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
Powell, Dilys: The Villa Ariadne
This is a memoir that centers on a house rather than on a person. From that house spin of tales of archeology, war, and travel. Although it purports to be a unified book, it is fairly obviously separately written pieces cobbled together. We have, for example, the personal reminiscences of the author, Dilys Powell's involvement with the Villa Ariadne on Crete, a center of archeological research established by Arthur Evans; the stories of some of the people involved with the villa, most notably the archaeologist and war hero John Pendlebury, assassinated by the Nazis during their occupation of Crete; and a bit about Powell's wanderings around Crete in the post-war years and her reunions with some of the people involved with Pendlebury and other British during the war years. I found myself wishing that Powell were a little less good-natured. She mentions but shies away from discussing, much less taking a side on, the controversies over Evans's reconstructions at Knossos or the controversies to do with the decipherment of Linear B by Michael Ventris. She even finds it difficult to say a bad word about the German occupiers of Crete, the only exception being the butcher of Crete, General Müller. It was his replacement, the apparently less brutal General Kreipe who was kidnapped by Paddy Leigh Fermor and his colleagues, and it is one of the book's disappointments that, though he is mentioned and discussed, Fermor does not make a cameo appearance in The Villa Ariadne.
Holdstock, Robert: Mythago Wood (The Mythago Cycle, 1)
I don’t read much fantasy, mostly because too much of it is swords-and-lords Tolkien knock-offs. This one’s different and better. The author’s deep knowledge of the myths and legends that England has given us, it’s deep psychic history, make it as rich as the wood where much of the action transpires. I found the early pages, in which a young Englishman, just back from his service in the Second World War, feels his way into the strangeness that has engulfed the family home the most compelling part of the book. Things lag a bit when the quest (books in this genre always have a quest) gets underway.
Harris, John: No Voice from the Hall: Early Memories of a Country House Snooper
Following on from Denton Welch’s wandering around England, this is a memoir by an architectural historian who wandered with purpose, from hall to manor house to stables, most of which, in the wake of having been requisitioned during World War ll and owned by families who could no longer afford to keep them, had become picturesque ruins, often filled with rubble composed of destroyed furniture, pictures, ornaments, books and other evocative bric-a-brac. Harris writes about this well; he is at once nostalgic, angry, funny, and hopeful.
Moorcock, Michael: The Laughter of Carthage: The Second Volume of the Colonel Pyat Quartet (2)
The Laughter of Carthage is the second volume of a four-volume series of historical novels. The conceit is that it's not a novel, but that Michael Moorcock has edited a series of memoirs written by an aging London shopkeeper about his years as sort of a malevolent Zelig present but peripheral at all sorts of key historical moments. I say "malevolent" because he's a racist antisemite and entirely deluded about what he thinks of as his genius. An unreliable narrator to say the least. What makes the novel fascinating is that Moorcock, though he shares none of his protagonist’s more outrageous notions, and would surely condemn all of them, is also a bit in love with the monster he has created. This tension keeps the novel from being simply another unreliable narrator being put through his paces.
Weinberger, Eliot: Angels & Saints
Eliot Weinberger looks at things Christians have believed and in some cases continue to believe: their myths and legends of saints and angels.. He makes no explicit argument for, against, or even about angels and saints. Rather employing his usual montage he allows the poignant, the ridiculous, the horrific, and the hilarious to bounce off each other in a way that gives us a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Weinberger, Eliot: An Elemental Thing (New Directions Paperbook)
Eliot Weinberger writes a lot, though not for American publications, about politics. Tired of that ephemera, he wanted to write about more elemental things. Thus: An Elemental Thing. The entire collection is part of his ongoing essay series of that title, bits of which we’ve seen elsewhere. He writes about winter, and rhinoceroses, Chinese mythology , stars, and many other things. His method is montage: the essays are made of fragments that interact with each other at the same time that each essay is a fragment that interacts with the other essays that form the never to be finished (I guess) elemental thing. As I said not too long ago, Weinberger is our finest essayist.
