'Conversation in the Cathedral' by Mario Vargas Llosa (Review)

It would be a slight understatement to say that The Feast of the Goat has been the least successful book of my Spanish-language literature adventure so far.  However, I'm nothing if not fair, so I decided that I needed to give Mario Vargas Llosa a second try, a chance to make amends - and I even gambled on one of his longer works this time around.  Let's see if it was a risk worth taking...

*****
Conversation in the Cathedral (translated by Gregory Rabassa) has absolutely nothing to do with big churches.  The cathedral of the title is a seedy bar, where two of the main characters, Santiago and Ambrosio, go to catch up after a chance meeting.  The two men have a shared history, but they are very different people - as will become evident over the next six-hundred pages.

Santiago is the son of a rich socialite family, but he has chosen the black-sheep path and works as a reporter for a tabloid newspaper, turning his back on his family and their wealth.  Ambrosio is a hulking black worker, formerly the chauffeur to Santiago's father, Don Fermín, and he has fallen on hard times.  As the two talk about what has happened in the years since they last met, the reader is treated to a spell-binding trip thorugh Peruvian history and introduced to a whole host of characters, both fictional and real.  It's a challenging book, and the two drinkers aren't the only ones with a headache by the time we get to the last page...

Where The Feast of the Goat left me cold, Conversation in the Cathedral had me coming back for more every night.  It's a novel which is far more interesting, stylistically more inventive, and much more intricate.  The first chapter detailing the events of the meeting and the conversation is fairly normal, but from chapter two the book bursts into life.  Conversations erupt without warning, several at once, intermingled, confusing:

"To work, son," Ambrosio says.  I mean, to look for work."
"Are you serious or joking?" the Lieutenant asked.
"Did my old man know you were there?" Santiago asks.
"I don't like to joke, " Bermúdez said.  "I always speak seriously."
p.46 (Harper Perennial, 2005)

By the way - Ambrosio is talking to Santiago, and the Lieutenant is talking to Bermúdez...

It gets even more complicated later when multiple conversations are taking place (from different times), and some of the speakers are present in two or three of them.  You really need to be on your toes at times in this book...  Which is not to say that it's all mind-bending.  The narrative flows nicely, and the conversations usually hit the right balance between mundane and witty:

"Why were you so bitter, then?"  Ambrosio asks.  "Was it because of the girl?"
"I never saw her alone," Santiago says.  "I wasn't bitter; a little worm in my stomach sometimes, nothing else."
"You wanted to make love to her and you couldn't with the other one there," Ambrosio says.  "I know what it's like to be close to the woman you love and not be able to do anything."
"Did that happen to you with Amalia?" Santiago asks.
"I saw a movie about it once," Ambrosio says.  (p.92)

Of course, there's more to that short exchange than meets the eye...

The book is divided into four parts, and each looks at a different period of time (even if the chapters tend to jump backwards and forwards in time).  Each introduces new characters, many of whom then fade into the background.  After 100 pages, we are obsessed with Santiago's university time and his communist leanings, eager to learn more about his friends Aída and Jacobo - by the end of the book, they've been forgotten (like mnay good university friends...).

One of the main characters is Cayo Bermúdez, a non-descript, half-breed merchant plucked from obscurity, who becomes one of the most powerful and feared men in the country in the 1950s.  Having eclipsed the General who recommended him to the President, he goes about consolidating the regime's grip on power while amassing a fortune, keeping a mistress and ruthlessly crushing all attempts at insurrection.  Oh, and did I mention that Ambrosio is his chauffeur too?

In fact, while the book begins with Santiago, it is actually Ambrosio who is the star attraction.  His connection with the rich, famous and morally questionable allows the reader to taste what life was like in Peru in the 1950s, a story fascinating enough to keep the reader's attention.  And when the pace does flag a little (inevitable in such a long book), and the reader is beginning to wonder what else might happen, Vargas Llosa throws in a murder, one he has already hinted at.  Suddenly, events take a new turn, and some surprising revelations make us see certain characters in a new light...

Conversation in the Cathedral is an excellent novel, and one which has (mostly) restored Vargas Llosa in my eyes.  Like The Feast of the Goat, it's a book concerned with history and politics, but it does so in a much more elegant and interesting manner.  Rabassa's translation is excellently unnoticeable (if you think that's a good thing!), allowing the reader to immerse themself in the story without stumbling across clumsy expressions.  While I don't think the writer manages to hold the tension right up to the end (I thought it was just that little bit too long towards the finish), he still does a good job of making the reader want to prolong their stay in the semi-fictional world he creates.

So Vargas Llosa has managed to redeem himself, and my Spanish-Literature odyssey is back on track - although it's actually nearing its end.  In fact, I have just one more of my library treats to get through before I can sit back and relax.  Which is probably a good job - I have a pile of ARCs that could really do with some attention...

'Lonely Hearts Killer' by Tomoyuki Hoshino (Review)

After the previous success of Tomoyuki Hoshino's short-story collection, We, the Children of Cats (from PM Press), I was eager to try another of the writer's books.  Today's choice is a novel, which makes a nice contrast, allowing me to see which genre suits him better.  So, how does Hoshino fare in the longer form?

*****
Lonely Hearts Killer (translated by Adrienne Carey Hurley, review copy courtesy of the publisher) is a novel which could almost be called dystopian in a detached, literary way.  After the death of the young Emperor (called Majesty throughout the novel), the 'Island Nation' nosedives into a communal depression, with many people unable to even get out of bed.  While many of those 'spirited away' had no strong feelings about the royal family, it seems that the event has acted as a catalyst, causing people all over the country to collapse under the stress of their everyday lives.

