The Diving Pool

By Yoko Ogawaok I Ogawa

In these three tales, the narrators appear isolated from their surroundings. It's as though they view existence through a screen, giving them a sense of dislocation from reality.

As you watch their stories unfold, a sense of disquiet slowly increases, fibre by fibre the web expands drawing everything into it's centre revealing the beauty & the terror at the heart of these tales. Whether it's the teenage girl, cut off by circumstance from her family, she spends her time secretly watching her foster-brother who she's in love with.

Or in the second tale, where the younger sister keeps a diary recording every slight detail of her sister's pregnancy, with an obsession & yet a clarity that truly disturbs.

And then there's the final story- Dormitory, this tale has us heading  into gothic territory. We have a young housewife, finding a place to live for her younger cousin, the place is her old dormitory run by a man with one leg & no arms.

These three tales offer a quiet horror, the cruelty is silent, the terror subtle, haunting us  by the beauty of Yoko Ogawa's writing. She shows us individuals, unaware of a connection to their fellow beings, with no discernable anchor to the society they live in, the cruelty displayed is dislocated from the individuals as if they were voyeurs in their own actions, their own lives.

The territory Yoko Ogawa inhabits is close to that of Haruki Murakami, they share the same stage, but not always the same actors. It is in the way the three stories portray a mirror image of an everyday suburban existence, but the mirror is fragmented, fractured & the image distorts.

 

Yoko Ogawa

THE TRANSLATER

Stephen Snyder -talks about

Postmodern classic Pale Ale

This is not a lowest common denominator Beer. This is an Aggressive Beer.

We don't care if you don't like it.

We do not merely aspire to to the proclaimed heady heights of conformity through the neutrality & blandness.

It is quite doubtful that you have the taste or sophistication to appreciate the depth, the character & quality of this premium craft brewed beer.

You probably don't even care that this rebellious little beer, contains no preservative or additives & uses only the finest fresh natural ingredients.

Just go back to drinking your mass marketed, bland, cheaply made watered down Lager, & close the door, behind you.

I don't normally post on beer but seeing this, got me curious. All whats above is whats on the label, including the "we don't care if you don't like it", so curiosity wouldn't be enough, it had better be good. It is, the taste is crisp & fruity, it has a bitternes  that really hits the taste buds, this really lives up to its own hype. Its gorgeous.

Alc. 6%vol.

 

• Day 197 Drink: BrewDog Punk IPA (lyke2drink.blogspot.com)

Thomas Pynchon

V - A Border-land tale

V-  centres around  two main characters. One of the characters is, Benny Profane, who having been discharged from the navy, becomes an itinerant labourer, taking any work that comes his way, he eventually finds himself in New York. "Finds himself" is a perfect description for Benny as he seems to bounce from pillar to post, with no apparent concern to where he lands. His reasoning for this is that he is a "Schlemihl", this being, a victim, loser or a bottom feeder, of no interest to anyone, least of all himself.

"Nothing heroic about a Schlemihl" Profane told her. "What was a hero? Randolph Scot, who could handle a six-gun, horses, reins, lariat, master of the inanimate. But a Schlemihl, that was hardly a man: somebody who lies back & takes it from objects, like any passive woman".

The second main character, Herbert Stencil, is on a quest to track down V, (hence the title), which could be a place or the initial of the woman who may have killed his father. This initial appears in the journal of his father, an old time British spy/ Diplomat, & Stencil with these fragments of information, imagination, hearsay & rumour, follows Stencil senior's trail through various geo-political crisises, stretching from the late 19th Century  to the early 20C in an attempt to build a cohesive image of V. As are we.

At the start of this post, I said that this novel centres around two main characters. Let me clarify this point, by centre, I'm using this definition  "a point around which something revolves", this could be the eye of a storm, although that suggests a stillness, a viewpoint of clarity at the heart of the maelstrom. This does not exist. Everything leaks into the eye, past, present, Benny Profane crown prince of Schlemihl-hood & his relationship (? ) with Rachel, the German Mondaugen, listening to sferics in S.W. Africa, to Stencil senior's disappearance, blasted by a waterspout in the Mediterranean. Time is dislocated, space is ruptured, everything pours into the eye.

