Scene of the Crime

Hello Gentle Reader, 

In Patrick Modiano’s short novella, “Afterimage,” the elusive, fading, and willfully transparent photographer, Francis Jansen admits his favourite punctuation mark are ellipses. Those three elusive periods trailing off into nothing. They are the incomplete punctuation. The cliff hanger; the hang man. Ellipses lack the finality of the period; the engaged and curious nature of the question mark; the excitement and enthusiasm of the exclamation mark. Each of these previous punctuation marks strike the border, carving out a defined end of a sentence. They conclude with authority. Ellipses, however, lack an ending. Rather than strike down with gavel assurance they trail off. For ellipses its not a matter of the end of the line, rather the track was never installed. They fade into the incomplete and the unknown. Dissolving into nothingness. They are the evaporating transparent ending. Perfectly fitting for Francis Jansen who seeks to continually pursue a state of invisibility, an ambition and trait shared by so many of Modiano’s characters. Sublimation is a particular Patrick Modiano literary quality. Fixed nodal points and individuals inevitably vanish as if sublimated to a vaporous state. Despite their vapid departure they linger in shadow, cutting haunting figures as grey ghosts. They are spectral and phantasms existing in the unreliable recesses of memory; summoned forth by happenstance, chance, and circumstance. Existing in the vague recess between lamplight and shadow, incorporeal and incoherent.

Patrick Modiano is often compared to fellow countrymen and writers Marcel Proust and Alain-Fournier for his dedication to the theme of memory, loss, absence, incomplete romances – if one can call them that. Yet, Proust’s exploration of memory was gilded and luxurious. The famous madeleine scene showcases Proust’s extravagant and sensuous sensibilities cascading in an uncontrolled torrent of sensations as reminisces and memories stir from their hibernation and incarceration whereby, they are inspected like fine china or silver in need of a polish, but whose values are more then obvious to the beholder. Proust’s madeleine experience is the gateway to the essence of memory, the involuntary and unfiltered impressions invoked by unknown ritual and ceremony, whereby they bubble to the surface containing experiences and sensations. For Proust involuntary memory retained a sense of unembellished purity and naturalness; free from the adulterations and manipulations of willfully recalled or intellectual produced memories, and by being unburdened by any editorial contextualization, embody the essence of the past in all its wistful and ungraspable longing. For Proust memory was the process of rebuilding a gilded and golden chateau. Elaborate and luxurious, an otherwise romantic ideal, safe from the corrosive acid wash of reality. Inconsequential details or unsavoury veracities are left behind at the gates. Remembrance, regardless of how its produced, inevitably will align itself with convivences and personal narratives. For Modiano, memory is less a rebuild of times past, as it is the recovery of faded photographs and film scenes salvaged from the banks of the river oblivion. Incomplete registers, diaries, address books, newspaper articles and phonebooks, are the only souvenirs and evidence of a bygone era, cataloguing a new dissolved city and world lost within the inevitabilities of progress and time marching forward. A netherworld and purgatory that plunges Modiano’s characters, personas, and pseudo stand-ins into continually delving into an aimless and inarticulate search of the past.

Some writers are accused of covering the same ground within their work. Their literary themes and preoccupations developed and ingrained. In the case of Patrick Modiano, its not a matter of a writer returning to the same old haunts, it’s the writer writing the same novel in different variations. The entirety of Modiano’s bibliography is best described as a Yayoi Kusama infinity room, where the gleam and sparkle of light reflects and ripple over and over again in a mesmerizing designed illusion. So too are Modiano’s novels. While each one is independent in scope, they all inevitably cross and crisscross the same ground. Some critics have described Modiano’s novels as mere chapters within a larger tome. Each one a celestial body within the vague ether of space. Names and characteristics are recycled and reused throughout the bibliography adding to the delirium and continued sense of déjà vu. This explains why critics implore readers to sample a variety of Modiano’s novels in order to gain a robust understanding of the authors output, whereby readers are enveloped in the distinct gossamer prose, coming across familiar names, situations, and streets. Retrospect is yet another significant component of Modiano’s bibliography, as youth is described best in his novel, “Out of the Dark,” in all of its vagrant incompleteness:

“We had no real qualities, except the one that youth gives to everyone for a very brief time, like a vague promise that will never be kept.”

In this regard, Patrick Modiano’s characters are always silhouettes. Mere traces and impressions left behind. Outlines and shapes dissolving away. They exist in a translucent state of transience, whereby they slip further away. Their fates always unknown, but they leave an aftertaste of menace and melancholy, components of guilt and mystery.