Although Shoji Inoue, a young unemployed filmmaker, wasn't affected by the event, he becomes fascinated by the reasons behind the nationwide downward spiral.  He gets to know one of the 'spirited away', his friend's partner, Miko, and becomes obsessed with his thoughts on the phenomenon.  It's a phase which may simply have passed away into history, if only Inoue hadn't made sure that nobody would be moving on with their lives in a hurry...

Lonely Hearts Killer is told in three parts and voices.  In the first,we learn about the death of his young Majesty, and the aftermath of the traumatic event, through Shoji's eyes.  In the middle section, his friend Iroha continues the story, trying to come to terms with Shoji and Miko's deaths and the chaotic situation Japan finds itself in as a result.  Finally, Mokuren, Iroha's friend, finishes off the story after Iroha does something foolish.  Both Iroha and Mokuren comment on the actions and thoughts of the previous part; in his introduction, Hoshino invites the reader to speculate in turn about Mokuren...

It's a frightening story, but one which is eminently believable.  A depressing event triggers mass depression and soul-searching in a country which is already in the grip of a downward spiral.  With an ageing population and a depressed economy, there is little hope for the future - and in a society where suicide is not as stigmatised as it is in Christian countries, death is always an enticing option.  Even the weather joins in, cherry blossoms blasted off the trees by giant dust storms  (perhaps symbolic of Hoshino's rejection of 'typical' J-lit conventions), and the reader is treated to the eery sight of Tokyo as a ghost town, with the streets emptied of people.

In deciding to take their lives, Inoue and Miko spark a revolution.  Death suddenly seems preferable to hanging around in a grey country waiting to die - and if you're going to go, why not take someone else with you?  Suddenly, everyone needs to be careful out on the streets:

"People were overreacting if someone just brushed up against their shoulder or arm on the train.  They would shove or even brandish a weapon at whoever had inadvertently done the touching, and the number of such cases resulting in bloody brawls had increased.  And sometimes simply walking in the same direction as another person even in a residential neighborhood would end in trouble.  The upshot of all this was a widespread aversion to other people and rampant paranoid hostility in crowded places."
p.128 (PM press, 2009)

All of a sudden, it seems that nowhere is safe, and no-one can be trusted.

A major theme involves films, with Shoji and Iroha obsessed with reproducing what they see on camera, putting layer upon layer, copy upon copy until the original is distorted, unrecognisable (an irony in a country where the traditional idea of reproduction has virtually come to a halt).  Shoji's existence has, fairly literally, been a life on film, a fact which doesn't always please him:

"Accompanying the growth of my catalogue of filmed images are occasional moments when I feel very sad at the thought that the substance of my worth, what matters about me is contained in the volume of a disc." (p.13)

Iroha is also obsessed with filming wherever she goes, and it is her film of Miko, films of films, an endless hall of digital mirrors, which causes the initial cracks in Shoji's facade.
And what are the 'love suicides' plaguing the country if not a series of copies...

Of course, this copy-cat culture is a distorted one, and the people need a strong leader to stand up and tell them to get on with their lives and stop worrying about death.  Initially, however, the royal successor (Her Majesty) is unable to do so.  In a worrying power vacuum, the gap is then filled by a politician - one who has shown himself to be a bit of an opportunist and, perhaps, morally suspect.  Just like real life then...

What's it all about?  Good question :)  It's certainly, in part at least, a stand against ultra-nationalism (something which is always a concern in Japan - I remember the men in black vans with loudspeakers distinctly...).  It's also a reflection (no pun intended) of a real sense of depression in Japan.  The Land of the Rising Sun has been eclipsed by close-to-zero economic growth and a rapidly ageing population.  In the book, few children are being born - the 'one child' policy which is introduced is meant to *stimulate* the birth rate, not control it!  The novel also highlights the danger of group-think, showing that there are risks in marginalising minorities in a culture of nationalistic homogenisation.  Then again, it might be about something else entirely :)

Once you've finished the novel (as in We, the Children of Cats), there are some added extras.  There's a great Q & A between the author and the translator, and a translator's introduction which provides background information about the novel.  This contains some useful analysis of the book (which certainly makes it easier to write a convincing review!).  Now, if only more publishers could find the time to do this...

Lonely Hearts Killer is a fascinating story with a good translation, and it's a book that is well worth checking out.  It's not always easy to get your head around what Hoshino is trying to say, but it's certainly a welcome change to some of the cherry-blossom-tinted (or blood-soaked) J-Lit around at the moment.  Do try it :)

'70% Acrylic 30% Wool' by Viola Di Grado (Review)

Today's post is on another gem from Europa Editions that I missed out on the first time around, but it's a book that was well worth waiting for.  The writing is strange, and subtly disorientating, but the setting is very, very familiar...

*****
Viola Di Grado's 70% Acrylic 30% Wool (translated by Michael Reynolds, review copy courtesy of the publisher) is a wonderfully bizarre novel, one set in the English city of Leeds.  From the very start, the city plays a starring role in the story, mostly as a dark, depressing place, a town where it's always December and daylight is just a distant cultural memory.

Of course, we're not meant to take this literally (I think...) - this view of the city is an outward projection of the mental state of the main character, Camelia Mega.  Born in Italy and brought to Leeds at the age of seven, she is struggling to cope with the loss of her father (caught in flagrante with a lover - in a car crash) and her mother's retreat into an inner-world, one of denial and wordlessness.

