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davramlocke's reviews
777 reviews
Scaredy Cats by Jennifer Leczkowski
1.0
This is the worst thing I've ever read. Seriously. It's the worst.
The Ark Sakura by Kōbō Abe
3.0
The Ark Sakura has all the makings of a novel I’d love. It has a Murakami-esque weirdness to it, and I could certainly see where Abe has influenced my favorite author, but the story itself never really comes together. Maybe it’s not supposed to. Regardless, it has sparked my desire to read more Abe, and let’s face it: even Murakami doesn’t have a perfect record (just kidding).
The story of The Ark Sakura revolves around a man named Mole. His true name is never revealed, a common theme throughout the narrative, and he lives alone in an abandoned underground quarry near Tokyo. He calls this quarry his ark, and intends to launch this ship, with an able-bodied crew, once the inevitable nuclear holocaust destroys humanity. It’s immediately clear that Abe, in-part, wrote this novel in response to the Cold War and people’s decades-long fear of being blasted into atomic oblivion. The book was published in 1984, at a time when the threat of world destruction was still very real. Mole is a recluse, having no friends or close family, and so occasionally will venture out to nearby social gatherings in order to recruit his needed crew. He rarely finds anyone worthy, until one day while visiting a flea-market he comes upon Komono, a smooth-talking dealer of various weird junk, who sells Mole a eupcaccia bug. The eupcaccia is an impossible creature, who subsists by eating its own excrement. This is where the book starts getting weird.
At the same flea market, Mole accidentally gives away an ark ticket to a couple of shills, or sakuras as they are dubbed. A sakura in this novel is someone who tricks someone else, usually for money. Sakura is also the meaning for cherry blossom, which it is more widely recognized for. The shills, a man and woman whose relationship is never clearly defined, steal away to the ark ahead of Mole and Komono, and pretty soon the novel morphs into a bottle-story, and the majority of it from then on is the complicated relationship that these four characters have. They bond, fight, and get strange with one another.
The four characters themselves are pseudo-archetypes. The woman seems only to represent sexuality, a fact that continued to bother me throughout the story. Mole and Komono continually objectify her in the crudest manner, and even when she makes attempts to show her intelligence and utility, they can’t seem to see past her skirt. This obviously characterizes them, but I couldn’t quite see Abe’s intent in writing her this way. Mole is the loner and outcast, someone socially inept but who craves companionship. Komono is charisma, able to talk himself in and out of anything, which lends him skills in both sales and leadership. The male shill, who is referred to as simply “the shill” for the length of the novel, is maybe the most complicated character. He changes, is maybe the only character who does evolve, and seems deeper than the rest by the end despite being characterized in the harshest ways at the beginning.
There are other characters who weave into the story, mostly at the end, and they seem to serve more as catalysts for the final few chapters than anything. An exception to this is Mole’s father, Inototsu, a rapist and murderer who defines much of Mole’s character and existence.
I feel like I should like this book more, and maybe it’s the kind of novel I’d return to for a second reading. Part of me thinks that re-reading it is necessary to fully comprehend it. Another part of me thinks I fully comprehended it and found it lacking. Another part (there’s lots of parts of me), wonders if the entire novel isn’t an allegory for Japan, with each of the four characters acting as part of the country’s ruling history in some way. I could be interpreting it this way because of my recent introduction to pre-modern Japan, but there were some interesting power struggles happening inside the ark that made me think of shoguns and emperors and aristocratic families. The last part of me wonders if the entire novel is Abe’s attempt to free-form write, without editing, and that he didn’t really care if anything made sense or appealed to anyone. I can respect that.
img1I’m not disappointed that I read The Ark Sakura, and plan on tackling Abe’s supposed masterpiece, The Woman in the Dunes, in the near future.
Original review at - https://goldnotglittering.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/book-review-the-ark-sakura-by-kobe-abe/
The story of The Ark Sakura revolves around a man named Mole. His true name is never revealed, a common theme throughout the narrative, and he lives alone in an abandoned underground quarry near Tokyo. He calls this quarry his ark, and intends to launch this ship, with an able-bodied crew, once the inevitable nuclear holocaust destroys humanity. It’s immediately clear that Abe, in-part, wrote this novel in response to the Cold War and people’s decades-long fear of being blasted into atomic oblivion. The book was published in 1984, at a time when the threat of world destruction was still very real. Mole is a recluse, having no friends or close family, and so occasionally will venture out to nearby social gatherings in order to recruit his needed crew. He rarely finds anyone worthy, until one day while visiting a flea-market he comes upon Komono, a smooth-talking dealer of various weird junk, who sells Mole a eupcaccia bug. The eupcaccia is an impossible creature, who subsists by eating its own excrement. This is where the book starts getting weird.
