The sixth chapter of David Foster Wallace’s posthumous, unfinished novel “The Pale King” features a character wrestling with the consequences of his actions at the same time his mind keeps summoning up quotations from Paul’s epistles.
Lane A. Dean Jr. sits with his girlfriend Sheri by a lake in a park. They appear to be clean, well-scrubbed kids in a wholesome setting, but something unspoken hangs in the air. By indirect language over the course of the chapter, the reader is left to assume that Lane has gotten Sheri pregnant. The couple met in “campus ministries,” and Lane has been praying, chewing on the moment. The idea of a child in their future forces Lane to realize that, while he likes Sheri, he doesn’t love her enough to want to marry her, or even perhaps to see the child born. Over seven pages, no dialogue is ever directly quoted. The two sit side-by-side, with the narrator wholly in Lane’s mind. Even when we hear Sheri, we must be conscious that this is Lane’s projection of what she might say, what he hopes she will say, what he fears might happen. He is contemplating an abortion for her.
But his larger fear - even more than an abortion, or the fact that he doesn’t love her - is that he might be, in fact, a hypocrite:
“He was desperate to be good people, to still be able to feel he was good. He rarely before had thought of damnation and hell, that part of it didn’t speak to his spirit, and in worship services he more just tuned himself out and tolerated hell when it came up, the same way you tolerate a job you have got to have to save up for what it is you want.”
Lane reveals himself as a little more self-centered than he wants to admit, not as careful as he would like to believe. And while he doesn’t necessarily believe in hell, he suddenly understands why what some might feel are archaic Biblical rules of sexual conduct suddenly make sense. Yet he still wonders if he is a hypocrite “who repented only after, who promised submission but really only wanted a reprieve.” He keeps thinking, the narrator tells us, of I Timothy 6 and “the hypocrite therein who disputeth over words.”
What he is referring to is an extended discourse in Paul’s letter to Timothy which deals with how “the Man of God” must conduct himself in a sinful world. Paul is warning, specifically, about false teachers within churches who stir up controversies out of their own conceits. False teachers, he is saying, create strife and constant friction because of their corrupted minds, displaying an obsession over terminology instead of truth. Paul’s contention is that this is godlessness, a self-centered delusion that makes the other person feel their false gospel is more true than the real kind. He goes on to warn of those who use the Gospel for financial gain, leading to the summation that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” Considering that “The Pale King” deals in part with the Internal Revenue Service, there is a flash of irony.
So what is Lane saying? Considering that his lack of belief in hell is, in fact, heresy, is Lane a false Man of God? Of course the dispute in this chapter of the novel isn’t doctrinal on the face of it, but having more to do with his behavior. However, the Apostle Paul would state categorically that one goes with the other - that you can’t have a watered down Gospel without making other compromises in your life which eventually catch up to you. Lane may believe in a “living God of compassion and love” and not of a burning lake of fire, but even he sees the hellish vision of “two great and terrible armies within himself, opposed and facing each other, silent.” The reality of hell is only a whisper, but enough to make him realize what he carries within.
Still later, though, he imagines that Sheri will tell him that she cannot go through with an abortion, that she will carry the child to term, and that he need not worry because she will make no demands on him. In a vision, Lane has seen them both, and himself not as a hypocrite but as just another foolish fallen man. Don’t worry, he imagines her telling him, but he also imagines that even this is a lie, a desperate lie she might tell him to force him into caring for her, that within herself she knows she cannot care for a baby or put her family through the shame. She is gambling, in this imagined scene, that he really is the good man she believes. But his imagination, which has brought all of this out, quotes half of Galatians 4:16: “Have I now become your enemy?”
In this letter, Paul is appealing to the Galatian church against what he sees as the corrupting influence of what has come to be called the Judaizers - a sect believing that one must first become Jewish and observe a Jewish diet and cultural customs as part of, and as a prelude to, becoming a Christian. Paul, who previously had been an observant Jew and a well-educated one, had particular invective for the Judaizers, appealing instead to a Gospel of grace and faith instead of one of supposedly earned salvation through works.
But the full quotation is telling - “Have I now become your enemy because I tell you the truth?” Paul is reminding this church, which he helped create, that God’s salvation cannot be earned through works. We were once together and one, Paul says, so why are we now at odds? You trusted me once with the Gospel, so why have you changed into believing I am dishonest?
This is an interesting juxtaposition when we fold it back on Lane and Sheri. Lane wants grace - in that he wants to not have to face the consequences of his choices with Sheri. Sheri has faith - faith that Lane is not the kind of man who would get a woman pregnant and then abandon her, all the while talking of Jesus. Neither of them have earned any kind of salvation through their works, unless by salvation one means love. And yet it’s obvious that the love they share isn’t really love at all, but the fading colors of a passing and passionate lust. And lastly, they are both struggling against the truth - that they have many troubling decisions to make, not just about their circumstances, but about who they are, or who they might think they are. Will they become enemies if they are simply honest with each other?
The truth, Wallace’s narrator leaves us believe as the chapter closes, is that Lane only lacks courage to be able to confront the issue at hand and trust that his heart will make the right choice. One can see that God working in catastrophe forces upon us our truest and most terrible reflections. And as the Apostle Paul knew, that is when we not only are ready for forgiveness, but we long for it, with all our hearts.
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Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Seventeen by Kenzaburo Oe
Earlier, I wrote about Yukio Mishima's "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion" and the way the novel documents "the angry loner" who often seems the source of political terrorism and myriad acts of motiveless violence. Mishima's novel grew from a real event in Japanese history, much as did "Seventeen," by Kenzaburo Oe. The winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature, Oe creates a character that seems at times a caricature and an accurate depiction, which says something about the nature of his art and his subject.
Oe stands, uneasily, at the other end of the spectrum of Japanese politics from Mishima, who died in what is often termed an attempted rightist coup. "Seventeen" was based on the case of Otoya Yamaguchi, a teenaged rightist who assassinated the Socialist leader Inojiro Asanuma on live television during a speech in 1960. Yamaguchi went on to commit suicide in prison.
Oe wrote two works based on the story, the first being the novella "Seventeen." Its sequel, "A Political Youth Dies," has never been translated outside Japan and deals with the actual assassination its storyteller carries out. In reading "Seventeen," one feels like the narrative is interrupted at the precise moment in which the character has arrived at what he perceives to be his destiny. It is like someone has excised about a third from Don DeLillo's "Libra" and left a novel about Lee Harvey Oswald which ends with his misadventures in New Orleans in the summer of 1963.
Oe does not name his storyteller, whose story begins on his seventeenth birthday. From the first page, the youth's self-loathing is understood and reinforced with every sentence. He is obsessed with his inconsequentiality. He feels unobserved, and fears his life has already seen its happiest moments. To illustrate this, Oe has the boy describe over and over in detail his habit of masturbating. For half of the novella, in fact, which grows tedious early on. It is tempting to think that Oe is merely offering commentary on the political thoughts that will later seize the boy - that they are a sad, lonely exercising of the same ideas, over and over, with the same result each time, only growing smaller and less satisfying. Such an explanation redeems the book for a point that more probably is meant to insult the rightist politics the boy later embraces.
At the same time we learn about his lack of sex life, we witness multiple embarrassments and humiliations. The boy makes a mild embrace of leftist politics in his home and is dressed down by his older sister. He loses a foot race at school. He is left with a blood lust he indulges in the privacy of his room, with his hidden sword. We realize with the hand-me-down leftist phrases he parrots back to his sister, the boy isn't interested in politics so much as feeling the satisfaction of being right about something. He wants to make someone pay for the way he believes his life has turned out.
The turning point comes when he is recruited to go stand and applaud during a rightist rally. The boy embraces the idea and the occasion, and even as he sees through the speaker, he identifies with his anger and impotence, a word and attitude that figures heavily in "Seventeen" and in "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion." Impotence can be seen as the natural outgrowth of a man robbed of his own importance, or of Japan following its defeat at the end of the Second World War. And as in Mishima's earlier work, Oe's "hero" makes various mentions of hell - the hell of surrender, not on a national but a personal level.