Camelia seems set to follow her mother down the spiral when a chance encounter on the street with a young Chinese man, Wen, provides the impetus she needs to start living again.  In fact, Leeds even manages to get past December (eventually...).  A love story with a happy ending then?  You obviously don't know Viola Di Grado...

70% Acrylic 30% Wool is a fantastic book, a novel which defies simple clichéd explanations.  It gets its power from Di Grado's manipulation of language and the way in which she makes the ordinary bizarre, constantly leaving the reader grasping at thin air.  For me, this was a more personal reading than for most because I lived in Leeds for a few years, very close to the places Camelia describes; however, the Leeds of the novel is less that of my student years and more one of some post-apocalyptic nightmare.  As any self-respecting southerner will tell you, it's grim up north:

"It must have been seven in the morning but it was dark outside, like at any self-respecting hour of the day in Leeds.  They discriminate against daylight hours here, ghettoizing them behind curtains."
p.19 (Europa Editions, 2013)

I don't think the city's tourist board will be hiring Di Grado as an ambassador any time soon...

Things start to get better though, when Camelia meets Wen, the manager of a clothes shop, and starts taking private Chinese lessons (let's ignore the fact that they met after he recognised her clothes as something he'd thrown out in the rubbish...).  Camelia had been planning to study Chinese at university before her father's death, and she soon gets swept up both with her studies, and her growing passion for the young teacher.  However, when Wen (no pun intended) fails to respond adequately to her advances, things start to get very messy.  Occasionally literally.

As you might imagine from the mixed linguistic background of the story, languages and words (or the absence thereof) play a major role in the novel.  Camelia becomes obsessed with Chinese characters, painting them on pieces of paper, plastering them across the walls of her home and tracing them manically onto her arms and legs while watching television.  Everything she sees is decoded in the form of the radicals of the characters, transformed from real objects into inky-black depictions.

Her journey into language contrasts with her mother's retreat into silence (the silence, at times, threatening to infect Camelia, forcing her to vomit up words...).  Having said that, languages do not necessarily require verbalisation, and mother and daughter somehow communicate very well with glances.  And, of course, there's always music:

"She stood up there, so red at the top of the steep narrow stairs, stairs rotten with dust, like an upside-down Tower of Babel that instead of multiplying languages had destroyed them all.  And all this, the elision of all languages, just to get to this moment, to her standing there mute and breathtaking as she always was after playing her favorite piece." (p.157)

Camelia, though, most definitely prefers words - and action...

I still don't think I've managed to quite get the idea of the novel across adequately - this book is ever so slightly twisted (in a good way, of course).  As well as the above, there'll be blood, sex, betrayal, mutilation of defenceless clothes and flowers, and symbolic references to holes.  And Leeds.  Lots of walking about the centre and student areas of Leeds.

Which brings me to the only bad thing I have to say about 70% Acrylic 30% Wool...  Michael Reynold's translation is a good one, a very good one in fact, but it's written in American English, and for me that detracted from the finished article a little.  I was just too close to the setting of the book to be able to gloss over some of the vocabulary choices, even if the style of the language isn't noticeably American.  The place I used to go and buy crisps at late at night is not a 'gas station'; the thing I used to walk on to uni most days (OK, some days) is not a 'sidewalk'; wherever Camelia found the clothes, I'm pretty certain it wasn't a 'dumpster'; oh, and while Leeds can be pretty bleak at times, it's definitely not 'gray'...

Rant over :)  This is a great book, and I really hope that more of Wunderkind Di Grado's work is available in English soon (my Italian ain't all it could be).  It's not always easy to get your head around, and understanding Camelia's actions can be a nightmare at times, but you should definitely take 70% Acrylic 30% Wool for a spin.  Definitely not one for delicates though ;)

'Heaven and Hell' by Jón Kalman Stefánsson (Review)

Last year, as some of you may remember, I was on a bit of an Icelandic kick and managed to read several great books from the small island nation.  One I didn't get around to though was a book by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, a novel which several bloggers had raved about.  With the sequel, The Sorrow of Angels, out now, I thought it might be time to correct this oversight - and luckily, the good people at MacLehose let me have a copy of both :)

*****
Heaven and Hell (translated by Philip Roughton) is the first in Stefánsson's trilogy about a character known only as the Boy.  We begin with preparations for fishing for cod in the cold sea off the north Icelandic coast, in a team of six with his friend, Bá­­ður (a literary type who seems out of place in such a functional setting).  We're in the mid-nineteenth century, but it could really be back in the seventeenth century; life seems very basic - and harsh...

After a night of waiting and preparing, the fishing crews set off into the unwelcoming waters, and disaster (inevitably) strikes.  Sickened by the attitude of the other fishermen in the face of tragedy, the Boy sets off on a perilous journey back to a distant village, not caring if he survives the journey or not.  There he finds that in a land that doesn't appreciate outsiders, he's not quite as alone as he thinks...

Heaven and Hell is a great story with superb writing.  The first part of the book is dominated by the struggle between the fishermen and the sea.  The waters are a living entity: cruel, cold, deadly and majestic.  The poor sailors in their tiny 'sixereen' are at the mercy of something far greater than themselves, trusting their fate to 'an open coffin on the Polar Sea'.  Just returning to shore can be considered an achievement:

"And those on shore do not passively watch the boats land but instead lend a hand, there is a law beyond man-made laws because here it is a matter of life and death, and most choose the former."
p.75 (MacLehose Press, 2011)

For those who enjoy descriptions of man versus wild, this is the real thing, and the writer creates a poetic description of the battle for life.

