Kafka on the Shore (Murakami Haruki)

Kafka on the Shore by Murakami Haruki, translated by Philip Gabriel (audiobook)

This is the 7th book by Murakami that I’ve read and so far I find his works to be a mix of the passable, the very good, and the mediocre. Kafka on the Shore belongs squarely to the last category. I was unimpressed by this long novel about incest, animal cruelty, music, destiny, and growing up. The translation by Philip Gabriel reads well but Murakami comes across as a minor writer, a mere crowd-pleaser. The repetitions of sentences and phrases are irritating. Granted that repetitions are used to imitate a piece of music, the flat Hemingway-esque prose can't save it from sounding contrived and didactic. The title refers both to a musical composition and a painting. But references to these art forms cannot help this piece of fiction approach the level of a good read. The plot just plods along, the disparate themes woven into a pointless puzzle. The puzzle is like a Scrabble board, the pieces being letter tiles that are sharply cut at the edges. There's no challenge to deciphering it, no net benefit to be had. Norwegian Wood is, I think, more worthwhile pointlessness than this. The novel is, moreover, a poor example of a "magical realist" novel, in which magic is utilized without "logic." My benchmarks for a good magical novel are One Hundred Years of Solitude, where fantastical elements are tightly integrated into the story, and The Literary Conference by César Aira, where magic is uncontrollable, wreaking havoc as it escapes from the grasp of the writer. The magic of Murakami here is neither mysterious nor crude. It is just plain dry old magic. A multitude of fishes falls from the sky, period. Leeches fall from the sky, period. The surreal worlding of magic and mystery in this novel is not to be accepted as inevitable but unbelievable. Very unlike the stifling nightmare world of its namesake writer Kafka, or the logical labyrinths of a Borges, or even the sustained suspension of disbelief in Murakami’s own brilliant A Wild Sheep Chase. The magic of Kafka on the Shore is without flair or drama. In its pure form, wry and deadpan, magic redounds to an unintended humor. Finally, the novel suffers from overkill: too much explanation trying to “justify” the incest, too much self-help crap undermining the characters’ consciousness. This self-help streak is prefigured in Dance Dance Dance but reached a young adult fever-pitch here. Save for some interesting scenes with the old man Nakata, the book is otherwise overrated.

TBR: Mondomanila by Norman Wilwayco

One of the books I'm excited about is Norman Wilwayco's Mondomanila. This, I believe, is his first book which, like Gerilya, won the Grand Prize in the Palanca Awards. Here's the start of the novel, followed by my rough translation. The acerbic voice is unmistakable.

Anuman ang sabihin nila, wala akong pakialam. Alam ng Diyos o ng kung sino mang nakatataas sa atin na masyado nang mahaba ang nilakbay ko. Putang ina, kailangan kong magpahinga. Kailangan kong tumigil, humimpil.

Ilang buwan na 'ko dito sa Baguio. Hindi ko na siguro pagsasawaan ang lugar na 'to. Malamig, maraming puno, mura ang mga pagkain. O malamang, paglipas ng ilang buwan pa uli, biglang mangati ang mga talampakan ko at maghanap ng ibang lugar. Doon sa kung saan walang makikialam sa 'kin. Doon sa kung saan hindi ako susundan at uusigin ng mga bangungot at ng sarili kong anino.

Pero sa ngayon, kuntento ako rito sa buhay ko. May maliit na loteng kinatitirikan ng maliit na bahay, may mga tanim na gulay at marijuana, may buhay, may pera. Itong huli ang pinahahalagahan ko sa lahat. Puta, nabuhay ako ng puro paghihirap ang dinaanan ko. Ni pambili ng bagong brief, pinoproblema ko dati. Natatandaan ko noong elementary pa lang ako, kung wala siguro akong pantalon, nahubo na ang brief ko. Si ermat kasi dati, ni hindi ako maibili ng bago. Ang ginagamit ko noong nasa grade six ako, iyon pa ring brief ko noong grade one. Kaya tuloy sa sobrang lawlaw na't wala na talagang garter, kapag tumatakbo ko, lumililis. Nahuhubo ang magkabilang tagiliran. Kaya lang hindi talaga nahuhubo, sumasabit sa pundya ng suot kong pantalon.

