11 posts tagged “japan times”
Pablo Picasso was a poet and a good one, but it would be a tragedy if his literary work had somehow diverted attention from his achievement as an artist. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha was an artist and a good one, but it is in no way a tragedy that her book, Dictée, has, to a large extent, eclipsed her artwork. This is not because the artwork is unworthy of attention, but because the experiments with language (and also images) that became Dictée, a masterpiece of avant-garde autobiography, were not peripheral to her artistic practice, but of a piece with it. Indeed, the more closely one considers Cha’s artistic and literary work, the harder it is to tell where one leaves off and the other begins.
That's the beginning of my review of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Exilée and Temps Morts: Selected Works
Read the whole thing here.
—David
Many of the other authors of this collection try too hard to be transgressive, and usually to very little effect. Often the stories are reminiscent of the "ka-ka," "poo-poo," "pee-pee" exclamations of a toddler, who having learned that such words get a rise out of grownups, screeches them when in company. The words really aren't that shocking . . . or interesting.
Me, on Love Hotel City
Read the rest here.
—David
As a boy, Edogawa Rampo was, as he relates in one of the essays included in this collection, a devotee of popular fiction. Entering the fantastic twists and turns of his stories we are soon lost in them just as, when boys and girls ourselves, we became the characters in the romances and adventures we devoured.
That's the first paragraph of my review of The Edogawa Rampo Reader
—David
When reading William J. Tyler's anthology, Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913-1938, one realizes that "modanizumu" (modernism) is a very broad term. It seems to mean, for Tyler anyway, any work produced during the years he designates that is not absolutely reactionary in its style or concerns. Thus readers who are hoping for Japanese fiction that, in Ezra Pound's phrase, "make(s) it new" may be disappointed to find that Tyler's expansive definition of modernism allows him to include work that simply deals with the new: the "fashion, mores, and manners" of the years with which he is concerned. Whether Tyler's definition is too broad is a question probably best left to those interested in literary taxonomy.
See what else I have to say about Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913-1938
--David
The Japan Times asked some of us to choose our three favorite Asia related books of 2008. Mine are here, and you can find the choices of other Japan Times critics (including Donald Richie) here.
Stay tuned for Only a Blockhead's own best of 2008 feature, coming soon.
—David
My review of Seiichi Hayashi's Red Colored Elegy begins:
Here's a rough synopsis of the plot of Seiichi Hayashi's Red Colored Elegy: A young couple, committed to their art, struggle to keep themselves, their art, and their love alive. This will strike no one as wildly original. What is surprising, however, is that, despite its hoary story line, "Red Colored Elegy" is a success.
Read the rest here.
--David
My review of For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut
When a fan of the neglected American genius Guy Davenport wrote to tell him that she admired his ability to express himself, his response was: "Yick!" Davenport's reaction — somewhere between bemusement and horror — upon learning that anyone could so misunderstand his art, and, indeed, art in general, seems apposite in considering the work of Takashi Hiraide whose "For the Fighting Spirit of the Walnut" has more in common with the cool integrity of the best work of poets such as Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and Guillaume Apollinaire — modernists, one and all — than it does with versifiers who appear to believe that writing is a way for them to work through the emotions that wash over them when, say, the sun sets behind bare trees, the seasons change, or a dog dies. Readers willing to leave all that warm fuzziness behind will enjoy the linguistic and conceptual fireworks, the wit, and the mystery that make Hiraide's Walnut a poetic page-turner.
Read the rest here.
—David
In most of the developed world, for most of the post-World War II era, the notion that torture might be OK was about as open to discussion as the notion that adulterers should be stoned or that Africans should be enslaved. Now, however, torture is back on the table, and even thinkers as mainstream as Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz refuse to categorically rule out its use.
This sea change in how we think about torture came about largely as a result of the revelation that Americans were, in fact, torturing inmates at military prisons, most notably in occupied Iraq. Many of us were shocked by this state of affairs and found the argument most frequently trotted out in support of torture, that extreme measures are necessary in a time of war, specious at best. There is, however, a grain of truth in this linkage of war with torture: Torture may not be necessary when a country is at war, but when a country is at war torture is likely to occur. We know that mistreatment of prisoners has been a part of the occupation of Iraq; can anyone doubt that it was a part of earlier, more popular occupations?
That's from my review of Terese Svoboda's Black Glasses Like Clark Kent
—David
They are in no particular order.
They are not necessarily my top nine.
They are nine books I enjoyed in 2007.
See the list here
--David
My review of two books by Yoko Tawada
For all his originality, Haruki Murakami, in his artful blends of fantasy and the mundane, reminds one of Paul Auster. The other Murakami, Ryu, succeeds in shocking, but he does so in a manner that screams Bret Easton Ellis. When reading Yoko Tawada, on the other hand, though the specter of Franz Kafka flutters, now and then, up from the pages, one is struck less by the resemblance of her fiction to that of other authors than by its utter originality.
The books I discuss are Facing the Bridge
Read the whole review here.
—David
