Only a Blockhead: Shameless Self-Promotion

Shameless Self-Promotion

08/21/2011

Tokyo in Transit

I write about Alisa Freedman's excellent Tokyo in Transit in today's Japan Times.

Movement is central to modernity. Baudelaire's flaneur, a walker drifting through city streets, "a perfect idler, ... a passionate observer," who is a part of the urban throng even as he remains apart from it, is paradigmatic. The flaneur, however, was more a response to the changed times than an agent of that change. Trains, on the other hand, are central to the genesis of the new world that was born, in Virginia Woolf's phrase, "on or about December, 1910."

Read it all here, and if you do, you know, like it, don't hesitate to hit the "like" button.

--David

Posted at 10:05 AM in Books, Japan, Literature, Reviews, Shameless Self-Promotion, Tokyo, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0)

06/19/2011

A Single Match

From my review of Oji Suzuki's A Single Match , one of the most interesting and original comics I've seen for a while:

Illuminated manuscripts, Persian and Mughal miniatures, Victorian novels enriched by illustrations from the likes of Cruikshank and Phiz: Illustrated texts have a long, rich and varied history. It can seem odd, therefore, that nowadays picture books are so persistently and exclusively associated with children.

The rest is here.

—David

Posted at 12:57 PM in art, Books, manga, Poetry, Reviews, Shameless Self-Promotion | Permalink | Comments (0)

05/08/2011

Speculative Japan

A good anthology, particularly one that aims to provide an overview of an unfamiliar subset of a nation's literature, should not please all its readers all the time.

The anthology I'm talking about is Speculative Japan 2, the latest essential anthology of Japanese speculative fiction put out by the estimable Kurodahan Press in Fukuoka. You can read my review, from The Japan Times, here.

—David

Posted at 03:34 PM in Books, Japan, Reviews, Shameless Self-Promotion | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/24/2011

Master of Miniatures by Jim Shepard

Jim Shepard reminds us what a novella can do.

Jim Shepard's "Master of Miniatures" is a masterful miniature, a small container filled with substantial events and substantial pleasures. Based on the life of Eiji Tsuburaya, the special effects man who made it possible for us to enjoy Godzilla destroying Tokyo, it's the story of that destruction, the seismic destruction of Tokyo in 1923, the aerial destruction of Tokyo in World War II, the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and also the destruction that those catastrophes wreak on Tsuburaya's marriage.

Read rest of my review here.

—David

Posted at 11:24 AM in Books, Literature, Reviews, Shameless Self-Promotion, Tokyo | Permalink | Comments (0)

04/19/2011

Bringing Literary Joy to You and Yours ...

. . . is the motto of a new journal, Prime Mincer.

A story of mine, "Sincerely," appears in the inaugural issue. You can read "Sincerely" for free here in a cumbersome and unattractive format, but wouldn't you prefer to read it in a format (traditional or electronic) more pleasing to the eye?

Click here to pick up a copy—or even subscribe.

(Addendum: Clicking my name won't get you to the story. Rather, "turn" to page 7 of the "book" using the arrows.)

—David

Posted at 08:59 PM in Books, Literature, Shameless Self-Promotion | Permalink | Comments (2)