Pounds, Wayne: 寒山の新詩集: No Mountain: Improvisations from Han-Shan’s New Home in Ueno Park Tokyo
“It is the image of Hanshan as a Beat poet that has primarily appealed to me,” writes Wayne Pounds in the introduction to this collection inspired by Hanshan, aka No Mountain, various translations of his work, and also the author’s neighborhood park, Ueno Koen, and especially a small island in Shinobazu Pond, Shotenjima. Pound captures, both when writing in his own voice, but also when he writes in No Mountain’s voice, or in the voice of the “broken figure of a Koshin” that he finds on the island for that matter, the lightness of the crazy wisdom that No Mountain is known for.
“There never was a road to No Mountain / don’t they know it’s a place in the heart.”
Hand, Elizabeth: Generation Loss: a novel
Someone I respect recommended the fourth novel in a series Elizabeth Hand is writing about the burned-out ex-punk photographer, Cass Neary. Worth checking out, I thought, so I looked at some reviews of the first in the series. It was roundly criticized because the protagonist is not "likable" and because the novel has (in these readers' judgment) less action than atmosphere. Both of these criticisms, of course, made me want to read the book. I can't imagine why it should matter whether characters are likable (Cass is not, at least in this first outing) so long as they are interesting, and I'm all about atmosphere. The novel did not disappoint. The portrait of Cass is a well-crafted vision of a very damaged person, the atmosphere, dark and gothic Northern Maine, is compelling. Damaged punk investigating what went down around a hippie commune in the far North meshes perfectly with the gray, the cold, the fog.
Denton Welch: In Youth Is Pleasure & I Left My Grandfather's House
William Burroughs is dead right when, in the introduction, he writes that Denton Welch has nothing to do with Ronald Firbank, with whom he’s often been grouped, but a real kinship with Jane Bowles. Reading In Youth is Pleasure, a fictionalized account of Welch’s adolescence, and From my Grandfather’s House, a memoir of a walking trip in England composed long after the walk, one sees a similar originality of perception (quirky, it might be crudely described) and prose style. Their prose is similar to each other’s in that they each use language in ways that seem dissimilar to all other writers: absolutely fresh. For me the memoir of his walk, circa age 18, was more pleasurable than In Youth is Pleasure, but both made me want to read more Denton Welch.
David Mitchell: Utopia Avenue
This novel is a glorious paean to creativity and a heyday of popular music. David Mitchell stitches his fictional band Utopia Avenue into real events and personalities of the day, and for me some of the funnest parts are the imagined hangings out with 60s luminaries like Francis Bacon, Brian Jones, Frank Zappa, and Jerry Garcia. As usual, Mitchell sets himself challenges—one is creating music through prose—and as usual he aces them. He also – sigh – inserts his multi-book ongoing woo-woo saga into this story, but a little claptrap is a small price to pay for ace storytelling and writing as smooth as silk. (*****)
Craig Brown: One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time
Yeah, yeah, yeah! In 2021, the Beatles' music holds its own, but their times have receded into history. Even those who lived through the 1960s as I did have probably forgotten just how world-changing, all-consuming and hysterical was the whirlwind that was Beatlemania, when four cheeky Liverpool lads seduced a nation and the world with their wit and irreverence, injecting fresh joy into popular music, and dealing a body blow to Britain’s class system in the process. The Beatles have been written about so much, could there be anything more to say? Rather than one more plod along the familiar timeline, here we have the tale through a kaleidoscope of facets—150 of them; telling detail, eccentric focus and journalistic flair combine to bring the story and times to vivid life again. Bravo! (*****)
Louis-Ferdinand Celine: Journey to the End of the Night
Disorganized, repetitive, shot through with a careless, toxic misogyny that presumably characterized the time of writing (1930s), this is one man’s jaundiced journey through the depths of human folly, cruelty and degradation. Yet the leisurely bathe in the cesspool of humanity is bejeweled with sparks of insight, empathy, lyricism, and mysticism. Here is shit and wisdom: angry, cynical, profound, and highly readable in a crackling translation. An uncomfortable read, but I'm very glad I did it. It was quite a ride! (***)
Sebastian Barry: The Temporary Gentleman
