Japan
The Great Passage
by Shion Miura
The year began with a great new author, Shion Miura. The book is a story about a small team of employees at a Japanese publishing company working to compile a new dictionary. Anyone who loves dictionaries will love this book. But I also think anyone who loves British cozy mysteries will love this as well... for while there are no murders to solve--and in fact the plot is exceedingly simple-- the story rests on the feel-good nature of the relationships between the characters. It is a sweet and wonderful book. The perfect first book of the year!
The translator, Juliet Winters Carpenter, is one of my favorite translators working from Japanese. See my review in the Chicago Review of Books of her translation of an I Novel by Minae Mizumura. I really loved her decision to put the dictionaries into direct English translation, highlighting what is wondrous about the dictionary-compiling process.... so that the famous Kojien becomes the Wide Garden of Words (took me time to realize) and Daijirin becomes the Great Forest of Words. It is great that she chose this path since it also allowed the book title to become The Great Passage--instead of 舟を編む [Fune O Amu]
I loved the characters, loved thinking about the process of dictionary-making, was happy to take a break from plot points and character arcs which are becoming almost tedious in American fiction today.
I loved the inclusion of Chinese and Japanese poetry and LOVED the annotated letter at the end. Looking forward to seeing more translations by this wonderful writer!
Other Japan Stories
The year also kicked off with my discovery of Keigo Higashino's Detective stories. I enjoyed all four installments of the Detective Galileo books and am thinking of reading his other series, starting with Malice. And I definitely want to read his novel, Nimiya General Store. My favorites were the first two: Devotion of Suspect X and Salvation of a Saint. My least favorite was Midsummer's Equation. I loved the last one, Parade, as well!
Translations are fantastic! And speaking of great translations and new writers, I really enjoyed these two books by Keiichiro Hirano, A Man and The End of the Matinee. The latter one especially was fantastic and translated wonderfully by Juliet Winters Carpenter.
I also started Michael Pronko's Detective Hiroshi series, and LOVE them! The Last Train, Moving Blade,
Around the same time, I re-read Jake Adelstein's brilliant and hilarious Tokyo Vice (going to be an HBO series)
In other news, I started reading Haruki Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart, translated by Philip Gabriel. I am not a big fan of Murakami but am really enjoying the novel—more than I’d expected! I also liked Kafka on the Shore. But I think this is the first of his novels that I can actually say I like a lot.
In Spring, I read three books written by Americans who taught English in Japan. If You Follow Me was the only novel; while the other two are works of nonfiction: Polly Barton's Fifty Sounds (an award-winning language memoir, which I will write a separate post on later) and Tim Anderson's Gaijin Diaries. Substack Post: If You Follow Me.
Memoirs
Schadenfreude, A Love Story: Me, the Germans, and 20 Years of Attempted Transformations, Unfortunate Miscommunications, and Humiliating Situations That Only They Have Words For
by Rebecca Schuman (Goodreads Review)
This memoir is beautifully voiced. Original, fun and really hilarious at times too. For me, Schuman is a cross between Dave Barry and Mrs Maisel. It kept me smiling and laughing the entire read.
The book spans a long time--from senior year in high school until she is 38, about to have a baby. Memoirs with long time spans are tough to pull off. I am now starting work on a language memoir of my own (Japanese) and hoping to study with Schuman at Stanford Continuing Studies. While I was reading, I kept wondering, "is this really okay to make fun of Germans like this?" My husband says it is allowed... She is so hilarious --especially when she went back to Berlin again in grad school to try to become fluent yet again. And I loved how her passion for Kafka propelled the entire life story-- laughing when every single German person took time to remind her that, yeah, Kafka is not German!
The funny parts were funny, but I have to say I preferred the serious parts. She was excellent on Heidegger and Wittgenstein and I would have wanted a lot more of that. I suspect there was more but maybe that was edited out. What a shame that would have been as those parts really captured my interest. I also appreciated her long struggle with trying to get tenure. Her struggle was long but the descriptions did not drag on and in fact, it was only the very last part of the book.
I was happy it had a happy ending too.
Now, I am off to see what else she is writing.
2 likes
Crying in H Mart
by Michelle Zauner
One of the most talented writers I have met at UCLA Extension recently raved about this book, so I had to read it immediately. It's been on my radar since it came out... though I had not heard of Zauner's band till after reading the book. A very moving account of the author's relationship with her mother, it spanned from her childhood and teenage years till after her mother's death and the years after. During the illness, at one point, I started to think if I ever doubted that having kids was meaningful, all I had to do was read this book as I was deeply moved by the author's care and devotion to her mother. She is an extraordinarily kind and loving human being. The best daughter. She even managed to make her wedding be about her mother over her own self... I loved her story and admired her character so much.