"Unconditionally, I forgive myself," the boy thinks at the rally, and the underpinning for all his future work has arrived. His loathing is now held in check, and a sense of destiny and superiority rises within him. His family now is glad to see him involved in something to give him self-worth, and his friends see some of his inexplicable behavior in the past as having had a covert, political edge. His identity is now set as well, and the shame he felt and perceived among others - or The Others, as he referred to them - is gone. His political arguments are only weapons he trots out for power. He is transformed. "To my golden vision I promise a bloodbath," he vows, at the story's end. As with Mizaguchi in Mishima's work, the angry loner doesn't care what philosophy he clings to as long as it gives him a feeling of being someone of world historical importance, a feeling that cannot be taken away and is only reinforced by the insults and retaliations of others.
The wholeheartedness with which he embraces this destiny is explained in a short, earlier section, wherein he confesses his fear that death, will not, in fact, be the end:
"The death I fear is like this: After this short life, I'll have to endure billions of years in unconsciousness, as a zero. This world, this universe, and all the other universes, will go on being for billions of years, and all that time I'll be a zero. For all eternity!"
In receiving his own forgiveness, he extends to himself grace to do whatever his will imagines, with disastrous consequences. Our hero feels singled out at both ends of his metamorphosis, by a higher power that seems both to designate him for punishment and then for distinction, with the reader to assume that the later end will also lead to the former, and just whom that higher power may be.
Oe stands, uneasily, at the other end of the spectrum of Japanese politics from Mishima, who died in what is often termed an attempted rightist coup. "Seventeen" was based on the case of Otoya Yamaguchi, a teenaged rightist who assassinated the Socialist leader Inojiro Asanuma on live television during a speech in 1960. Yamaguchi went on to commit suicide in prison.
Oe wrote two works based on the story, the first being the novella "Seventeen." Its sequel, "A Political Youth Dies," has never been translated outside Japan and deals with the actual assassination its storyteller carries out. In reading "Seventeen," one feels like the narrative is interrupted at the precise moment in which the character has arrived at what he perceives to be his destiny. It is like someone has excised about a third from Don DeLillo's "Libra" and left a novel about Lee Harvey Oswald which ends with his misadventures in New Orleans in the summer of 1963.
Oe does not name his storyteller, whose story begins on his seventeenth birthday. From the first page, the youth's self-loathing is understood and reinforced with every sentence. He is obsessed with his inconsequentiality. He feels unobserved, and fears his life has already seen its happiest moments. To illustrate this, Oe has the boy describe over and over in detail his habit of masturbating. For half of the novella, in fact, which grows tedious early on. It is tempting to think that Oe is merely offering commentary on the political thoughts that will later seize the boy - that they are a sad, lonely exercising of the same ideas, over and over, with the same result each time, only growing smaller and less satisfying. Such an explanation redeems the book for a point that more probably is meant to insult the rightist politics the boy later embraces.
At the same time we learn about his lack of sex life, we witness multiple embarrassments and humiliations. The boy makes a mild embrace of leftist politics in his home and is dressed down by his older sister. He loses a foot race at school. He is left with a blood lust he indulges in the privacy of his room, with his hidden sword. We realize with the hand-me-down leftist phrases he parrots back to his sister, the boy isn't interested in politics so much as feeling the satisfaction of being right about something. He wants to make someone pay for the way he believes his life has turned out.
The turning point comes when he is recruited to go stand and applaud during a rightist rally. The boy embraces the idea and the occasion, and even as he sees through the speaker, he identifies with his anger and impotence, a word and attitude that figures heavily in "Seventeen" and in "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion." Impotence can be seen as the natural outgrowth of a man robbed of his own importance, or of Japan following its defeat at the end of the Second World War. And as in Mishima's earlier work, Oe's "hero" makes various mentions of hell - the hell of surrender, not on a national but a personal level.
"Unconditionally, I forgive myself," the boy thinks at the rally, and the underpinning for all his future work has arrived. His loathing is now held in check, and a sense of destiny and superiority rises within him. His family now is glad to see him involved in something to give him self-worth, and his friends see some of his inexplicable behavior in the past as having had a covert, political edge. His identity is now set as well, and the shame he felt and perceived among others - or The Others, as he referred to them - is gone. His political arguments are only weapons he trots out for power. He is transformed. "To my golden vision I promise a bloodbath," he vows, at the story's end. As with Mizaguchi in Mishima's work, the angry loner doesn't care what philosophy he clings to as long as it gives him a feeling of being someone of world historical importance, a feeling that cannot be taken away and is only reinforced by the insults and retaliations of others.
The wholeheartedness with which he embraces this destiny is explained in a short, earlier section, wherein he confesses his fear that death, will not, in fact, be the end:
"The death I fear is like this: After this short life, I'll have to endure billions of years in unconsciousness, as a zero. This world, this universe, and all the other universes, will go on being for billions of years, and all that time I'll be a zero. For all eternity!"
In receiving his own forgiveness, he extends to himself grace to do whatever his will imagines, with disastrous consequences. Our hero feels singled out at both ends of his metamorphosis, by a higher power that seems both to designate him for punishment and then for distinction, with the reader to assume that the later end will also lead to the former, and just whom that higher power may be.
Set Your Fields on Fire
The award-winning novel by William Thornton
Available now
Some of the coverage of "Set Your Fields on Fire"
You can order "Set Your Fields on Fire"for $14.99 through Amazon here.
It's also available on Kindle at $3.99 through Amazon here.
Read an interview I did with AL.com on the book here.
Here's my appearance on the Charisma Network's CPOP Podcast.
Here's an interview I did with The Anniston Star on the book.
Shattered Magazine wrote a story about the book here.
The Alabama Baptist wrote about the book here.
This piece appeared in the Marietta (Ga.) Daily Journal.
Here's the write-up from The Birmingham Times.
Read a story for Village Living here.
This story appeared in The Trussville Tribune and this video.
Read an interview I did with AL.com on the book here.
Here's my appearance on the Charisma Network's CPOP Podcast.
Here's an interview I did with The Anniston Star on the book.
Shattered Magazine wrote a story about the book here.
The Alabama Baptist wrote about the book here.
This piece appeared in the Marietta (Ga.) Daily Journal.
Here's the write-up from The Birmingham Times.
Read a story for Village Living here.
This story appeared in The Trussville Tribune and this video.
Here's my appearance on East Alabama Today.
Story and video from WBRC Fox6 here.
Here's the write-up in The Gadsden Times on the book.
Read a piece I wrote for WestBow Press about writing the book here.
A piece about some inspiring works for me.
Story and video from WBRC Fox6 here.
Here's the write-up in The Gadsden Times on the book.
Read a piece I wrote for WestBow Press about writing the book here.
A piece about some inspiring works for me.
This is another interview with the fleegan book blog here.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky
Among the many factors that can determine the longevity of an artist's career beyond his lifetime is a compelling life story - one that adds the barest seasoning to an already intriguing catalog of work. Because of this, David Foster Wallace is well on his way to becoming the transcendent American author of our times, judging by David Lipsky's recent book, "Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace." The book is equal parts mythmaking and mythbusting, allowing the reader to engage in whichever feels right.
With the release of David Foster Wallace's posthumous novel "The Pale King" only weeks away, I thought it was time to tackle this work, which frankly cries out to be made into a movie. It's an obvious road picture, as Lipsky transcribes the running dialogue he recorded between himself and Wallace during the book tour for "Infinite Jest." Lipsky taped their conversations as part of a profile he was preparing for "Rolling Stone." Wallace was flush with success, his likeness gracing news magazine covers, the words of his cult sensation essays gratefully quoted, his abundant ambition evident in his newly published 1,000 page novel. He arrived in the popular consciousness like a thunderclap, and twelve years later was dead by his own hand following his surrender to clinical depression.
