Spanish-langauge literature, ordering a wide selction of books from my wonderful library.  At the same time, I managed to get hold of several exciting review copies too...

In fact, you just peruse this post - I'll get back to my reading ;)

*****
Total Books Read: 9
Year-to-Date: 46

New: 9

Rereads: 0

From the Shelves: 0
Review Copies: 4

From the Library: 5

On the Kindle: 0

Novels: 6
Novellas: 0

Short Stories: 3

Non-English Language: 9 (4 Spanish, 2 Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Polish)

In Original Language: 0

Aussie Author Challenge: 0 (2/3)

*****
Books reviewed in May were:

1) Satantango by Laszlo Krasznahorkai
2) Raised from the Ground by José Saramago
3) A Heart So White by Javier Marías
4) Popular Hits of the Showa Era by Ryu Murakami
5) Blue Bamboo by Osamu Dazai
6) The Light and The Dark by Mikhail Shishkin
7) Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges
8) Mother Departs by Tadeusz Różewicz
9) The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño

Tony's Turkey for May is: Nothing

Not a turkey in sight - maybe next month ;)

Tony's Recommendation for May is:
Javier Marías' A Heart So White

This was an incredibly good month for reviews, and I actually struggled to choose my favourite book here.  Apologies to Krasznahorkai, Borges and Saramago (and even more apologies to Bolaño) - A Heart So White left a big impression on me, and it's Marías who just takes the honours for May :)

*****
After such a busy month, it'd be nice to think that June could be a bit more relaxing - no such luck.  There's still a pile of quality library books and a fair few review copies to get through.  And let's not forget the start of the seventh edition of Bellezza's Japanese Literature Challenge, one of my favourite blogging events.  I suppose I really should get back to the reading this time... 

'The Savage Detectives' by Roberto Bolaño (Review)

The latest in my series of library-sourced Spanish-language books is one by probably the biggest name in Latin-American literature at the moment, Roberto Bolaño (writing being one occupation where death is no obstacle to fame).  Today's review is of a big book, one with big ambitions, which takes us to the US, Europe and Africa - but it all starts and ends in Mexico...

*****
The Savage Detectives (translated by Natasha Wimmer) is the book which made Bolaño's name in the English-speaking world, and with good reason.  It's a 577-page roller-coaster of a novel, a bizarre, chopped-up account of the lives of two poets, Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano.  From the story's beginning in Mexico City in late 1975, we roam around the world, following the poets on their travels in search of contentment - and running away from something else entirely.

The story is written in three unequal parts. In the first, Juan Gárcia Madero, a university drop-out, describes his first encounter with the two poets, the founders (or resurrectors) of the 'visceral realist' school of poetry.  Juan plunges headlong into a world very different from the one he'd experienced up to then, but he has few regrets about leaving respectability behind:

"Also, without intending to, I ended up thinking about my aunt and uncle, about my life so far.  My old life seemed pleasant and empty, and I knew it would never be that way again.  That made me deeply glad."
p.41 (Picador, 2007)

This section of the book is written in the form of Gárcia Madero's diary, and the sex- and poetry-filled entries lead up to the moment when the three poets speed off into 1976 (and the Mexican desert) with a prostitute called Lupe.  They're hoping to escape from the wrath of Lupe's pimp, but soon the trip to save the damsel in distress will turn into another kind of quest - a hunt for a missing poet, the elusive Cesárea Tinajero...

Part Two takes up almost 400 pages, consisting of first person accounts from a vast cast of narrators.  Together, the many voices tell us what Lima and Belano did between 1976 and 1996, describing the Quixotic travels of the two poets over four continents.  We frequently return to one strand, however; a drunken night spent with a poet in January 1976, where Lima and Belano find out more about the mysterious Cesárea.  The third part of the novel then returns us to García Madero's diary, where we find out exactly what happened in the desert.  I'm certainly not going to spill the beans here, but rest assured, the events of the following twenty years all stem from what happened in Mexico's north in early 1976...

The Savage Detectives is a mindblowing novel, one which is virtually impossible to really summarise or analyse in one review post.  In some regards, it's a highly enjoyable romp, but one which demands intense focus and concentration.  With a vast array of characters, both real and made up (this is a book which could really do with a War and Peace-type character list at the front), it will take you until the very end to work out exactly what's going on.  Even then, many questions remain unanswered.

