Dr. Pereira was the editor of the culture page of Lisboa, a small nonpolitical evening newspaper in Lisbon. It was 1938, Portugal was under the authoritarian regime of Salaza, and the Nationalists were fighting against the Republicans during the civil war in the neighboring Spain. .
In the difficult time like this, Pereira was content with his life, translating 19th century French authors (Balzac, Maupassant, Alphonse Daudet,...) and writing anniversary pieces for famous authors (Pesoa, Rilke, Vladimir Mayakovsky,...). And obsessed with the resurrection of the body. He also just took on a leftist young assistant to write advance obituaries of great writers who might die at any moment. (Bernanos, Mauriac, Lorca, …). Yes, there are many authors mentioned and a little knowledge of them would help to apprehend the novella.
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Tabucchi questioned the responsibilities of an intellectual in a difficult time. Should Pereira declare that he was apolitical, that he did not care to write about politics, and was content with his life?
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In just 130 pages, Tabucchi also discussed heavy topics, from civil war, politics, to Theodule Ribot and Pierre Janet’s theory of the confederation of souls. I particularly enjoyed his musings on the souls and the ruling ego/super ego (“you must shed your super ego,...slough off grief,...stop haunting your past and try to drop in on the future”), as well as on authors and their political viewpoints.
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“Marinetti’s a swine, he started his career by singing the praises of war, he’s set himself up as a champion of bloodshed, he’s a terrorist, he hailed Mussolini’s march on Rome, Marinetti is a swine and it’s my duty to say so.”
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“Bernanos, exclaimed Pereira.... He’s a great Catholic writer, said Pereira with pride, I knew he’d take a stand, he’s a man of the highest moral principles."
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Even though this clearly is a political novel, the writing is not unsettling, violent, or brutal. The form and the writing is very unique, passionate, charming, and humorous in tone. Reading this novella was a very fulfilling and entertaining experience. An excellent novella!
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Translated from the Italian by Patrick Creagh. First published 1994.
The Key is a brilliant study of the innermost nature and sexual desires of human beings. I was quite baffled that one is willing to succumb to one's sexual desire and even sacrifice one's life for it. Reading this story is quite a sensual ride.
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Diary of a Mad Old Man is also erotically charged. However it was hard for me to read a story about a perverse seventy six year old man. I was wondering how realistic the character was. My guess is it must be, to some extent, considering Tanizaki wrote the novel in his seventies. Viewed from another perspective, Diary of a Mad Old Man provides insight into the sexual appetite and psychology of old men.
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I was shockingly surprised to read this book, since it's a world of difference from The Makioka Sisters in terms of the subject matters. When I read a short article on the JP Times reviewing Tanizaki's autobiography Childhood Years (trans by Paul McCarthy) I've come to realize that Tanizaki's infatuation with sexual relationships was rooted in his childhood days and it defined his works and his art.
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In these two novels, there are also traces of Tanizaki's nostalgia for the fading of Japanese traditional culture and his observation of the emergence of Western influences on Japanese people and lives. This nostalgia was also explored in his slim book In Praise of Shadows (trans. by Thomas Harper and Edward Seidensticker).
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The Key and Diary of a Mad Old Man
Translated from the Japanese by Howard Hibbett.
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#japaneseliterature #translatedfiction #literaryfiction #bookintranslation #worldliterature #bibliophile #tanizaki #junichirotanizaki #diaryofamadoldman #thekey #januaryinjapan
I wanted to assemble a rainbow spine out of my Jlit collection, and this is what came out.
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It's been fun seeing many popular books and authors posted for #JanuaryinJapan.
However if you want to dig further into Japanese literature, what are your sources?
I'd like to share a few websites which I visit frequently and have learned a lot from over the past few years.
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Tony's Reading List is a blog written by Tony Malone from Australia. His special interests are J-Lit and K-Lit. There's hardly a book of Japanese literature that he doesn't review.