Because of Wallace's tragic end, it is impossible to read these conversations without feeling various emotional tugs - poignant appreciation of how talented he was, a mournful anger when considering what was ahead of him, a knowing laughter at some of his opinions, seasoned with humor. What grabbed me in reading it was the spiritual dimension to many of his observations.
When reading, it's necessary to remember that Wallace is not offering his opinion out of a need to express himself. He's selling a book, and its a book that he knows is good and will forge his reputation as a serious American writer. Moreover, he's responding to questions designed to ferret out his opinions on life, his background and what he's hiding about his nervous breakdown and drug use, and his answers (and off the record comments) are calibrated to satisfy a reporter's curiosity.
The book is overflowing with his particular persona, right down to the awkwardly structured, overly long title, which comes from one of Wallace's statements. It's amazing how vague the dialogue is. Wallace is hesitant to make a definitive statement, so he qualifies his statements, and sprinkles them with mitigating phrases, and kinda, sortas and maybes, like, abound. This is a painfully self-conscious dialogue, as the interview is self-conscious when the interviewee is overly conscious of what he perceives are his own inadequacies to the moment itself. But he is also refreshingly honest about some aspects of his career, such as how unsatisfying he thinks the ending to "The Broom of the System" was. He both praises and savages John Updike, and points out the flaws of Stephen King while at the same time lauding him. He believes that the death of serious reading will mean that identity has also ceased to exist. He sees the flaws in experimental writing. He has endless riffs on movies. All of these observations are laid out in caffeinated, postcollegiate patois, complete with all the you knows, uhs, and likes that we all struggle against in our own daily speech. Some of this is superficial pedestrian woolgathering masquerading as philosophy, and some of it is brilliant observation. The distance between the two isn't all that great.
Wallace also lays out some of his theories on what it will take for the writer to grab the attention of his over-stimulated, undereducated, 24-hour-news cycle audience. As Wallace is talking, we are pre-Twitter, pre-Facebook, with the Internet only just beginning to grab the attention and time of the public. What strikes Wallace, again and again, is the "loneliness" of modern life - how little connectivity has actually connected anyone. And upon reading, the horrifying reality is that this condition has only worsened since these interviews took place.
But Wallace also believes that human beings are "absolutely dying to give ourselves away to something." He believes this, but he also believes it is virtually impossible to write in a contemporary voice about God:
"I mean the culture, it's all wrong for it now. You know? No, no. Plausibly realistic characters don't sit around talking about this stuff. You know? So...I don't know. But the minute I start talking about it, it just, it sounds number one: very vague. Two: really reductive. And the whole thing to me was so complicated, that you know it took sixteen hundred pages of sort of weird oblique stuff to even start to talk about it. And so feel stupid, talking about it."
Of course, the real characters of this book are talking about it, and neither sounds like Dostoevsky. So why does he feel uncomfortable talking about it? "Because I don't have a diagnosis. I don't have a system of prescriptions," he says. Yet later, he and Pinsky understand that modern America and their generation is growing up in "the rubble of the old system" - that is, the "ridiculous and hypocritical...old authoritarian...don't-question-authority stuff." But, like Jonathan Franzen, Wallace has nothing to replace it with, no direction to point to, no diagnosis, no prescription. He knows enough to know that the same generation is "dying...on the toxicity" of the idea that pleasure and comfort provide the ultimate meanings for life.
"I'm talking about the number of privileged, highly intelligent, motivated career-track people that I know, from my high school and college, who are, if you look into their eyes, empty and miserable. You know? And who don't believe in politics, and don't believe in religion...And who just..who don't believe in anything. Who know fantastic reasons not to believe in stuff, and are terrific ironists and pokers of holes. And there's nothing wrong with that, it's just, it doesn't seem to me that there's just a whole lot else."
But reading this, it's evident there is indeed something wrong with that, and Wallace knows it. One wonders whether he did have some idea of what was wrong, but didn't feel comfortable providing an answer. I'm not suggesting a Christian answer, though it is interesting that Wallace leaves Pinsky to go to a church where "everyone more or less wants to leave each other alone." Much of Wallace's work deals with the loneliness, the lack of meaning, the aimlessness of existence, and the search for meaning, or just, how to kill time. But a writer with the ambition to write an epic novel, with the courage to look at the hole in modern existence, is also mature enough to recognize that he doesn't have all the answers. The question of existence remains. Being able not to believe in something isn't necessarily a strength, when one ultimately doesn't believe in anything at all.
In the book's forward, Franzen provides an observation: "Does it look now like David had all the answers?" In retrospect, we can see that he at least was on to the right questions. But Lipsky's epitaph resounds: "His life was a map that ends at the wrong destination."
Buy my book, "Brilliant Disguises," for .99 cents here. Available in all e-formats.
Buy my book, "The Uncanny Valley," for $5.99 here. Available in all e-formats.
With the release of David Foster Wallace's posthumous novel "The Pale King" only weeks away, I thought it was time to tackle this work, which frankly cries out to be made into a movie. It's an obvious road picture, as Lipsky transcribes the running dialogue he recorded between himself and Wallace during the book tour for "Infinite Jest." Lipsky taped their conversations as part of a profile he was preparing for "Rolling Stone." Wallace was flush with success, his likeness gracing news magazine covers, the words of his cult sensation essays gratefully quoted, his abundant ambition evident in his newly published 1,000 page novel. He arrived in the popular consciousness like a thunderclap, and twelve years later was dead by his own hand following his surrender to clinical depression.
Because of Wallace's tragic end, it is impossible to read these conversations without feeling various emotional tugs - poignant appreciation of how talented he was, a mournful anger when considering what was ahead of him, a knowing laughter at some of his opinions, seasoned with humor. What grabbed me in reading it was the spiritual dimension to many of his observations.
When reading, it's necessary to remember that Wallace is not offering his opinion out of a need to express himself. He's selling a book, and its a book that he knows is good and will forge his reputation as a serious American writer. Moreover, he's responding to questions designed to ferret out his opinions on life, his background and what he's hiding about his nervous breakdown and drug use, and his answers (and off the record comments) are calibrated to satisfy a reporter's curiosity.
The book is overflowing with his particular persona, right down to the awkwardly structured, overly long title, which comes from one of Wallace's statements. It's amazing how vague the dialogue is. Wallace is hesitant to make a definitive statement, so he qualifies his statements, and sprinkles them with mitigating phrases, and kinda, sortas and maybes, like, abound. This is a painfully self-conscious dialogue, as the interview is self-conscious when the interviewee is overly conscious of what he perceives are his own inadequacies to the moment itself. But he is also refreshingly honest about some aspects of his career, such as how unsatisfying he thinks the ending to "The Broom of the System" was. He both praises and savages John Updike, and points out the flaws of Stephen King while at the same time lauding him. He believes that the death of serious reading will mean that identity has also ceased to exist. He sees the flaws in experimental writing. He has endless riffs on movies. All of these observations are laid out in caffeinated, postcollegiate patois, complete with all the you knows, uhs, and likes that we all struggle against in our own daily speech. Some of this is superficial pedestrian woolgathering masquerading as philosophy, and some of it is brilliant observation. The distance between the two isn't all that great.
Wallace also lays out some of his theories on what it will take for the writer to grab the attention of his over-stimulated, undereducated, 24-hour-news cycle audience. As Wallace is talking, we are pre-Twitter, pre-Facebook, with the Internet only just beginning to grab the attention and time of the public. What strikes Wallace, again and again, is the "loneliness" of modern life - how little connectivity has actually connected anyone. And upon reading, the horrifying reality is that this condition has only worsened since these interviews took place.
