Tag: reading

Book Review: Amadis of Gaul, Books III & IV

I read the Place and Behm translation, which puts Books I and II in Volume One and Books III and IV in Volume Two. I waited over a year between volumes. As a result, I forgot what had contributed to the main conflict narrated in Volume Two, and I also forgot many of the characters, especially the many whose names begin with G. I would advise readers to tackle the whole thing straight through, if possible.

Volume Two drags. There is a lot of preparation for the Big Battle, and the pacing is quite slow during the preparation. The beginning, covering Amadis’s eastern adventures, and the end, covering a couple of extra adventures, are the most exciting parts.

One thing that continues to strike me about chivalric literature is the paucity of emotional narration accompanying dialogue (or action). One example is:

“Beware, sire, for you are committing great cruelty and a great sin, and very quickly you could receive such a lashing from the Lord on high that your great brilliance and fame might be greatly obscured….”

“Good uncle,” said the king, “I well remember all that you have said to me before, but I cannot do anything more….”

“Then, sire,” said the count, “I ask of you permission to leave for my own estate.”

“God be with you,” said the king. (p. 281)

One might have expected the king to “redden” or “bristle” as he is reprimanded and abandoned by one of his vassals (his own uncle, no less), or for the narration to spare a phrase or two to convey his feelings. However, the sixteenth-century text, like many others of the time, remains minimalist and leaves the psychoanalyzing to the reader. Perhaps the emotional narration is absent when the emotion should be obvious.

On the other hand, when emotion is not discernible from a character’s speech or behavior – as usually occurs when the character’s speech is counterfeit or his behavior ironic – the omniscient narrator does intervene. For example, after a certain knight loses a battle and is then treated cordially by his former foes, he dutifully returns the cordiality; but he is inwardly angry, for, as the narrator explains:

He was not satisfied in his desire, because all this honor and gain had come to him after being overcome and reduced to dire straits….He consoled himself and dissimulated as a man of great prudence so that no one might perceive that his thought was concerned with anything other than considering himself the lord and superior of everyone, and believing that with great honor he had won it. So with this pretended joy and with a very complacent appearance he came to where the queen was. (pp. 565-566)

In sum, the omniscient narrator only appears when there is a mismatch between appearance and reality. He is a guide only to what is hidden. If nothing is consciously being hidden, then his services are unnecessary. Unless otherwise stated, then, all is as it seems.

By way of comparison, Thomas Malory, who was active a full century earlier than Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo (the compiler of Amadis), did not, I recall, employ omniscient narration in such a way. In fact, Malory’s more consistent disinclination to explain his characters’ actions leaves a great deal of very pleasant work in the hands of the reader, as he is compelled to supply motives and draw lessons from Malory’s often mysterious, bare-bones narration. My conclusion is that Malory is more of a puzzle than Montalvo, more challenging and perhaps, therefore, more rewarding.

Book Review: Inheritance from Mother, by Minae Mizumura

Inheritance from Mother is a two-part novel: Part I is almost entirely a flashback, describing protagonist Mitsuki’s mother’s prolonged decline and intercutting scenes of their relationship; Part II takes place at a resort hotel, where Mitsuki has gone to figure out what to do about her unhappy marriage (and it also contains many flashbacks). Part II was more pleasant for me to read, since I like hotel settings and internal dialogue in which characters figure out what to do.

The latter part contains one of the best portraits of relationship disappointment I’ve ever read:

As she sang, she felt enveloped in the peculiar bliss of singing – the sense that, at least for that fleeting moment, the world is in harmony.

She was halfway through the first verse when Tetsuo quietly left her side and walked slowly off to the pier.

‘The ship’s whistle sobbing, a flutter of cherry petals.’ She sang on alone, watching his figure grow smaller.

Why?

That was the first ‘why’ of her married life.

She herself was fond of hearing others sing at the chansonnier. Her past boyfriends had enjoyed hearing her sing. And Tetsuo was her husband – shouldn’t he listen gladly? This precise thoughts had not come to her at the time, but she had felt a voiceless cry tear through her, like an echo from the bottom of a deep well. (275-276)

Like Haruki Murakami, Mizumura includes copious references to Western music and literature, yet she also, without becoming nativist or reactionary, expresses resentment at the general degradation and sense of trauma that has accompanied Westernization.

Of course, culture flows both ways, and for every Mizumura character reading Madame Bovary, there is a Westerner like me reading Mizumura. On the subject of world literature, it seems to me that Japanese writers best capture the essence of modern bourgeois life: culturally amalgamated, materialist, and reflective, if not spiritual. Perhaps I am reading different literatures in search of different facets of the human experience in time. If Japanese novels are the best representations of the present, it is in European (especially Hungarian) literature that I find the most homesick remembrances of the past. American literature is where I turn for liberating visions of the future – which seem, ironically, to have been most vivid in the past.

(Maybe this last observation explains why I set my great American novel in seventeenth-century China.) At any rate, I will enjoy reading all of Mizumura’s books.

Lost and Found

By some miracle, a bookmark that I acquired in Taiwan in 1989 has remained in my possession, showing very little wear and tear, in spite of my indifference to it. I always thought it was cool – Its character style and the fact that it contains a quotation from Socrates are very evocative of Taiwan – but I never took any care of it. (After all, it’s just a bookmark.) Over the years, I occasionally employed it in its intended capacity, paying it no more mind than if it had been a shop receipt or piece of Kleenex, and then, the book read, I would leave it lying around for the next time. I don’t know how many places I’ve lived since 1989, but the bookmark survived them all.

Recently, while reading Jonathan Manthorpe’s Forbidden Nation: A History of Taiwan, I remembered the bookmark and decided that it would complete my experience. Then, after enjoying both book and bookmark, I resolved to make the latter a mandatory accompaniment to my upcoming immersion in Taiwanese fiction. With my determination fixed, I sought for the bookmark, to make sure everything was prepared; but I could not locate it. It was on no dusty nightstand or bookshelf, where it always was, where all the other bookmarks were. I checked my office, my car, and even less likely places, in increasing despair.  I realized that it was an irreplaceable antique, of tremendous personal value, the central artifact of my youth. I felt bereft and aggrieved, like a man missing a limb. I slept very little.

The following morning, I dashed to my car and arrived at the library, well before opening. As soon as the door was unlocked, I charged inside and implored the young man at the circulation desk to search every cart where a book returned the previous day might be. Finding the Manthorpe on the fourth or fifth cart, I flipped through the pages and there found the object of my quest, preserved as though in amber. I returned home and, at the foot of my bed, wept tears of gratitude.

Here is what it says:

HELP WANTED

“The most promising successful people are not those who possess uncommon talent but are, rather, the ones who are most adept at exploiting every opportunity for self-development and discovery.”

— Su-ge-la-ti

1989 Campus Career Fair