This book is immersive, by which I mean, you have to be prepared to totally immerse yourself. Think preparation, not logical, not with professorial intent, I mean more than taking a deep breath. Think full underwater apparatus, not snorkel, we're talking old school, a full suit, lead boots, a large helmet bolted down, with an air tube anchoring you to the surface. 


V - is a dreamscape, you don't read it, you inhabit it & like some Border-land smuggler, you've travelled these paths, this route between paradoxical sleep (R.E.M.) & the waking moment too many times. Now you're tired, not sure which side of the border you're on & there's lights ahead.
 
V- is a bawdy satire, think Voltaire, think Rabelais, think Cervantes.

Note on Pynchon

A fans (Ian Rankin- Author) Story on Thomas Pynchon

The novel is centuries older than we've been told (guardian.co.uk)

A bedtime tale

Or an introduction to Dr Seuss - A Classic Treasury, in the style of Dr Seuss. (AS told by KT & her Dad.)




                             
 Daddy, Daddy please please can,
 You read to me Green eggs & ham
 No, no this tale, I do not like

 I would not, could not read it tonight                                                                              

                                                                   
well, would you, could you now & then
  even possibly soon & when
read it with me, Barbie & Ken
 No I wouldn't now & then 

Would you, could you on a boat
 somewhere of the Norfolk coast                                           
whilst the captain makes some toast
 would you, could you on a boat
                                                                         
No I wouldn't on a boat
even with jam on my toast 
 floating off the English coast
 no I wouldn't on a boat 


Will you, will you on a horse 
 riding round a jumping course 
  reading  semaphore & Morse 
 will you, would you on a horse

No I wouldn't on a horse

 not even on a dressage course

 read in semaphore & Morse

 never, never on a horse

                                                                                                     

Daddy, Daddy please please can,

  you read to me Green eggs & ham

Green eggs & ham, this very night                                        

 this is something I would not like

                                                  
Well, would you, could you in a field   
 speeding down a giant hill 
on an old & rusty shield  
would you read it in a field

 Never, never in a field
it would make me rather ill
speeding on a rusty shield
 I'll never read it in a field



                               
  How about read it to a goat
  who's telling rather saucy jokes
  whilst waterskiing round a moat
 would you read it to a goat

                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

 Read it, read it to a goat  
who's waterskiing round a moat 
 this is a rather poor taste joke
I will not, read it to a goat

  

 Well could you teach me, then & now 
 to read this book, show me how
so I can read green eggs & ham 
 then I can read it , when I can

                                                                           

 Ok, my daughter I confess
 even if its under duress
 I do like Seuss, I have to say
 I would teach you to read him any day
  
 But, I will read it till you sleep
 count, count, counting all the sheep
 cuddly toys piled in a heap
 on your bed, that's never neat


I will read him now & then
& together with your friends
somewhere off the Norfolk coast
bob, bob, bobbing on a boat    





                                                                          
 I will read him on a horse
 signing  semaphore & Morse
 whilst I'm sitting in a field
slip, slip, sliding on a shield

I will read it to a goat

who's waterskiing round a moat

  I will read green eggs & ham

 to you my daughter, yes I can                                          

                                           

                                                

                                         


                                            
   With you my daughter, yes we can !!







             


When my daughter was younger, a lot of the books were what I  would describe as " very girly" stories, full of princesses lounging about the place waiting to be saved. My daughter loved having  me read stories to her, but these "girly" ones I didn't like, found I couldn't invest any real passion or joy in them. So when I came across a couple of books, One being - Spike Milligan's, A children's treasury of Milligan ( really funny book), & the other being this one - Dr Seuss, A classic treasury, I suddenly found not only did I enjoy reading to her again, but there was all these daft characters that I could become. Her bedtime suddenly turned into a performance, with both of us playing different characters (complete with silly voices) & as she got older & she started reading confidently, she found she could join in and even read it to me.  

Technorati Tags: fiction

????

This Island Life

Book reading is predominantly a solitary pursuit, even if you are a member of a book club, most of your reading, where ever you are, whether it's on a train, or a bus, a plane or whether it's sat in your favourite, comfiest chair will be by yourself. Now, for the most part, this is expected - even relished, one of the reasons we love to read is for that space away from everything else that clamours for our attention. Yet every now & then I want to communicate my love for some book, whether it's some classic or my latest/greatest literary find.