“Scene of the Crime,” folds back—imperfectly, slanted, and angled of course—on an earlier Modiano novella, “Suspended Sentences.” “Scene of the Crime,” should not be described as a sibling, child, or offshoot of “Suspended Sentences.” Nor is it a spiritual successor. The notion of successorship is best abandoned. The events of “Suspended Sentences,” haunt and linger within “Scene of the Crime,” as details are salt and peppered throughout the narrative: a house on Rue du Docteur-Kurzenne (previously incarnated as Rue du Docteur-Dordaine in “Suspended Sentences,”), overgrown gardens, the house of the immortally famous Dr. Guillotine, a cast of characters concealing an incoherent darkness. Even the protagonist of “Scene of the Crime,” Jean Brosman is yet another Modiano iteration, repurposed and remerging in a new independent light from his previous incarnations. Yet these facts and facets do not align. They’ve been altered and reconfigured. Patrick Modiano further pathologizes and questions the veracity and reliance on memory and recollection of events as ordained fact. What emerges from the stagnant bog of memory and the imperfect shores of oblivion, is the dread and menace that haunts, lingers, and quietly tortures Modiano’s characters. In the case of Jean Brosman, it’s the vague events of his childhood. Virtually abandoned by his parents, his mother is referenced as an actress touring and his father merely absent, he is left in the custody of friends. While referenced as affectionate if albeit distant surrogates in “Suspended Sentences,” they’ve taken on a more menacing phosphorescent glow. In typical Modiano fashion, Bosman is reintroduced to this world once again by coincidence and chance, by both a song and spying a luxurious American watch. In turn, the enigmatic Camilie Lucas, a bookkeeper who is endearingly referred to as “Deathmask,” for her inscrutability:

“Right from their first meeting, he had noticed that Camille was very good at keeping quiet. Usually people talked way too much about themselves. But he had understood pretty quickly that she would always remain silent about her past, her relationships, her doings and perhaps her accounting work. He did not blame her. You like people the way they are. Even if you might not fully trust them.”

Re-introduces Bosman to a world of shifting shadows, whereby recollections and childhood memories are brought reawakened but brittle and incomplete:

“He only had to think about those two people to become all the more sensitive to the dust, or rather smell, of time.”

A certain Guy Vincent who maybe Roger Vincent from “Suspended Sentences,” haunts the “Scene of the Crime,” like a low hanging fog. The name Rose-Marie Krawell repeats through the novel like an incantation, leaving readers to wonder if she is Annie from “Suspended Sentences.” Modiano never clarifies or confirms. Just as Jean Bosman gropes and fumbles through his own memories, readers are equally left in the dark with a sense of mystery that never quite materializes or is solved. Of course one does not read Patrick Modiano for plot, narrative, or suspenseful attempt at solving the case. To read a Modiano novel is the pleasure of being engulfed within the elegiac atmosphere populated by shadows and devious ambiguous threats, whereby the verity of memory is always in a state of questioning. “Scene of the Crime,” is no different then any of the previous Patrick Modiano novels, another chapter within his repetitious bibliography of existential noir novels. What separates “Scene of the Crime,” from other Modiano novels is its apparent insinuations of kinship between itself and “Suspended Sentences,” without aligning in any coherent fashion reinforcing the questioning nature of memory. “Scene of the Crime,” in turn distances itself further, as Jean Bosman looks back at the events of his life in a spectrum of time, with each recollection casting more doubt over the preceding events. In turn as a protagonist, Jean Bosman is more antagonistic and bolder then Modiano’s usual characters who drift through the novels in a daze. Bosman gives the impression of delighting in his flirtations with the threats that stalk him, all the while resigning himself to pursuit of becoming silent. As in the case of Francis Jansen, Modiano’s novels fade into ellipses unresolved and the sense of being incomplete. “Scene of the Crime,” is no different. Jean Bosman reviews the dubious events of his childhood without coming to any clear understanding of the stakes at play. Bosman’s retrospective operates in that vague borderline between memory and fabrication, with Bosman showing neither interest or concern with clarifying dreamed events to that of fact.

 

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read

M. Mary

– XXXIV –

Grow up, break free, let loose, achieve; but most importantly: Live.  

Breyten Breytenbach Dies Aged 85

Hello Gentle Reader,

Breyten Breytenbach was one of the greatest South African Afrikaans language writers of his generation, an icon of who defended human rights and revolted against the barbaric delineation of apartheid. A statement from Breytenbach’s family perfectly summarizes and defines the author shortly after his peaceful passing:

“an immense artist, militant against apartheid, he fought for a better world until the end.”

As a writer, Breyten Breytenbach literary themes were formed in relation to that of Nadine Gordimer, J.M. Coetzee, and Antjie Krog, an unmistakable outrage and disgust over the National Party’s hyper racial segregation policies and oppression of the majority black population or any other ethnicity designated ‘non-white.’ During his time at university, Breytenbach founded the Sestigers literary group with fellow wrier Andre Brink. The Sestigers were a group of dissident writers who opposed and challenged the prevailing doctrine of apartheid; they also sought to elevate the Afrikaans language, transcending it above its two-dimensional political associations of being a language of an oppressive minority. The Sestigers is affectionally referred to as a literary movement of exile within its own country, and its continued legacy reverberates today, being the foundational lifeblood of the explosion of Afrikaans language and art. The notion of Afrikaans language and the idea of Afrikaner were complex subjects for Breyten Breytenbach remarking:

“I'd never reject Afrikaans as a language, but I reject it as part of the Afrikaner political identity. I no longer consider myself an Afrikaner.”