The book was a bit slow-reading for me, not because I wasn't interested, but rather because it never brought much outside reference to the story. Many people will appreciate that since you are always right there in story, it creates a very cinematic experience... And this book is incredibly evocative and emotionally compelling like the best cinema. That said, for me, I would have loved more history and context about certain aspects of Korean culture she was writing about-- especially about family relations, the language and more about food. I am imagining a cookbook at least someday!! I will never forget the book. Like the reviewer in the Chicago Review of Books, I also expected to cry (which I did) but did not expect to find myself deep in self-reflection: "In this book, Zauner brings us all in so close that we’re left with no other option but to examine our own lives just as closely."
The Magical Language of Others
by E.J. Koh
As I was reading, in some ways it felt the exact opposite to Crying in H Mart--in story, but also in writing styles.
The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays
by Esmé Weijun Wang
This book is a tour de force. It is a book of essays that works on the reader like the best memoir you have ever read. I stayed up late two nights in a row because I could not put it down. As a person who is not fundamentally interested in psychiatry and issues of pharmacology, I resisted buying the book because life is short and there are so many books sitting on my nightstand. But after reading a short article about the author, I felt impressed and wanted to read more and then could not stop reading. This book has the best of everything non-fiction: gorgeous and precise sentences, thought provoking ideas, a lot of research that leads to insights and a world-opening artistic vision. Need I say more? I love the chapter on Chimayo best.
Fragrant Rice: My Continuing Love Affair with Bali [Includes 115 Recipes]
by Janet De Neefe
Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir
by Farah Bashir
In Other Words, Jhumpa Lahiri
It is an interesting premise: Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist gives up her language of strength and power to embark on a journey of writing in another language... one in which she is not proficient at yet. I once knew a Polish writer whose English was so fluent that I never once caught a hint that it was not his native tongue. A modern-day Joseph Conrad? A genius who one day informed me that he had decided to give up English.... why, I asked? Well, according to him, he was bored thinking about the things that people thought of in English. In French, he declared, the intellectual possibilities were wide open. the language he thought and dreamt in grew out of is reading--and if he preferred reading French books then I figured it only made sense he would want to think in that language as well. I feel the same about Japanese. I prefer myself when I was thinking and reading in that language. And so Lahiri's choice makes sense... in a nutshell, she fell in love. With a language, with its literature and its people.
The book was very basic-- is this the writing of a famous writer? But I kept reminding myself she wrote it in Italian and someone else translated it. Even after 25 years studying Japanese, I could never have pulled off such a beautifully done memoir. Having read her stories-- I am thinking of Interpreter of Maladies-- I know she is concerned with language and identity. Maybe like my son, (or not?) she never feels fully herself in her parents' home culture of Bengali or in her first-generation English home culture. Instead of having two homes she feels fractured-never fully accepted in either. I think even long term expats and immigrants (as I was in Japan) feel always "betwixt and between," as my mom says. And so in her story Interpreter, she is less interested in details concerning culture as much as she uses details to highlight cultural differences. Like the clothing is described in terms of differences--not the temple or the car--each which could have been depicted in great details... who doesn't love an Ambassador? Her POV character is only lightly painted... in fact, it took me a moment to realize that he was indeed the POV character... the American-born characters are more flashy. And what she does with that alarming American habit of people confessing things to strangers is fascinating.
In the memoir she includes two stories--one about a translator.
In a review in the Irish Times, one of the judges who awarded her with a prize in that country said this:
As a student aged 27 Lahiri first went to Italy, to Florence. She didn’t buy a guidebook, she bought a dictionary. She developed a single-minded and joyless passion. Lahiri declined to translate In Other Words, leaving it to Ann Goldstein, who has translated Elena Ferrante and last year edited the magnificent Complete Works of Primo Levi, in English. Goldstein conveys Lahiri’s intensity, a quality which also dominates Ferrante’s work. Both Lahiri and Ferrante are humourless which made Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet heavy going for me, whereas Lahiri’s refined detachment compensates for her lack of irony.
I loved the book--and I do think in art having constraints can bring fruitful results--and for a writer what more of a constraint is there than writing in a language you are only tentatively fluent in?
““When do you return to America?” he asked, trying to sound placid. “In ten days.” He calculated: A week to settle in, a week to develop the pictures, a few days to compose her letter, two weeks to get to India by air. According to his schedule, allowing room for delays, he would hear from Mrs. Das in approximately six weeks’ time.”