On land, things are little better.  Near the shore, the village lies under almost perpetual snow, and the atmosphere amongst its inhabitants can be just as cold and forbidding.  There is a fixed hierarchy, where the owners of the big stores have entrapped the little people in their eternal debt, and the poor villagers live on a diet of credit, subservience, gossip and infidelity.  Outsiders are regarded with suspicion, and anyone a little different tends to drift into a certain circle, one centred upon the enigmatic Geirþúður.  Which is where the Boy comes in...

Stefánsson has a striking style, reminiscent at times of Saramago (a saga Saramago?).  His writing can be jerky, confronting and involved, with frequent rhetorical questions and addresses to the reader:

"A tidy man, that Pétur, like his brother, Guðmundur, skipper of the other boat, about ten metres between their huts but the brothers don't speak to each other, haven't done so in a good decade, no-one seems to know why." (p.16)

Another feature of the writing is superb imagery.  Stefánsson has a great eye for detail, and the reader is sucked into the pictures he creates, be they in the midst of a storm or in the snug of the local pub:

"This was in the evening, a dense cloud of cigar smoke in the room, they could barely see each other, or at least until one of them came up with the idea of opening the window onto the autumn and the sky coughed when the smoke was sucked out." (pp.118/9)

The narrator of the story occasionally switches eyes, following other characters away from what we have come to see as the 'centre' of the story.  When it leaves the Boy and accompanies another of the villagers or fishermen, it appears like a disembodied spirit (which, if we believe the narrative's frame, is exactly what it is...).

Heaven and Hell reminds me at times of a couple of the books I read last year.  In parts, particularly in its description of the hardship of life in Iceland, it is reminiscent of Halldór Laxness' Independent People.  The first section, with the focus on the importance of fishing is more akin though to a Faroese novel, Heðin Brú's The Old Man and his Sons.  Like many of the Icelandic books I've read, particularly those set in the past, it also emphasises the importance of books, stories... and coffee!  However, while coffee can cure all ills, literature is seen as the cause of disaster - poetry can be dangerous...

"Some poems take us to places where no words reach, no thought, they take you up to the core itself, life stops for one moment and becomes beautiful, it becomes clear with regret and happiness.  Some poems change the day, the night, your life.  Some poems make you forget, forget the sadness, the hopelessness, you forget your waterproof, the frost comes to you, says, got you, and you're dead." (p.85)

Please take care when reading...

Heaven and Hell is a great book, but it's hard to discuss the novel without giving it all away as very little actually happens over the course of the two-hundred pages.  Unlike many books, this one really feels like the first part of a trilogy, a set up of more to come.  Which is not a bad thing at all - I, for one, will be diving into The Sorrow of Angels very soon...

...just as soon as I've sorted out some thicker thermals ;)

'In Translation' by Esther Allen and Susan Bernofsky (eds.) (Review)

Over the past couple of years, as regular readers may have noticed, I've become much more deeply involved in the translated-fiction side of life in the literary blogosphere, and my ratio of books originally written in languages other than English has sky-rocketed.  I've also found myself reading more in German, and for a while now I've been contemplating an alternate universe, one in which money and free time magically appear, allowing me to go off and study again, this time in the field of literary translation.  It's unlikely (sigh) to ever happen, but if I get many more books like today's offering, my arm might just be twisted...

*****
Esther Allen and Susan Bernofsky, two noted American literary translators, have put together a wonderful book on the art and science of their metier, In Translation (published by Columbia University Press, review copy courtesy of Australian supplier Footprint Books***).  It consists of eighteen essays by leading translators and writers, each giving a small insight into the art of translation and the life of the translator.  The first section is mainly concerned with theory, and the essays here come complete with footnotes and academic jargon; the second part then moves onto practice, with real-life examples from a host of renowned practitioners.

Before we get onto the nitty-gritty though, we gain an insight into the unglamourous, and often thankless, role of the translator.  Peter Cole discusses the ethical dilemmas of the translator, often a choice in the eyes of the public between invisibility and treachery (to the author and to the original text).  Eliot Weinberger suggests an image of the translator as tradesman, not artist (one who really should be better paid!).  While David Bellos muses over the concept of 'foreign-soundingness', Michael Emmerich shows us how translation can be just as much about the visual as the phonological - in Japanese, snow literally (almost) falls down on the page...

If you think these issues sound a little abstract and unimportant, others are a touch more controversial.  Alice Kaplan, in an essay on the trials and tribulations of translating, talks about her battle of wills with authors (and her own translator), also mentioning the time when Nabokov ordered all the copies of a Swedish translation of Pnin to be burnt.  Whoever said the author was dead...

In the final act of the first part, Esther Allen cautions the unwary reader against assuming that translation is a given for any particular book; you see, it's not quite as straight-forward as that:

"...any given act of literary translation is a product of unique political, linguistic, cultural, technological, historical, and human contexts."
p.101 (2013, Columbia University Press)

The reality is that it takes a unique combination of factors, a whole myriad of planets aligning, to get any one particular work published in the English-speaking world.  Quality is only one small factor.

Once we dive into the practical side of things, we also get to hear from, and about, some superstars of world literature.  Maureen Freely discusses the problems of translating Orhan Pamuk, a story of an 'ethnically-cleansed' language, a head-strong writer and an unexpected venture into Turkish politics.  Cuban poet José Manuel Prieto explains the difficulties he had in translating Osip Mandelstam's most famous poems into Spanish, and Haruki Murakami explains how (and why) he took 'his' Gatsby into Japanese (on a side note, it was nice to see these last two in the collection - translated by Esther Allen and Ted Goossen - as a work on translation without any translated pieces seems rather silly...).

