Sturdy bench
A joy to use
Made of hope in the wake of tragedy*
Eating lunch outside
in the warm sun
I share the bench with maple leaves
Found under a leaf on the bench:
A brief, leaf-shaped ghost
of last night’s rain
--Julian
*the bench was bought from Ishinomaki in Fukushima after the 2011 earthquake
(Yuya Tamai, Wikimedia Commons)
It was the 3/11 Tohoku earthquake that opened my eyes to the wonder of the supermarket. Whatever we need in the way of sustenance is reliably there, fresh, with choice, and immediately available in return for money.
But life is fragile, a delicate balance. We are one big earthquake away from temporarily losing this essential resource. After 3/11, energy was rationed across the country, the manufacture and delivery of goods to stores was sporadic, and people grabbed what they worried they needed to hoard. The supermarket shelves emptied, item by item. I went from store to store and stood in long lines to buy necessities. I waited outside the local conbini (convenience store) for the promised delivery of bread so I could get my one loaf. Until, in the days weeks and months that followed, the balance of supply and demand was gradually restored.
When I have this in mind, I revel in the absence of worry, and the ease with which we can feed ourselves, and I am truly grateful. Complex capitalist infrastructure has made the feeding of ourselves free of uncertainty. With money, we need never be hungry.
Our hunter-gatherer forbearers would have killed for what we take for granted today.
--Julian
The last maple leaves--like the old year--have already shriveled and blown away. This post, begun in early December, got lost in the year-end bustle. It starts with a bench bought from the Tohoku coastal town of Ishinomaki after the March 2011 tsunami.
Sturdy bench
A joy to use
Made of hope in the wake of tragedy
Eating lunch outside
in the warm sun
I share the bench with maple leaves
Found under a leaf on the bench:
A brief, leaf-shaped ghost
of last night’s rain
--Julian
As everywhere in Japan, Shinto shrines dot the countryside. From the currently most prosperous in the area, 37 heavy mikoshi portable shrines were borne through the night towards the beach where they arrived at first light one after the other in elated festival spirits. Hundreds of local people gathered on the sand to witness this climax. Dozens of stalls sold food and drink. The shrines were paraded through the crowds, weaving and dipping to the rhythm of beating metal and the shouted chanting of the bearers, before lining up to be blessed by the senior Shinto priest.
After the mikoshi converge, they’re usually taken into the sea in a purification ritual, with the teams of men and women porters daring each other deeper, but a typhoon was approaching and the sea was deemed too dangerous. But one of the first mikoshi to arrive wasn’t to be cheated of the experience, and took an unofficial detour into the waves.
This year’s festival was dedicated to the victims of the March 11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.
--Julian
Kim Newman: Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D'Urbervilles (Professor Moriarty Novels)
This purports to be the memoirs of Sebastian "Basher" Moran, a protege of Moriarty, the nemesis of Sherlock Holmes. Through Basher's debauched and violent eyes we get a different view of several of the best known cases of the famous consulting detective, as well as of that detective's unfortunate accident at the Reichenbach Falls. The tales Basher spins are a delight to read. Anyone who enjoys a visit to the fantastic Victorian underworld should give them a whirl.
Paul Farley & Michael Symmons Roberts: Edgelands: Journey into England's True Wilderness
There are many books about the splendor of wild places, and many about the splendid places that are the world's great cities. Edgelands is the first book I've encountered that takes as its subject those interstitial zones where city gives way to country, where housing estate gives way to vacant lots, where a road ensures that, say, a median strip is only accessible to the most intrepid. That two poets with a wry sense of humor took on this job ensures that reading about office parks, landfill, big box malls out on the highway, and so on is always amusing, and took me back to childhood when the feral lot (soon to be covered with a condominium) near my house was filled with possibility.
Annie Ernaux: A Frozen Woman
Autofiction, I believe the French call the sort of memoir that employs the exquisite prose of the best fiction and also a bit of the fiction of the best fiction. This book is a little like a reduced version of Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend in that it is an account of growing up, of jumping classes from a humble beginning to something "better," and doing all of it while being female with all that that implies in the societies in which we live. The book ends on a bleak note, with the woman at its center entirely frozen, but, as one suspects that this woman goes on to become the writer Annie Ernaux, one is eager to read more from this austerely brilliant writer.