What's it all about?  You tell me...  It's a story of the excesses of youth and the eccentricities of poets - when you talk about being mad, bad and dangerous to know, Lima and Belano fit the bill nicely.  The two appear to be carrying a curse (Belano, in particular, seems to bring bad luck wherever he goes), and many of the narrators felt uneasy in his presence:

"...and then I remember too that I looked at Arturo Belano and that he didn't get up from his seat when the Ecuadorean came in, and not only did he not get up, he didn't even pay attention to us, didn't even look at us, would you believe, and I saw the hairy back of his neck and for a second I thought that what I was seeing wasn't a person, not a living, breathing human being with blood in his veins like you or me, but a scarecrow, a bundle of ragged clothes on a body of straw and plastic, something like that." (p.191)

They were right to.  Many of the people the two poets encounter end up falling ill, losing their jobs or perishing in car crashes; it's not stretching things to see them as angels of death.

It's also a novel about Mexico and Latin America, and I'm certain that the book would mean even more to people who know the area and the eras described.  The novel is full of hints of desperation, world weariness in countries which long for change.  The Mexico City of The Savage Detectives is described as a vibrant, violent city - but also as a small town of 14 million people.  I'm sure there's a message in there somewhere...

At times, Belaño makes you nostalgic about your lost youth, and you wish you were a seventeen-year-old wannabe poet, sleeping with waitresses and neurotic students.  Part one, in particular, had Haruki Murakami undertones, with García Madero taking on the role of the naive, Haruki-esque protagonist wandering through the big city.  Of course, the reality of this city is much closer to that envisaged by Ryu Murakami, with its seedy side and ever-present threat of violence.  And while we're throwing in random literary references, why not Kerouac's On the Road too?  I don't think it's too much of a stretch to see shades of Sal Paradise in García Madero, and Lima and Belano as a two-headed Dean Moriarty ;)

What helps Belaño sustain reader interest in such a long and complicated story is a great cast of characters.  Through our initial introduction to Juan, we are allowed to move through the city and meet the writer's other creations: seductive sisters María and Angélica Font (and their mad dad Quim); the flamboyant, bisexual, gorgeous wanderer Luscious Skin; old poet Amadeo Salvatierra; Lupe and her pimp, Alberto (a man with impressive attributes); and, of course, the enigmatic Cesárea Tinajero.  It's a lot to get your head around, and you might need to take a few notes now and then to help you get your bearings (I certainly did...).

Surprisingly though, the main men are the ones we know the least.  They are always seen through the eyes of others, and this has the effect of turning them into mythical creatures, ghosts of the night.  Instead of well-rounded, visible creations, Lima and Belano are the nothing at the centre of the structure, a gap where characters should be - one which the reader spends 577 pages attempting to fill.

Since finishing The Savage Detectives, it has been in my mind constantly.  It's an amazing book, one which will have its readers and its critics (in the best possible sense) for a long time to come:

"Iñaki Echevarne , Bar Giardinetto, Calle Granada del penedés, Barcelona, July, 1994.
For a while, Criticism travels side by side with the Work, then Criticism vanishes and it's the Readers who keep pace.  The journey may be long or short.  Then the Readers die one by one and the Work continues on alone, although a new Criticism and new Readers gradually fall into step with it along its path.  Then Criticism dies again and the Readers die again and the Work passes over a trail of bones on its journey towards solitude.  To come near the work, to sail in her wake, is a sign of certain death, but new Criticism and new Readers approach her tirelessly and relentlessly and are devoured by time and speed.  Finally the Work journeys irremediably alone in the Great Vastness,  And one day the Work dies, as all things must die and come to an end: the Sun and the Earth and the Solar System and the Galaxy and the farthest reaches of man's memory.  Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragedy." (p.456)

This short paragraph from near the end of the novel is an apt comment on the book, but also on Lima and Belano (who, apparently, is Bolaño's alter-ego...).  The people around the two poets accompany them on their way, but soon or later they end up walking alone...

After enjoying this one so much, I have more Bolaño on the way from the library.  Distant Star is an earlier work, one apparently narrated by Belano, and it sounds like a good one to continue my discovery of the Chilean writer's work (I think I'll leave 2666 for another time...).  All in all, it's another great library discovery, and time to chalk up another success in my self-education efforts :)

'Mother Departs' by Tadeusz Różewicz (Review)

Stork Press is a relatively new London-based publisher, one with an eastern-European slant, but focusing particularly on Polish books (the name is a very Polish one!).  So far, they have published in several genres, and the first book to really catch my eye was the winner of the 2000 Nike Prize (the Polish Booker).  It's by a famous poet, but, as we'll see, it's actually more of a family affair...

*****
Tadeusz Różewicz's Mother Departs (translated by Barbara Bogoczek, review copy courtesy of the publisher) is a short book, encompassing several different styles of writing.  There are some childhood reminiscences, short poems, diary entries, prose fragments... a bit of everything really.