But Wallace also believes that human beings are "absolutely dying to give ourselves away to something." He believes this, but he also believes it is virtually impossible to write in a contemporary voice about God:
"I mean the culture, it's all wrong for it now. You know? No, no. Plausibly realistic characters don't sit around talking about this stuff. You know? So...I don't know. But the minute I start talking about it, it just, it sounds number one: very vague. Two: really reductive. And the whole thing to me was so complicated, that you know it took sixteen hundred pages of sort of weird oblique stuff to even start to talk about it. And so feel stupid, talking about it."
Of course, the real characters of this book are talking about it, and neither sounds like Dostoevsky. So why does he feel uncomfortable talking about it? "Because I don't have a diagnosis. I don't have a system of prescriptions," he says. Yet later, he and Pinsky understand that modern America and their generation is growing up in "the rubble of the old system" - that is, the "ridiculous and hypocritical...old authoritarian...don't-question-authority stuff." But, like Jonathan Franzen, Wallace has nothing to replace it with, no direction to point to, no diagnosis, no prescription. He knows enough to know that the same generation is "dying...on the toxicity" of the idea that pleasure and comfort provide the ultimate meanings for life.
"I'm talking about the number of privileged, highly intelligent, motivated career-track people that I know, from my high school and college, who are, if you look into their eyes, empty and miserable. You know? And who don't believe in politics, and don't believe in religion...And who just..who don't believe in anything. Who know fantastic reasons not to believe in stuff, and are terrific ironists and pokers of holes. And there's nothing wrong with that, it's just, it doesn't seem to me that there's just a whole lot else."
But reading this, it's evident there is indeed something wrong with that, and Wallace knows it. One wonders whether he did have some idea of what was wrong, but didn't feel comfortable providing an answer. I'm not suggesting a Christian answer, though it is interesting that Wallace leaves Pinsky to go to a church where "everyone more or less wants to leave each other alone." Much of Wallace's work deals with the loneliness, the lack of meaning, the aimlessness of existence, and the search for meaning, or just, how to kill time. But a writer with the ambition to write an epic novel, with the courage to look at the hole in modern existence, is also mature enough to recognize that he doesn't have all the answers. The question of existence remains. Being able not to believe in something isn't necessarily a strength, when one ultimately doesn't believe in anything at all.
In the book's forward, Franzen provides an observation: "Does it look now like David had all the answers?" In retrospect, we can see that he at least was on to the right questions. But Lipsky's epitaph resounds: "His life was a map that ends at the wrong destination."
Buy my book, "Brilliant Disguises," for .99 cents here. Available in all e-formats.
Buy my book, "The Uncanny Valley," for $5.99 here. Available in all e-formats.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima
Among the plays slated for later this year at the Lincoln Center Festival will be the American premiere of "The Temple of the Golden Pavilion" by Japan's Kanagawa Arts Theatre, a dramatization of Yukio Mishima's most well-known novel. Anyone who saw Paul Schrader's "Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters" will remember that one of those chapters was taken up with this spell-binding story, replete with Mishima's customary violence and obsession with obsessions.
“The Temple of the Golden Pavilion” tells the story of the stuttering, antisocial Buddhist acolyte Mizoguchi, who will eventually set the fire that destroys Kinkaku-ji, the 550-year-old temple in Kyoto. Based on an event that occurred in 1950, Mishima supposedly went so far as to interview the real arsonist, a schizophrenic, in prison in preparation. Inside this novel is a carefully drawn portrait of a mind’s slow descent into madness, but also the struggle of an individual frustrated by his surroundings, searching for freedom.
“He who chases fantasies lacks judgment,” or such is the judgment of Proverbs 12:11. Mizoguchi, from an early age and inspired by his father, sees the Golden Temple as the very essence of beauty. Not the Temple itself, which initially disappoints him, but the image he has created in his mind. Because of this, he easily contrasts it against himself, the personification of ugliness. Interestingly, Mishima - or his translator, Ivan Morris - decides not to let us hear Mizoguchi’s stutter for ourselves. His thoughts, of course, which tell the story, flow freely. But they are a contradictory lot, with conflicting observations about the nature of beauty, ugliness, being and nothingness, good and evil. From an early age, Mizoguchi is alone and proud of being misunderstood, which is the beginning of his fall. It gives him a sense of mission, which is key to his development as the story unfolds.
Halfway through the book, Mizoguchi reminds himself that “the essence of Zen is the absence of all particularities, and that the real power to see consists in the knowledge that one’s own heart possesses neither form nor feature.” In a way, he longs for the nothingness, the lack of attachment, of his calling, but his pride in his otherness keeps drawing him out of this. “It is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other,” he says. But he stands in opposition to the beauty of the Temple, the ever-present, suffocating, undeniability of the Temple. Mizoguchi does not “have any feeling of solidarity with nothingness.” Indeed, he cannot, not because of his defect, not because of the Temple. It is little wonder that his encounters with women repeatedly find him impotent.
One can spot several different messages arising within the story. Beauty acts as an ideal, but also as a curse. It reminds Mizoguchi - and us - that the trials of the world are not so easily escaped even by the devoted and devout. The obsessions we wrap ourselves in can dominate us, and easily turn what is just a historical building of great beauty into a reminder of the unworthiness we perceive in ourselves. One is left to wonder if the individual within Mizoguchi might have been encouraged, in a different setting, or if the process of encouragement itself would have any effect. After all, what would he be encouraged to do? But we also have an all-too familiar picture of the angry loner, a figure who comes to believe that only through destruction does he define himself, that destiny has fingered him for an awful end, but it is his own end, and he will embrace it willingly because it is his. The Christian idea of sin, of malignant desire for that which is beyond redemption or even beyond understanding, is recognizable. But there is something else - a rebellion against the eastern concept of the ideal, which is an existence beyond attachment, identity and struggle.
With the death of Mizoguchi’s father, he begins his career at the Temple, and he befriends Tsurukawa, an upright man. But Mizoguchi’s malevolence is growing, “a wordless force” that seeks to possess him. He nurtures it as he recognizes it, and it blooms when he makes a new friend, Kashiwagi. An arrogant, malicious, self-absorbed man with a club foot, he projects all of these twisted qualities onto Mizoguchi and shows him how to use his disability to his disadvantages.
The appearance of Kashiwagi midway through the novel is Mizoguchi’s catalyst, and the beginning of his emotional apprenticeship. Mizoguchi also learns about the nature of hypocrisy from the Superior, Father Dosen, who has both frustrated and advanced Mizoguchi’s career. At its beginning, Mizoguchi held the ambition to one day succeed him, but only later does this contort itself into the desire to destroy the Temple. After all, the Temple is more alive than Mizoguchi.
Near the end, before Mizoguchi carries out his plot, he begs a visiting father to see past his face and look into his heart. We realize that he too recognizes what is going on inside him, that he does care, that he perceives the outer “ugliness” has taken root inside him, but the father cannot see inside him, and instead unknowingly inspires him to go ahead. Given the author, one might expect Mizoguchi to kill himself in sight of the flames of the Temple. But instead, he smokes a cigarette and embraces the freedom he has found for himself, the individuality, the singularity of his existence. It is not our thoughts which define us to others - but our actions. But our thoughts define us to ourselves, and make the action inevitable.
“The Temple of the Golden Pavilion” tells the story of the stuttering, antisocial Buddhist acolyte Mizoguchi, who will eventually set the fire that destroys Kinkaku-ji, the 550-year-old temple in Kyoto. Based on an event that occurred in 1950, Mishima supposedly went so far as to interview the real arsonist, a schizophrenic, in prison in preparation. Inside this novel is a carefully drawn portrait of a mind’s slow descent into madness, but also the struggle of an individual frustrated by his surroundings, searching for freedom.
“He who chases fantasies lacks judgment,” or such is the judgment of Proverbs 12:11. Mizoguchi, from an early age and inspired by his father, sees the Golden Temple as the very essence of beauty. Not the Temple itself, which initially disappoints him, but the image he has created in his mind. Because of this, he easily contrasts it against himself, the personification of ugliness. Interestingly, Mishima - or his translator, Ivan Morris - decides not to let us hear Mizoguchi’s stutter for ourselves. His thoughts, of course, which tell the story, flow freely. But they are a contradictory lot, with conflicting observations about the nature of beauty, ugliness, being and nothingness, good and evil. From an early age, Mizoguchi is alone and proud of being misunderstood, which is the beginning of his fall. It gives him a sense of mission, which is key to his development as the story unfolds.