As in the case of many writers whose work is influenced by its criticism of political realities, language for Breyten Breytenbach became homeland. In the 1960’s Breytenbach entered exile, living abroad in Paris, but remained a cultural icon in South Africa and a vocal critic. In the 1970’s, Breytenbach returned to South Africa, but was promptly arrested for allegedly supporting resistance movements and was sentenced to seven years in prison. Unrepented and unhindered Breyten Breytenbach continued to write poetry during his incarceration. The then French president François Mitterrand worked to facilitate Breytenbach’s release in 1982, afterwards Breytenbach would be granted French citizenship. These years of imprisonment provided Breyten Breytenbach the necessary material to write the monumental novel “The Albino Terrorist,” an account of his in incarceration, including the first two years spent in solitary confinement. Ever politically motivated Breyten Breytenbach continued his political discourse even as apartheid ended, refuting Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress of becoming corrupt and corroded with power.

Rest in Peace Breyten Breytenbach.

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

Tanikawa Shuntarō Dies Aged 92

Hello Gentle Reader,

The grandfather of modern Japanese poetry and the Japanese master of free verse, Tanikawa Shuntarō has died at 92 years old. Japanese literary sensibilities are deep as they are subtle and refined. Emphasising understand brilliance; capitalizing on the contrast between subject and the negative space. The haiku is the perfect example of the concentrated principles of this aesthetic, whereby the entirety of the world is both captured and reflected within a single morning dewdrop. Tanikawa Shuntarō described the postwar period of Japanese society as bleak, the intellectual and cultural environment a vacuum with writers and thinkers continually turning away from previous lodestone institutions to find a new place for themselves within a society that had been bombed, obliterated, and ravaged by war. Those of Tanikawa’s generation who pursued postsecondary education involved themselves in political movements. Thankfully, Tanikawa was spared these political orientations and indoctrinations which allowed the poet to formulate a poetic style all his own. A free verse unbridled from the literary traditions of its forebears and open to exploring new literary frontiers. In a sparse and conversational style, Tanikawa Shuntarō crafted poetry that surveyed emotional truths and reflected on profound ideas all the while being set within the intimate and shared reality. Tanikawa’s debut collection “Two Billion Light Years of Solitude,” was an immediate bestseller in Japan and remains one of the most popular and beloved collections of poetry. What followed was a legendary poetic career of one of Japan’s most important and brilliant poetic voices, whose work remained a chameleonic and cutting-edge presence exploring new modes and literary expressions within the Japanese poetic canon. The hallmark of Tanikawa Shuntarō’s poetry is the approachability of the poems founded in a deceptive simplicity all the while sparkling with sophistication. In addition to poetry, Tanikawa was also a prolific translator, specifically of children’s literature, which included the Mother Goose Rhymes, Maurice Sendak, and Schulz’s  Peanuts comics. Tanikawa Shuntarō’s poetry introduced the world to the possibilities of Japanese poetry, and helped the nation move beyond the dour bleakness of the postwar years to a startling and brilliant future, one of possibility not ruin and devastation. Tanikawa Shuntarō’s poetry will continue and endure, recited and enjoyed by readers and students not only in Japan but around the world. The poetry of Tanikawa encompasses that full spectrum of the human condition, the multitudes of wonder and amazement, the struggles and drudgery of life, and still the perseverance to continue. In reflecting on his own death, Tanikawa Shuntarō reflected on the comfort of curiosity of what comes afterwards and continued on to live until that time. Despite not winning the Nobel, there is no doubt that Tanikawa Shuntarō is and was a deserving laureate in his own right, as his poetry inspired, renewed, and rejoiced at all the ideals of humanity, its flaws, and the countless possibilities.  

 
Rest in Peace, Tanikawa Shuntarō.
 
Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary

The Booker Prize Winner 2024

Hello Gentle Reader,
 
This years Booker Prize has been awarded to the English writer Samantha Harvey for her novel: “Orbital.”
 
“Orbital,” is the second shortest book to have received the Booker Prize, accounting for four pages longer than Penelope Fitzgerald’s 1979 Booker winning novel “Offshore.” Perhaps Samantha Harvey’s win with “Orbital,” proves that shorter novels are more then a match to larger novels. Even more so, considering shorter novels require a gardener’s hand for pruning and a jeweler’s eye detail. Where larger novels can juggle multiple balls, granting them permissible room to let some inconsequentially fall without ceremony or fault. Whereas a shorter novel juggles only a few jeweled eggs, but there is no allowance for mishaps.
 