Books David Finished in 2025

Disch, Thomas M. & Charles Naylor: Neighboring Lives
This seems to be a work of psychogeography avant la lettre. As the title hints, it is not a narrative that moves its characters through places, but rather the story of a place, London's Chelsea, during the Victorian years, and the remarkable people who lived there or passed through: Chopin, Leigh Hunt, John Stuart Mill, Rosetti and assorted pre-Raphaelites, Browning, Lewis Carroll, and especially the now little-read Thomas Carlyle and his wife Jane. It reads more like a collection of stories than a novel, but it is no less fun for that. The prose is slightly archaic in the best way: it captures the wit that was valued in the period. And among the wittiest of the characters is Jane Carlyle, who, as she laments herself, "never did anything." Her letters survive, though, and they reveal what a clever, gossipy woman she was. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to be convinced that the artistic milieu that sprang up in Chelsea during those years is fascinating, and to anyone who values sprightly prose. Maybe it's time to read Sartor Resartus?
Connelly, Michael: The Overlook
Another cracker in Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch series. The novel has moved into a time after 9/11 but before bin Laden was killed, so terrorism, panic about imagined terrorism, and security theater come into it. I'm looking forward to the next in the series.
Forster, E.M.: A Room a With a View
I thought I had read this before, but now, having read it I think I only saw the Merchant-Ivory film. The film was great and so is this, the most recent entry in my year of reading Forster. The early scenes featuring English tourists at a Pension in Italy are superb comedy. I rather wish Forster had kept it in that vein and left his big ideas—love! Passion!—alone, but that’s a quibble. Forster’s prose carries one along. I think I’ll watch the movie, though I’m almost certain I’ve seen it before.
Allingham, Margery: Sweet Danger
Another romp with Allingham's Albert Campion: a little witchcraft, a little insanity (the witchcraft turns out to be insanity) and lots of Golden Age British silliness. Allingham wrote the first of these books in 1929 (Campion played a minor role) and the last in 1968. It will be fun to see how the books respond to the times through which they move.
Olubas, Brigitta (ed.): Expatriates of No Country: The Letters of Shirley Hazzard and Donald Keene
Shirley Hazzard writes: "Literature, language, expression, writing itself—seem to be deteriorating in the machine and electronic world." "That doesn't mean that nothing more can happen for the better . . . ," she adds, and I'm glad she sees reason not to be entirely pessimistic. Me too, but reading through the correspondence of these two intelligent, cultured, literate people causes me to despair that literary letters are no longer much written and that few new collections of them will appear.
Moreno-Garcia, Sylvia: Mexican Gothic
As it says on the tin: This is a gothic novel set in Mexico (though with a little fiddling, I think it could have been set just about anyplace where there are isolated houses in cold and misty environs). There is an isolated house in Mexican Gothic, and it is cold, rainy, and misty, and there is a young woman, a Mexico City debutante, at its center who is ultimately imperiled. She's sent to the isolated house to see and perhaps rescue her cousin, who has married into the family whose ancestral pile the isolated house is. Horrible hijinks ensue. Cryptobiology—it's the mushrooms!—and eugenics come into it. All of that makes for a mix that is engaging enough, but I don't see myself seeking out more of Moreno-Garcia's work.
Robbins, Tom: Another Roadside Attraction
I first read this novel fifty or so years ago. I'm happy to have returned to it. The zany philosophizing is fun, and a novel in which hippies are the main characters and are treated lovingly is pleasant. The prose is a perfect accompaniment to the above: "A trombone of geese slides southward between the overcast and the barns;" "Is it true that Roland Kirk is the entire Count Basie orchestra in drag?" " . . . human beings were invented by water as a device for transporting itself from one place to another;" "What an electric heater perched on the rim of the Bathtub of the World that dead Jesus was!" "His voice was like steel dog barking bricks." Maybe I'll read some more Robbins sometime.
Dao, Bei: Sidetracks
Tiananmen, exile, a stroke, returning after fifteen years to language, to poetry: All of it is chronicled in Bei Dao's first long poem, Sidetracks. History is here, and also the people and places that Bei Dao encountered as, in exile, he travelled the poetry circuit. He writes: "I am you a stranger on the sidetracks / waiting for the season to harvest blades of light / sending letters though tomorrow has no address."
Gifford, Barry: Sailor & Lula: The Complete Novels
These are the titles of the seven novels in the Sailor & Lula series: Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula; Perdita Durango; Sailor's Holiday; Sultans of Africa; Consuelo's Kiss; Bad Day for the Leopard Man; The Imagination of the Heart. They should give one a sense of the scope of Barry Gifford's imagination, an imagination that has given us, in these seven novels (some of which should probably be called novellas), an American epic featuring a couple who retain a purity even as they navigate a world that is "wild at heart." Gifford's great gift is for dialogue, and his characters employ a Southern demotic that may or may not be authentic but is always delightful. Gifford is prolific. He deserves more attention.
Stephenson, Neal: Polostan:Volume One of Bomb Light
My favorite of the prolific Neal Stephenson's work is The Baroque Cycle (a trilogy when I read it though apparently it's now offered as eight separate novels). Thus, I'm happy that with Polostan he is embarking on a new historical trilogy, and doubly delighted because the first volume is excellent. It follows a girl named Dawn (among other monikers) in America and the USSR in (so far) the 1930s. There are many physicists in the novel, and that, coupled with the trilogy's title, suggests that the atomic bomb will be a significant part of the story. As always with a Stephenson novel, there is lots of information, and the many learned aside that Stephenson works in are always interesting. They never descend to the level of plonkish as-you-know-Bob interjections. I look forward to the subsequent volumes.