If you are lucky & the member of some book Club that's open enough to accept the latest book you’ve found from some obscure Asian/Latin/Nordic (take your pick) Author, or if like myself, you mention some book you’ve read to friends & colleagues & you get the standard response “I’ll wait till it's out at the cinema/or on DVD”.  Cue film insert – Robinson Crusoe gazing at the sunset, minus his man Friday, camera turns & written into the sand is

“Shut the $%^*+! up”

Then one day, whilst browsing (for work purposes honest !), you discover a book blog, in my case - In spring its the dawn (thanks Tanabata) & suddenly the sun peers out from behind the clouds, some suitably epic music plays & the proverbial light bulb blinks into life “I can do that”
So the process starts, “how do I do that”. In my case, I found Blogger, used up every profanity & swear word I knew & some how got it working. Next, came the name – The Parrish Lantern (check out the “about me” page), which had to be christened with some good whisky (Ardbeg 17 yr old, mmmm) & then my first post, followed by my 2nd3rd4th5th6th.
I then discovered the art of networking & amazingly some people found me, or to be accurate they found – The Parrish Lantern. Bit by bit my blog develops, what was an island becomes an archipelago as I discover more fellow Bloggers & they find me.

Suddenly what was a solitary pursuit – Robinson Crusoe blowing smoke signals into a void has gone global, gone broadband. What I once saw as a clique of likeminded individuals spread across the planet, is now, thanks to the Book Bloggers Appreciation Week (thanks Amy), an army of Bloggers woven through every strata of society & networked everywhere Asia, Europe, America, Australia, everywhere. There are Blogs run by couples, friends, clubs & individuals spreading the word about literature, whether its Fiction/ Non-Fiction, whether its the Classics or Contemporary, Sci-Fi Or YA, it’s out there to be found.                    


So now thanks to Blogging, if I want to shout from the rooftops about how fantastic some book is, I can & if I want to discuss some salient point on the use of e.g. concrete as a social metaphor there is a whole world of likeminded people quite happy to debate the issue with me.


                                                        http://www.bookbloggerappreciationweek.com
Thanks. Parrish
p.s. Best of luck to all concerned.

Yoko Ogawa

The Housekeeper & the Professor                       

Like most people I  was introduced to maths at school, that cocky kid, who took great delight in showing you up, in a bit of light bullying, was quite happy to use weapons (algebra,statistics). But I left school, started work etc & never really met him/her again, there was no reason to.

So when I came across this book, my immediate reaction was MATHS!!. But everything I read about this book, stated  how wonderful it was, fellow bloggers, paper reviewers even other writers (for the most part) only had good things to say & to add to the conspiracy, my library had a copy !.

The book tells the tale of a single mother, hired to care for a retired maths professor, who is suffering from Anterograde amnesia, this means he cannot create new memories or has a limited span. In the professor's case he has an 80 minute time span after which all is lost to him. This was caused by an auto crash in 1975, so everything before then he can remember for example; all the baseball players he would have known have long since retired (this last bit is relevant).

Through the mother, we learn how the professor copes,  the strategies he uses such as pinning notes to his suit, the maths problems he spends all day solving etc.  We also  look on whilst there develops this sweet innocent relationship between the two, spoken through the language of maths, intensified when her son comes into the picture & the Professor forms an immediate bond with the lad, partly brought on by a shared love of base ball, except the Prof only knows the players pre 1975 & the boy supports the teams featured now (I told you it was relevant), watching how the lad skirts this issue is one the delights of this book .

We follow this family, for that's what they become,  through several highs & lows until the professors death. Very little happens in this book, it’s like catching a glance into someone's daily routine, the usual confrontations, moments of joy, the sadness & the sheer absurdity of every day existence, compressed into a cycle of 80 minutes . We see the Professor meeting the Housekeeper anew each day & watch him re- acquaint himself using numbers to communicate & as a safeguard.

“I was always a new housekeeper he was meeting for the first time, & so every morning he was appropriately shy & reserved. He would ask my shoe size or telephone number, or perhaps my zip code, the registration number of my bicycle, or the number of brush strokes in the characters of my name; & whatever the number, he invariably found some significance in it”

So, although maths plays a large part in this novel, it’s there to aid communication, this is how the professor deals with the world, his coping mechanism, his courtship, his poetry. There is a line in a song by Simon & Garfunkel  – I am a rock

“ I have my books & my poetry to protect me,I am shielded in my armour,  hiding in my room, safe within my tomb, I touch no one & no one touches me”

Except the House keeper with her son do touch him,  & it’s maths that allows this process to start  & communicates it to us, as onlookers into their lives.
 