At the same flea market, Mole accidentally gives away an ark ticket to a couple of shills, or sakuras as they are dubbed. A sakura in this novel is someone who tricks someone else, usually for money. Sakura is also the meaning for cherry blossom, which it is more widely recognized for. The shills, a man and woman whose relationship is never clearly defined, steal away to the ark ahead of Mole and Komono, and pretty soon the novel morphs into a bottle-story, and the majority of it from then on is the complicated relationship that these four characters have. They bond, fight, and get strange with one another.
The four characters themselves are pseudo-archetypes. The woman seems only to represent sexuality, a fact that continued to bother me throughout the story. Mole and Komono continually objectify her in the crudest manner, and even when she makes attempts to show her intelligence and utility, they can’t seem to see past her skirt. This obviously characterizes them, but I couldn’t quite see Abe’s intent in writing her this way. Mole is the loner and outcast, someone socially inept but who craves companionship. Komono is charisma, able to talk himself in and out of anything, which lends him skills in both sales and leadership. The male shill, who is referred to as simply “the shill” for the length of the novel, is maybe the most complicated character. He changes, is maybe the only character who does evolve, and seems deeper than the rest by the end despite being characterized in the harshest ways at the beginning.
There are other characters who weave into the story, mostly at the end, and they seem to serve more as catalysts for the final few chapters than anything. An exception to this is Mole’s father, Inototsu, a rapist and murderer who defines much of Mole’s character and existence.
I feel like I should like this book more, and maybe it’s the kind of novel I’d return to for a second reading. Part of me thinks that re-reading it is necessary to fully comprehend it. Another part of me thinks I fully comprehended it and found it lacking. Another part (there’s lots of parts of me), wonders if the entire novel isn’t an allegory for Japan, with each of the four characters acting as part of the country’s ruling history in some way. I could be interpreting it this way because of my recent introduction to pre-modern Japan, but there were some interesting power struggles happening inside the ark that made me think of shoguns and emperors and aristocratic families. The last part of me wonders if the entire novel is Abe’s attempt to free-form write, without editing, and that he didn’t really care if anything made sense or appealed to anyone. I can respect that.
img1I’m not disappointed that I read The Ark Sakura, and plan on tackling Abe’s supposed masterpiece, The Woman in the Dunes, in the near future.
Original review at - https://goldnotglittering.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/book-review-the-ark-sakura-by-kobe-abe/
Premodern Japan: A Historical Survey by Mikiso Hane
5.0
In considering the full spectrum of Japanese literature and film that I've absorbed in my life, it became clear to me as soon I as finished Premodern Japan that I should have read it before doing anything else. It is such a comprehensive look at Japan from its earliest written records up to the Meiji restoration that it puts anything I could be reading or watching into a solid, real state.
Premodern Japan is a history book, and a fairly broad one at that. It covers almost two thousand years worth of Japanese history. Basic Western history books usually cover the period of Ancient Egyptian civilization into the various eras after, which this book does not. Written records in Japan did not stretch back that far, and Premodern Japan begins before the CE break, the year one as history records it, and not much before. History is hazy for the country pre Common-era times, and mythology is as much a source as anything. According to some of the earliest myths, the Sun Goddess Amaterasu created Japan as the first among all nations, and every Emperor has been divined by Her since the dawn of time (I didn’t even know Japan still had Emperors, but apparently a fellow named Akihito is the current one). Premodern Japan covers those initial mythologies, then becomes more factual up to the middle of the 19th century. It does so in a comprehensive and incredibly readable way.
Could I tell you the history of Japan now? Not really. I could likely recite a few facts, tell you what a few terms meant, and might even be able to place a name should you toss it my way. The point of Premodern Japan isn’t to make one an expert in Japanese history, at least as far as I can tell. Rather, the point of the book, much like whatever World History book you may have read in college or high school, is to give an outline of Japanese history in such a way that you feel a grasp of the country from one point in its existence to another. Before I read his book, I had only the vaguest idea of how the country was formed, what the Emperors functions were, what the term Shogun even meant, or why and how Japan closed its borders for hundreds of years to all outside influence. My knowledge to this point had been picked up here and there from movies and literature, neither of which have any responsibility at accuracy.