Books Julian Read Recently

Alan Hollinghurst: Our Evenings
These fictional memoirs of an actor growing up in the UK from the 1960s take in racism, class divisions, gay liberation and Brexit, An acutely-observed, vivid and enjoyable read. (***)
Samantha Harvey: Orbital
This entirely original sliver of a novel describes (an earth) day in the life of astronauts aboard an international space station, with gorgeous, evocative descriptions and startling perspectives on life, humanity, the universe and everything. A thrilling and extraordinary ride! (*****)
Julian Barnes: The Sense of an Ending
An Englishman remembers his life while probing the nature of memory. The final mystery is involving, and the solution is astonishing enough to almost compel rereading the whole book. I’m not sure if the whole adds up to more or less than the sum of its parts, but it’s definitely impressive. (I first read this in 2012, forgot it entirely [not inappropriate given that memory is the book's theme], and according to my earlier notes, I liked it better this time around.) (***)
Rachel Kushner: Creation Lake
Rambling, opaque ideas about the origins of humankind swamp a thriller about radicals vs. big business in impoverished rural France. On the plus side, the venal narrator is compelling, the short sections are highly readable, and there’s a great climax. (**)
Hermann Hesse: Siddhartha
A radiant account of a life searching for and finally finding mental peace. (***)
C. S. Lewis: A Grief Observed
It’s bracing and helpful to read this account of the excruciating pain of the loss of a dearly loved one. However, it is mostly an attempt to find a place in the author’s Christian beliefs (a wise God; some sort of afterlife; a purpose to life, etc.) for the tragedy, and to revise and clarify those beliefs in the face of it. The brutal honesty and logic brought to bear on this task makes clear that, whatever benefits religion might have, it sure can add an awkward and sad complexity to life… and death. (***)
Elizabeth Strout: Tell Me Everything
Elizabeth Strout again brings together the (mostly small town American) characters from her previous novels, but you don’t need to have read those to appreciate this. Here, post pandemic, Olive, Lucy, Bob and all are involved in a murder mystery, a bereavement, and a love story, but the everyday is every bit as absorbing. Strout’s world encompasses life, death, and what lies between: in a word humanity. (****)
Alice McDermott: Someone
The daughter of a New York working-class family, growing up mid-century, recounts her life in shards of recollection. Razor-sharp observation and disarming honesty make this a pleasure. (****)
The Best of Saki: (selected by Tom Sharpe)
What fun these very short stories are! The humor is pointed up by the gloriously overblown names of the protagonists in these miniature gems of character and situation in which (as Tom Sharpe, editor of the edition I read, puts it) “ingenious mischief… triumphs over pomposity.” The fun is in the twists: you never quite know how a story is going to get to its inevitably satisfying conclusion. And if it sometimes reflects the prejudices of its time (early 1900s), it’s an added pleasure to realize the (albeit still limited) social progress we’ve made since then, and to hope that our current fiction will feel as likewise antiquated in its prejudices and mores to future generations. (Thank you fellow Blockhead David for the recommendation.) (****)
Haruki Murakami: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Reading this, I learned that some people who run, cycle or swim competitively have elations, satisfactions and frustrations at the cost of excruciating pain in the striving to beat themselves and others. I enjoy cycling enough to average 600 benign kilometers a month, but the training for marathons and triathlons that Murakami describes is another world, alien and too often horrific: leg cramps, inability to walk, lingering depressions…. Ouch, no thanks! How different we exercise-seeking humans can be from one another! (**)

