I feel like I've been globe-trotting lately. Literarily, I've been to Japan, India and Southeast Asia, Ireland, Spain, the Dominican Republic and Paterson, New Jersey. Those trips left me energized, quite unlike an actual trip to Arizona, from which I'm still recovering. Oh well, it was nice to be warm while reading.
Last I posted, I was diving into Kawabata's SNOW COUNTRY. I surfaced from that dive a bit frostbitten. OK, so I'm a warm-weather woman. Here's my bald impression: Kawabata's writing style reminds me of those long-ago college parties where you get that out-of-body, jittery sensation after drinking the punch. I don't know, it felt very Felliniesque, like circus jugglers could drift into the dining room at any moment and the characters wouldn't bat an eye. Or am I thinking of Bergman? In any case, the protagonist is steeped in what I imagine is a particularly Japanese ennui, living an empty life and pursuing his own selfish interests in his association with the country geisha, who in turn is living her own version of hell and deteriorating precipitously. Into the mix drift in and out the circus jugglers in the character of Yoko, the beautiful (so, of course, doomed) younger geisha. So what is my problem? Sounds like a recipe for a great story. It is a great story, but I found some of the dialogue weird, disjointed. It seems like one character will say something, and the other will respond with a declarative statement having no bearing on what the first guy said. I'm sure this is purposeful, the characters are clearly unable to make a meaningful human connection, but I found it hard to read as prose. So I'm going to read it again.
Junot Diaz's short story "Wildwood", published in The New Yorker last June, was a treat that I found easier to relate to, though I'm not Dominican, nor have I ever lived in Paterson, NJ, nor had I ever really run away from home as a teenager. I insisted that my mother read it, and when she was done she asked why I found the story so compelling. I don't know, something about this resonates with me: "If you didn't grow up like I did then you don't know and if you don't know it's probably better you don't judge. You don't know the hold our mothers have on us, even the ones that are never around - especially the ones that are never around. What it's like to be the perfect Dominican daughter, which is just a nice way of saying a perfect Dominican slave. You don't know what it's like to grow up with a mother who never said anything that wasn't negative, who was always suspicious, always tearing you down and splitting your dreams straight down the seams." Woops! That's not the part that resonates, here's the part that resonates: "Just know that I would die for you," she told me the last time we talked. And before I could say anything she hung up.
OLD FILTH, by Jane Gardam, is my newest favorite book. I'm a complete sucker for gorgeous writing. This book is a rose, brilliant as it unfolds petal by petal, so enthralling that when the inevitable thorn draws blood all the reader can do is suck on it and admire the beauty of such exquisite pain. I also adore learning something, and while I was somewhat familiar with the British Raj, the term "Raj orphans" was new for me, and knowing a little about those children of the Empire satisfies a curiosity about things not of my time nor of my world. It's fascinating history brought 'round to the contemporary with an ageless theme - children will grow up, and abandonment will dictate a fractious outcome, even as the casual observer (and we all observe the lives of others casually) sees only a seamless facade. Beautifully wrought by a talented author.
My literary travels include Ireland via Anne Enright's THE GATHERING, a dark, brooding, turbulent tale, and Spain courtesy of Tariq Ali's SHADOWS OF THE POMEGRANATE TREE, another fascinating historical novel about the reconquest of Muslim Spain. The books couldn't be more different, and both are well worth reading. Wish I could expound forever, but I'm feeling a bit travel weary. Time to go home.
Terri
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