Annie Ernaux: Positions
A spare, austere memoir of the author's father, a man who rises from the fields to become the proprietor of a small country cafe-grocery by his daughter who attains a higher class status and the alienation that comes with that.
Touching.
William Shakespeare: Julius Caesar (Folger Shakespeare Library)
I read a play or some sonnets every year, and when I do, I always wonder why I don't read more Shakespeare more often.
Taiyo Fujii: Gene Mapper
This is an entirely satisfying science fiction novel. The science being fictionalized is genetic modification, and it is refreshingly unorthodox in that it does not see genetic modification as something about which we should shriek and panic, and ends on an optimistic note. The technologies imagined for the future in which the action takes place are interesting, the information dumps never tedious, and the protagonist is believable, while some of his sidekicks are amusingly colorful if slightly unbelievable. Maybe I'll go order something else by Fujii.
Natsuo Kirino: Grotesque
This book is aptly titled: it's a book about grotesque people and how they got to be that way. It's a mix of philosophy (nihilist) horror (grotesquerie, see above), and social criticism (it's society that turns people into monsters). The book covers a lot of ground—maybe too much. We hear about Aum Shinrikyo, the hardship of life in rural China, eating disorders, elite girls' schools, and so on. That so many of the characters are, one way or another, diarists, and that we read their diaries seems a bit too easy of a way for Kirino to dump the information we need on us, but the voices she gives these chroniclers are arresting, and the characters' various accounts conflict in interesting ways. I suppose I may read more Kirino, but Grotesque is definitely the sort of book that leaves you feeling you need to read something completely different before returning to her world.
James K Elmborg: A Pageant of Its Time : Edward Dorn's Slinger and the Sixties(Hardback) - 1998 Edition
James K. Elmborg's monograph on Edward Dorn's "Gunslinger" is well-written and sheds useful light on the poem. His reading is based on the idea that in "Gunslinger" Dorn was very much responding to the social and political times in which its four books of "Gunslinger" were written: roughly 1968-1972. He's certainly not wrong that "Slinger" is a product of its times, but—and I think Elmborg would agree with me—there are certainly other ways to read the poem as well. Poetry tends not to be either/or, but also/and.
Jane Thynne: A War of Flowers
Jane Thynne's series of novels about an actress turned spy continues with another perceptive look at life in the Third Reich. As has been the case with previous entries in the series this novel is particularly perceptive because she focuses on women, in this case, the enigmatic Eva Braun.
These novels are proof that historical novels can be done without laying down great swathes of fustian.
Marilynne Robinson: Housekeeping
This story of two sisters growing up in backwoods Idaho begins with the same grave, wise cadencies of Gilead, wistful and sometimes wry, then gradually slides into mystical and poetic descriptions beyond my level of comprehension and appreciation, riffing on life, death, family, the bible… by way of water and the moon. A telling both conventional and transgressive, with much to be appreciated. (***)
Michael Chabon: The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh
I’m not sure all the pieces quite jigsaw into place, but this is a rich, pleasurable read (about being young, about living in a city, about friendship) with light and darkness, and much satisfyingly acute observation. It’s the kind of book that makes you grateful someone took the trouble to craft it. Thank you Michael Chabon. (****)
Jennifer Egan: Manhattan Beach
A story about a New York family during the Depression and World War II. I felt a little bogged down in the middle stretches, but all that scene-setting pays off in the final third, and the penultimate sequence at sea is incredibly moving. The story also illustrates the vast distance we've traveled in overcoming racism and sexism in just one lifetime. (****)
Lafcadio Hearn: Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation
A century ago, as it remade itself into a modern power, Lafcadio Hearn sought to explain his adopted home Japan in terms that educated Westerners might understand, drawing copious parallels with ancient Greece, and describing its religion on its own terms rather than through a Christian lens. He saw Japan as akin to a bonsai tree: centuries of social control had created an extraordinary charmed fairyland of exquisite beauty, fast disappearing as industrialization took an ax to its roots of ancestor worship and community ties. The book is heavy on history, but the analysis is penetrating. Hearn’s thesis can be summarized by the quote he uses to open the book: “Perhaps all very marked national characters can be traced back to a time of rigid and pervading discipline.” (***)
Viet Thanh Nguyen: The Sympathizer
The tragedy of Vietnam’s colonial past culminating in the horror of the war and its deathly aftermath; the humiliation and marginalization, historic and ongoing, experienced by Asians in the United States; all are grist for this tart and uncomfortable novel. It works its way to being as realistic and surreal as Apocolypse Now, and has similar ambition. More educational and salutary (thanks for that) than enjoyable. (**)
Roz Chast: Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?