— Interpreter Of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
AT THE TEA STALL Mr. and Mrs. Das bickered about who should take Tina to the toilet. Eventually Mrs. Das relented when Mr. Das pointed out that he had given the girl her bath the night before. In the rearview mirror Mr. Kapasi watched as Mrs. Das emerged slowly from his bulky white Ambassador, dragging her shaved, largely bare legs across the back seat. She did not hold the little girl’s hand as they walked to the rest room.”
— Interpreter Of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
https://a.co/ivbU29O
Jack Livings also recommends:
Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter
When Mrs. Dutta decided to give up her home of forty-five years to go to America, her relatives were less surprised than she had expected. Everyone knows, they said, that a wife's place is with her husband, and a widow's is with her son
By Chitra B. Divakaruni
Fragrant Rice: My Continuing Love Affair with Bali [Includes 115 Recipes]
by Janet De Neefe
All Strangers Are Kin, by Zora O'Neill
To make people laugh in a foreign language. What a wonderful life goal! Languages all have their personalities--and so in many ways when you switch languages you become another person.
I had read about Arabic, as well as Farsi, having their high and low literary and colloquial tongues. I also knew that there are many "Arabics"-- so a person would study Egyptian or Syrian --or Moroccan-- and while they’re related, they are not mutually comprehensible. I knew this as facts but it was only in this book where I got to really understand what that means.
The author is a brilliant storyteller and a genuinely great person! A wonderful ambassador to the world, I was thinking. her story is a scene-driven super fun travel memoir. Somehow she makes the intricacies of Arabic--what makes it hard?-- come alive on the page mainly by showing it in her great scenes. So reading entertaining stories you realize how much the Ottoman empire influenced vocabulary or how much Egyptians like to joke around. Also how Moroccans "hear" Egyptian. I actually felt my eyes fill with tears reading one scene where a family suddenly called her over to join in their picnic out in front of the museum in Cairo-- it was such a spontaneous act of hospitality and O'Neill had the grace of the perfect guest to plop down and join them. I also loved the scene on the bus in Lebanon when she meets a Druze lady who spent a lot of time in Chicago. They talked about life in America and her religion... the next morning O'Neill gets a text message that reads: "Hi baby".... as a translator and twenty-year expat (Japan), I thought this was one of the greatest language memoirs and reminded me a lot of the struggles involved in always being a student--even in her forties.... and to just keep going. The ending when her parents join her in Morocco was the perfect ending... from her beloved Egypt to the Gulf to Lebanon and finally where her fascination began with her parents in Morocco this was a great read!
Bird of Paradise: How I Became Latina
by Raquel Cepeda
Heart Radical: A Search for Language, Love, and Belonging
by Anne Liu Kellor (no review)
Taste: My Life through Food
by Stanley Tucci
Most beautiful book:
Feast of the Seven Fishes: A Brooklyn Italian's Recipes Celebrating Food and Family
by Daniel Paterna
Art
Re-read Still Life with Oysters and Lemon: On Objects and Intimacy
by Mark Doty
Loot: Britain and the Benin Bronzes
by Barnaby Phillips
Thieves of Baghdad: One Marine's Passion to Recover the World's Greatest Stolen Treasures
by Matthew Bogdanos, William Patrick
The Elgin Affair: The Abduction of Antiquity's Greatest Treasures and the Passions It Aroused
by Theodore Vrettos
The Sleeve Should Be Illegal and Other Reflections on Art at the Frick
by Adam Gopnik (Foreword), Michaelyn Mitchell
Other
Best American Stories 1999 for class on detail in fiction with the great Jack Livings
Jim Thompson: The House on the Klong
by William Warren, Jean Michel Beurdeley (Text), Luca Invernizzi
A wonderful book about a magnificent house. This book is not about Jim Thompson--not about his life or his mysterious disappearance. It is about the creation of his extraordinary house in Bangkok. The finest book on Thai aesthetics that I have ever read was the one by Alex Kerr, Bangkok Found--just re-released as Hidden Bangkok, published by Penguin. I highly recommend Kerr's book to be better informed for understanding the Thompson House. Though I guess it should be said that the house of the Klong--like the art collection housed there--is a personal interpretation of Thai aesthetics and art. It is one man's vision of beauty. The book has some beautiful photographs of the home, garden and art. The essay on the collection by Beurdeley is fantastic (Beurdeley is as interesting as Thompson in so many ways). For me, it is a special pleasure to repurchase books that I used to own previously and that were once part of my large-ish library in Japan. It is like being reunited with an old friend and it also is fun to remember how much I used to love certain topics. The Italian photographer is also a well-known great name.
The main essay was written by a Thompson biographer, who also wrote the Jim Thompson: The Thai Silk Sketchbook, with wonderful watercolors painted by Graham By field.