Halfway through the book, Mizoguchi reminds himself that “the essence of Zen is the absence of all particularities, and that the real power to see consists in the knowledge that one’s own heart possesses neither form nor feature.” In a way, he longs for the nothingness, the lack of attachment, of his calling, but his pride in his otherness keeps drawing him out of this. “It is impossible to touch eternity with one hand and life with the other,” he says. But he stands in opposition to the beauty of the Temple, the ever-present, suffocating, undeniability of the Temple. Mizoguchi does not “have any feeling of solidarity with nothingness.” Indeed, he cannot, not because of his defect, not because of the Temple. It is little wonder that his encounters with women repeatedly find him impotent.
One can spot several different messages arising within the story. Beauty acts as an ideal, but also as a curse. It reminds Mizoguchi - and us - that the trials of the world are not so easily escaped even by the devoted and devout. The obsessions we wrap ourselves in can dominate us, and easily turn what is just a historical building of great beauty into a reminder of the unworthiness we perceive in ourselves. One is left to wonder if the individual within Mizoguchi might have been encouraged, in a different setting, or if the process of encouragement itself would have any effect. After all, what would he be encouraged to do? But we also have an all-too familiar picture of the angry loner, a figure who comes to believe that only through destruction does he define himself, that destiny has fingered him for an awful end, but it is his own end, and he will embrace it willingly because it is his. The Christian idea of sin, of malignant desire for that which is beyond redemption or even beyond understanding, is recognizable. But there is something else - a rebellion against the eastern concept of the ideal, which is an existence beyond attachment, identity and struggle.
With the death of Mizoguchi’s father, he begins his career at the Temple, and he befriends Tsurukawa, an upright man. But Mizoguchi’s malevolence is growing, “a wordless force” that seeks to possess him. He nurtures it as he recognizes it, and it blooms when he makes a new friend, Kashiwagi. An arrogant, malicious, self-absorbed man with a club foot, he projects all of these twisted qualities onto Mizoguchi and shows him how to use his disability to his disadvantages.
The appearance of Kashiwagi midway through the novel is Mizoguchi’s catalyst, and the beginning of his emotional apprenticeship. Mizoguchi also learns about the nature of hypocrisy from the Superior, Father Dosen, who has both frustrated and advanced Mizoguchi’s career. At its beginning, Mizoguchi held the ambition to one day succeed him, but only later does this contort itself into the desire to destroy the Temple. After all, the Temple is more alive than Mizoguchi.
Near the end, before Mizoguchi carries out his plot, he begs a visiting father to see past his face and look into his heart. We realize that he too recognizes what is going on inside him, that he does care, that he perceives the outer “ugliness” has taken root inside him, but the father cannot see inside him, and instead unknowingly inspires him to go ahead. Given the author, one might expect Mizoguchi to kill himself in sight of the flames of the Temple. But instead, he smokes a cigarette and embraces the freedom he has found for himself, the individuality, the singularity of his existence. It is not our thoughts which define us to others - but our actions. But our thoughts define us to ourselves, and make the action inevitable.
Set Your Fields on Fire
The award-winning novel by William Thornton
Available now
Some of the coverage of "Set Your Fields on Fire"
You can order "Set Your Fields on Fire"for $14.99 through Amazon here.
It's also available on Kindle at $3.99 through Amazon here.
Read an interview I did with AL.com on the book here.
Here's my appearance on the Charisma Network's CPOP Podcast.
Here's an interview I did with The Anniston Star on the book.
Shattered Magazine wrote a story about the book here.
The Alabama Baptist wrote about the book here.
This piece appeared in the Marietta (Ga.) Daily Journal.
Here's the write-up from The Birmingham Times.
Read a story for Village Living here.
This story appeared in The Trussville Tribune and this video.
Read an interview I did with AL.com on the book here.
Here's my appearance on the Charisma Network's CPOP Podcast.
Here's an interview I did with The Anniston Star on the book.
Shattered Magazine wrote a story about the book here.
The Alabama Baptist wrote about the book here.
This piece appeared in the Marietta (Ga.) Daily Journal.
Here's the write-up from The Birmingham Times.
Read a story for Village Living here.
This story appeared in The Trussville Tribune and this video.
Here's my appearance on East Alabama Today.
Story and video from WBRC Fox6 here.
Here's the write-up in The Gadsden Times on the book.
Read a piece I wrote for WestBow Press about writing the book here.
A piece about some inspiring works for me.
Story and video from WBRC Fox6 here.
Here's the write-up in The Gadsden Times on the book.
Read a piece I wrote for WestBow Press about writing the book here.
A piece about some inspiring works for me.
This is another interview with the fleegan book blog here.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Silence by Shusaku Endo
One of the director Martin Scorcese's future planned film projects is reportedly a movie based on "Silence," a novel by the Catholic Japanese writer Shusaku Endo. In an interview with the writer Richard Schiekel, Scorcese states that he has been contemplating a film about the book since a copy was given to him following the release of his 1988 film, "The Last Temptation of Christ." Endo's tale, steeped in the early history of Christianity in Japan, reveals the story of people whose faith survived even as they outwardly denied it.
Endo uses several strategies of structure and voice to tell his story. It begins with news from Japan relayed back to Europe that the Jesuit priest Ferreira, after 33 years on the island, has become an apostate following torture. This inspires the journey of two priests, Sebastian Rodrigues and Francisco Garrpe, who go to Japan to discover the truth about their former mentor. As Francisco observes, "there is no one more wretchedly alone than the priest who does not measure up to his task."
There is more than the fate of a single priest at issue though. The Shogun of Japan is waging a bloody campaign to stamp out Christianity, torturing and killing priests and requiring thousands of villagers to desecrate the holy images they venerate. The Japanese authority does not wish to become yet another European colony in the Far East, with the church serving as its advance guard. The church, in turn, is afraid that its toehold on this island at the edge of the world is disappearing.
After a brief introduction by a narrator, we then follow several chapters of letters penned by Rodrigues, who relates the journey of the priests to Japan and their struggles to remain underground once they reach the islands. Their journey is aided by Kichijiro, a Japanese drunkard later revealed as a Christian brother who succumbed to fear and became an apostate at the point of death. We hear Rodrigues' voice as he thrills to the adventure of discovering that Christian faith thrives still in secret, as he administers baptisms, conducts mass and hears confessions from Japanese starving for the sacraments. It is in these chapters that we relate most to Rodrigues, the reader bonding with his devotion to the faith.
Two themes begin to introduce themselves at this point. One is the image of the face. Rodrigues studies the faces of the Japanese, who look alien and expressionless to him. Are they really devoted followers, and who among them may be ready to betray them to the authorities? Behind the face, we see, is the truth of a person and, we believe, the measure of his faith. Rodrigues senses that Christianity acts as an antidote to the fatalism endemic in the Japanese people, but he detects a diabolical nature behind their outward passivity. Even still, Rodrigues observes that "Our Lord himself entrusted his destiny to untrustworthy people." The face that is mentioned more than any is that of Jesus. Rodrigues, as his situation deteriorates, obsesses over the portrait of Jesus he paints in his own imagination. This is necessary, considering that that very face will be the one that measures his own destiny during the course of the book.
The other theme, though, gives the book its title. "Silence" may stand for the kind employed by the Japanese Christians, who practice their faith in secret and are driven to deny it even as they cling to it. But Rodrigues mentions the awful silence of God, as his faith is challenged again and again. After a few believers are killed, and Kichijiro questions why they must endure alone among men, Rodrigues pens these words:
"I have long read about martyrdom in the lives of the saints - how the souls of the martyrs had gone home to Heaven, how they had been filled with glory in Paradise, how the angels had blown trumpets. This was the splendid martyrdom I had often seen in my dreams. But the martyrdom of the Japanese Christians I now describe to you was no such glorious thing. What a miserable and painful business it was! The rain falls unceasingly on the sea. And the sea which killed them surges on uncannily - in silence."