Thanks to this book, I now feel equipped and intrigued to dive into more succinct history books about Japan. Not only does Premodern Japan boast a dizzying bibliography of sources to follow up with, but it’s given me specific points of interest to learn about. I now know that the early rulers of Japan were often female. I’d like to know more about that, and will be looking for a book that dives deeper into those early female leaders (particularly the famed Himiko). I learned that ninja were not nearly as ubiquitous as they are in popular culture, and that the notion of a samurai’s honor, so prolific in our thinking, is not really as romantic as we might wish to believe (most of the samurai in Japan’s history were more interested in greed and self-survival than they were in duty, loyalty, and honor).
It’s odd how growing up with history classes in school, even if I wasn’t always paying that close attention, has molded my general framework for how the world was formed. Yes, those books had a Western bias and left out key areas of the world, but I can see a timeline in my head of where and how the main body of Western humanity coursed across the land and where the hearts of civilization were. Premodern Japan has done a similar thing for me, as I can now close my eyes and watch the rise and fall of Shoguns and daimyo and various other political powers as easily as I can envision Alexander the Great sweeping across Europe or the Civil War tearing America apart. It’s refreshing, and I can hardly believe I attempted to study Japanese culture without giving myself this most basic of lessons first.
And here are a few nerd moments. As I neared the end of Premodern Japan and the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate, the book started to feel like a novel to me, and I was visibly excited as I read about the final players in this very real drama. After finishing, I found myself eager to learn more.
Original review at - https://goldnotglittering.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/book-review-premodern-japan-by-mikiso-hane-and-louis-g-perez/
Premodern Japan is a history book, and a fairly broad one at that. It covers almost two thousand years worth of Japanese history. Basic Western history books usually cover the period of Ancient Egyptian civilization into the various eras after, which this book does not. Written records in Japan did not stretch back that far, and Premodern Japan begins before the CE break, the year one as history records it, and not much before. History is hazy for the country pre Common-era times, and mythology is as much a source as anything. According to some of the earliest myths, the Sun Goddess Amaterasu created Japan as the first among all nations, and every Emperor has been divined by Her since the dawn of time (I didn’t even know Japan still had Emperors, but apparently a fellow named Akihito is the current one). Premodern Japan covers those initial mythologies, then becomes more factual up to the middle of the 19th century. It does so in a comprehensive and incredibly readable way.
Could I tell you the history of Japan now? Not really. I could likely recite a few facts, tell you what a few terms meant, and might even be able to place a name should you toss it my way. The point of Premodern Japan isn’t to make one an expert in Japanese history, at least as far as I can tell. Rather, the point of the book, much like whatever World History book you may have read in college or high school, is to give an outline of Japanese history in such a way that you feel a grasp of the country from one point in its existence to another. Before I read his book, I had only the vaguest idea of how the country was formed, what the Emperors functions were, what the term Shogun even meant, or why and how Japan closed its borders for hundreds of years to all outside influence. My knowledge to this point had been picked up here and there from movies and literature, neither of which have any responsibility at accuracy.
Thanks to this book, I now feel equipped and intrigued to dive into more succinct history books about Japan. Not only does Premodern Japan boast a dizzying bibliography of sources to follow up with, but it’s given me specific points of interest to learn about. I now know that the early rulers of Japan were often female. I’d like to know more about that, and will be looking for a book that dives deeper into those early female leaders (particularly the famed Himiko). I learned that ninja were not nearly as ubiquitous as they are in popular culture, and that the notion of a samurai’s honor, so prolific in our thinking, is not really as romantic as we might wish to believe (most of the samurai in Japan’s history were more interested in greed and self-survival than they were in duty, loyalty, and honor).
It’s odd how growing up with history classes in school, even if I wasn’t always paying that close attention, has molded my general framework for how the world was formed. Yes, those books had a Western bias and left out key areas of the world, but I can see a timeline in my head of where and how the main body of Western humanity coursed across the land and where the hearts of civilization were. Premodern Japan has done a similar thing for me, as I can now close my eyes and watch the rise and fall of Shoguns and daimyo and various other political powers as easily as I can envision Alexander the Great sweeping across Europe or the Civil War tearing America apart. It’s refreshing, and I can hardly believe I attempted to study Japanese culture without giving myself this most basic of lessons first.