* * *

Whatever they say, I don’t give a fuck. God, or whoever towers above us all, knows that I’ve travelled such a long way. Fuck, I need to stop. I need to rest, to relax.

I've been here in Baguio for many months now. I may never get tired of this place. The cold, the trees, the cheap food. And yet, months will pass by and I’ll likely go footloose and find another place. A place where no one will mind me. Where I won’t be pursued and hounded by nightmares and my own shadow.

Right now, I’m contented with this life. I got a small lot with a small house on it. I got a garden of vegetables and marijuana. I got life, money. That last one is what I value the most. Fuck, I suffered a lot in life. How to buy new briefs, the kind of problems one had. I still remember when I was in elementary, if I didn’t wear pants, I’m good as naked. Blame it on ermat, she couldn’t buy me briefs. What I wore when I was in grade six were the exact ones I had on when I was in grade one. Since they were pretty much worn out and with the garter totally undone, whenever I ran they slid down, exposing my thighs. The reason they didn’t go all the way was that they got caught in the crotch of my pants.

Cave and Shadows (Nick Joaquín)

You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.

Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?

True, he said ...

- Plato, The Republic

The most mystical Filipino writer is probably Nick Joaquín (1917-2004). In his books characters are seized by visions, the faithless become converts, and the faithful turn into seers. Nick Joaquín was a novelist, poet, dramatist, historian, journalist, and biographer. His significant contribution to Philippine literature in English led to his conferment of the title National Artist for Literature.

He was, as he wrote in his dedication, a "man who has two novels," alluding to his first novel, The Woman Who Had Two Navels. His second novel, Cave and Shadows, dealt with a literal cave and some metaphorical shadows. Yet the reference to Plato's cave was not lost.

From its first surreal sentence ("The vision—a crab on a string being walked by a naked girl—occurred in deep-hotel corridor twilight and moreover when he, Jack Henson, was feeling himself in a swoon.") the novel was propelled by the mysterious death of a girl found in a cave that was practically sealed from the outside. The girl was naked, had no sign of any injury or violation on her body, and a scent of flowers seemed to emanate from her. Was she the same crab-walking girl that Jack saw in the hotel corridor? If yes, why was she haunting him?

Jack Henson, 42, divorced, and an American expatriate living in an island in southern Philippines, was asked by his former wife to get to the bottom of the unexplained death of her daughter, Nenita Coogan, the girl found in the cave. A possible explanation for her death, as "folk memory" would have it, would be the sacrificing of youth at planting time so that the harvest of the fields will be more fruitful and abundant. The sweet-smelling body of a "saint" will appease the gods. But then it could also be a crime of passion. Or some other primal offense. No neat explanation was at hand.

As Henson investigates, Joaquín traced the increasingly surreal and mysterious circumstances surrounding the girl. He came to interview a number of quirky characters that were associated with her while still alive. As the story progressed, the present started to play against the insistent echoes of the distant past. Forgotten incidents were projected onto the pages of history, becoming more and more pronounced as they filled narrative gaps. Amid the reverent themes of religious fanaticism and the search for an authentic native god, Joaquín used the genres of the detective story and historical documentary as creative vehicles for exploring the intersection of various spheres of Philippine life: history, politics, religion, activism, and colonialism.

The main thread of the detective story was alternated with chapters that foregrounded the mythical and superstitious elements of the story. These include: a discourse on the origin of the cult of the cave; a documentary investigation into the rise of the religious figures known as the Hermana, the Beatas, and the cave goddess; and an exposition of events sometime in the 17th century, events that go back to the roots of religion and could rewrite the official history on paper and the articles of faith etched in stone. Yet again, as in Joaquín's short stories and his first novel, readers were privy to a subtle battle of the sexes in the book, wherein a feminist revisionist approach to history was enacted.