To contrast this years Booker Prize from last years award, judging chair Edmund de Waal confirmed that this year’s winner was chosen unanimously by the judges and that the judges read all 156 nominated books to completion. The unanimity of the judge’s decision according to de Waal recognizes the intensity of Harvey’s literary ambition in recognizing not only the preciousness of our shared planet, but also its precariousness. The novel itself recounts the one day in the life of twelve astronauts as they orbit the earth. The novel recounts not only the routine of life on the space station, but also their lives back on earth which tether and anchor them home. Through sixteen sunrises and sunsets, they orbit the blue celestial marble of home. “Orbital,” is a breath of fresh air. The novel is the necessary injection of literary pleasure and craftsmanship the Booker Prize needed, after years of politically charged and statement like novels. “Orbital,” embraces the possibility of the writer’s capacity to imagine and reflect on the vastness of space and our own celestial provincial attitudes in comparison to the magnanimity of space.
 
A very well earned prized. Congratulations to Samantha Harvey.
 

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read


M. Mary

Mina’s Matchbox

Hello Gentle Reader,

By the end of October, the north wind has rampaged through. The leaves routed from their trees. They've ruptured and burst forth into the roaring wind, scattering on the street. Winter looms over the horizon. A starved dog whose howls close in every night as the sun pulls away. Never content to remain ominous or threatening in the distance, a smattering of snow anointed the ground, and while it has since melted, snow marks the conclusion of autumn. Once dandy trees peacocking with their burning foliage are reduced to gnarled shadows. Etherized, they contort and frame the early dusks. Their scaffolding branches claw at the sky, creep along the streets, and lurk outside windows. Autumn recedes further away as October closes. Soon November will sail in on slate grey clouds imbued with cemetery light. Frost will thread and sew its way through the grass; while the filigree of hoarfrost engraves the windows. As October concludes on a brittle note, one can’t help but suspiciously eye the romantic attitudes and airs projected on the month. Of course, October reaps the splendors of its harvest regalia, it is also a month of closures and hollowing out. A time of preparation and harvest; taking stock and giving thanks. In turn, October is a month of transitions and shifting borders. Here at the end of October everyone slips into the forlorn mists, swept up and away, retreating just a little further into themselves. Night falls suddenly, leaving all to cozy up with their memories. Under the circumstances its best to quote the venerated October Poet, Louise Glück:

            “We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.”

Childhood is a nebulous subject, shifting and shaping. Ranging from the coyly saccharine sugared imaginings of bewildering entertainment, to more serious literary explorations of individual development and the lodestone of the human condition. All individuals look back on this development period with their own imbued perspectives. Some recount homes that were more hovel than house, where ignorance and violence were the preeminent languages. A world acquainted with the predatorial philosophy and Darwin law of “survival of the fittest.” Others described autocratic and tyrannical fathers or claustrophobic communities, where power was unimpeachable, taking the form of violence and brutality, enforcing conformity and complacency. The vocabulary of these homes and of these families were each the same: overcrowded, meager, unwanted, unsustainable. Thumps in the night always foreshadowed further impoverishment. The term ‘unwanted pregnancy,’ was synonymous with further suffering. For a wife and already overwhelmed mother, another link in the chain to the iron ball dragging her to unknowable depths. For an unwed daughter or sister, it was the beginning of the fall. An expedited journey to ruin and the end. They were described as being filthy and dirty; branded as whores who bitched and catted around. The shame was palpable, coloured in contusions. All of them were excited to caste out anything that could be described as of an ill-reputed nature or cheapened or spoiled. One of the rarest of moments in which they can elevate themselves beyond their squalor and piss on another. Despite this, they were all in the same pit, vying and clawing for the edges. While others describe their childhood in pastoral shades. The closet version of Arcadia that earth could facilitate. Then there are others whose lives were full of the same, the otherwise grey mundane; not without but no splendor to spare. Childhood is where one is forged and oriented to the workings of life.

Memory is a perennial preoccupation in the works of Ogawa Yōko. In the dystopian parable “The Memory Police,” Ogawa observed an island in a continual state of loss and redaction. Throughout the novel the inhabitants of the island lose their memories and their gradual connection to the world, all the while their entire reality reduces in size and scope. When calendars are deemed obsolete, the island nation finds itself transfixed in permanent winter. The entire world is lost in a whiteout, redacted further into the reductionist of nothing. In the still untranslated novel, “The Ring Finger,” a woman works at a laboratory, where clients bring in specimens (a bird bone, a melody, a scar, mushrooms) to be preserved by the memorial taxidermist, who preserves not only the specimens but also the associated and corresponding memory. Another untranslated novel “The Museum of Silence,” a woman collects and curates a macabre collection of mundane miscellaneous objects pilfered from people’s homes just after they have died. While in “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” the 88-minute-long memory of the professor, becomes more an eccentric plot point of the novel, rather than abstract theme, but allocates the novel the ability to float temporally in weightlessness while engaging in the abstract beauty of mathematics. In “Mina’s Matchbox,” Ogawa Yōko returns to the theme of memory, as the narrator looks back on a year of her childhood where she begins to transition from the dreaming and imaginative world of childhood and enter the more actualized reality of young adulthood.

