Category Archives: book reviews

Book of the Week: Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness: Four Short Novels by Kenzabur? ?e

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What a way to finish up my tour of the great Japanese writers of the 20th century. It’s not often you can call a writer brave. Generally it’s reserved for writers who risked their own lives for their art. Alexander Solzhenitsyn would be a good example. But as I read the tales in Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, I could only stand in awe at how brave Kenzaburō Ōe was as a storyteller.

Take the opening tale, “The Day He Himself Shall Wipe Away My Tears.” It is told entirely from the prospective of an unnamed narrator, who spends his days in a hospital bed, dying from liver cancer, wearing thick underwater goggles covered in cellophane, dictating the story of his youth to a constantly interrupting stenographer who continually questions the motives of the narrator, the veracity of his account, and whether or not he truly has cancer (something the doctors dispute). The reader spends the entire story in the twisted headspace of the narrator, looped into his madness, as he recounts the tale of his sickly dying father accompanying a band of insurrectionists on a mission to restore Japan’s honor. As with his delusions of sickness, the narrator’s story of the insurrection is somewhat distorted, as if the cellophane over his goggles have changed his perception of days past. It is only the arrival of a third party later in the story that we learn the truth. Written as an angry parody in reaction to his friend Yukio Mishima’s grandiose suicide by hara-kiri, “The Day He Himself Shall Wipe Away My Tears” explores one’s inability to escape the myth and identity of the past. The overall narrative is inventive and challenging for the reader, but the power of Ōe’s writing carries it through.
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Book of the Week: Inside the Mind of a Python ( Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years by Michael Palin)

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A publicity biography of Michael Palin, written by John Cleese, is included in the introduction for (Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years):

“Michael Palin is not just one of Britain’s foremost comedy character actors…he also talks a lot.

Michael chats, quips, fantasises, reminisces, commiserates, encourages, plans, discusses, and elaborates. Then, some nights, when everyone else has gone to bed, he goes home and writes up a diary.”

You can almost hear Cleese’s signature tone of ire in your head as you read that last line. But it sums up this collection of Michael Palin’s diaries from Monty Python’s definitive years perfectly. At 673 pages (not counting the index), this hefty tome takes you deep inside Palin’s head during a period of almost exhaustive creative output, constant travel, financial wranglings, headbutting within the Python camp, and ultimately, great success.
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Book of the Week: Even the Dead Are Smiling ( The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh)

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In the hand of any other writer, a macabre little book such as this would come across as overwrought and fall apart from too much nudging and winking at the reader. But only a Brit of Evelyn Waugh’s superb wit and writing prowess could concoct a story of death, cemeteries, suicide, and Hollywood that expertly skewers the American way of life (and the writer’s own countrymen).

Whenever a discussion of satirical novels comes up, the two masterpieces I always think of are Terry Southern’s Blue Movie and Evelyn Waugh’s The Loved One. While the former is stuffed with Southern’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink style of satire, Waugh’s tome is decidedly more British – spare, dry, and razor sharp in its humor. Southern was such a fan of The Loved One, he wrote a movie adaptation of the novel (although a very Southern-ized version that didn’t quite work as a film).

What still fascinates me to this day about the The Loved One is its perfectness. It is a small novel, almost a novella at 164 pages. But not a word is wasted. Each turn of phrase or change in tone is used to maximum impact.
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James Jay’s “Sympathy for Jesus”

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I was lucky enough this past Thursday to read with poet James Jay at a book tour stop for him and old-friend Mike Faloon in Brooklyn. James read a few pieces from his new collection, The Journeymen, which is out now from Gorsky Press and won the show. More narrative in nature, the poems where gritty tales of northern Arizona (James hails from Flagstaff) and rundown bars. A few favorites were “Freddy Arizona and the Trains” and what I at first thought was called “V.W. Jesus,” but later discovered was titled “Sympathy for Jesus.” Below are the first few stanza’s from the latter. Right off the bat, Jason delivers this rich character and brings you hip deep into the poem’s story. Great stuff and I can’t recommend The Journeymen enough.

At the wheel of the V.W. bug,
Jesus, short-legged, pot-bellied,
he rounds up the kids from the trailers
of Kingman, of Birdland, of Butler.

He sticks his hands out the window
Into the scorching summer air
as the V.W. takes slow, wide turns
all on its own. “The hands of God

now have the wheel!
You better believe!”
the Jesus of the V.W. hollers.
We children scream and hoot. How can this be?

Book of the Week: Beware of Sand! (The Woman in the Dunes by Kōbō Abe)

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Next up in my run through of the great Post-War Japanese literary giants, is Kōbō Abe. (You can check out my review of Shusaku Endo’s Silence here).

I actually discovered Abe not through his books, but through the films of Hiroshi Teshigahara. The Face of Another, which was adapted by the director from Abe’s novel, is an eerie film, with Tatsuya Nakadai doing a stellar job as the businessman who loses his identity (and his moral self in the process). I then moved on to The Woman in the Dunes, but didn’t think the film worked as well as The Face of Another. The repetition of the lead character’s isolation dragged the film down rather than creating suspense.

The book however is another story…

Abe’s short novel is as gritty as the ever-present sand that permeates the tale, in spite of having no typical aspects of a crime or suspense novel.

To be sure, the story does involve a kidnapping, namely one Jumpei Niki, a schoolteacher and entomologist who travels to a small remote village to collect rare insects from amongst the sand dunes. Having missed the final bus out of town, the locals offer to let him stay the night. They lead him to a deep pit within the dunes, wherein is small wooden cottage and the young widow who lives there. Niki climbs down the roper ladder and like a fly in the web, so he is trapped.
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Book of the Week: “Hello this is God, I’m not in right now…”

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Silence by Shusaku EndoSilence by Shusaku Endo

It is a testament to Endo’s devastating, yet spare prose that the most complex argument against Christianity is boiled down to a simple realization: the silence of God.