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The Complete Review (complete-review.com) written by M.A. Orthofer, and The Modern Novel (themodernnovel.org) written by John, are mines of gold for not only Japanese literature but for world literature as well. They both read over 100 books per year and in multiple languages. The two websites are very well organized and categorized by region, nationality, authors,...
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The Japan Times Books section is another good webpage for Japanese lit lovers.
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For a hard core Japanophile who wants to have a more or less systematic understanding of modern/contemporary Japanese literature, culture, or history, I'd recommend the website of Dr. Kathryn Hemmann from Washington DC. (kathrynhemmann.com). She's posted her syllabi for the courses she taught in the past few years - Contemporary Japanese Fiction, Introduction to Anime and Manga Studies, Introduction to Japanese Culture, Japanese Science Fiction and Fantasy, etc... She also blogs at Contemporary Japanese Literature (japaneselit.net).
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Where do you go for book news, book reviews, or book recommendations of your interests? .
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#japaneseliterature #translatedliterature #bookintranslation #literaryfiction #worldliterature #bibliophile
I found this tiny book while browsing a small bookstore near UC Berkeley last November. I wonder how long it had sat on the shelf. The book was published by Hokuseido Press and printed in Japan in 1970.
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These two stories were originally published in the 50s but the writing seems very old fashioned for me. The first story Catching a "Kappa" is very interesting though. A kappa is an imaginary animal in Japanese folklore, believed to inhabit rivers, ponds, swamps, and the sea. In the Introduction, they mentioned one of the best stories about kappa is probably Kappa by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, which I had never heard of. .
I might have read Ibuse in one of the anthologies, but didn't remember him until now. Masuji Ibuse is better known for his major works: Black Rain, The Salamander, No Consultations Today, etc...
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#japaneseliterature #translatedliterature #literaryfiction #bookstagram #bookintranslation #masujiibuse #januaryinjapan
With this, I completed the set of three small sized books by Yasushi Inoue published by Pushkin Press in 2014 (The Hunting Gun, Bullfight, and this one). Inoue is now one of my favorite Japanese authors.
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On another note, when I was checking out the list of 103 authors nominated for the Nobel prize in literature in 1969 (they now opened the file after 50 years), I saw his name. It may not mean anything. Just saying....
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#japaneseliterature #translatedliterature #literaryfiction #bookintranslation #yasushiinoue #lifeofacounterfeiter #januaryinjapan
The Hunting Gun is very good, and Bullfight is as good, if not better. The writing is sharp and elegant, and tells of the life in post war Japan, and of course of bullfight, too (albeit not much).
Translated from the Japanese by Michael Emmerich
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#japaneseliterature #translatedliterature #bookintranslation #literaryfiction #worldliterature #yasushiinoue #bookstagram #booklover #bibliophile
"She didn't seem to talk to me but to God through me, and her voice was strangely clear, like heavenly music. The words sin, sin, sin, which had formed a structure as high as the Eiffel Tower, and everything I had found in her diary the night before - it was all falling down around her. I heard the rumbling sounds quite definitely. The weight of the many-storied buildings of sins which had lasted for thirteen years was now crushing my worn-out mother and carrying her away."
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Sin, solitude, betrayal, deceit and a love triangle are accounted through three letters written by the wife, the mistress, and the mistress's daughter. The three missives form the main part of this hauntingly poignant novella and tell us of marriage, relationships, love in its many forms, the consequences of an illicit love affair, and above all, the desire to be understood!
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“We humans are, in the end, stupid creatures who cannot help desiring that someone knows us as we are.”
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The Hunting Gun is one of the two outstanding debut works that established Inoue in 1949 as a major literary figure, and launched a career during which he completed 50 novels, and wrote more than 150 short stories. His other debut, Bullfight, also from 1949, won the Akutagawa Prize in 1950.
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The Hunting Gun is an elegantly short, but effective novella.
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Translated by Sadamichi Yokoo and Sanford Goldstein
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#japaneseliterature #translatedfiction #literaryfiction #thehuntinggun #yasushiinoue