And here are a few nerd moments. As I neared the end of Premodern Japan and the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate, the book started to feel like a novel to me, and I was visibly excited as I read about the final players in this very real drama. After finishing, I found myself eager to learn more.
Original review at - https://goldnotglittering.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/book-review-premodern-japan-by-mikiso-hane-and-louis-g-perez/
Making a Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers by Carolyn See
4.0
The second time through this, it was more enjoyable. I've aged ten years and see more of myself in See's writing than I did as an idiot fresh out of college (creative writing major...). I wonder how much of her advice is applicable 2016 when online connectivity has changed the landscape of the written word so much, but there's certainly stuff in there worth your time. If nothing else, the memoir aspects make this a valuable read.
How to Plant a Tree: A Simple Celebration of Trees and Tree-Planting Ceremonies by Daniel Butler
4.0
The Counterfeiter and Other Stories by Yasushi Inoue
3.0
I read The Counterfeiter over the better part of a day. It’s a short read at a mere 128 pages, and it’s a book of short stories. It’s divided up into three sections, with the title story, The Counterfeiter, taking up most of the book’s real estate. Obasute and The Full Moon are shorter, and constitute the back half of the book. I’ll take this story by story, but it’s not a huge book, nor an intense read, so this review may run a little short.
The Counterfeiter is far and away the strongest and most interesting of the three tales. It takes places in post Meiji-era Japan, so I found comparisons to The Master of Go almost immediately. Both hearken to a lost age and struggle with modernism and the efforts to maintain tradition. The Counterfeiter follows a biographer as he travels around Japan during and after World War II, chronicling the life of Keigaku, a famous artist. As he struggles to find information about his subject, he becomes more interested in a man named Hosen Hara, accused by many in the art world of copying the paintings of Keigaku. As the story progresses, it becomes Hosen Hara’s biography, and Keigaku, while still remaining the subject of the narrator’s eventual work, becomes a background character who serves as constrast.
Hosen Hara is the more interesting man, for the obvious reason that he is flawed. Keigaku is the consummate perfect artist. He has never made a mistake, has won all the awards, and is distinguished in his field. Hosen Hara, who befriends Keigaku at a young age, lives forever in his friend’s shadow. He is the Salieri to Keigaku’s Mozart, never matching and always chasing the genius of his rival. His efforts to counterfeit the paintings of Keigaku are Hosen Hara’s attempt to prove to everyone that he is just as good as his friend. In many cases the forgeries are good enough that they fool almost anyone not trained to spot a fake.
By his life’s end, Hosen Hara has mostly given up painting and instead makes fireworks at small villages in the countryside. This doesn’t possess the prestige of painting, but Hara finds in it something he can attempt perfection in. I thought this theme of chasing perfection was relevant, especially in our own time when the slightest mistakes can ostracize a person from everything society views as vital to a good life.
Obasute is shorter, and slightly less fleshed out, but I really enjoyed it’s themes of isolation and myth. Mount Obasute is a real spot in Japan, and there is mythology of it being a place where people would drop off the elderly, instituting a banishment for the crime of being old (the term obasute literally means to abandon a parent). Whether or not this ever happened is not made clear in the story, but the very thought of it is possibly the most depressing thing I can imagine. We have an entire system of social security in the U.S. that is counter to the very idea of this, and abandoning people who most need us seems to me inhuman.
The story wraps around this mythology. Central to the narrative is a family, and as the story progresses, each family member seems to desire being taken to a place like Mount Obasute and dropped off so that they can finally be alone. I’m reading Precarious Japan right now, and much of it deals with a very real problem called hikikomori. Hikikomori are young people who willingly cut themselves off from society, often not leaving their room or dwelling for long stretches of time. They are social outcasts, willingly, and possess a social anxiety that seems crippling. I thought of this problem, these hikikomori, while reading Obasute. It takes place after World War II, a time in Japan where everything, social, political, and moral, was breaking down. The booming Japan of post-Meiji times had been shattered, and while it would rise again economically, for a long stretch Japan had no center. The family members in Obasute could think of nothing better than abandoning the world and living alone on a mountain, much like some young folks in Japan today can think of nothing better, in an era where capitalism rules the world, than locking themselves in a room and ostracizing themselves from the madness.
The Full Moon is the story I found less captivating than the others, though it still dealt with interesting themes and carried in it that post-war tragedy felt throughout the entire collection of stories. The Full Moon chronicles the rise and fall of the president of a corporation, a relatively new phenomenon in Japan at this point. This story actually reminded me a little of The Wolf of Wall Street, both for the corporate narrative and because it manages to detail the life outside the office, one that is often secretive and full of scandal. It’s not as strong as the other two stories, but is still an interesting window into the life of a 1950s corporate man of post-war Japan.