Joaquín situated the "present" of the story in August of 1972, a month before the declaration of martial law in the country. This avoidance of an important political turning point in history is significant in terms of Joaquín's deliberate gloss over an event that is still shaping the course of the present. In any case, the novelist did not completely detach himself from the political sphere since major characters in the story are either public officials or have direct connection to people in power. As Henson said in one conversation, "politics is what we have to have instead of love; it's how we arrange for safety and justice in a society where people don't really care much for one another."

The cave in question was subject to previous worship and ritual ceremonies as early as the 16th century before being literally obstructed by the Spanish clergy - it was covered by an embankment twice over. Out of sight, its existence gradually vanished from memory. The obstruction was meant to suppress the practice of pagan rites by the villagers which was threatening to eclipse the Catholic faith that was then being aggressively spread by Spanish colonists. In 1970 the cave was uncovered by an earthquake which brought down the paved scaffold and revealed the gaping entrance. What was once buried from memory was unearthed from memory.

The rediscovery of the cave became a sort of trigger that invaded people's consciousness, eventually excavating folk memories lying in the recesses of the mind. The process was aided by researchers who reconstructed the events in history. At least two versions came out of submerged history: the native and the colonial religious histories and their associated customs.

Culture, Joaquín seemed to be implying, is not forever dormant even if systematically suppressed. It is very like strands of DNA that remain intact even after several millennia. It only takes a blunt force of nature for it to uncoil itself and spread its contagious doctrine.

With the cave once again "in place," it was thus inevitable that the cultural DNA will be resurrected by its modern-day adherents, the neo-pagans. The vestiges of anito - old faith of the forefathers, sticks and stones ready for worship - can survive in the new and can reclaim its once strong foothold in people's hearts and souls. Naturally, in the reorientation of belief systems, there was bound to be a clash of beliefs, an overt war, between introduced Christianity and home-grown paganism. Each of the two sides had proponents who will go to such length as to form new cults and recruit followers to protect the interest of their gods. The all-out war on faith and the unchecked ceremonies of the faithful could turn deceptive, violent, and deadly, as they in fact did. The cave was ordered closed to the public before Nenita Coogan was found dead in it.

I will hazard a guess as to what the cave probably signified in the novel. It may be a stand-in for memory, particularly that of cultural memory. Its reopening allowed paganism, a recessive trait, to be reborn in contemporary times, brought out again to the light for everyone to inhabit and cultivate. It would only take a well-timed stimulus, a natural calamity, or perhaps a demagogue's fiery speech during a demonstration rally, to trigger a crisis of faith. The objective histories told in books and in official documents belied the deep-set motives and desires of the characters. Everyone was capable of compassion; everyone was capable of murder and machination.

The novel was so opaque and tangible that it can harbor many interpretations, many individual readings and tellings, of fortune and literary meanings. As a variation of the Socratic allegory, the philosophy proceeded to its dark conclusions. Along the walls of the cave, the shadows conjured confusion and mystery such that the viewers of these dark images could not distinguish the shadows from the objects that cast them.

The cave became the canvas in which the novelist projected his own portraits of shadows, characters like trapped animals, darkened by their savage capabilities and blinded by their own appetites and desires. Shadows that were like figments of one's susceptible beliefs, readily accepted as rock-hard beliefs, but ultimately hollow and easily ground. They were fooled by perverse forms reality takes, the objects dissolving into their petty projections.

The characters' shadowy attitudes reflect our own inherited failings, our national defects. This is the un-reality we cannot face and yet we must do so to escape it. As the dying words of a female mystic in the novel put it: "All only shadows in a cave ... Oh, fly me outside!"

A note on the prose. Joaquín was a poet and he wrote in beautifully observed sentences ("The kneeling light was also examining the purple thread in their plaid, the curl of bead or shell, the jewelry of white buds in dark hair, the throb of gold in the flesh."). He was one of the best Filipino stylists in the English language. Even with descriptions that were somehow excessive or accessorized with bourgeois accoutrement, he was an original at the level of the sentence. His writing breathed and throbbed in quick flashes, like gold in the flesh.



Review copy courtesy of Anvil Publishing and Honey of Coffeespoons.

