steveatwaywords's reviews
1222 reviews

This translation is fully worth the re-read of the older work and, to my mind, replaces it. Restoring around 100 pages from the original English version, the Rubin translation also unwinds the story in a slower and more reflective arch than the earlier Birnbaum.

And this review is not intended to cast doubt on Birnbaum's work, necessarily. But here, the novel is given a new and different mood, and a richer life through it.

One of the most interesting aspects to me is an examination of the choices each translator has made along the way to touch upon that "ineffability" Murakami is so famous for. How do we capture the ideas which themselves are a bit beyond language? Birnbaum's translation of kokoro, for instance, as "mind" is now in Rubin as "heart." When our narrator in the shadowless town feels he is losing something vital, this difference is critical, knowing still that neither of these quite captures what Murakami is after. In later novels, he will begin using nani-ka for some of this, which essentially means "anything/something," perhaps less helpful still.

And our shallow and efficient Cybertech-noir narrator is given greater depth as he struggles through discovering the purposes of the mystery, his relationship with the pink-dressed girl and the grandfather, etc. The "explanation" for the narratives near the novel's end is also lent greater elucidation.

From my view, this new Rubin translation raises the status of HBW&EotW, already a favorite, to stand alongside some of his other greater works, 1Q84, Wind-Up Bird, After Dark, Kafka on the Shore, . . .  in his works of magical surrealism, that touch upon the patterns which lie beneath/within us. 

Wimberly's hip-hop "Tybalt-take" on Romeo & Juliet is vivid, unexpected, and challenging: a mashup of '80s street politics and samurai fantasy, of media ogling and Shakespearean verse, of motivated women and secret trysts. 

This isn't Wicked done with R&J; Wimberly is far too savvy to offer us a mere "reversal" story. Instead we see new dynamics arise behind the "not original" telling by the Bard: normed competitions and public stakes for dueling, the neighborhood's women determining what their own wins must look like, and betrayals at least the measure of those which end Mercutio. Who are the "innocents" here? Well, perhaps none in equal measure.

But Wimberly challenges readers, too, with panels of artwork which demand more work than the stark and unambiguous narratives of traditional graphic novels.  Most are without dialogue, slices of action or scene or character, exposing a critical detail or obscuring two. A quick flash of an image which changes everything; the next decision instantaneous. Then, when the moment settles to dialogue, we find ourselves trusting little of what is spoken, though its iambic pentameter lends its own gravitas. 

As a revisioning, this is fine work. As a book which may motivate some students to approach Shakespeare more fully, it's a clever method for us to discover his own ironic words. As an artifact of the cultural moment, it is astounding. 

Sexual politics is foregrounded here in a novel frank and fresh in its discussion of the myriad forces which work upon the bodies of women (and the women who find equally myriad ways of negotiating them or failing to). Kawakami's Japan seems a particularly well-suited space to place such talks, but the Western-oriented emphasis of much of it (breast implants, IVF, etc.) has four fingers pointed right back at the West. 

As others have written, this is not a novel of action, and our protagonist Natsuko mostly talks with others and reflects on her own situation. On the other hand, why should she do anything else? For my part, I appreciated Kawakami's characterizations. While many seem frantically self-destructive, it only demonstrates how fragile the facades built for others. Ditto the levels of predation her men are capable of plying, nothing so simple and crass as violence nor as lowkey as "micro-sexism." 

Most appreciate the first half of the novel for its inter-family dynamics and multiple viewpoints; and they are somewhat less satisfied with the larger second story which is almost entirely from Natsuko's internal view and questions. For me, though, this second exploration felt much more vital, reflective, and true. Natsuko shifts back and forth in her levels of confidence, assertions, and choices. And her interactions with friends and mostly her aggressive literary agent are powerful, revealing. She flirts with the parallel between childbirth and birthing of books in business (a disturbing connection, but one necessary here). The very question of a single woman's pregnancy breaks family connections. And a man who himself campaigns against IVF for single women connects unexpectedly. 

But again, this is not a traditional (nor plotted) story. And as much as some critics warn that the story does not resolve neatly, I might say that this resolution (tidier than I expected) was one of the more artificial parts of the reading. For me, Natsuko herself--at times funny, self-deprecating, ignorant, cleverly revealing, frustrating in her angst, persevering--is so compelling a character that I enjoyed every turn and loop she makes. 

I will be reading more of Kawakami, and I'm confident, too, that what she has in other titles will be at least equally necessary.