An engaging tale of an Irishman in Africa with the British army, and a marriage that becomes an alcohol-soaked nightmare. The protagonist is Jack McNulty, brother-in-law of Roseanne in Barry’s "The Secret Scripture". That book was a single; this is an album track. (***)
Ali Smith: Autumn
A fragmented fragment of a book rooted in angst-ridden Brexit Britain. It begins with (to me) too many tedious rants on bureaucracy (in the form of righteous conversations with obdurate officials). But it’s also a pleasant read, with passages about nature, Shakespeare, Dickens (his best and worst of times) and clever puns galore. Finally, it’s about a charming relationship between a precocious girl and a surrogate parent, and there’s another between a brother and sister, and it ends with a rose-tinted view of the 60s, and a glorious riff on the forgotten life of a (real-life!) 60s artist. (***)
Alan Hollinghurst: The Folding Star
This book took me back to my youth when I thought about sex constantly, and it was painfully frustrating because you could never get enough, and you couldn’t have the people you desired, and when you did get it, it was often unsatisfying because what you and your partner wanted to do or wanted from it were out of synch. Hollinghurst captures all that with clear-eyed and compassionate veracity, inside a story of a young Englishman’s stay in a Belgian town. It’s beautifully written, with intelligence, insight, and well-captured detail. These assets more than compensate for a few longueurs, and a less-than-satisfactory story arc. (****)
Alice Munro: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
Nine snappy short stories about contemporary North American life and emotions, written with great insight into the human condition. Not a dull word. A master at work. (****)
Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenburg, Tom Pyszczynski: The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life
This might be the most important book I’ve ever read, both as history and self-help. Humans are going to die and, alone among creatures, know it. This terrifying knowledge is kept unconscious through everyday distraction, immortality beliefs and projects, and by bolstering our culturally-derived sense of importance. Unfortunately, we also target cultural and religious outsiders as part of the defense against our unthinkable demise. This has been the story of the human race. The authors use experimental evidence to refine Ernest Becker’s insights into the human denial of death. There is no escape, but I hope I can think on this evidence to better understand my own terror of the inevitable, and its inevitable grip upon my mind. (Oh, and this book is written in a breezy pop-culture style for easy digestion.) (*****)
Ann Patchett: Commonwealth
A series of almost short stories gradually circle and coalesce into a novel about an extended family in California and Virginia, with characters moving from their prime to middle and old age. It’s about nothing more than the vagaries of life, finely and artfully observed. Compelling and satisfying. (****)
Scanlan, Kathryn: The Dominant Animal: Stories
This is a book of super-short fiction. Of the 40 or so stories, most are less than two pages. Nothing in the writing here is beautiful or kind, but somehow I whizzed thought it all. Some stories leave out points that would have made them more accessible. What the heck happened? A lot of the stories end on a sudden whim of observation and leave one wanting to read more. Most of the stories focus on a negative experience with a male, with strange detail, and after finishing a story, I often wanted to take a hot shower to get clean. I did enjoy "Design for a Carpet" and "Mother's Teeth." (**)
Woodrell, Daniel: Woe to Live On: A Novel
Confederate soldiers on a journey to fight Yankees in Missouri and Kansas. Woodrell's voice in this novel is similar to Cormac McCarthy's. Lots of brutal killing and torture and the story seems to float along on southern dialog and an internal monologue of fear by the speaker. There are moments of occasional humanity, but for the most part the plot is a thin gruel of spilt blood, wandering, waiting, and revenge. (***)
Munro, Alice: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
There are three standout stories in this very fine collection by Alice Munro. She has a real knack for creating a variety of believable characters. The title story was my favorite: two teenagers pull a sour trick resulting in a surprising ending. In the story "Queenie" we see a young woman scrambling to make her way in the world, using a bad marriage as a way to make some progress. The final story, "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" veers off into occasional long-winded reflection, as one man struggles with the loss of his wife to Alzheimer's. Munro is a master story teller. (*****)
