Sep. 22nd, 2014 10:40 am
Keeping it short
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muckefuckI still can't decide on my next English-language novel, though I have been cozying up lately to both Livaneli's Bliss (Mutluluk) and Barnás' The ninth (A kilencedik). Keeping me company in the meantime are a trio of short story compilations: Edward Jones' Lost in the city, Danticat's Krik? Krak!, and something called The Showa anthology. It's almost comical how I was flitting between them yesterday. If I could force myself to focus on any given one, I'd've finished it already.
With the Showa anthology, the problem is boredom. I remember encountering an essay recently which criticised the tendency of translators to promote a certain kind of Japanese literature in the West, and this compilation exemplifies the problem. Though I don't know how fair it is to blame Western Orientalism for that given that the majority of the pieces included have won the Akutagawa Prize, the Yomiuri Prize, the Dazai Osamu Prize, or some other prestigious Japanese award for mainstream literary fiction. (Then again, it could well be that recognition abroad influences in turn which writers are considered for these awards.) Among all the meditative vignettes and semiautobiographical confessions, however, there have been some refreshing surprises. I never knew that Mishima was capable of writing comic fantasy, for instance, and I'd never read Abe Kōbō before, who turns out to be a modernist in the vein of Kafka or Hedayat.
With Jones, it's more due to the emotional intensity of many of the stories (which often deal with death and tragedy) and perhaps a certain reluctance to be finished with the collection too soon. Moreover, his tales take place in a world that is adjacent to my own--the Black inner city--and yet isn't really a part of it. The strain of crossing over weighs heavily on many of his characters, and it takes something out of me as well to go over to where they're at and try to meet them on their terms.
The difference being, of course, that I'm piercing the barrier for fun and they do it out of necessity. I remember shrugging off many of the specific privileges composing the Invisible Backpack when I first read McIntosh's essay, thinking them superficial or trivial. Among these was being able to live among people who look and act like me. I simply didn't appreciate at the time how fully I'd interalised mainstream White middle-class values, how different they are from other modes of behaviour, and how strictly and selectively they are enforced. It's too easy to set up a false equivalence based on the discomfort I've always felt in the ghetto. But avoiding the inner city is an easy task for most White people, much easier than the reverse. Jones' writing really brings this home for me. There's some of that in Danticat, but it's camouflaged by the familiar challenges of living in diaspora. I expect immigrants to feel alienated in this country and struggle to find a place in it.
With the Showa anthology, the problem is boredom. I remember encountering an essay recently which criticised the tendency of translators to promote a certain kind of Japanese literature in the West, and this compilation exemplifies the problem. Though I don't know how fair it is to blame Western Orientalism for that given that the majority of the pieces included have won the Akutagawa Prize, the Yomiuri Prize, the Dazai Osamu Prize, or some other prestigious Japanese award for mainstream literary fiction. (Then again, it could well be that recognition abroad influences in turn which writers are considered for these awards.) Among all the meditative vignettes and semiautobiographical confessions, however, there have been some refreshing surprises. I never knew that Mishima was capable of writing comic fantasy, for instance, and I'd never read Abe Kōbō before, who turns out to be a modernist in the vein of Kafka or Hedayat.
With Jones, it's more due to the emotional intensity of many of the stories (which often deal with death and tragedy) and perhaps a certain reluctance to be finished with the collection too soon. Moreover, his tales take place in a world that is adjacent to my own--the Black inner city--and yet isn't really a part of it. The strain of crossing over weighs heavily on many of his characters, and it takes something out of me as well to go over to where they're at and try to meet them on their terms.
The difference being, of course, that I'm piercing the barrier for fun and they do it out of necessity. I remember shrugging off many of the specific privileges composing the Invisible Backpack when I first read McIntosh's essay, thinking them superficial or trivial. Among these was being able to live among people who look and act like me. I simply didn't appreciate at the time how fully I'd interalised mainstream White middle-class values, how different they are from other modes of behaviour, and how strictly and selectively they are enforced. It's too easy to set up a false equivalence based on the discomfort I've always felt in the ghetto. But avoiding the inner city is an easy task for most White people, much easier than the reverse. Jones' writing really brings this home for me. There's some of that in Danticat, but it's camouflaged by the familiar challenges of living in diaspora. I expect immigrants to feel alienated in this country and struggle to find a place in it.
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