Completists of PKD will enjoy this relatively simple tale with its whodunnit twists and its foundational  tracklaying for hundreds of stories after it, a prime virtue of Dick's work: he got there first.

Still, pulp fiction is pulp fiction, and this is not really an exception. This is pure adventure along with a too-heavy-handed warning to the war-mongers and tech-makers out there: lest our own war machines turn against us . . . !

So enter it with this in mind. Early 1950s Cold War fears, the final soldiers on Earth still battling away, but now with automated robots which swarm the enemy, a distant military industrial complex directing/ignoring the realities. And then, a message suggests a truce may be at hand. But for what reason?  The short adventure follows, complete with tough men, strong & beautiful women, innocent children, a world of ash, and our hero making crucial decisions. 

An escapist adventure which feeds our resentment for our own self-destructive nature.

Kumar's retelling of the tale of Angulimala is not especially poetic--if we are seeking a lush tale like we may find in the verse of Tagore or Neruda seek something besides what this book offers: a capsule of the Buddhist thought, a healthy reflection on guilt and redemption, and the challenges to leadership.

Also, and this is not a spoiler, the redemption of our terrorist whose name means "Necklace of Fingers" happens quickly and early in the tale. One, after all, does not meet the Buddha and remain unmoved. Could it happen this way? Could a genuine terrorist be so undone after a single conversation? It's an intriguing idea, but again this is not the center of the book. Instead we begin the book with the encounter with a principle: that we are victims to our attachments, whether property or past traumas. This is not a realization that happens after a single conversation (or even years of them, in my experience), but it sets up Kumar's larger story.

The story isn't really about the terrorist's conversion, at all--it is about our own. What do we, as individuals and communities, understand about justice and forgiveness? A great evil is committed against us: how must we respond? This is not a moment, at least, for the "Christian forgiveness" which even now divides the Judeo-Christian-Islamist ethic. It has much more to do with our own desires, our own attachments, about peace. 

Yes, Kumar's version is motivated a bit by our contemporary crises, and yes, he has made choices of his own in how to tell it. So have others across history. This is what writers do with story. The more important question is what readers do with it. And for myself, the teaching is critical, though I am slow slow to learn; hence my rating and my regular re-reading. 

Eisner has rightfully been called a master of the craft, no small praise since he essentially invented the graphic novel with <i>The Contract with God.</i> Before him, no one had really considered the illustrated genre of books quite this way: a book-length comic?

Well, not exactly. Once Eisner settles in, his characters and situations--while occasionally in scenes predicted or now tropes--are rich in layers, in history, in motivations. What I admired most in reading this series in order is to witness his own development of how such stories might be told or framed. The neighborhood itself is his character, and Eisner's stories are first hyper-local, then expand to cultural life, the world at Dropsie's borders, the long life-history of space. 

Many characters earn some degree of justice, but not in ways we might expect. And major and minor power figures are always at work behind the scenes while a woman wonders about her son who has not written or a man who seeks just another carpentry job. Across time, their anger and loyalties cycle and cycle around ethnicity, around birthright, around property and ownership. 

There is nothing profound in any one story on Dropsie Avenue. But Eisner did not merely create the first graphic novel here; he also explored a new type of ambition in storytelling, something so many who followed him have failed to recognize.

This is a strange book to review or to call spiritual, exactly. More, it is a curated set of four brief volumes which together offer anecdotes, koan, and other "wisdoms" from the history of Zen figures. 

Curators Reps and Nyogen Senzaki say that some stories from the book are purportedly true, others perhaps apocryphal. But what difference does this make? The role of such tellings is not their investigation but in accepting them as devices to re-frame our thinking. To enlighten, even while most describe the very acts of teaching earlier students of Zen.

Western readers might well be cautioned, however, that because of its assorted short pieces, one might be tempted to read this quickly: it is too too easy to do so. In fact, the opposite is the course any master might recommend. Each koan, for instance, if accepted for what it is, may well take days, weeks, or far longer to uncover. More, over time, a revisit to that space may be required.

Here is one story as example from the book:

Abrupt, cantankerous, objectionable, cute, slapstick, absurd, or meditative, these short works risk distracting contemporary readers in their style, disguising not "deep and secret messages" but deceiving us into believing they are mere amusements, ourselves obscuring their paths to openings in our thinking (or absence of thinking). 

Reps says very little about method or motivation to the collection, however, content enough to offer them with little to no comment or preface. For this reason, I recommend reading about the philosophy or approach to Zen through another text, something perhaps by Kodo Sawaki or Shunryu Suzuki, then later move to Dogen. As they are, however, Reps offers a quick and approachable demonstration of the philosophy, and for that this one stays on my shelf.