It's also fragmented in another way.  While Tadeusz is the writer of the family, Mother Departs features the joint efforts of four family members: Tadeusz; his mother, Stefania; his younger brother, Stanisław; and his older brother, Janusz, a member of the Polish resistance who was executed in 1944.  Interspersed throughout the writing are family photos, many of which feature the focus of the collection, Stefania.  Despite their variety, all the pieces circle the topic of the mother (either abstractly or concretely)

In the first couple of pieces, Stefania describes the village she grew up in, sketching a picture of the lives of the farming labourers.  Their abject poverty (and their poor hygiene and diet) is set against the traditional celebrations for holidays and weddings, and a dependence on superstition. This was the time of partition, where the village fell under Russian rule.  While the middle classes seethe though, the peasants aren't particularly bothered by foreign rule - provided the Tsar helps to supply them with more food...

The next section sees Tadeusz take over with short, plain poems, mostly about mothers and grief.  In 'dead fruit', we see a mother grieving her dead son:

"The poor mother steps across the room
 adjusts the photograph and cries

 The gold suns on the table darken
 as does the dead fruit of her life" 
p.42 (Stork Press, 2013)

When we know what happened to Janusz (and the excellent introduction gives a detailed account of Różewicz's family history), the poems take on a more solemn, personal tinge.

While Różewicz is known as a poet, I much preferred the prose fragments.  One of my favourites, 'Red Stamps', a story of around 150 words, describes the visit of a bailiff who has come to decide which household items are to be confiscated to pay off debts:

"It was not until my brother and I crept into the creaking bed and hid our heads under the thick eiderdown that we dared speak out loud.  We prayed for a miracle.
But in the cold light of the morning, five red stamps bled like five wounds." (p.69)

It's an excellent story, evoking powerful images of a stressful event - I suppose you could even call it flash fiction...

Perhaps the pivotal section of the book, 'Gliwice Diary' is an honest, weary account of the last few months of Tadeusz's mother's life.  As he struggles to come to terms with her inevitable death (and, at the same time, cope with the recent death of close friend Leopold Staff), he recounts his inability to focus on his writing, and the suffering his mother endures over the final days of her life.  Ostracised by the mainstream literary society in Poland (for political reasons...), he finds himself trying to justify his methods:

"What the 'critical' or 'literary' fraternity labelled 'repetition'... - 'Tadeusz R. keeps repeating himself', they said - was and possibly still is the most valuable thing in my work.  The dogged reworking, repeating, returning to the same matter, and so on... to the very end.  Other things will get written by somebody else.  There is no alternative.  Or you end up with literary chit chat." (p.88)

Grieving a close friend, preparing for a life without his mother and struggling to carry on with his work - it's a lot to take for a young man.  At the time he was 36, a couple of years younger than I am now...

The collection ends with contributions from Tadeusz's two brothers.  Janusz's piece is a fragment from a man whose life was cut tragically short, a short description of coming home from school to his waiting mother. Stanisław's is a childhood memoir, again with a central focus on his mother.  Together, the assorted texts form both a portrait of, and a homage to, a woman - but also to a country and a time.  You see, as much as it talks about Stefania, Mother Departs talks to the reader about a shared past.  It's easy to see why it won the Nike Prize - it's not so much the private memories of a mother, as a collective, nostalgic look at what has been lost.

While I'm not a big fan of the poetry here, the collection as a whole works surprisingly well.  Bogoczek's translation is very smooth, with no obvious clumsiness (to my British eye, anyway!), and it's a book which you can dip into when the mood strikes.  I'd have to take task with the publisher over one thing though - I'm not sure you could claim that this was by Różewicz.  This work is most definitely a collaborative effort - or, as I said above, a family affair :)

'Fictions' by Jorge Luis Borges (Review)

Today's post features another stop on my Spanish-language literature self-education journey (courtesy of my wonderful library), and it's one I've been looking forward to for a while.  You see, if you're going to start reading works translated from the Spanish, there's a name you'll come across sooner or later - a certain Jorge Luis Borges...

*****
Fictions (translated - mostly - by Anthony Kerrigan: with some stories translated by Alastair Reid, Anthony Bonner, Helen Temple and Ruthven Todd) brings together two of the writer's first collections of short stories, The Garden of Forking Paths and Artifices.  Despite this, Fictions is a short work, clocking in at just over 150 pages - mainly because Borges' creations don't tend to outstay their welcome.  For the Argentinian maestro, ten pages is a fairly long tale.

The first eight-part collection is a dazzling display of meta-fiction, and any reader wondering where writers like Enrique Vila-Matas inherited their style should look no further.  The stories are written in a dry, detached, academic tone, and Borges relates his analyses of invented works and writers (complete with footnotes...) in a manner which is both confusing and intriguing.  Beneath the surface though, you suspect that there is some serious leg-pulling going on, with the writer taking aim at out-dated philosophies and academic approaches.