Films Julian Watched Recently

All Of Us Strangers
In a new tower block with just two inhabitants so far, an isolated man looks back on his life and, through strange encounters, faces past traumas of family and growing up gay. Dreamlike, atmospheric, mesmerizing, bracing, it’s a gorgeous meditation on the redemptive power of love. A triumph of filmmaking and performances. (DVD) (*****)
The Zone of Interest
The Holocaust from the oblique angle of its perpetrators who live bourgeois lives filled with all-too-familiar human concerns… over the wall from unspeakable horror. A movie grave, meticulous, reverent and highly original, the implication is, I think, how will future generations look at what we are doing, and not doing, in face of current horrors. What appalling realities am I ignoring over my wall? (DVD) (****)
La Chimera
In an impoverished part of contemporary Italy, Etruscan tomb robbers search for artifacts to sell… or treasure. Sometimes odd but with few surprises, I was so uninvolved that I felt I lost two hours of my life. (DVD) (zero stars)
Justine Triet (director): Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
Family friction, a mysterious death, a courtroom drama. These well-worn ingredients are presented with both assurance and breathtaking freshness. The result is cinema at its purest and most exciting. (*****)
The Great Escaper
An aged veteran makes his way to a WWII remembrance ceremony in France, while his wife relives her own traumatic wartime on the home front. This modest film -- acted with commitment -- builds toward the suggestion that war is a tragic waste. Humanitarian propaganda of the best sort. Tissues mandatory. (Theater) (***)

Things NC Consumed Recently

F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
More than forty years on since my last reading, this classic novel is remarkable not so much for its romantic longings as for its emphasis on American violence, its depiction of a country in which California hardly matters and its meeting of the Mid West and East Coast. Plus its succinct nine chapters, its elegant prose and its almost noirish tone: Tom breaking Myrtle's nose would seem to foreshadow Lee Marvin throwing hot coffee in Gloria Grahame's face in The Big Heat - and the use of flashbacks helps too. I'd like to thank the publicity for the recent film version and my current cold for sending me back to the novel (and my young self).
Isabelle Eberhardt
In 1904, Isabelle Eberhardt drowned in the desert, leaving behind, among other things, various writings in French (a novel, travel notes, a journal, short stories), Islam, Lake Geneva, a husband, debauchery in kif, sex and alcohol, and a small collection of male clothing, which she wore habitually, along with her man's name. The lazy say she was an early hippie, because of her nomadic, hedonistic life, and being the first one to die at 27. Lindqvist has her in a line from Villon, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Celine and Genet. Her story can only get stranger and more fascinating. "In The Shadow of Islam", "The Passionate Nomad", "The Oblivion Seekers" and Annette Kobak's biography are one way in. You'll find there an apt fatal romanticism for vast desert spaces and a depiction of Islam to ponder. Among other things.
Listen to Britain - Humphrey Jennings
Terence Davies is surely right to say Listen to Britain is in part an attempt to define the nation on the eve of its being invaded. But that invasion never came. A little prematurely, Humphrey Jennings's film records what left later, with something messier, less defined usurping through the back door. Terence Davies is surely right to say Listen to Britain is one of the greatest things these islands have produced.
Patience (After Sebald)
Grant Gee's documentary uses a palette of pale black and white, maps and talking heads to comment on W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, an account of his walk through Suffolk. Unlike the book, where a variety of genres (and photographs) coheres to make a recognisable whole, the film suffers slightly from a lack of direction. It is too specific to serve as an introduction and lacks an overriding arc that might describe a thesis. However, with its archival footage, interviews with the author and shots of the route taken, it is essential viewing for those already in thrall to all things Sebaldian - even if the ending, alas, veers close to Conan Doyle and fairies-in-the-garden territory.