Chronicle of My Mother (Inoue Yasushi)

[If] an emotional love—even just a tiny fragment—has endured throughout a person's life, then one cannot say that life has been entirely wasted. [p. 33]

Inoue Yasushi (1907-1991) was primarily known as a historical novelist from Japan and author of such acclaimed works as Tun-huang. – I haven't read Tun-Huang but the review in Coffeespoons captivated me so I decided to pick up this one, my first Inoue. – In Chronicle of My Mother, translated by Jean Oda Moy, the novelist wrote about the last decade of his mother's life. It charted the mother's aging, senility, and death, up to the late age of 89. The chronicle was divided into three parts. "Under the Blossoms," the first, was published in 1964. The succeeding, "The Light of the Moon" and "The Surface of the Snow," were published five years apart from each other. Inside these poetically titled sections, Inoue shared first-hand accounts of the difficulties he and his siblings faced while caring for their mother ("Granny"). Tthe deterioration of Granny's physical and mental health was detailed in very concrete terms that were surprisingly devoid of self-pity. The children tried to rationalize the puzzling gaps in Granny’s memory. The events that she was able to recall from her past and the possible explanation for this selective memory were a constant preoccupation for Inoue. Granny's senility was evident from her utter forgetfulness, repetitiveness, and mood swings: "We first became aware of the severity of her condition when we realized that Mother herself did not understand, or accept, the fact that she kept forgetting what she said and repeated herself. . . . although she heard what was said, she retained it only that moment and promptly forgot about it." Despite Granny's condition, which was stressful for all those caring for her, her children were very understanding of her condition. They were supportive of each other and were very willing to attend to her needs.

The family culture that was described in the chronicle was exclusively Japanese, though the universal theme will resonate for anyone. In the translator’s introduction, Jean Oda Moy, an Asian American, described the increasing lack of regard for aging parents as a result of materialism: "With the unprecedented social and cultural changes taking place in Japan today, many traditional values which might appear to interfere with productivity and 'success'—in short, with rampant materialism—are losing ground. . . . In Japan as in the West, the elderly today are frequently shunted aside, ignored, or made to feel they are a burden." Inoue's family, as portrayed in the book, was one of those who adhere to a strong sense of duty and love for old parents. The economy of words, the poetry, and the lack of sentimentality made Chronicle of My Mother a touching and accessible read. It is a good example of "grief literature," one that was by no means a depressing elegy. On the contrary, the reader can sense positive feelings from the book and this could be attributed to Inoue's empathy, compassion, and love for his mother. He produced an intimate memoir, one that also served as a paean to motherhood and family ties.

Fourth epilogue for variations: "Phone Calls" (Roberto Bolaño)

Roberto Bolaño's fame as a major novelist in the Spanish language shot up in 1998 after the publication of The Savage Detectives and after his winning back-to-back major awards in Latin America: the Premio Rómulo Gallegos and the Premio Herralde de Novela. His fame in the English-speaking world will begin gradually, and then suddenly, beginning with the publication of his first translated book (By Night in Chile, tr. Chris Andrews) in 2003.

His first English-translated short story, however, appeared early on. It was probably "Phone Calls," from Llamadas telefónicas, that was to also appear (in a new translation) in Last Evenings on Earth. Translated by Mark Schafer, "Phone Calls" was published in 1999 in Issue 67 ("Fire") of the now-defunct magazine Grand Street. It was later to be reprinted in the magazine's Issue 72 ("Detours"). Mark Schafer is a visual artist and translator of poetry and fiction, most recently of Belén Gopegui's novel, The Scale of Maps (2011). Belén Gopegui was one of the writers admired by Bolaño.

"Phone Calls" starts as a love story of B and X. Then it suddenly metamorphosed into a murder story. The sudden plot shifts in the story create an atmosphere of vertigo. It condenses the novelist's universe in miniature.

Here's an excerpt from "Phone Calls" in Schafer's version.