This collection of stories was, I think, a decent introduction to Inoue. Nothing in it made me want to read his entire lexicon right away, but I do want to explore some of his longer works, particularly in light of The Counterfeiter story being the strongest of the three.
Original review at - https://goldnotglittering.wordpress.com/2015/11/16/book-review-the-counterfeiter-and-other-stories-by-yasushi-inoue/
The Counterfeiter is far and away the strongest and most interesting of the three tales. It takes places in post Meiji-era Japan, so I found comparisons to The Master of Go almost immediately. Both hearken to a lost age and struggle with modernism and the efforts to maintain tradition. The Counterfeiter follows a biographer as he travels around Japan during and after World War II, chronicling the life of Keigaku, a famous artist. As he struggles to find information about his subject, he becomes more interested in a man named Hosen Hara, accused by many in the art world of copying the paintings of Keigaku. As the story progresses, it becomes Hosen Hara’s biography, and Keigaku, while still remaining the subject of the narrator’s eventual work, becomes a background character who serves as constrast.
Hosen Hara is the more interesting man, for the obvious reason that he is flawed. Keigaku is the consummate perfect artist. He has never made a mistake, has won all the awards, and is distinguished in his field. Hosen Hara, who befriends Keigaku at a young age, lives forever in his friend’s shadow. He is the Salieri to Keigaku’s Mozart, never matching and always chasing the genius of his rival. His efforts to counterfeit the paintings of Keigaku are Hosen Hara’s attempt to prove to everyone that he is just as good as his friend. In many cases the forgeries are good enough that they fool almost anyone not trained to spot a fake.
By his life’s end, Hosen Hara has mostly given up painting and instead makes fireworks at small villages in the countryside. This doesn’t possess the prestige of painting, but Hara finds in it something he can attempt perfection in. I thought this theme of chasing perfection was relevant, especially in our own time when the slightest mistakes can ostracize a person from everything society views as vital to a good life.
Obasute is shorter, and slightly less fleshed out, but I really enjoyed it’s themes of isolation and myth. Mount Obasute is a real spot in Japan, and there is mythology of it being a place where people would drop off the elderly, instituting a banishment for the crime of being old (the term obasute literally means to abandon a parent). Whether or not this ever happened is not made clear in the story, but the very thought of it is possibly the most depressing thing I can imagine. We have an entire system of social security in the U.S. that is counter to the very idea of this, and abandoning people who most need us seems to me inhuman.
The story wraps around this mythology. Central to the narrative is a family, and as the story progresses, each family member seems to desire being taken to a place like Mount Obasute and dropped off so that they can finally be alone. I’m reading Precarious Japan right now, and much of it deals with a very real problem called hikikomori. Hikikomori are young people who willingly cut themselves off from society, often not leaving their room or dwelling for long stretches of time. They are social outcasts, willingly, and possess a social anxiety that seems crippling. I thought of this problem, these hikikomori, while reading Obasute. It takes place after World War II, a time in Japan where everything, social, political, and moral, was breaking down. The booming Japan of post-Meiji times had been shattered, and while it would rise again economically, for a long stretch Japan had no center. The family members in Obasute could think of nothing better than abandoning the world and living alone on a mountain, much like some young folks in Japan today can think of nothing better, in an era where capitalism rules the world, than locking themselves in a room and ostracizing themselves from the madness.
The Full Moon is the story I found less captivating than the others, though it still dealt with interesting themes and carried in it that post-war tragedy felt throughout the entire collection of stories. The Full Moon chronicles the rise and fall of the president of a corporation, a relatively new phenomenon in Japan at this point. This story actually reminded me a little of The Wolf of Wall Street, both for the corporate narrative and because it manages to detail the life outside the office, one that is often secretive and full of scandal. It’s not as strong as the other two stories, but is still an interesting window into the life of a 1950s corporate man of post-war Japan.
This collection of stories was, I think, a decent introduction to Inoue. Nothing in it made me want to read his entire lexicon right away, but I do want to explore some of his longer works, particularly in light of The Counterfeiter story being the strongest of the three.
Original review at - https://goldnotglittering.wordpress.com/2015/11/16/book-review-the-counterfeiter-and-other-stories-by-yasushi-inoue/