But the scene abruptly shifts to a narrator again once Rodrigues is captured. The silence he mentions is overpowering, even as Kichijiro again proves himself, in Rodrigues' eyes, as an unreliable believer. The inevitable meeting comes with Ferreira, who is now an unrepentant apostate with a Japanese name and wife. He is a defeated man, and he believes Christianity will never take root in Japan because the Japanese will eventually twist the faith into whatever gods and superstitions they already possess.
Rodrigues feels himself twisted, as the pain mounts, even questioning the existence of God and his own place in an increasing absurd fate. He has traveled around the world to find his mentor an unbeliever, and he feels his impending death as the final death blow to the faith in this alien land. He will be "a missionary defeated by missionary work." And he compares himself to Christ in his sufferings, drawing inspiration, but also asking questions and nursing doubts. The peril of free will is that even as we may be succeeding in life, we can still fail in the ultimate test of divine approval. The closer we draw to God, the more we are aware of how far away we are, how utterly lost without Him.
In hearing a final confession, Rodrigues hears what he thinks is the voice of Jesus, with the distance of the cross providing a last blessing and comfort. The silence has been necessary, he learns, so that he could identify with his Lord in a special way unlike any other. His existence has kept the faith going, even if his example has failed. By giving us this novel, Endo speaks on the paradox of evangelism - that even the outward failure of the individual can lead to ultimate success if the message is carried on, if the life speaking of it draws sufficient attention with its passing on of the light. It is not the individual who succeeds, but the Word itself. In the telling of the story of Jesus, we not only identify with Him, we discover Him, even as we bring others to Him.
In the end, God thunders loudest in appalling, scandalous silences, when our spirit gnaws at the end of our faith like a ravenous dog on a dessicated bone. It is the craving for His voice to comfort, to reassure, even to explain, that ultimately reveals His face, and ours.
Endo uses several strategies of structure and voice to tell his story. It begins with news from Japan relayed back to Europe that the Jesuit priest Ferreira, after 33 years on the island, has become an apostate following torture. This inspires the journey of two priests, Sebastian Rodrigues and Francisco Garrpe, who go to Japan to discover the truth about their former mentor. As Francisco observes, "there is no one more wretchedly alone than the priest who does not measure up to his task."
There is more than the fate of a single priest at issue though. The Shogun of Japan is waging a bloody campaign to stamp out Christianity, torturing and killing priests and requiring thousands of villagers to desecrate the holy images they venerate. The Japanese authority does not wish to become yet another European colony in the Far East, with the church serving as its advance guard. The church, in turn, is afraid that its toehold on this island at the edge of the world is disappearing.
After a brief introduction by a narrator, we then follow several chapters of letters penned by Rodrigues, who relates the journey of the priests to Japan and their struggles to remain underground once they reach the islands. Their journey is aided by Kichijiro, a Japanese drunkard later revealed as a Christian brother who succumbed to fear and became an apostate at the point of death. We hear Rodrigues' voice as he thrills to the adventure of discovering that Christian faith thrives still in secret, as he administers baptisms, conducts mass and hears confessions from Japanese starving for the sacraments. It is in these chapters that we relate most to Rodrigues, the reader bonding with his devotion to the faith.
Two themes begin to introduce themselves at this point. One is the image of the face. Rodrigues studies the faces of the Japanese, who look alien and expressionless to him. Are they really devoted followers, and who among them may be ready to betray them to the authorities? Behind the face, we see, is the truth of a person and, we believe, the measure of his faith. Rodrigues senses that Christianity acts as an antidote to the fatalism endemic in the Japanese people, but he detects a diabolical nature behind their outward passivity. Even still, Rodrigues observes that "Our Lord himself entrusted his destiny to untrustworthy people." The face that is mentioned more than any is that of Jesus. Rodrigues, as his situation deteriorates, obsesses over the portrait of Jesus he paints in his own imagination. This is necessary, considering that that very face will be the one that measures his own destiny during the course of the book.
The other theme, though, gives the book its title. "Silence" may stand for the kind employed by the Japanese Christians, who practice their faith in secret and are driven to deny it even as they cling to it. But Rodrigues mentions the awful silence of God, as his faith is challenged again and again. After a few believers are killed, and Kichijiro questions why they must endure alone among men, Rodrigues pens these words:
"I have long read about martyrdom in the lives of the saints - how the souls of the martyrs had gone home to Heaven, how they had been filled with glory in Paradise, how the angels had blown trumpets. This was the splendid martyrdom I had often seen in my dreams. But the martyrdom of the Japanese Christians I now describe to you was no such glorious thing. What a miserable and painful business it was! The rain falls unceasingly on the sea. And the sea which killed them surges on uncannily - in silence."
But the scene abruptly shifts to a narrator again once Rodrigues is captured. The silence he mentions is overpowering, even as Kichijiro again proves himself, in Rodrigues' eyes, as an unreliable believer. The inevitable meeting comes with Ferreira, who is now an unrepentant apostate with a Japanese name and wife. He is a defeated man, and he believes Christianity will never take root in Japan because the Japanese will eventually twist the faith into whatever gods and superstitions they already possess.
Rodrigues feels himself twisted, as the pain mounts, even questioning the existence of God and his own place in an increasing absurd fate. He has traveled around the world to find his mentor an unbeliever, and he feels his impending death as the final death blow to the faith in this alien land. He will be "a missionary defeated by missionary work." And he compares himself to Christ in his sufferings, drawing inspiration, but also asking questions and nursing doubts. The peril of free will is that even as we may be succeeding in life, we can still fail in the ultimate test of divine approval. The closer we draw to God, the more we are aware of how far away we are, how utterly lost without Him.
In hearing a final confession, Rodrigues hears what he thinks is the voice of Jesus, with the distance of the cross providing a last blessing and comfort. The silence has been necessary, he learns, so that he could identify with his Lord in a special way unlike any other. His existence has kept the faith going, even if his example has failed. By giving us this novel, Endo speaks on the paradox of evangelism - that even the outward failure of the individual can lead to ultimate success if the message is carried on, if the life speaking of it draws sufficient attention with its passing on of the light. It is not the individual who succeeds, but the Word itself. In the telling of the story of Jesus, we not only identify with Him, we discover Him, even as we bring others to Him.
In the end, God thunders loudest in appalling, scandalous silences, when our spirit gnaws at the end of our faith like a ravenous dog on a dessicated bone. It is the craving for His voice to comfort, to reassure, even to explain, that ultimately reveals His face, and ours.
Set Your Fields on Fire
The award-winning novel by William Thornton
Available now
Some of the coverage of "Set Your Fields on Fire"
You can order "Set Your Fields on Fire"for $14.99 through Amazon here.
It's also available on Kindle at $3.99 through Amazon here.
Read an interview I did with AL.com on the book here.
Here's my appearance on the Charisma Network's CPOP Podcast.
Here's an interview I did with The Anniston Star on the book.
Shattered Magazine wrote a story about the book here.
The Alabama Baptist wrote about the book here.
This piece appeared in the Marietta (Ga.) Daily Journal.
Here's the write-up from The Birmingham Times.
Read a story for Village Living here.
This story appeared in The Trussville Tribune and this video.
Read an interview I did with AL.com on the book here.
Here's my appearance on the Charisma Network's CPOP Podcast.
Here's an interview I did with The Anniston Star on the book.
Shattered Magazine wrote a story about the book here.
The Alabama Baptist wrote about the book here.
This piece appeared in the Marietta (Ga.) Daily Journal.
Here's the write-up from The Birmingham Times.