At night X invites him to share her bed. Deep down, B has no desire to sleep with X, but he accepts. When he wakes in the morning, B is again in love. But is he in love with X or is he in love with the idea of being in love? The relationship is problematic and intense: X borders on suicide from day to day, is in psychiatric treatment — pills, lots of pills, which nevertheless do nothing to help her. She cries often and without any apparent reason. So B takes care of X. He cares for her tenderly, diligently, but also awkwardly. His ministerings imitate those of a person truly in love. B realizes this right away. He tries to lift her out of her depression but only succeeds in leading X down a dead-end street or one X judges to be a dead end.

Here's the same excerpt in Andrews's version.

That night X invites him to share her bed. B doesn't really want to sleep with X, but he accepts. When he wakes up in the morning, he is in love again. But is he in love with X or with the idea of being in love? The relationship is difficult and intense: X is on the brink of suicide every day; she is having psychiatric treatment (pills, lots of pills, but they don't seem to be helping at all), she often bursts into tears for no apparent reason. So B looks after X. His attentions are loving and diligent but clumsy too. They mimic the attentions of a man who is truly in love, as B soon comes to realize.

The stories can be read in full at the following links:

http://www.grandstreet.com/gsissues/gs72/gs72a.html 

http://www.ndpublishing.com/books/bolanolast.html



Related posts:

"The Slaughter of the Ponies" (João Guimarães Rosa)

Stairway to hell: Two translations of "Rashōmon"

Manual of Painting and Calligraphy (José Saramago)

I shall go on painting the second picture but I know it will never be finished. I have tried without success and there is no clearer proof of my failure and frustration than this sheet of paper on which I am starting to write. Sooner or later I shall move from the first picture to the second and then turn to my writing, or I shall skip the intermediate stage or stop in the middle of a word to apply another brushstroke to the portrait commissioned by S. or to that other portrait alongside it which S. will never see. When that day comes I shall know no more than I know today (namely, that both pictures are worthless). But I shall be able to decide whether I was right to allow myself to be tempted by a form of expression which is not mine, although this same temptation may mean in the end that the form of expression I have been using as carefully as if I were following the fixed rules of some manual was not mine either. For the moment I prefer not to think about what I shall do if this writing comes to nothing, if, from now on, my white canvases and blank sheets of paper become a world orbiting thousands of light-years away where I shall not be able to leave the slightest trace. If, in a word, it were dishonest to pick up a brush or pen or if, once more in a word (the first time I did not succeed), I must deny myself the right to communicate or express myself, because I shall have tried and failed and there will be no further opportunities.
– Manual of Painting and Calligraphy, trans. Giovanni Pontiero

The opening paragraph of José Saramago's Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is unmistakable in its trademark tone. The lulls and pauses in the phrasing are searching for a way forward. The prose is laden with hesitations and qualifications, trying to overcome the clauses that skirt away from the general idea. The ideas are spreading like ripples in the pond, emanating from the center of consciousness. Above the surface hovers a unique voice, a singular mind, a ruthless thought process. Below is raging calm, propagating through perfect control of rhythm. The only comparison I can immediately think of is the artful opening of a Javier Marías.

Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is a work of fiction, a novel, but it is an essay in the same way that Blindness and Seeing are essays on blindness and lucidity. It is narrated by H., a fifty-year old painter commissioned by S. for a portrait. The first few pages unfold slowly, telling of H.'s difficulties in producing two simultaneous portraits of his client. In order to get around to this problem, or more like to escape from it, H. decided to produce another third portrait of S., but this time the image will be in words. Through sudden impulse or instinct, H. decided to turn into writing (the "calligraphy" in the title).

I never expected this book to develop right off the bat a similar theme of another novel I finished last year, also from the Portuguese. The Stream of Life by Clarice Lispector (translated by Elizabeth Lowe and Earl Fitz) is narrated by a female painter who writes of her innermost consciousness and feelings the way colors unravel from the strokes of her paint brush, the way consciousness streams forth from a fountain of imagination. But where Lispector's prose issues forth quick as silver, Saramago's brush paints from a slow easel, building from primary colors as he established his plot. As in Lispector's "art book," plot is probably the least of Saramago's concern here. Manual is, from the outset, a novel of ideas: ideas about art, about the expressions and forms that art makes, and the relationships of these art forms.