As a novel “Mina’s Matchbox,” is more akin to “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” then “The Memory Police,” or “Revenge.” Where “The Memory Police,” a parabolic in its dystopian vision, contemplating the responsibility of remembrance and the corrosion of obsoletion and forced amnesia having the reductionist power to redact the world, but also discombobulate and alienate individuals’ relation to reality, and slowly releasing them into nothing. Whereas “Revenge,” showcased Ogawa as a master of the macabre. A consummate curator, Ogawa assembled, organized, and crafted scenes and landscapes transfixed and static in their clinical ordinariness, and then began to autopsy these otherwise starched and ironed scenes, revealing the absurd, deranged, and visceral undercurrent coursing beneath the otherwise unexceptionally ordinary. What is best described as the macabre or the madness of the mundane. Instead “Mina’s Matchbox,” bubbles and floats on the gentle effervescence of Ogawa’s observational and unadorned prose, explicitly in alignment with that of “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” while providing Ogawa the space to indulge in detours, details, and the shadows shifting in the periphery. Of course, as in “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” the quotidian is relayed on the slant. Whereas the titular professor’s 88-minute memory injects a sense of eccentricity into the narrative; in “Mina’s Matchbox,” the unconventionality comes not only in the niche habits and quirks of its characters, but also in the form of a pygmy hippopotamus, the sole survivor of a private family zoo, now a pet and mode of transportation. Ogawa’s straight forward prose hits the necessary punches in order to evade sentimentality and kitsch. Regardless, from 1972 to 1973 prove to be a formative year for Tomoko, who looks back on her stay with her distant and affluent relatives in Ashiya, who provide her a new world of discovery and knowledge. Counterbalancing the whimsy and the unconventionality of the relatives, Ogawa Yōko laces time specific details within the text, not only grounding it but enlivening the narrative into a greater context, enriching the narrative with a necessary palpability. Specifically, the 1972 Summer Olympics are by and large a defining feature of the year, with both Tomoko and Mina transfixed by the Japanese Olympic Volleyball Team’s journey to Munich and the aspirations the team would win gold. The two girls’ devotion to the team became borderline fanatical; but their rationale regarding their admiration towards individual team members delineated how the girls viewed the team. Mina logically evaluated the statistics and abilities; while Tomoko frivolously admired the beauty and appearance of another.

Tomoko’s reminisces of her time in Ashiya prove to be crystalline, but also express a gap in memory or a child’s lacking maturity to fully realize the depth of the situation. Through all their eccentricities, their indulgences in intellectual pursuits, and their lavish surprises, the family is dogged by secrets and familiar tensions. Mina is asthmatic, but her conditions severity gyrates between crisis and projected exaggeration by those around her. Despite this, Mina’s medical remand has nurtured an imaginative and creative mind, as the novel is spiced with a few of her matchbox stories. Tomoko’s uncle is charming dazzling, but beyond his smooth and shiny veneer lurks an ungraspable tension. His absences fill the house and while his returns are celebratory, Tomoko perceives a tension between her uncle and her maternal aunt. While her aunt in turn spends her days drinking and smoking, reading texts and books scanning for typographical errors. When Mina’s beautiful brother Ryuchi returns from Switzerland, Tomoko once again reflects on a concealed strain between father and son. From Grandmother Rosa, Tomoko comes to learn about the Holocaust, and the survivor’s guilt that plaques her grandmother, all the while the horrible massacre and terrorist act of the Munich Olympics, becomes a shattering reminder of the human capability for terror, marking one of the unadulterated moments when the idyll of childhood is infiltrated with the violence of the external world. The novel in turn traces first loves and there fated disappointments. All the milestones in the march to growing up. Ogawa’s prose is casual and laconic as it languishes over the details, which is also the novels weakness. Details effervescently emerge and while their intentions are ominous or foreshadow conflict, they instead burst or drift off course, never quite actualizing. Just who is the uncle’s mistress? While Tomoko circles the issue and approaches it, the subject is never explored further. Ogawa’s tasteful desire to refuse to linger on overtly dramatic events, be it a home invasion or a fire, allow her to bob and weave the entrapments  and indulgences of melodramatic histrionics, but the lack of completion or conclusion or at the very least hard lined definition can be considered underwhelming. Yet, in Ogawa’s defense, children are minuscules in comparison to the machinations of the adults around them and as such as scaled to their environment. The hypersensitivity and overprotectiveness of Mina is in turn leveraged against Tomoko, and while she exercises some agency in her movements, she is otherwise tethered to the house. In addition, as a child Tomoko may be reluctant to explore or investigate an issue of an extra marital affair further. The revelation of the holocaust was enlightening to the human capacity for horror and cruelty.