Waters, Sarah: Fingersmith
Sarah Waters: Fingersmith
Such a good story: the get rich scheme of a handsome scoundrel twists and turns into... Two women in the story are quite duped into role playing. A lot of playful sex is talked about, but not much happens in the way of happiness or fulfillment. As always, Waters is right on target with the voices and the atmosphere in this London area thriller. (*****)
Barry, Sebastian: The Temporary Gentleman: A Novel
What a sad story. This novel takes place on the Gold Coast in Africa, where an Irish soldier/engineer recounts his life growing up near Galway and Sligo. Back and forth we go between Ireland and Africa. Like an unseen shadow, in Ireland, what slays the characters in this novel is alcohol. Back in Africa, the memories of the homeland, and the attempt at living again are equally daunting foes. Excellent story telling. (****)
Donna Tartt: The Little Friend
Donna Tartt's second novel does not disappoint. The story of a young girl, Harriet, who seeks to revenge the death of her brother, Robin. The backdrop is a small town in Mississippi, and the goings on of 4 or 5 sisters, whose lives all changed with the murder of young Robin; hung from a tree. Harriet wants to solve the mystery. Who killed him? She gathers clues, and encounters the wrath of the local druggies. Quite a page-turner, and like Tartts' other two novels almost nothing is left out or glossed over. There were times in the novel where I felt her writing fell short; places where I couldn't actually see what was happening from the writing, as is the case when she encounters the villainous brother, Danny Ratliff on top of the water tower. The writing perspective seemed off (who was where and when?) as a battle ensued. But one is so caught up in the narrative we read on and on. Also, who is the little friend who is suggested in the title? Harriet? Hey? Robin? I don't think it is the best title she could have thought of for such a wonderful and awful story. (****)
Strout, Elizabeth: Olive, Again: A Novel
A wonderful sequel to an earlier collection of stories, Olive Kitteridge. Clearly, Strout is a masterful writer; each of the characters in her stories I can see clearly in my mind. These stories span Olive's life from middle-age to old-age, with thoughtfulness, kindness, reflection, and regret. In a general way of summing up, this collection tells us that life sends us problems that are most times not of our own making-- and that we do our best with what we have to work with, and what we think is best to do at the time. The prevalence of loneliness that comes with old age is a dominant theme in the later stories here. Read this book. (*****)
Strout, Elizabeth: Olive Kitteridge
It's been more than a few years since I first read this wonderful collection of stories. As a prelude to reading her next collection, Olive, Again, I read these stories again. Wonderful insight into a community in Crosby, Maine and how they encounter each other. Henry and Olive Kitteridge function as the main characters, and each story includes them if in even a small way. Prior to my second reading, my favorite story was The Piano Player, but this time I enjoyed Incoming Tide most. Her stories can veer into a local gossipy mode, yet there is always tension lurking in the next sentence. (*****)
Alan Hollinghurst: The Folding Star: A Novel
Edward Manners goes to Belgium to teach English to two boys who are getting below average marks in high school. When not teaching, he helps out at a museum focused on a Jewish painter who was hidden from the Nazis during WWII. Manners falls in love with one of his students, and a lively adventure ensues as Manners undertakes to seduce him. The narrative is fun, at times cynical of gay life, and there is a lot of sex. One also learns a good deal of personal history of growing up in post-war England and Belgium. Hollinghurst is a brilliant writer, and I learned many new words. (*****)
Alison Moore: The Pre-War House and Other Stories
After reading the Booker Prize nominated The Lighthouse, I was excited to read this earlier collection of 24 short stories from Alison Moore. They are a little underwhelming; as if written by a grad student. Moore is great at creating tension and awkward scenes. She is an artist when painting a picture of place and atmosphere. Some stories are creepy, and one longs for a hot bath. However, I found them to be a bit formulaic. By the third or fourth story, I was keeping my eyes open for the one clue in the narrative that I would return to in climactic ending sentences. I like Moor's sparse style, and I will read more of her work (written after The Lighthouse) in the future. (***)