A good example of this style is the story 'Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote'.  In this short piece, the narrator discusses the major unpublished work of Monsieur Menard, namely an attempt to rewrite Don Quixote - not to change it, or to transcribe it, but to rewrite it exactly as it is.  'Borges', our narrator, advances the opinion that Menard's work is superior to that of Cervantes (despite the fact that it is identical, word for word) as the modern writer can impart more meaning to the words after centuries of progress in the fields of philosophy and literary analysis.  If you say so...

Another highlight from the first collection is 'The Library of Babel', where the writer restructures the universe as a gigantic, geometrically-designed library.  It contains all the books you could ever wish for - you'll never be able to find the one you need though.  'The Babylon Lottery' is another great story, one where a former citizen of Babylon recounts how a simple game we all recognise turned into an all-encompassing way of life.  In his country, life literally is a lottery (which is certainly an interesting way of looking at things...).

The second collection, Artifices, is markedly different in style.  The focus is less on the academic (imaginary) literary analysis, and more on conventional twisty-turny types of stories.  In 'The Form of the Sword', Borges tells us the tale of a traitor, a story with a startling, unexpected ending.  'Funes, the Memorious', on the other hand, is about a man whose life is altered by an accident.  With a memory far surpassing normal human standards, he is able to remember every single thing he has ever seen or heard - and is unable to believe the polite conventions (or lies) of time and language:

"It was not only difficult for him to understand that the generic term 'dog' embraced so many unlike specimens of differing sizes and different forms; he was disturbed by the fact that a dog at three-fourteen (seen in profile) should have the same name as the dog at three-fifteen (seen from the front)."
p.104 (John Calder, 1985)

A word which continually crops up throughout Artifices is 'labyrinth', and Borges seems obsessed by the idea of mazes, both tangible and mental.  In 'The Death and the Compass', a detective story with a difference, an investigator is concerned with fascinating possibilities of crime.  When his superior attempts to explain away a murder with a conventional explanation, the sleuth begs to differ:

"It's possible, but not interesting," Lönnrot answered.  "You will reply that reality hasn't the slightest need to be of interest.  And I'll answer you that reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but that hypotheses may not." (p.118)

However, we've all heard what curiosity did to the cat, and Lönnrot eventually runs the risk of being trapped in a labyrinth partially of his own making...

*****
Sharp-eyed Borges lovers may have noticed a rather notable omission, a deliberate one as I'm leaving the best to last.  The opening story of The Garden of the Forking Paths, 'Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius' (translated by Alastair Reid) is the stand-out of the two collections and, perhaps, a landmark in short-story writing.  Eighteen-pages long, it's easily the longest of the tales in this selection, and it's a fascinating example of Borges' mastery of meta-fiction.

The story begins with the discovery of a book which doesn't exist, containing an article on a fictional country.  After a feverish search for more information, the writer comes across a book that was never written, one which has detailed information on the customs and philosophy of an imaginary world.  It all adds up to a shadowy conspiracy, a meticulously-planned hoax - which then begins to bleed over into the 'real' world when alien artefacts are found...

In a coda to the story, set seven years after the original events (and in the future from the point of view of the actual writing of the story), the narrator reveals the effect the teachings of Tlön have had upon the world:

"Almost immediately, reality gave ground on more than one point.  The truth is that it hankered to give ground.  Ten years ago, any symmetrical system whatsoever which gave the appearance of order - dialectical materialism, anti-Semitism, Nazism - was enough to fascinate men.  Why not fall under the spell of Tlön and submit to the minute and vast evidence of an ordered planet?" (p.33)

The story was written in 1940, and Borges shows superb foresight of the tragedies about to unfold in Europe.  It's easy to fall under the spell of a regime which promises the world... 

Fictions is a short collection, but fairly dense, and it's a book I'd recommend to most people.  While not all of the stories in Artifices grabbed me, I enjoyed The Garden of Forking Paths immensely, and I'm keen to try some more.  A warning to the casual reader though: Labyrinths, the other commonly-cited collection of Borges' early writings, is an American publication which contains many of the same stories (it omits a few from the two collections from Fictions and adds some from a later collection, The Aleph).  It seems remarkably apt that even deciding which Borges book to try is steeped in confusion ;)

*****
You'd think that I would have exhausted my ideas on a 150-page book by now, but there's something else I need to tell you.  You see (and I am not making this up), my battered old library copy, sent from somewhere in country Victoria, had one last surprise for me.  Sellotaped inside the back cover, I found a small, cut-out piece of paper, smaller than the other pages, on which was a Borges poem, 'The End Game'.  It describes a game of chess, and moves from the perspective of the pieces to that of the players, to God... and to another god.  The last three lines read:

"God moves the player, and he, the pieces
 What god from behind God begins to weave the plot
 of dust and time and dreams and agonies?"

It's a great poem - but where on earth did it come from?  Is it a part of the book that fell out, or is it just a random inclusion from a generous soul?  Whatever the answer, it's all very Borgesian :)