Kenzaburo Oe has said,, “Yoko Ogawa is able to give expression to the most subtle workings of human psychology in prose that is gentle yet penetrating”. It is this subtlety that provides the magic in this book, there are no fireworks, the magic is gentle, sleight of hand & like good sleight of hand,  no matter how close in you go you don’t see how its done, you just see the magic.

On a different note this book is just as much about Baseball as it is Maths.

For more Information
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/yoko_ogawa

Shusako endo

Technorati Tags: fiction

The Sea & poison
by Shusako Endo
The book starts as a prologue, with the visit to a  “ shabbily constructed house, more like a shed than a Dr’s surgery” by an unnamed man seeking a Doctor for a routine injection. He meets Dr Suguro, whose faultless technique, but cold distant attitude, piques his curiosity. A while later, whilst at a  family wedding, he meets another doctor who is a fellow guest, they get chatting & he finds out that the other doctor knew Suguro & through his tale we learn about Dr Suguro’s past.
During the 2nd world war, Suguro worked as an intern at Fukuoka  medical school & whilst there became involved with medical experiments on some American prisoners of war, these included live vivisection & injecting air into their veins to find out how quick they’ll die. Although, when it came down to it, Suguro couldn’t  do it, he couldn’t stop it either, he froze.

“ I didn’t do anything at all; Suguro made an effort to shut out the voice. I didn’t do anything at all; But this plea seemed to reverberate within him, churning itself into a whirlpool devoid of meaning”

It’s this inability to act  against his superiors  that overrides everything. This leads  to a lack of resolution that paralyzes  his ability to act  according to his ideal of what a doctor is. Creating the humiliation that will  dictate his future.



There is another character in the book called Toda, who appears to have none of the qualms of Suguro. He is guided purely by his ambition, to him the patients are merely another instrument to assist him on his chosen path. Toda discusses his lack of concern & chides Suguro for his compassion, even when it comes to killing the prisoners Toda is only concerned with how he would be perceived by his peers.
“After doing this will my heart trouble me with recriminations? will I shudder fearfully at having become a murderer? killing a living human being. Having this most fearful of deeds, will i suffer my whole life thru?
“ I looked up, both Dr Shibata & Dr Asia had smiles on their lips, these men were after all no different from me. Even when the day of judgement comes, they’ll fear only the punishment of the world, of society”

So what is a moral dilemma for Suguro, even if it’s one that through his submission he cannot act upon, causes Toda a momentary concern of how society would view his actions.                                           
It’s this apparent contradiction, on the one hand almost total subservience & on the other an ambition that has no brake, that seems to  stunt the growth of any moral or ethical perspective from both Suguro & Toda. In the end, although both reacted differently to the situation they were in, the result was the same.
Postscript

This book was written in the late 1950’s & was set in the 2nd world war.  Yet having recently finished Haruki Murakami’s – Underground ( Tokyo gas attack & the Japanese psyche) pub’ 1997,  i  was constantly amazed by how similar they were when referring to the society they were set in ( all though they are separated by about 50 years). There was this  constant sense of isolation & alienation of the individual & an obedience to authority, regardless of whether it was detrimental to the person involved.

What also struck me about both books, was that no one had any sense of personal responsibility. With The Sea & Poison, the reasoning was there was nothing I could do, it was the medical authority, the military or the war etc. With a few name changes (the Aum, work ethos) this could have been Murakami’s Underground. In fact, whilst researching how a massacre of Japanese troops led to slaughter by their superiors during an invasion of Mongolia (1939), Murakami writes
“ I was struck by the fact that the closed, responsibility – evading ways of Japanese society were really not any different from the Imperial Japanese army operated at that time”








For information on the translator
michael_gallagher_(translater

Robert Bolano

2666  by Roberto bolano           Translated by Natasha wimmer

The introduction
To say that 2666 is epic or on a grand scale, would be be an understatement. It would be to misunderstand what's asked of you. This book doesn’t just want commitment, it wants blood, wants sacrifice & even that's not enough. It will hold your hand, take you down a blind alleyway then vanish, taking away all that you understood, all that you had grasped, all those images hoarded in the hope of finding a path through it.
How do you write about a book that's about everything & nothing, that has in it’s shadow, or  is the whole of the 20 century?