Once you've got your head around what you're going to translate, you need to give some thought to who you're actually translating it for.  One of my favourite pieces had Jason Grunebaum pondering this issue in translating a novel from Hindi into English.  Should he be concentrating on American English, or Indian English?  After all, if you're looking for a large potential market...

Laurence Venuti had a slightly different dilemma in wrestling with the issue of anachronism in his translation of 12th-century Italian poetry.  A poet monk criticising the Pope - what voice would work best in English?  Venuti's answer - Slim Shady:

You spoke with forkéd tongue
and deeply I was stung:
it has to lick my sore
to show the plague the door;
because I'm sure my grief
can't find the least relief
without the execution
of your absolution (p.205)

At any rate, it's certainly original...

If you're a polyglot, In Translation provides you with many great opportunities to test your skills.  Whether it's Russian, Polish, Hindi, German or 16th-century French ballad lyrics, there's something of interest in every piece.  My only issue with the collection (ironically) is that for the Englishman in me it's a little narrow, and slightly US-centric.  A piece on the US-UK language divide would have been nice (as would more British contributors...)

Still, it's a wonderfully-absorbing collection, one which has given my nascent ambitions a further push.  For those of you who think Goethe had more than Dan Brown on his mind when coining the phrase Weltliteratur, let's give a big thank you to the people who show us that there's a lot out there that is worth reading :)

Before I finish though, I'll leave you with some final advice from Susan Bernofsky, who discusses the need to let go of the original text, and the importance of both frequent revision of translation and taking the odd semantic risk:

"It takes a certain amount of pluck - not to mention aesthetic sense and the ability to write well in English - to let go of an original long enough to allow oneself to fully imagine the English words that will take its place, but without this no fully realized translation is possible." (p.233)

That sounds like a job for me :) 

*****
***Footprint Books say that this book is available in good Australian bookshops and directly through their website :)

'All Dogs Are Blue' by Rodrigo de Souza Leão

It's been a long time between drinks, but today I've finally got around to reviewing another book from great indie publishers And Other Stories.  It's another of their South American finds, this time from Brazil, and like Down the Rabbit Hole, it's a fairly short read.  It seems even shorter because of its compulsive nature - this is one you race through in a blur...

*****
All Dogs Are Blue by Rodrigo de Souza Leão (translated by Zoë Perry and Stefan Tobler, e-copy courtesy of the publisher) is a semi-autobiographical tale of time spent inside a mental institute.  An overweight schizophrenic is locked up after trashing his parents' house, and in a confusing stream-of-consciousness monologue, we learn a little about how he's ended up there and a lot about what happens within the asylum's walls.

From the very first paragraph, the reader is shown what to expect from Souza Leão's madness:

"I swallowed a chip yesterday.  I forced myself to talk about the system that surrounds me. There was an electrode on my forehead.  I don't know if I swallowed the electrode with the chip.  The horses were galloping.  Except for the seahorse, who was swimming around in the aquarium."
(And Other Stories, 2013)

Our friend is a little bit paranoid and obsessed by the idea that he swallowed a chip (which may have developed from the cricket he swallowed when he was a child).  There's a lot more to his madness than that though.

After an initial stint in solitary confinement, he wanders around the asylum accompanied by his (imaginary) friends.  Baudelaire is a calm fellow, but (unfortunately) he's not always around.  Rimbaud, on the other hand, can usually be relied upon to provide the writer with some company, even if he is a tad more aggressive than his fellow French poet.  An interesting point here for non-French speakers - Rimbaud is pronounced in English as 'Rambo' ;)

We occasionally get to see the effect of the illness on the speaker's family, especially his mum and dad.  While they seem to want the best for their son, he certainly feels a little betrayed by their decision to have him committed:

"He says I'll get out when I'm better.  I move towards him and kiss him on the face.  Is it the kiss of Judas?  Will I betray my father in my madness?  And what if two men came now and crucified me upside down.  Could the cross bear the weight of this lard-arse?"

However, in rare, lucid, moments, he is able to put his delusions aside and recognise the truth, accepting that there was something very wrong with his life:

"I cried because I was thirty-seven years old and living like a teenager."

One frequent theme of All Dogs are Blue is religion, with several mentions of beliefs, of both Christian and less orthodox varieties.  It's seen as something that keeps the people happy, even if it messes with their heads at times:

"Religion nowadays just fucks with people.  I think they knew there were a lot of alcoholics in here.  Religion isn't just the opium of the people.  But it's what keeps the people happy.  It's a sad thing when a nation needs religion to lean on.  It's worse than a lunatic who's been cured, but who will always need the support of another person to be happy.  Better to be an incurable lunatic."

In view of later events, this is an interesting viewpoint.  You see, when he eventually leaves the institute, he decides to immerse himself in religion - but not as you might expect.  Our lunatic decides that those who think that a bit of religion, football and music make everything alright in the world are the real crazy ones...

All Dogs are Blue, as mentioned in my introduction, is a work you race through, a real one-sitting book.  It's a story which gives you a flavour of Brazil, albeit in small glimpses through the bars on the institute's windows, but it's also a slightly unsettling glimpse into the writer's own problems.  It fits in very well with the rest of And Other Stories' back catalogue - edgy and ever-so-slightly bizarre. 

A nice addition is an introduction by Deborah Levy (the publisher's success story of the last couple of years) in which she explores some of the book's central themes.  She describes Souza Leão's blue dog as a rare breed of the more common black dog of depression, but it is also used as a link back to his 'normal' life, his childhood, before things went wrong.  Sadly, the writer never got to enjoy his success - he took his life the year All Dogs are Blue was published...