Read a story for Village Living here.
This story appeared in The Trussville Tribune and this video.
Here's my appearance on East Alabama Today.
Story and video from WBRC Fox6 here.
Here's the write-up in The Gadsden Times on the book.
Read a piece I wrote for WestBow Press about writing the book here.
A piece about some inspiring works for me.
Story and video from WBRC Fox6 here.
Here's the write-up in The Gadsden Times on the book.
Read a piece I wrote for WestBow Press about writing the book here.
A piece about some inspiring works for me.
This is another interview with the fleegan book blog here.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Sanshirō by Natsume Sōseki
Reading Haruki Murakami again led me to this classic of Japanese 20th century literature, since Murakami provided the introduction to this latest translation by Jay Rubin. "Sanshirō" is the story of a young country boy who goes to Tokyo for his university education, and Murakami's introduction points out that, if the book is effective, it is because it provides an affectionate and accurate representation of the "fragrance" of this particular time in one's life, regardless of where the reader may live.
The setting is 1908. Japan, after centuries of non-contact with the West, is open to European and American influences in art, dress, religion, politics, philosophy and expression. The setting, then, is a hurricane of societal change, and that alone would be worthy of a panoramic novel of ideas. But Sanshirō, who has experienced rural life with its suppositions and superstitions, is thrust into modern Japan to receive his education. He approaches the city with a mix of skepticism, innocence, fear and expectation.
What follows then is a story with an intimate setting and a small cast of interrelated characters. "Sanshirō" is a novel of college life, but its most important aspects are not lectures or the ideas the characters wrestle with, but what characters learn about the world they will encounter, and themselves, and how they deal with each other. Just as in every university the world over, passionate young people display inordinate emotion over ideas they barely understand, but which dominate them. The students give birth to ideas that have been rubbed raw, already thought and rethought a thousand times. These minds are too young to know how unoriginal these fancies are, but vain enough to exult in the ideas as if they are brand new. "How many aeons did nature expend in fashioning a precious jewel?," one asks. "And how many aeons did the jewel lie gleaming in the earth until fate brought it forth?"
Sanshirō is a familiar character, a wise fool who is oblivious to experience as he makes friends with the ebullient Yojirō and pursues the shy Mineko. He "smells of the farm," Yojirō tells him, but his reticence keeps him in awe of the figures he encounters and mindful of danger.
This marks him, though, as a "coward," as evident in his first encounter with a woman on a train headed to Tokyo. He ends up sharing a bath and a bed in an inn with a strange woman, but nothing passes between them. It is only at their parting that he realizes she was waiting for him to make a move. Later, his mother repeats the charge that he has always been cowardly. Yet it took some courage for Sanshirō to venture to college in the first place. What we see is not so much a man who is avoiding danger as one who is blind to it. The only question is how willingly blind he is. He is learning, and more than anything, learning to understand. The emotional language of those he meets is foreign to him - just as foreign as "Hamlet" is when he waits for the Danish prince to say something more recognizably Japanese.
The question of Japanese identity lies dormant in the novel, as the definition is still being debated during this period. The Japanese are learning, in the early 1900s, to become part of a larger world community. There is awe at some western ideas and healthy skepticism. But a professor counsels Sanshirō from the beginning "not to surrender himself" to the ideas he encounters, which is also a theme running through the novel. All of these grand philosophical and societal ideas are nothing, the same professor says later, because man does not operate according to mechanical laws. The same experiences inspire different responses from men living side by side.
The professor offers another critique, in that western ideals have made people less hypocritical, because they are "hyper-villains" - instead of caring for others for the benefit of public approval, they now care for themselves out in the open. This has made society meaner, but more honest, "natural ugliness in all its glory," the professor says. This is one of the paradoxes of modern living, of course. We surrender civilization in the service of "honesty," but we instead give dishonesty a bigger home in wider society. We surrender altruism because it inconvenient, but we mourn the loss. And where does Sanshirō fit in? All he seems to want, even though he doesn't understand it, is Mineko.
The bittersweetness of college, though, is that it eventually ends, as does youth. Mineko will not marry Sanshirō, but only because he eventually proves the prophecy of his cowardice. Later on, Sanshirō learns that Mineko is a Christian, which makes her common judgment on others - that they are "stray sheep" - more understandable. It also makes the heart ache to hear her parting words to him, from Psalms 51: "For I acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever before me." She has mistakenly given her heart to a man who will not take it. He has learned something, but we are unsure if it is enough to change him.
Set Your Fields on Fire
The award-winning novel by William Thornton
Available now
Some of the coverage of "Set Your Fields on Fire"
You can order "Set Your Fields on Fire"for $14.99 through Amazon here.
It's also available on Kindle at $3.99 through Amazon here.
Read an interview I did with AL.com on the book here.
Here's my appearance on the Charisma Network's CPOP Podcast.
Here's an interview I did with The Anniston Star on the book.
Shattered Magazine wrote a story about the book here.
The Alabama Baptist wrote about the book here.
This piece appeared in the Marietta (Ga.) Daily Journal.
Here's the write-up from The Birmingham Times.
Read a story for Village Living here.
This story appeared in The Trussville Tribune and this video.
Read an interview I did with AL.com on the book here.
Here's my appearance on the Charisma Network's CPOP Podcast.
Here's an interview I did with The Anniston Star on the book.
Shattered Magazine wrote a story about the book here.
The Alabama Baptist wrote about the book here.
This piece appeared in the Marietta (Ga.) Daily Journal.
Here's the write-up from The Birmingham Times.
Read a story for Village Living here.
This story appeared in The Trussville Tribune and this video.
Here's my appearance on East Alabama Today.
Story and video from WBRC Fox6 here.
Here's the write-up in The Gadsden Times on the book.
Read a piece I wrote for WestBow Press about writing the book here.
A piece about some inspiring works for me.
Story and video from WBRC Fox6 here.
Here's the write-up in The Gadsden Times on the book.
Read a piece I wrote for WestBow Press about writing the book here.
A piece about some inspiring works for me.
This is another interview with the fleegan book blog here.
Monday, March 21, 2011
after the quake by Haruki Murakami
The indelible pictures of devastation following this month's 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan continue to mesmerize - with YouTube videos of cars bobbing in the water, homes carried away on currents, and the smoldering ruins of nuclear reactors, with no one knowing where the devastation may end. The Japanese themselves struggle with not only how to rebuild, but what "meaning" they may attach to this parade of disasters.
The last time the nation went through a comparable catastrophe was the 1995 Kobe earthquake, which killed more than 6,400 people. It also inspired "after the quake," a short story collection by Haruki Murakami peopled with characters dealing with its aftermath.
But the effect is largely at a distance. The book's six stories do not feature even a single survivor of the quake, nor is there a description of the moment of devastation. The characters of the book tend to experience the disaster as much of Japan and the world did - secondhand, through television images and reports of the devastation. Komura, the main character of the opening story, "UFO in Kushiro," (which is being reprinted in this week's New Yorker) sees a morning paper of reports:
"He read it from beginning to end on the plane. The number of dead was rising. Many areas were still without water or electricity, and countless people had lost their homes. Each article reported some new tragedy, but to Komura the details seemed oddly lacking in depth. All sounds reached him as far-off, monotonous echoes."
The stories have common traits, common images, common themes. One is obviously a sense of loss. Komura's wife has used the earthquake to leave him. Another character has run away from his wife. One story takes place not in Japan but Thailand, with the earthquake only mentioned in passing, reminding a woman of a lost child. Still another character has what may or may not be a mystical experience that prevents a larger quake from striking Tokyo, but with the expectation he may lose his life.
Another element is the aftermath of sudden calamity. In all cases, the earthquake is only a far-off trauma that mirrors one closer to home. The death of loved ones, the loss of certainties in life, the suddenness of unwanted loneliness, the approach of death - all of these shake and shape our characters in ways far beyond that of trembling earth. The heart figures prominently in a few of them, as an image and the obvious stand-in as the seat of our emotions, our longings for freedom, and our insistence on love.