“Mina’s Matchbox,” was originally written in a serialized format, which explains the short chapters and the episodic feel of the narrative skipping along, in addition to the abrupt endings. The novel is a marvelous exploration of the domestic, and while many readers have praised Ogawa’s foray into the realism and domestic novel, it still retains a slanted perspective betraying the signature flirtation with the macabre. The overgrown Fressy Zoological Garden remains a haunted landscape. Mina’s matchbox stories integrated themselves into the narrative naturally. I found this time the transition between novel and independent fable more symphonic; whereas with “The Memory Police,” chapters from the narrators’ novels did not blend within the narrative as organically. Ogawa Yōko’s continued exploration of the finer nuances of memory are on perfect display with her novel “Mina’s Matchbox.” While it eschews Ogawa’s usual underpinnings of the grotesque and ghoulish, it succeeds in being a charming domestic novel. Ogawa’s prose shone in the crisp gracefulness, a lightness of touch continually feathering out and insinuating each detail. While others are quick to categorize “Mina’s Matchbox,” as a coming-of-age story, Ogawa Yōko has skillfully skirted the mechanical form of such novels and stories. This ‘year in the life,’ novel layers events and details naturally form, never fixating or magnifying on any particular event as having a significant contribution to the development of either girl. All the while through the course of the novel they inevitably do change and grow. Time marches forward, yet as Tomoko reminisces, it was a transformative year. Ogawa succeeds at encapsulating those moments of youth. The awkwardness of self-awareness. The frustrations of infatuations. Those insignificant moments which haunt us throughout our lifetimes; much like the little girl catching falling stars in a bottle, on one matchbox cover. This is Ogawa’s strength, the ability to effortlessly examine the subtle shifts and changes in her characters psychology and relation to the world.

“Mina’s Matchbox,” is a welcome – like all future Ogawa Yoko publications – and overdue entry into the English language. “Mina’s Matchbox,” showcases Ogawa’s range as writer, her ability to move beyond the visceral or mundane violence of her other works, and instead explore a quieter and intimate family narrative. Ogawa’s prose remains natural and unadorned, never burned by ostentatious formatting and achieving at their crests a wistful lyricism, much like the radium-fortified drink Fressy which appears throughout the novel. “Mina’s March,” provides a holistic portrait of one’s memory and one’s relationship to it, but also the complicated relationships and how they’ve adapted and changed through the ages, and how they too are remembered. In a manner similar to Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Klara and the Sun,” Ogawa Yoko moves through time deftly and with ease covering a period of thirty years through highlights and applying a short epistolary format. As in “Klara and the Sun,” which fixated on only a short pinnacle period of a character’s life, Ogawa ended "Mina's Matchbox," without cheapening the prose, but coming to a rounded conclusion. 

 

Thank you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary                                                                                                         

– XXXIII –

People who are health conscious are quite monkish. I admire their discipline and pray for their failure.

Fleur Adcock, Dies Aged 90

Hello Gentle Reader,

The poetry of Fleur Adcock was a late in life discovery. Poetry is a literary form which is always fighting its corner. Its meager allowances routinely reduced. Yet still it pushes on. Poets like Fleur Adcock, proved that poetry can be pulled from the lofty heights of academia and the ivory tower. While the poems of Blake, Shelley, Keats and Byron are pulled from the shelves, their names inspiring dread and groans from students who must look through their lines and scry out so meaning. It is poets much like Fleur Adcock, who work against these traditions, ensuring poetry retains a somewhat grounded presence, celebrating the observational and the everyday, rather than soaring for the celestial heavens, to reside in starlight immortality, only to descend as some form of torture on high school students, who will never return to ‘that tiresome subject.’ Where does one place Fleur Adcock? Born in New Zealand in 1934, but lived in England from the age of 5 before returning to New Zealand at 13. She then returned to England in 1963, working as a librarian in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Her first collection of poetry was published in New Zealand “The Eye of the Hurricane,” in 1964, while her sophomore poetry collection “Tigers,” was published in the United Kingdom in 1967. In short, Fleur Adcock straddled both worlds. Her poem “Immigrant,” recounts the sense of being an outsider upon returning to England, whereby Adcock commented on being too colonial with her New Zealand accent, which she was desperate to lose, and while walking through St. James Park, Adcock spies the pelicans amongst the swans, which she likens to herself in her colonial manner, despite to shift, change, and blend. Through poems that move through the everyday, ruminating on objects, thoughts on a place and one’s relationship to it, and human relationships. Adcock’s poetry is written in the beautiful and approachable language, a language of shared ground but with an eye trained for brilliance and mystery lurking in the everyday, which is the anecdote poetry provides to the world. As testament to Fleur Adcock’s poetry, she received the (then) Queens Gold Medal for Poetry in 2006 for her collected poems “Poems 1960 – 2000,” and went on to write another five poetry collections, and two more collected poetry collections, the most recent published in 2024. Literary talent runs in the family of course as well, Adcock’s sister Marilyn Duckworth is a novelist, and her mother Irene also published.

Rest in Peace Fleur Adcock.
 