Roz Chast’s (autobio)graphic novel of the ambivalent daughter and her ageing parents’ last years is hilarious, insightful and moving. Pure joy to read. (*****)
Andrew Sean Greer: Less
A failing writer is turning 50, has parted from his partner, and decides on a whim to travel around the world from one dubious author gig to another. It’s rare (Elizabeth Strout; Ian McEwan…) to feel that I am in good hands: that this writer will steer me true, and Greer joins the list. It’s another book to thank the Pulitzer for steering me toward. Comic and profound. (****)
Louis Sachar: Holes
An excellent yarn for kids and adults, simple yet complex, short and expansive, fantastic and real, with memorable characters and situations, and a story you can’t predict. It’s serious and funny, and, above all, fun. I’d say it only puts a foot wrong once, at the end of Chapter 18. (*****)
Tim Kreider: I Wrote This Book Because I Love You
Tim Kreider’s latest book of essays is as fun to read as his last “We Learn Nothing.” He riffs on relationships, sex, teaching, religion, politics, keeping a pet, summer vacation and more. Kreider is intelligent, extremely gifted as a writer, and is honest enough to be very funny. We are sometimes asked who living or dead we’d invite to a dinner party, and Kreider would be on my list. (No drawings in this volume, so I’m going to have to order one of his earlier books of cartoons to get my Kreider cartoon fix.) Color me grateful to have a book like this to read. (*****)
Elizabeth Strout: The Burgess Boys (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition)
Elizabeth Strout's latest novel is the story of three siblings from rural Maine. An accident from their childhood continues to influence their adult lives, especially in times of personal turmoil. The brilliance of The Burgess Boys is how the psychological transparency of each sibling, so precisely rendered by Strout, provides adequate tension for a climactic finish. Not nearly her best work, however. For that see Olive Kitteridge. (***)
Paul Bowles: Collected Stories, 1939-1976
Thanks, David Cozy, for recommending this. These refreshing, tension-filled stories, took me to worlds I have never encountered before, North Africa and The Sahara Desert, a variety of places and communities... Bowles writing is fresh, educating, and unpredictable. Great writing from and about the Muslim world and beyond. My favorite in the collection was "How Many Midnights?" How about you, reader? (*****)
Lorrie Moore: 100 Years of The Best American Short Stories (The Best American Series ®)
This is a treasure trove of short stories, each one a gem. The short stories in this volume progress from the year 1915 to 2015. Read chronologically, I gained notions on how short stories writers changed and improved over the years. Interspersed with autobiographical notes on each author, as well as commentary from the editors on the eras in which they wrote, the stories feel bound to a good home in this collection. A heavy book, but I could not put it down. My personal favorites were Fitzgerald's "Babylon Revisited," John Updike's "Pigeon Feathers," Joyce Carol Oates' "By the River," Charles Baxter's "Harmony of the World," Jamaica Kincaid's " Luella," Akhil Sharma's "If You Sing Like That for Me," and Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Third and Final Continent." I will go back to these stories again in the future. Such beautiful writing. Such a magical book. (*****)
Cesare Pavese (author): The Beautiful Summer (Penguin European Writers)
An intimate, buoyant story of one summer for a seventeen year-old woman attempting to fit-in with some older experienced Bohemian artists. Pavese captures her lack of confidence perfectly as she falls in love with a handsome painter and encounters her co-horts teasing and bullying. A small, fun book to read, and for the most part, the reader feels the exuberance of youth in the 1930's, in an Italian city, and the possibilities and boredom that accompanies a Bohemian lifestyle there within. (****)
Sebastian Barry: A Long Long Way
Sebastian Barry takes you by the hand and leads you into the trenches of Belgium during WW1. This is one Irishman's story of the horrors of war. Brutal, and extremely well written, A Long Long Way is unflinching in detailing man's inhumanity and cruelty toward each other. (****)