July 2013 Wrap-Up

While I may have posted plenty of reviews in July, there was a lot less going on behind the scenes.  You see, I spent half the month tackling a classic of world literature, a monster I've been steeling myself to confront for a long time now (but more of that next month!).  So if the numbers aren't that great, you know why ;) 

*****
Total Books Read: 9
Year-to-Date: 71

New: 9

Rereads: 0

From the Shelves: 3
Review Copies: 5

From the Library: 1

On the Kindle: 1 (review copy)

Novels: 5
Novellas: 1

Short Stories: 2
Non-Fiction: 1

Non-English Language: 8 (2 German, 2 Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Icelandic, Italian)

In Original Language: 2 (2 German)

Aussie Author Challenge: 0 (3/3)

*****
Books reviewed in July were:

1) Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara
2) Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño
3) A Handful of Sand by Marinko Koščec
4) The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith by Thomas Keneally
5) Rituals by Cees Nooteboom
6) Diplomat, Actor, Translator, Spy by Bernard Turle
7) animalinside by László Krasznahorkai
8) Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye
9) Varamo by César Aira
10) An einem Tag wie diesem (On a Day Like This) by Peter Stamm
11) Professor Borges by Jorge Luis Borges
12) The Name of the Flower by Kuniko Mukoda
13) The Aleph and The Maker by Jorge Luis Borges

Tony's Turkey for July is: Nothing

No turkeys this month - perhaps in August.

Tony's Recommendation for July is:
Marie NDiaye's Three Strong Women

I have to say that this was a tough decision (again), not because I have a selection of great books to choose from, but rather because nothing really stood out above the rest of the pack.  In terms of writing, I would go with the Krasznahorkai piece, but it's really too short to warrant the award, and while I enjoyed the two by Borges, they weren't my favourites this time around.  I also loved Peter Stamm's novel, but I'm not sure it deserves to be up with my top picks of 2013.  In the end, then, Ndiaye's book of three related novellas was the only real choice in a month of good, but not great, books.

*****
What does August hold in store?  More of the same, I suspect.  I'm still working my way through some intriguing-sounding review copies, and I have a couple of library books to read to finish off my Spanish-language adventure.  Having said that though, it's all overshadowed by my previous review (the first of the new calendar month) - get your climbing boots on...

'Der Zauberberg' ('The Magic Mountain') by Thomas Mann (Review)

Recently, a climber in the Swiss mountains found a rather peculiar document as he was leafing through a book in the library of the hotel he was staying at - a building which, according to a receptionist he talked to, used to be a sanatorium specialising in the care of tuberculosis victims.  The document appears to be a tale of a climber's slow ascent of one of the local peaks, but it is (rather strangely) written as much in the form of a book review as of a true climber's journal.  It is possible that the climber was a little disorientated from the altitude (or sickness?), but the text is immensely confusing at times.  Perhaps it is best if the reader judges for themself...

*****
Day 1:
Today finally saw the start of my attempt to conquer The Magic Mountain, the peak the locals call Der Zauberberg.  It's one I've been wanting to tackle for a long time now, and the conditions seem perfect for the ascent.  I decided to take it easy to begin with; in fact, the first part was by train (the scenery is spectacular!).  I got chatting to a nice young man from Hamburg called Hans Castorp, who is spending a little time here visiting his cousin, and we both agree that the air up here is wonderful, guaranteed to improve your health.  I think this is going to be a great experience :)

Day 2:
The incline is still fairly gentle, which is a good thing - I haven't quite acclimatised to conditions yet.  Yesterday, I talked to a few other visitors in the village, some of whom have been here for a good while longer than I would have thought necessary.  Castorp doesn't appear to be taking to the mountain air - he was looking very pale this morning.  To be honest, I'm feeling a little tired myself - let's stop there and push on tomorrow...

Day 4:
Things are getting tougher as I push on up the mountain.  Today, I made the acquaintance of Settembrini, an Italian literary type, both scholar and philosopher - and a man who likes to speak his (and everyone's) mind.  I sense that if I fail in my endeavour and come tumbling down this mountain, it'll be his face that I see frowning down at me as I fall into the abyss below...

Castorp and Settembrini seem to have become as thick as thieves, and they are constantly having discussions on freedom and progress.  In particular, Castorp seems obsessed with the topic of time; it is said to pass quickly in the sanatorium (where the month is the smallest unit of time), yet the seven minutes waiting for a thermometer to take a reading seems like years (in fact, am I sure it's only been four days since I started off?  It seems like months.).

Settembrini is constantly warning Hans to leave the mountain as soon as possible (at times, I get the distinct impression that the warning is actually intended for me...).

Day 6:
I'm pushing on grimly again towards my planned stop half-way up the mountain; I could definitely do with a rest.  Time is flying by, yet it's also strangely dragging.  Some of Castorp's days, weeks, months pass in seconds, yet some minutes take days...

The going has become harder again as the climb moves from the physical to the metaphysical.  Castorp's obsession is now the human body, fuelled by an equally ardent obsession with the lovely Clawdia Chauchat.  He's spending his time reading and talking about bodies, looking at the aesthetic, spiritual and artistic sides, before descending into an analysis of protein and fat.  An endless biology lesson - Hans, what are you doing to me?!!!

It's high time I took a well-earned rest...