Reading diary: December 2010

December 2010




More of Ryan's books »

It's the last post of this 2010 series of capsule reviews, the first post of the new year. Eighty books read, it's been a great year, like going around the world in the same number of days. Here's my seven titles in December, two of which made my favorites list.

Clandestine in Chile by Gabriel García Márquez, tr. Asa Zatz

A true story of Miguel Littín, an exiled Chilean film director, who re-entered Chile in disguise during the late years of Pinochet regime. He undertook this clandestine mission to shoot a documentary that exposes life under the military dictatorship. It's a candid and nostalgic look at losing one's own identity and being a stranger in one's own homeland.

My full review here.

The Trial by Franz Kafka, tr. Breon Mitchell

Whoever said The Trial is a comic novel must be joking. The things that happened to Josef K. are not funny at all. Having come face to face with a corrupt justice system, with his individual rights violated at every turn, and being at the mercy of inept lawyers and judges ... Nobody is laughing at all. *looks warily at his back* Right?

Patikim by Mark Angeles

Patikim is Mark Angeles's first book of poetry, a harvest of love poems that contain some of the most cheesy lines that express heartfelt sentiments. They are the kind of lines that make a stone cringe: "you asked me, the me within me – / why the leaves flutter in the wind / why the stones are weeping / why a kiss tastes sweet." Faced with these crude expressions, the reader expecting complicated lofty thoughts will be disappointed. Instead what he will get are unapologetic jolts of feelings interspersed with entertainment, sometimes deadpan, sometimes wicked, often irreverent. The poems show that love can be a cure against cynicism, and laughter is the bitter medicine. The technique is hidden by apparent accessibility.

I have translated and posted a couple of these poems here. Here is another one, a short question the poet asks the violin and it encapsulates Mark's attempt to, in his own words, "objectify love." It can be a two-take objective: one that objectifies and one that object-ifies.

O, Mahinhing Biyolin           O, mahinhing biyolin,           dalit ko'y iyong dinggin—           Paano susuyuin           and iyong pagkabirhen?

O, Virtuous Violin O, virtuous violin, hear my grieving hymn— how does one win your virgin being?

Blow-Up and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar, tr. Paul Blackburn

Reading Cortázar, it's like having a tiger in the room. A cute tiger, stripes and all. You wouldn't know, though, when it's going to pounce. But you know it's going to make a mean move, snack on you maybe, drink your blood, like a poet drinking metaphors, satiated beyond satiety. Like a reader drinking the prose of Cortázar. They are perfect prose pieces, unexpected like tigers. He is one of those prose stylists whose sentences you read for their music and poetry, without caring for the cohesiveness of the stories. The surprising thing is that the stories are impeccably plotted, with always something mind-walloping in the end. My favorite short stories here are the first two, "Axolotl" and "House Taken Over."

I decided to start with these stories after reading only a few pages of Hopscotch. I know the latter promises to be great but I felt the need to get some bearings with the short fiction. I predict a new (literary) hero worship is in the offing.

Tres by Roberto Bolaño, tr. Erica Mena, unpublished translation

I accidentally came across Erica's translation while surfing on the web. Unfortunately, it's not authorized for publication. I find in this translation of Tres the concentration of Bolaño's strengths as a poet. The conversational voice, the perfect muscle control of the lines, the powerful and various abysses, strangely structured, surreal, improviso.

Here is the start of the third poem called "A Stroll Through Literature."

1

I dreamed that Georges Perec was three years old and visited my house. I hugged him, I kissed him, I told him he was a precious boy.

2

We were left half-done, father, neither cooked nor raw, lost in the vastness of this interminable garbage dump, missing and mistaking ourselves, killing and begging forgiveness, manic depressives in your dream, father, your infinite dream that we unraveled a thousand times and a thousand times again, like Latin American detectives lost in a labyrinth of crystal and mud, traveling through rain, watching films where old men appear and cry tornado! tornado!, looking at things for the last time, but without seeing them, like phantoms, like frogs in the bottom of a well, father, lost in the poverty of your utopian dream, lost in the variety of your voices and your abysses, manic depressives in the immeasurable room in Hell where you cook up your Jokes.

One must read Tres for its rhythm, for its content, for visceral realism. Above all, for its rhythm. One, two, or three times.