At the beginning of Silence, a Portuguese priest, Father Sebastian Rodrigues, travels to Japan at the height of Christian persecution in the 17th Century. He knows that Christians are being tortured and put to death by the local officials and samurai. He knows that his predecessor, the highly-respected missionary Ferreria, apostatized, supposedly renouncing his religious beliefs after undergoing the torture of the pit. Yet, Rodrigues is secure in his religious piety. As a colleague of his states prior to landing on Japanese soil, “Someone must go to give them courage and to ensure that the tiny flame of faith does not die out.” Unfortunately, this righteousness makes Rodrigues blind not only to the social realities of Japan but to the flaws in the purpose of his mission.

As the story unfolds, Rodrigues is put through the religious wringer, forced to question how a loving God could allow his poorest, most wretched citizens to suffer, and ultimately, whether or not this soul-saving quest is indeed fool’s errand. Continue reading →

Book of the Week: Twenty Stories by Kristin Fouquet

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I have to admit that I concur with Caleb Ross’ review of Twenty Stories. Ms. Fouquet’s tales grow on you, line-by-line, page-by-page, slowly creeping under the skin, as you dig deeper into the collection. But perhaps that is the point. What else would you expect from a bunch of tales set in low and lazy New Orleans? If you’ve walked the streets, you know that nothing is rushed. Even redemption and remorse. So by the time you hit “Another Initiation” on page 6, then stumble upon “The Painters” on page 15, before catching “Boy in Waiting” on page 36, and then finally reaching “Blue No More” on page 43, you’re hip deep in the sordid lives of the New Orleans locals.

I would call these tales postcards rather than traditional stories. Most are snapshots of lives not quite lived but misdirected. There are the not-so-usual missteps and miscalculations. Such as the main character’s longing for a tough-loving lounge singer in “The Moon is New, But Love is Old.” Or the painter who misjudges his landlord’s appreciation of art in “The Painters.” But in all these tales, Fouquet presents characters, people you already know. If you’ve ever spent time in the sweaty watering holes of the South, you recognize them as locals. They ring true of the landscape. Maybe that’s why their trip-ups make for good reading.

Book of the Week: Charactered Pieces: stories by Caleb J. Ross

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In the opening story of Caleb J. Ross’ new collection, the main character invents the term charactered pieces as a euphemism for diamonds with obvious cracks and flaws. In many ways Lori is a charactered piece herself – mostly due to the foot of her fetus-in-fetu sister that protrudes from her belly. Then of course there is mom, a bit of a flawed gem herself, who had half-her face blown off in a beer-commercial mishap. Yet, she seems convinced that somehow all the defects can be covered up, if only by glops of makeup.

That opening tale served as a nice introduction to the off-kilter, macabre, black-sense of humor that made me instantly like most of the stories in Charactered Pieces. The people who stumble and wander through Ross’ stories, much like Lori’s diamonds, have obvious flaws, glaring even. It’s an ugly humanity but one that’s too real to dismiss. Take the divorced, ex-drug-addict, father who slaves away as the lone gringo in a Chinese kitchen. He’s too angry, too bullheaded, and too self-centered to take responsibility for his mistakes. He views them as unavoidable obstructions that he had no more control over than the snow storm that starts a series of unfortunate events. As he says midway through the tale, “Mother Nature doesn’t want a person to live.” Where Ross keeps this from becoming cliché is his compassion for the characters. There is beauty in the flaws, or at least humanity.
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Book of the Week: Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon

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Who are you really? Is your identity static or can you slide in and out different personas like a snake shedding skin? If you can, do you lose any sense of who you really are? And ultimately, what are the consequences of all this reinventing of identity?

In age where our personas, who we project ourselves to be on social networks and blogs, don’t always match the truth, Await Your Reply cuts straight to the bone (as you’ll see by the opening chapter), getting underneath our collective skins. Like a puzzle box that you slowly unravel, the novel digs deep into those questions. I don’t loosely throw out the term ‘Hitchcockian’ as it carries great expectations, but the book is just that. As I read Dan Chaon’s novel, I kept thinking to myself, “This is Vertigo.” Imagine Hitchcock’s Vertigo expanded out to include three lost souls all wrapped up in separate intrigues that ultimately involve shedding their personas. That’s not to say that Chaon is ripping off Alfred, he’s just taking a cue from the master and crafting his own wonderful web of lies, deceit, trickery, violence, and murder. From the first chapter you’re hooked and can’t wait to dig deeper.
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Book of the Week: The Strangers in the House by Georges Simenon

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It is a testament to Simenon’s quirky way of crafting a novel that when reading The Strangers in the House, one finds the actual solving of the mystery as the least interesting part of the novel.

Simenon took an interesting approach to his novels to say the least. He would often start out by writing everything he knew about his main characters on the backs of envelopes. Simple things: where do they live, what do they do for a living, who is in their family. Case in point, Hector Loursat, the protagonist of The Strangers in the House. At the beginning of the novel, we learn that Loursat is:

  • An abandoned husband (his wife having left him for a lover 18 years ago)
  • A father (and not a very good one to his only daughter)
  • A slob (who walks about the house in his soiled smoking jacket)
  • A drunk (who goes through several bottles of burgundy a day)
  • And a recluse (who has not left the confines of his bedroom nee study in many years)

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