*****
Day 7:
After a relaxing interlude spent preparing for the ordeal ahead, we resume our climb.  Almost a year (a year?) has passed since setting off, yet our return to the lowlands remains a distant promise (do I mean mine or Castorp's?  I'm not really sure anymore...).

Settembrini!  Settembrini!  He's back to torment me, and this time he's brought a friend - Herr Naphta, a sick Jesuit with a love of corrupting philosophy and politics...  If only I could throw the two of them off the mountain, the climb would become much more enjoyable (alas, I fear the thin air is having an effect on me...)

Day 8:
Joachim, Castorp's cousin, has descended the mountain leaving Hans (like me) all alone.  Unlike me, Castorp is fine on his own up here - I'm struggling to keep up...

Day 10:
I'm lost, we're lost - we're all eternally and frighteningly lost...

There have been more metaphysical, metaphorical wanderings through the tortured, twisting discussions of the elegant Settembrini and the scowling Jesuit Naphta, and I'm starting to lose my grip on sanity and ice pick alike.  Why?  Why must they do this to me?  Is it not enough that I'm barely two-thirds of the way up this accursed mountain?  Must I be tormented by soulless imbeciles blathering on about revolution, nature and death?

Of course, there's also the literal, open-air wandering high in the mountains as Castorp and I cast caution to the (biting) wind and explore the local slopes on skis.  And we're lost.  The darkness draws ever closer, the gale is tearing at us like a thousand knives - and the snow continues to fall, unceasing, like fresh earth on a waiting grave...

Oh, and it's *bloody* cold...

Day 13:
What a few days...  A new companion on our ascent, Mynheer Peeperkorn, has certainly livened things up (and even managed to subdue the quarrelling pedagogues).  What a man!  What a character!  What a party!  Wine, Dutch gin and lots of fun...  Time to rest - my head is throbbing a little...

Day 14:
Peeperkorn gone, Clawdia departed - so near to the top and time is dragging (again).  Even Castorp's interminable patience appears to be waning.  Surely I can't fail so close to the summit?

Day 15:
I'm here!  I've made it to the summit!  I'm standing at the top, looking down upon the flatlands below.  Time seems to be standing still - while the ascent seems to have taken a very long time, in some respects it feels as if I only just set off to conquer the peak.  Time really is relative...

What next?  It would be a shame to just start back down now that I've made it all the way up here.  I might just check in at the 'Berghof' for a while (room 34 seems to be vacant).  Not for long, three weeks sounds good...

*****
Regrettably, this is all that remains of the text.  We hope that more light will one day be shone on what could be a remarkable literary find.

Then again, it may all just be a dream...

'The Aleph' and 'The Maker' by Jorge Luis Borges (Review)

After the success of Fictions, my first exposure to the world of Jorge Luis Borges, I was always going to try more from the Argentine master of the short story.  Luckily, my ever-wonderful library came up with the goods, in the form of a Penguin Classics edition with two collections included.  Time to dive back into the world of the meta-fictional and meta-physical...

*****
The Aleph, including the prose fictions from The Maker (translated by Andrew Hurley) has another two sets of early works from Borges.  The first is a series of short stories, reminiscent of the collection The Garden of Forking Paths, while the second is much shorter, full of pieces which are almost examples of flash fiction at times.  The Aleph, though, is the collection most similar in form to what I read a while back, and this similarity applies to the themes too.

The lead-off story, 'The Immortal', is a perfect example of this.  It's an intriguing tale, starting with that old Borgesian staple, an arcane document, one whose authenticity can be doubted, and it ends up as an improbable tale.  A soldier searches for immortality in a story which turns the idea of eternal life on its head:

"Among the corollaries to the doctrine that there is no thing that is not counterbalanced by another, there is one that has little theoretical importance but that caused us, at the beginning or end of the tenth century, to scatter over the face of the earth.  It may be summarized in these words: There is a river whose waters give immortality; somewhere there must be another river whose waters take it away."
p.15, 'The Immortal' (Penguin Classics, 2000)

In a lovely twist, the characters here are searching for water which will take away the curse of immortality.  Of course, we are once again faced with the dilemma of how much (and who) to believe in Borges' elaborate stories within stories.  Perhaps the document is just a hoax...

Many of the stories in The Aleph take place in the writer's native Argentina, and there are many tales of macho men in the wild west (or south!).  'The Dead Man'  is a neat little piece where a cocky gaucho thinks he can take down the big boss, little knowing that he is just a pawn in a bigger game.  However 'A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz' is a much subtler story, one which ends up being entangled in real-life Argentine history.  While the significance of the ending of this story (and many others) would sail right over the head of the average Anglophone reader, Hurley's excellent notes help to explain exactly what is going on.

Borges is great at writing short stories with twists, and there are some very tricky endings here.  In 'The Dead Man', the narrator discovers that a friend he remembers seems to have lived parallel, simultaneous lives, with different people remembering him in very different ways.  In 'Emma Zunz', we have a well-constructed story of a woman taking revenge for her father's demise.  Her actions leading up to the end of the story seem incomprehensible, but on the final page we understand why she has done what she did.

Of course, it wouldn't be Borges without a labyrinth or two, and there are plenty to be found in this collection.  'Ibn Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in his Labyrinth' is a story which doesn't keep the reader waiting for the content of the piece; however, titles (and labyrinths) can be most deceiving.  Another story with a maze is 'The House of Asterion', a brief, three-page tale of a 'deity' - one which seems a little bland until the final, fascinating twist ;)

*****
The Maker is very different to The Aleph.  It's a lot shorter and consists of several brief pieces; a nice addition, but not really a book in its own right.  The stories in this section, may not be quite as short as haikus, but they have a similar, thought-provoking effect.