Cave and Shadows by Nick Joaquín

A satisfying blend of history and detective story, Cave and Shadows investigates the death of a young woman found in a cave. There was no sign of foul play. She was found naked, and as if sleeping. There's an inner cave within cave, secret passages, neo-paganism, ritual sacrifices, cults and activists, converts and sinners. I think it has a lot to offer the readers of mysteries and mysticism.

I'll put up a longer review of this book sometime this month.

Mondo Marcos: Mga Panulat sa Batas Militar at ng Marcos Babies,
ed. Frank Cimatu and Rolando B. Tolentino

"Marcos babies" refer to the generation of Filipinos who were born or came of age during the regime of dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Mondo Marcos is an anthology of writings (short stories, essays, poems) about life under that dictatorship. A full review of this book is also upcoming.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Clandestine in Chile (Gabriel García Márquez)

The plan was to film an underground documentary on the increasingly desperate situation in Chile after twelve years of General Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. I had been unable to get the idea of making this film out of my mind. I had lost the image of my country in a fog of nostalgia. The Chile I remembered no longer existed, and for a filmmaker there could be no surer way of rediscovering a lost country than by going back to it and filming it from the inside.


Gabriel García Márquez faithfully transcribed Miguel Littín's voice in Clandestine in Chile (trans. Asa Zatz), a book of reportage. Littín is a Chilean filmmaker living in exile, homesick and determined to come back to shoot his documentary. To do this he was forced to impersonate a new identity, as a Uruguayan businessman. The transformation was complete: his physical appearance, his accent, and his family history and emotions were calibrated to another person's. This book turned out to be dedicated not only to exposing life under dictatorship but to describing a voluntary "identity crisis" and the large amount of risks a person is willing to undertake in order to practice his art (filmmaking) for purposes he believed were noble. Was it all worth it?
 

Santiago has always had street vendors but I cannot remember ever having seen as many as now. There is hardly a spot anywhere in the business center where they are not standing in long, silent ranks, selling everything imaginable. They are so many and so diverse that their presence alone reveals the social drama. Side by side with a physician who is not permitted to practice, a destitute engineer, a woman with the air of a duchess who is trying to dispose of her wardrobe from better days at any price, there were orphaned children peddling stolen goods and housewives offering homemade bread. Most of these once successful professionals have lost everything but their dignity. Standing behind their wares, they continue to dress as though they were in their former offices. A taxi driver, once a wealthy textile merchant, took me on a tour of half the city that lasted several hours, and at the end he refused to charge me.

The social drama that Littín witnessed was the drama of ordinary people coping with a changed political and economic circumstances. Daily life under the Pinochet regime was, at surface, a veneer of good times, perhaps just as good as life outside Chile. But deep inside was raging silent protest. There was a persistence for ordinary people to continue existing, always hopeful that a better living condition awaited them, because they remember the benevolent past, and it was enough for them to go on. Littín's account of his clandestine shooting was permeated with feelings of nostalgia. Surprisingly, the main pathos of the story derived not from the filmmaker's film rushes but from his living a double life in disguise. While pretending to be someone of different profession and nationality, Littín was unwittingly recapturing his own identity in the pictures of the country he was taking. The documentary which was ostensibly meant to bring to light the injustices of military dictatorship became the same document that eulogized the country of a man dreaming, of the past and the lost possibilities.

In the book's preface, Francisco Goldman said that the book had acquired an extra-literary life after publication, perhaps even eclipsing the actual film made of it. The author being no less than García Márquez who is no stranger to power, and the subject matter being the strongman Pinochet, the conception of the book was far from neutral. Fifteen thousand copies of the book were burned in Chile to stanch any possible damage it may bring to the regime.