Manual de Pintura e Caligrafia first came out in 1976, only Saramago's second published novel at that time. The first, The Land of Sin (still untranslated), appeared almost thirty years earlier. In between the two, he produced three collections of poetry (he did not publish poetry since then) and four collections of newspaper articles. The English translation of Manual, by Giovanni Pontiero, appeared in hardcover from Carcanet Press in 1994, and in paperback from the same publisher a year later. Among his earliest works in the original Portuguese, this is the first "window" to his works as it remains to be the earliest with an English translation. The translation, however, has since gone out of print.

The online sales pitch for this book goes like this: 'A rare first edition of the author's hard to find second novel. The novel is often thought of as his first but he published The Land of Sin in 1947; the book received little attention and upon being told that the book was out of print, Saramago replied "Thank God".' I'm not sure about the veracity of this claim. The alleged exclamation (from an avowed atheist) is interesting, and it is at least intriguing why this book has not been reprinted.

Last year The Collected Novels of José Saramago was released in e-book format, as an exclusive compendium of Saramago's fiction (twelve novels and one novella). This collection is missing Manual of Painting and Calligraphy. Why this book was not reprinted or included in the collected edition of his fiction is a mystery to me. It wasn't clear if he wanted to suppress this translation of the book. Was it due to the quality of the translation? Saramago was known for being very exacting about translation of his books. There was an instance when the novelist requested for a more faithful English translation of Baltasar & Blimunda as the first published version contains editorial amendments that he wished to be overruled. It could not be the translation since Giovanni Pontiero is a very good translator and esteemed even by Saramago. His prose work on The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, Baltasar & Blimunda, Blindness are some of my favorite writings.

Maybe initial sales of Manual were poor so the publisher did not produce any more copies? But Saramago, Nobel laureate, is a big name now, almost a brand. His name recall alone will be enough to pull new readers and drive sales of this book, especially a book with such a mysterious title.

Perhaps Saramago considered this early effort to be minor, not at par with his later novels which are considered masterpieces? But the book has been released lately in other languages.

Maybe there are some copyright issues with this book? Or maybe the supposedly overt political theme of the book is the reason? Saramago was a staunch follower of communism and this book had some political color directly linked to its historical backdrop, the Portuguese Revolution of 1974 and the overthrow of Salazar. But I still doubt that the politics of the novel was enough reason not to republish it. In the arenas of politics and religion, Saramago courted controversy like black ink stain on bright white paper.

Whatever the reason, the rarity of this novel makes it Saramago's priciest book. By sheer luck, I was able to acquire both the paperback and hardcover. A month or so before the Senhor died, the OOP book suddenly appeared online at a very cheap price. Through a friend, I was able to snag a copy of the hardback. The paperback I got, of all places, from the book swap site BookMooch.




First posted in Project Dogeared.

Flips Flipping Pages will discuss Saramago's Blindness on March 26.

Related post: Stark white

"Huling Lagapak ng Kandado" (Axel Pinpin)

The Lock's Last Thud
BY AXEL PINPIN


The calendar is weathered and withered
The chain is clanging and slamming
Time is slowing and speeding
The bars are bruised and skinned
The cold is here and gone
The heat rose and receded
Boredom mocked and endured
Anger, sneering and jeering

Eight hundred and fifty-nine days
Over and over, a spiralling dance

Two years and four months
Back and forth, spinning with no end in sight

This freedom expected to battle the deepest
darkness of the tomb of the living,
was snatched stolen buried
by the dump of flawed laws
which were even the first to rot and agonize
over the demise of the acrobat, a witness inexpert
in the lessons of walking and balancing.
Ay! He slipped from the rope of lies
knotted by the corrupt fiscal, all reason
mumbled and stumbled,
turned into black magic
each time a false witness sprang
a surprise from the box of evidence, not
the white rabbit which was trained to be swift
and clean, fooling the stunned
masses, guardians of justice
in the Judge’s carnival court.