But the characters in these stories also deal with meaning, and the loss of meaning brought on by disaster. Komura, our hero from the opening story, does not know why his wife left and struggles with understanding how he can continue in her absence. Katagiri, in "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo," believes he is being guided by a walking, talking frog who means to save the capital city. He is told that if he has faith in the frog, who has been watching him and silently admiring his integrity, then they will be successful. But even if they are successful, no one will know it has happened.
Yoshida, the main character of "All God's Children Can Dance," deals with the absence of the defining idea of his life, as his religiously devout mother raised him to believe, as part of her pseudo-Christian cult, that he was a Son of God. Consequently, as the years continue, he abandons his faith because of "the unending coldness of the One who was his father: His dark, heavy, silent heart of stone." In the face of so many losses, Yoshida asks the question why "if it is all right for God to test man, why was it wrong for man to test God?" Even Yoshida, in the end though, cannot totally abandon God anymore than he can abandon the faith he barely comprehends. Like our other characters, he struggles against a profound sense of loneliness that seems just as persistent as it is indefinable. More than one character struggles against a sense of personal darkness that threatens to overwhelm him or her.
The New York Times, in reporting on the response of the Japanese people to the 2011 earthquake, noted that at least one citizen mentioned tapping the nation's "hidden strength." "Implicit in the praise of Japanese traits of endurance, perseverance and grace - strengths evident in the orderly response to the unfathomable destruction up north - is a criticism of the perceived values that led to the nuclear accidents: the postwar blind pursuit of material wealth and comfort..."
The stories of "after the quake" illustrate that disasters sometimes serve only as the background music in the lives of individuals to illustrate the loss of control we all experience, even at our sanest and safest. We struggle for meaning because we do not want an accident to be responsible for carrying away all we ever knew, but we struggle against it simultaneously because we don't think the meaning we perceive may be one we wish to confront. We want to assign blame elsewhere, or we are too quick to attach it to ourselves. We want clarity, until we perceive it, and then we insist on ambiguity, with nothingness growing in our hearts, in order to preserve our all-too-fragile notions of who we are and where we think we are going.
A headline this week in the USA Today on the disaster read, "For survivors, daily struggle of life and death." Murakami, in evoking Kobe, reminds us that such a headline can deal with much more than the aftermath of an earthquake.
I also wrote about Murakami's "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage" here.
The last time the nation went through a comparable catastrophe was the 1995 Kobe earthquake, which killed more than 6,400 people. It also inspired "after the quake," a short story collection by Haruki Murakami peopled with characters dealing with its aftermath.
But the effect is largely at a distance. The book's six stories do not feature even a single survivor of the quake, nor is there a description of the moment of devastation. The characters of the book tend to experience the disaster as much of Japan and the world did - secondhand, through television images and reports of the devastation. Komura, the main character of the opening story, "UFO in Kushiro," (which is being reprinted in this week's New Yorker) sees a morning paper of reports:
"He read it from beginning to end on the plane. The number of dead was rising. Many areas were still without water or electricity, and countless people had lost their homes. Each article reported some new tragedy, but to Komura the details seemed oddly lacking in depth. All sounds reached him as far-off, monotonous echoes."
The stories have common traits, common images, common themes. One is obviously a sense of loss. Komura's wife has used the earthquake to leave him. Another character has run away from his wife. One story takes place not in Japan but Thailand, with the earthquake only mentioned in passing, reminding a woman of a lost child. Still another character has what may or may not be a mystical experience that prevents a larger quake from striking Tokyo, but with the expectation he may lose his life.
Another element is the aftermath of sudden calamity. In all cases, the earthquake is only a far-off trauma that mirrors one closer to home. The death of loved ones, the loss of certainties in life, the suddenness of unwanted loneliness, the approach of death - all of these shake and shape our characters in ways far beyond that of trembling earth. The heart figures prominently in a few of them, as an image and the obvious stand-in as the seat of our emotions, our longings for freedom, and our insistence on love.
But the characters in these stories also deal with meaning, and the loss of meaning brought on by disaster. Komura, our hero from the opening story, does not know why his wife left and struggles with understanding how he can continue in her absence. Katagiri, in "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo," believes he is being guided by a walking, talking frog who means to save the capital city. He is told that if he has faith in the frog, who has been watching him and silently admiring his integrity, then they will be successful. But even if they are successful, no one will know it has happened.
Yoshida, the main character of "All God's Children Can Dance," deals with the absence of the defining idea of his life, as his religiously devout mother raised him to believe, as part of her pseudo-Christian cult, that he was a Son of God. Consequently, as the years continue, he abandons his faith because of "the unending coldness of the One who was his father: His dark, heavy, silent heart of stone." In the face of so many losses, Yoshida asks the question why "if it is all right for God to test man, why was it wrong for man to test God?" Even Yoshida, in the end though, cannot totally abandon God anymore than he can abandon the faith he barely comprehends. Like our other characters, he struggles against a profound sense of loneliness that seems just as persistent as it is indefinable. More than one character struggles against a sense of personal darkness that threatens to overwhelm him or her.
The New York Times, in reporting on the response of the Japanese people to the 2011 earthquake, noted that at least one citizen mentioned tapping the nation's "hidden strength." "Implicit in the praise of Japanese traits of endurance, perseverance and grace - strengths evident in the orderly response to the unfathomable destruction up north - is a criticism of the perceived values that led to the nuclear accidents: the postwar blind pursuit of material wealth and comfort..."
The stories of "after the quake" illustrate that disasters sometimes serve only as the background music in the lives of individuals to illustrate the loss of control we all experience, even at our sanest and safest. We struggle for meaning because we do not want an accident to be responsible for carrying away all we ever knew, but we struggle against it simultaneously because we don't think the meaning we perceive may be one we wish to confront. We want to assign blame elsewhere, or we are too quick to attach it to ourselves. We want clarity, until we perceive it, and then we insist on ambiguity, with nothingness growing in our hearts, in order to preserve our all-too-fragile notions of who we are and where we think we are going.
A headline this week in the USA Today on the disaster read, "For survivors, daily struggle of life and death." Murakami, in evoking Kobe, reminds us that such a headline can deal with much more than the aftermath of an earthquake.
I also wrote about Murakami's "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage" here.
Set Your Fields on Fire
The award-winning novel by William Thornton
Available now
Some of the coverage of "Set Your Fields on Fire"
You can order "Set Your Fields on Fire"for $14.99 through Amazon here.
It's also available on Kindle at $3.99 through Amazon here.
Read an interview I did with AL.com on the book here.
Here's my appearance on the Charisma Network's CPOP Podcast.
Here's an interview I did with The Anniston Star on the book.
Shattered Magazine wrote a story about the book here.
The Alabama Baptist wrote about the book here.
This piece appeared in the Marietta (Ga.) Daily Journal.
Here's the write-up from The Birmingham Times.
Read a story for Village Living here.
This story appeared in The Trussville Tribune and this video.
Read an interview I did with AL.com on the book here.
Here's my appearance on the Charisma Network's CPOP Podcast.
Here's an interview I did with The Anniston Star on the book.
Shattered Magazine wrote a story about the book here.
The Alabama Baptist wrote about the book here.
This piece appeared in the Marietta (Ga.) Daily Journal.
Here's the write-up from The Birmingham Times.
Read a story for Village Living here.
This story appeared in The Trussville Tribune and this video.
Here's my appearance on East Alabama Today.
Story and video from WBRC Fox6 here.
Here's the write-up in The Gadsden Times on the book.
Read a piece I wrote for WestBow Press about writing the book here.
A piece about some inspiring works for me.
Story and video from WBRC Fox6 here.
Here's the write-up in The Gadsden Times on the book.
Read a piece I wrote for WestBow Press about writing the book here.
A piece about some inspiring works for me.
This is another interview with the fleegan book blog here.
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