Thank you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary 

Post-Nobel Prize in Literature 2024 Thoughts

Hello Gentle Reader,

This years Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to the (South) Korean writer Han Kang, who the Swedish Academy praised:

“For her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

As has been the case since the announcement of the 2018 and 2019 laureates for the Nobel Prize in Literature, this year’s announcement continued in the same particular Swedish adoration for procedure as a virtue. At 1:00pm (CEST) the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy Mas Malm, comes through the beautiful white doors of the Swedish Academy, and takes his position behind the little white pen, and greets those assembled welcoming them to the Swedish Academy and then anxiously announce this year’s laureate. Following is the usual dry sermon by Anders Olsson, Chair of the Swedish Academy’s Nobel Committee. Finally, a very unenlightening interview with Swedish Academy member Anna-Karin Palm. This all takes place within a span of twenty minutes. The entire procession could easily be handled by one person, but is now a relay race between three people passing a baton.

To be blunt once again, the current itineration of the Nobel Prize announcement being divided up amongst different members of the Swedish Academy doesn’t work. The entire affair is stilted and stagnant. The entire proceedings are starched and stiff. The lack of engagement and liveliness of the entire assembly is rather mortuary. Kind of makes you quote from Kazuo Ishiguro’s screenplay for the film “Living,”:

[Rusbridger]: “Don't worry, old chap. This time of morning it's a kind of rule: Not too much fun and laughter. Rather like church.”

Though I will say, glasses really do suit Mats Malm – and no, I’m not taking the piss – I think he looked rather charming, and even gave a bit of a smile which was nice to see. In all honesty and fairness, I think if the announcement obligations and responsibilities were consolidated back to the Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy as they should be, and no longer divvied up to other members of the academy or its Nobel Committee, I suspect Mats Malm would have the opportunity to relax and settle into the role, and provide viewers with an appreciation of his character and personality, rather than coming across as somewhat awkward.

Its not lively or engaging, when compared to the pre-2018/2019 announcement. Oh, Sara Danius and Peter Englund, you are sorely missed. Even those who are assembled for the announcement are muted in their response. There’s no cheering and no applause, just absolute silence, which is really reminiscent of church: sit down, stand up, sit down, stand up, take your cracker and kneel, peace be with you and then hasty exit. Perhaps its just me, but I am really disappointed that over the past five years this is how the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Literature has been conducted. Its bleached and soulless. There’s no palpable anticipation. Its droning on and boring. Its reminiscent of a corporate meeting. Everyone attends first thing in the morning coffee in hand. No participation or interest, but attendance is mandatory. The Nobel Prize in Literature deserves better and can do better. We know this because it has. As I’ve said before: while Anders Olsson is an accomplished academic, literary historian and critic, these qualifications do not endow him with the charm offensive necessary to be a front facing and engaging public relations representative for the Swedish Academy. Since the 2018 & 2019 prize announcements, Olsson’s approach to the announcement is one of somber sermon rather than enlightening engagement. The event has become more about endurance then enjoying. Its previous incarnation may have been more unscripted and sporadic, but at least it was concise and entertaining, leaving you in a state of somewhat exaltation, giddy and excited – unless of course its 2016, at which point you stomp around like an agitated goose.

Turning towards this years Nobel Laureate, Han Kang, it’s a mixed bag of reactions. Han Kang is by no means a perennial candidate, and can be considered a surprise choice; despite being an outlier on the radar. At 53 years old, consensus was held that she was considered overall on the younger side. Of course, there have been many writers who have received the Nobel Prize in Literature and can be considered rather young. Rudyard Kipling retains the honour of being youngest writer to receive the award 41 years old. Albert Camus was 44 years old when he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 – and it is considered a serendipitous award as well, as Camus died tragically three years later in an automobile accident. Joseph Brodsky was 47 years old when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987; once again Brodsky died less then ten years later of a heart attack, so the Nobel reached him in due time. Orhan Pamuk was 53 when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. While Herta Müller was 55 years old and Olga Tokarczuk was 56. Personally, I thought Han Kang would become a more serious candidate for the award in another six to eight years, which would give her more time to publish a couple more works, and she would be entering that typical age group when writers begin to be assessed by the Swedish Academy. As for Han Kang’s literary oeuvre, it is by no means robust. Steady and consistent, yes; but certainly not groundbreaking or monumental. In all, awarding Han Kang the Nobel Prize in Literature, there’s a sense its perhaps: premature. In a fashion similar to Kazuo Ishiguro in 2017, this years Nobel Prize in Literature is polite and acceptable, but not explosively interesting. For the past 8 years, Han Kang has been gaining an increasingly international literary presence. In 2016, she won the Man Booker International Prize for her novel “The Vegetarian.” Her short autobiographical piece of work “The White Book,” was once again shortlisted for the same award in 2018. Again in 2018, Han Kang was selected as a contributor to the Future Library Project, where she submitted her manuscript: “Dear Son, My Beloved,” in the spring of 2019. Now after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, there really is no further Han Kang can go on the international literary scene, except perhaps to quote Doris Lessing: “getting a pat on the head from the pope.” Then again though, the Swedish Academy may have decided to acknowledge Han Kang with the Nobel as recognition of not only just what she’s written published but also as encouragement of what she will publish. While the Nobel Prize in Literature is often criticized as being the kiss of death or a curse, some writers have continued to produce high quality work without being tainted by the Nobel’s lofty reputation. Now, whether or not Han Kang can accomplish that feat, only time will tell.