This curiosity published in Nepal, 1998, is a book devoted purely to local poets (in translation) writing poetry to and about Hilary Clinton, largely praising her for her moral uprightness, her steadfastness against a philandering President-husband, and her virtues from which all women might learn.

I would never have guessed such a thing might exist, and when I bought while visiting Nepal, I remember only being thankful that I found local Nepalese poets in translation, not checking at all about its topic!  So I was surprised by its subject (commissioned? earnest spontaneity?), but also by the nature of the poems and their translations (also local writers, some uncertain in their own English skills). 

The book really defies a review. Instead, for those who found this review, I cannot also believe you will find this book. So I will offer a few verses from it, instead:

Being tumbled
The zeal to the goals falls
But a mother's eagerness to her child
Never gets shaken by
    any stumbling block.
And,
Motherhood is by far greater than the birth;
To her
The world is a child in its whole.

More than anyone else
Responsibilities are better
Understood by mothers;
They shoulder, endure them,
Be they of any kind.
And Hillary Rodham is too, a mother.
                                          --Chet Bahadur Kunwar (Karki, trans)

In the age that we are living
In an open western society
There is Hillary who is a modern day woman
As large as the US geography
Her thoughts invaluable
Her mind as liberal as her great land
As formidable and rich
Hillary, you established and exhibited a truth
Which appeared incredible to many
You saved by your natural conscience a home
That was on the brink of collapse
A civilization on its nosedive to sure ruin
By your intelligence you kept it standing like a tower
You in this way became, O Hillary!
The very first among the women of the while world
In what way, O Hillary!
You scored victory in a competition
You didn't participate at all?
                                                 --Nava Raj Karki (Sharma, trans.)

Yes,
Hillary, whether you read or not
I am writing a few lines
As if we have to exchange thoughts
Between us
Or, as if we are sending
                  letters to each other
And at least
I couldn't remain silent, nor neutral
About you
And I promise you
And support you wholeheartedly
Because
They say you are an advocate
Quite famous!
                                             --Gaurav (Sharma, trans.)

I'm not sure what to do with my copy of this book now. Mail it to her?

Morrison's novel unpacks her fictional surmise of an historical tragedy, and while doing so leaves most readers as bewildered as ever. What caused the sudden violence upon a house full of women, of black on black crime in the small town of Ruby? In a near flawless labyrinth, we realize that this is not the question we're here for.

Beneath the town and its race-divided, class-divided politics, characters pass over and through, stepping over boundaries community-shared and/or unique to an individual. Some are suppressed, some displaced. Yes, there is domestic violence here, gossip, ostracizing, and mythologized history. Town pageants are quietly re-cast; children mysteriously appear without clear parentage; a large domestic oven is the town's key symbol. After this, we enter the viewpoints of various women in turn, and each approaches the most important questions of Ruby at best tangentially. Morrison places their own concerns in the foreground, so we rarely see the contexts for them with clarity. 

It is only through a slow piling on of limited-view narratives that a collage of psychologies emerges, and these not altogether clear. Where was Mavis when . . . ? How much did Deek tell Steward when we didn't see them together, and did Steward listen? What is the core cause of the final violence? And ah, that last question has never a single unambiguous response: we can only know that in a house outside of town called The Convent live a group of women living outside of the community propriety, and in the end, their stories won't explain their ends.

For as challenging as this is for readers, the submersion into the experience, into Morrison's language, always feels more fully realized than we anticipate. 

Isaacs and Zimbardo assembled this earlier criticism of Lord of the Rings in 1968, essays gathered from 1955 - 1966, including explorations by C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Marion Zimmer Bradley. For this reason alone, the historically first looks at Tolkien are worthwhile reading: as an historical moment in what would soon become a cultural phenomenon.

That said, however, don't go looking for high insights or close examinations of the trilogy. Instead, each critic approaches his or her topic with broader strokes, offering "safer" claims that to many of today's readers and fans will feel completely unenlightening. Patricia Meyer Spacks spends too many pages explaining how the story is a quest for power with the Ring at its center (she goes on to say that the the reading is weak in its literary merit). W. H. Auden tells us that the trilogy has a large Quest pattern similar to many myths. 

No, I was entertained by these quaint takes on the Master of Middle Earth, reading fairly quickly through the most obvious of passages. More, though, I was satisfied to have visited an era where criticism still struggled to make sense of a work fairly new to literature, a fantasy which echoes deeply.