Goldman also mentioned that the book never really produced a memorable scene or image that depicted the horrors of the military rule. This is debatable. It did seem that the narrative style of the book, which stuck to the individual voice of Littín, had filtered the horror to the extent that one reads a dry recounting of socio-political and historical events, not an anguished litany of abuses. García Márquez's nonfiction was consciously written in that style, as he explained in his introduction. In a way, the novelist acted as film editor to Littín's director, cutting out extraneous scenes from a very long interview, trying to work with what footage was available, and producing a whole picture out of the whole intrepid project of an exiled man – filmmaker, citizen, son – going home. The editor constrained himself with faithfulness to the vision of the filmmaker. His stylistic decision certainly did not give full dramatic mileage to the horrors of history which were somehow dampened by the nostalgic voice of his subject. Goldman added that one only need read Roberto Bolaño's novels Distant Star and By Night in Chile, in order to come face to face with evil perpetrated under Pinochet's rule. I agree. These two novels about Chile provide a richer canvas for understanding the uses and misuses of art for political ends.

Bolaño's immediate concerns in Distant Star and By Night in Chile are the heinous crimes perpetrated by writers in the name of literature and the collaboration of the Chilean literary establishment with the totalitarian regime. He employed in his fiction the registers of both the journalistic and the poetic. Like García Márquez, the journalistic was used to report objectively on unspeakable crimes. But Bolaño's treatment argued for an ethical dimension of literature, hence a more powerful discourse of evil was essayed. The merger of the journalistic with the poetic allowed Bolaño to dramatize his scenes and represent evil and its relationship to literature and politics as both palpable and paradoxical. His passionate engagement approached that of Littín's belief in his artistic enterprise.

Clandestine in Chile did contain some unforgettable stories. At least two incidents in the book illuminated how the Chileans reacted to violent abuses committed under the regime. A few months before Littín entered Chile, an opposition militant and sociologist named José Manuel Parada, along with two other activists, was kidnapped by military. Parada was an officer of Vicariate of Solidarity, which was critical of the government and was working for human rights. A few days after the kidnapping the bodies of the three men were found bearing the signs of torture; their throats were cut. Public outrage led to the resignation of the police commander believed to be the mastermind of the murders. At the end of this recollection, it was mentioned that the name of one of the streets leading to Plaza de Armas, the location of the vicariate, "was erased by an unknown hand and replaced with that of José Manuel Parada, the name by which it is now known."

The second incident told of a man named Sebastián Acevedo who set fire to himself after failing to find help in stopping the torture of his two children. His son and daughter were arrested by the authorities. As a result of this sacrificial act, the public was outraged and his children were eventually released from the torture chambers. Acevedo was able to speak to his daughter before he died. "Since that time," the story concluded, "the people of Concepción have had a secret name for the place of sacrifice: Plaza Sebastián Acevedo."

These stories showed that the laying down of life under the cloud of injustice is a sacred act that people do not take for granted. More importantly, it showed that people under the iron rule are not prevented to commemorate in order to honor those who were killed in the name of freedom and justice. In loud protest lies liberty and in the record of memory lies salvation. This was true for Chile then, and perhaps will be true for countries where dictatorships still prevail and where freedoms and rights are curtailed.

Here is one more passage where the novelist was able to capture Littín's speaking voice, where both filmmaker and editor were closely listening to the travails of another artist singing her soul – the whisper of a sweet song – bitter, tender. The speech evoked the blood of history as being perpetrated by the audience's disregard. We only finally listen when we recognize what we've lost.

I sat down on a bench to read the newspaper but my eyes ran over the lines without seeing them. What I felt just sitting there on that bright autumn morning was so intense that I couldn't concentrate. All at once, the twelve-o'clock cannon went off, the pigeons scattered in fright, and the notes of Violeta Parra's most moving song, "Gracias a la Vida," floated from the cathedral carillon. It was almost too much to bear. I thought of Violeta, of how often she had gone hungry and homeless in Paris, of her unfaltering dignity. The system had always rejected her, ignored her songs, and mocked her rebelliousness. A president had to die, gun in hand, Chile had to go through the bloodiest martyrdom of its history, and Violeta Parra had to die by her own hand before her country discovered the profound human truth and the beauty of her songs.

Clandestine in Chile is the December 2010 book selection of The Wolves (Richard, Emily, Sarah, Frances, E. L. Fay, and Claire). Also read by Stu and Lizzy. Check out The Wolves' lineup for 2011.