The synopsis

This book is in 5 parts, the 1st is titled The part about the critics. This follows four critics from  across Europe & their shared interest in Archimboldi a post war German writer, who vanished years ago & who they are searching for, it’s also a love triangle.
Part 2, The part about Amalfitano is about a Chilean philosopher living Santa Teresa (Mexico), with his daughter. The Philosopher  between bouts of madness (hearing voices in his head) and worrying about his daughter, conducts an experiment based on some ideas by Marcel Duchamp.
The 3rd part, The part about Fate, concerns an African-American journalist                                           
(Oscar Fate), as he travels to Santa Teresa to cover a boxing match & meets Amalfitano’s daughter & learns about the killings that have been going on there for years.
Part 4, The part about the crimes. This book covers the killing of countless women, over decades in Santa Teresa & is based on the actual events in Juarez. It’s written as hardboiled fiction & reportage.
The final part (5) follows the writer Archimboldi from his birth onwards, through the 2nd world war. In fact, through most of the 20 century (1920 – 2000) & along the way answers some of the questions  that have been prodding  you  with a sharp stick.

                                                  How sour the knowledge travellers bring away!
                                                  The world’s monotonous and small; we see
                                                  ourselves today, tomorrow, yesterday,
                                                  an oasis of horror in a desert of ennui!
                                                                                    Charles Baudelaire
 

The impression
  2666 is an unfulfilled love story, its a world war 2 epic, it’s science fiction, it’s horror, reportage, it’s a thriller, it’s a comedy, it’s a vision of hell. It’s also the vision St Thomas Aquinas had of heaven, where the righteous can enjoy their  beatitude & the grace of god more richly by being granted a perfect sight of the damned.
2666 is a nightmare that is beautiful & a dream that haunts the edges of your waking hours, you could take a set square & compass to it & describe it logically, but all you would end up with is a pile of words, scattered across your floor.
  2666 is massive, a dark nothing out of which everything explodes - life, death, love & hate. This is the start of the universe & the inertia born of its dying. This is the black heart of the sun.




Writers on Bolano
Argentine novelist, Rodrigo Fresian, wrote “It doesn’t make much sense to read about 2666, one must read 2666”
   “He took what was there, as Joyce did with Ireland almost a century earlier – a broken society with a strange literary  tradition. And he set about turning it on its head, using chaos, its unformed & unstable nature, its violence & making a myth out of that”  –Colm tiobin
“Anyone who has been young & in love & besotted with poetry, can’t help but respond to Bolano. He has a natural storytellers  gift – but more important, he has the power to lend an extraordinary glamour to the activities of making love & making poetry” – Edmund White 
Bolano on Archimboldi – “The style was strange. The writing was clear & even transparent but the way the stories followed one after another didn’t lead anywhere:  all that was left were the children, their parents, some animals, some neighbours & in the end, all that was really left was nature, a nature that dissolved little by little in a boiling cauldron until it vanished completely.”



The conclusion

Once upon a time,  three  blind schoolchildren went to the zoo, on a project to understand Elephants. The First child went to the back of the elephant, to its hind leg. On feeling the leg he thought it was tall & strong like an Oak tree, in fact it reminded him of the trees that were used to build the ships that had sailed against the  Armada (as he had learnt in history).
The second child felt his way to the side of the creature, he realized that an Elephant was tall ,wide & as tough as stone, just like the castle (Camelot) he had read in his favourite book about King Arthur.
Walking to the front of the elephant the third blind kid, grasped it by the trunk & was lifted clean off the ground. Once back down he thought how strong & sinuous an elephant was, like some large snake, maybe an Anaconda,  just like his teacher had described when she talking about the Amazon.
The next day at school, they described to their tutor what an Elephant was.
One with his tall oak trees & the large warships, another with his castles & the tales of the round  table & the third with the Boa- constrictor, all sinuous crushing strength. They talked & argued for most of the day, without reaching a definitive description of an Elephant