Having also read Professor Borges recently (a translation of a series of lectures Borges gave on English literature), there were many familiar names and themes mentioned in The Maker.  The writer appears to have an obsession with the promise King Harold gave to Harald Hardrada in 1066 of 'six feet of English soil', and he's equally preoccupied with Don Quixote, Shakespeare and Anglo-Saxon poetry.  One piece from The Maker combines a couple of his interests nicely - 'Ragnarök' is a story of the end of the gods (and mentions Samuel Taylor Coleridge, another of Borges' literary obsessions...).

I enjoyed this collection a lot, and I only wish I'd had more time to peruse it at my leisure (unfortunately, I managed my time badly and had to hurry through my library copy).  It's a book to dip into and return to when you have an unhurried moment to devote to it - another time, perhaps ;)

'The Name of the Flower' by Kuniko Mukoda (Review)

The July theme for the Japanese Literature Challenge 7 is short stories, so it was off to the shelves to see if I had anything to fit this criterion.  As I rummaged through my ever-expanding J-Lit section, I did manage to find a couple of unread anthologies, but they were a little long (and after recently finishing a 1000-page German-language classic, I was in the mood for something a touch lighter...).  Finally, I stumbled across the perfect choice, the book you see displayed on the left of the page.  What makes my selection all the more apt is that I received it as a gift from Bellezza herself for my efforts during January in Japan:)

*****
Kuniko Mukoda was a television screen-writer, essayist and short-story writer, and The Name of the Flower (translated by Tomone Matsumoto, published by Stone Bridge Press) is a collection containing thirteen assorted tales from various original works.  It's a short book, running to just 150 pages, and it makes for fairly easy reading.  However, it's also well written, with keen observations on Japanese society in every piece.

The stories all focus on married life, from the viewpoint of both husband and wife.  Infidelity (traditionally tolerated in Japan, especially for husbands) is the major theme here, and most of the stories begin with a snap-shot of a domestic scene which slowly expands to include the shadow of betrayal lurking in the corner.  In a society where marriages were largely arranged (certainly at the time the stories were written), marital bliss seems hard to come by; in fact, marital indifference seems to be regarded as a relative success round these parts...

Many of Mukoda's female protagonists are betrayed by their husbands.  In the title story, 'The Name of the Flower', a wife realises that her husband has been using her, allowing her to help him become more cultivated so that he can attract other women.  In another story, 'I Doubt It', a man plays the dutiful mourner at his father's funeral:

"Now he was chief mourner.  Perhaps it was wrong to bask in this self-satisfied respectability, having just lost a father, but that was how he felt.  The general-affairs section of his company came out in force and arranged the whole program - the ceremony at the funeral altar, the wake, and the ritual farewell to the deceased.  It all reflected Shiozawa's position.  Those relatives he was not ashamed of came, and his friends paid their condolence visits.  He felt a twinge of guilt as he displayed the appropriate grief like an actor, but he told himself not to be concerned because every important occasion in life called for this kind of performance."
p.33, 'I Doubt It' (Stone Bridge Press, 2002)

However, his honest facade hides a multitude of secrets, involving extra-marital affairs and blackmail...

Before anyone gets too angry at Japanese men though, it must be said that the women are even worse.  The central character of 'The Otter' is an old man recovering from a stroke, and while his wife seems cheerful and supportive, she is actually scheming to sell the house from under him.  In 'The Window', a man remembers his mother's affairs, humiliated by the way his father was constantly cuckolded.  Now he believes that her genes have resurfaced in his own daughter, and he's afraid of the consequences.

Quite apart from the constant affairs, there are other consequences of these unhappy marriages, stories of two strangers living together.  In 'The Fake Egg', a woman who can't get pregnant wonders why she's even with her husband, while the protagonist in 'Ears', a man left alone at home on a rare sick day, attempts to resist the temptation to search the house for dirty laundry of a rather personal nature.  Trust is in short supply in The Name of the Flower, and most of the relationships appear to be those strictly of convenience.

The book says a lot about personal relationships, but Mukoda also opens a wider window into Japanese society, where conventions are markedly different to those of the west.  There is a strict adherence to roles within the work hierarchy, something the reader sees repeatedly in the pieces here.  Examples include the traditional visits by work colleagues to the funeral in 'I Doubt It' and the rather unorthodox (to western eyes) use of a work subordinate as a chauffeur (and lackey!) in 'Triangular Chop'.

I lived in Japan for three years (many, many moons ago...), and I loved the little touches which reminded me of my time there.  Characters eat noodles, fish and rice for breakfast, newspaper agents and money collectors stroll into houses and shout out as if they're part of the family; salarymen work (and drink) so much that they never see their house in daylight (as is the case in 'The Window') - oh, and, of course, there's the casual sexism:

"At last Makiko had heard what she was waiting for.  The real reason Makiko had decided to marry Tatsuo was her age - she was twenty-four." (p.102, 'Triangular Chop')

Yep, women, like Christmas cakes (as the story goes), are no good after the twenty-fifth... At this point, my female readers may like to take a deep breath and recall that these stories were written in the early 80s.  I'm sure things have changed slightly since then...

There's nothing too deep here, but The Name of the Flower is full of great sketches exploring Japanese marriage and offering a fascinating insight into Japanese society.  Tomone Matsumoto provides an excellent, smooth translation too, something that is not as common as I'd like in J-Lit.  Anyone wanting to explore the domestic side of Japanese life will enjoy this collection a lot - arigato Bellezza :)