Eight hundred and fifty-nine days
Over and over, a spiralling dance

Two years and four months
Back and forth, spinning with no end in sight

In an instant, before eyes blink,
The fracas is ended!





     TRANSLATED FROM FILIPINO
     ("HULING LAGAPAK NG KANDADO")

Crossing the Heart of Africa (Julian Smith)

I draw the basic outline of my trip in the air: six and a half thousand miles through seven more countries, a crooked line heading north and west up the scar of the western branch of the Great Rift Valley (technically the East African Rift System), a massive fracture in the earth's crust where the continent is tearing itself in two. My goal, like Grogan's 109 years ago, is to go as far as I can down the Nile into southern Sudan ... [34-35]

Julian Smith's Crossing the Heart of Africa is part travel writing, part memoir. Smith journeyed into the continent following closely the itinerary of legendary explorer Ewart Grogan who undertook more than a century before what was then considered an impossible feat. The parallelism in the two men's travels rests not only on the similar roads they took but on their motive for their respective crossings: they both, in their own ways, did it for love. Grogan was challenged by his beloved's stepfather to the task as precondition for his marrying her. Smith, on the other hand, did his own travel on the eve of his scheduled wedding. Each of their separate travels was recounted in the book in alternating sections, with some flashbacks of the developing relationship between Smith and Laura.

The book's subtitle, "An Odyssey of Love and Adventure," promises the reader two things. The romantic notion of braving all odds to get the girl was enacted here. Grogan accomplished it and he and Gertrude lived happily ever after. (There's a long denouement recounting Grogan's further "adventures" even after his famous journey.) Smith's attitudes on his own relationship with Laura were a bit more complicated.

Thankfully, the book escaped the self-centered kind of confession from Smith. He candidly shared his personal thoughts on the matter of love. This "inner" journey into the self, the parsing of feelings before a major life-changing commitment, the need to "know oneself" through solitary travel: these are all equally perilous territories for a writer to dwell on, one that could easily fall prey into the trappings of chick lit books. I was actually resisting the book from the beginning, not sure whether I will still find two journeys whose ends were already predetermined still engaging. Yet the book was filled with enough anecdotes and concrete stories to make it a singular reading experience.

"To travel" originally meant to "suffer." A thousand years ago, life was dangerous, but leaving home was worse. The word itself comes from the Old French travailler, meaning to toil, as in "travail." It's rooted in the Latin tripalium, a torture device made of three poles tied together, to which victims would be attached and lit on fire. [101]

I was a bit put off at first with the forced alternation of chapters, feeling lost as I navigated the brief transitions between the two men's parallel travels. This device felt a bit overused and artificial for me at first, but eventually the book grew on me. I much appreciated the cultural and political contexts that Smith integrated into the text. The realization that Africa is a place fraught with danger and threats precisely because men tried to tame it. That the heart of darkness in the continent stems from personal and historical interests staked on it.

In the end though, while I found interesting the mixture of romance and adventure in the book, I actually enjoyed more the larger silent story that Smith was telling in the background. One was shown revealing aspects of human nature as Smith recalled ordinary incidents with people he interacted with. The historical precedence of violence in Africa was evident in Grogan's time as it is in the present. The all too real incidents of genocide, cannibalism, colonialism, and slavery; the challenges of wildlife and national parks management in Africa; the unstable history of newly founded African nations - all of these provide a very forceful backdrop to the shared passions of Grogan and Smith, two lovers trapped by frontier dreams. Crossing the Heart of Africa is a sometimes stirring, sometimes humorous, often barefaced and plain account of overcoming personal and emotional challenges amid the forces of nature, the clash of cultures, and the humanitarian crises enveloping the dark corners of a continent.

From here on, every step I take will be toward home. [202]

I received a copy of the book from the publisher.