The closest Nobel Laureate that Han Kang can be somewhat compared to is perhaps, Kazuo Ishiguro; specifically, when the Swedish Academy highlighted the “metaphorical style,” of “Greek lessons.” As, Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels have been described as metaphorical pastiches, be it the P.G. Woodhouse comedy of manners, in the dissection of the trademark English figure: the Butler, and the quintessential emotionally repressed rectitude of the character in “The Remains of the Day,”; the dystopian worlds of “Never Let Me Go,” and “Klara and the Sun,” where the notion of ‘human,’ is explored in the notion of manufactured cloning and the rise of Artificial Intelligence; or the Arthurian fantasy of “The Buried Giant,” exploring the notion of remembrance and the bitter reality of societal amnesia. Ishiguro’s prose is founded on an adherence to cinematic principles, whereby the author builds tension by revealing the bomb beneath the table, and ensuring the characters remain completely helpless in changing their predestined fates, at which point, the readers are left helplessly to watch events run their course. In “Never Let Me Go,” it’s the passive acceptance of Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth beginning the process of their donations, and accepting the cruelty and clinical end of their lifecycle. In turn, Ishiguro is a master of crafting compelling first-person narrators. “Klara and the Sun,” shines on the fact that Klara is a compelling narrative voice, observational and inquisitive, whose deductions carry the weight of the novel successfully, and imbue it with a sense of hope. Kazuo Ishiguro has been a writer who has sought to wrestle with concepts of the human condition pertaining to history, the act of remembrance, and the revisions of history by both individuals and society create and accept. Yet, Ishiguro requires the pastiche or genre façade of his novels in order to evade the inevitably political question, which is where Han Kang deviates from.  

In the Nobel citation, the Swedish academy highlights:

            “[. . .] that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

This has been the nature of Han Kang’s work so far, the exploration of trauma and its generational impact and inheritance. “Human Acts,” is a polyphonic novel that wrestles with the brutality and horrors of the Gwangju Uprising (Massacre), where the military coup and dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan, violently quelled a student protest which opposed the coup. The novel blooms from this incident, narrating how from this event how its traumatic repercussions reverberate years and decades later. One of the most heartbreaking scenes of the novel is the soul of a victim of the massacre attempting to return home and only to be swept away at the dawn of a new day. While “Human Acts,” explicitly tackles a historical and political event, Han Kang succeeds in avoiding the pitfalls of polemics, by in turn focusing on the individuals experience, their grief, their pain, in her signature lyrical and succinct style. “The White Book,” in turn explored a far more personal and intimate form of grief, as Han Kang’s book reflects on the birth and death of her older sister, and how her death becomes a white spectre haunting Kang her family. As Han Kang writes:

“This life needed only one of us to live it. If you had lived beyond those first few hours, I would not be living now. My life means yours is impossible.”

Anders Olsson describes “The White Book,” as less of a novel and more of a “secular prayer book,” whereby Kang ruminates on the notion of life, death, and the nature of grief, through prose that is associative with colour of white and white objects. Personally, I found “The White Book,” a beautiful work; even as the poeticism was heightened within it, but never detracted from Kang’s meditation on grief and loss, and living within that knowledge that her life was made possible by the tragedy of her elder sisters’ death. Both Kang and her sibling were cherished by their parents because of their elder sister’s death, and they understood life was not trite matter. “Greek Lessons,” explored the personal sphere of trauma through the contrasting brittle and budding relationship between two damaged individuals. The woman has experienced loss through the death of her mother and then loosing custody of her child, and in turn shrinks away from the world losing her relationship with language in the process. While the instructor is gradually losing his eyesight and is recovering from the heartbreak of an unrequited love. They orbit each other in a class dedicated to Ancient Greek language lessons. The hallmark of “Greek lessons,” however is Han Kang’s beautifully rendered style, which is a breath of fresh air from Annie Ernaux clinically bleached language and Jon Fosse’s rhythmic tidal sentences. Han Kang’s style is smooth and unobtrusive, with her imagery and metaphors often flowing with natural ease and only a hint of flourish; with somewhat violent imagery injected for startling effect such as:

“Now and then, language would thrust its way into her sleep like a skewer through meat, startling her awake several times a night.”

Due to Han Kang’s international reputation, this years Nobel Prize in Literature announcement was not met with the indignant hooting of “Who?” by the press. Over the years, however, the only (relatively) obscure Nobel Laureate in Literature has been Abdulrazak Gurnah in 2021. Olga Tokarczuk, Peter Handke, Louise Glück, Annie Ernaux, and Jon Fosse, had established reputations or were highly recognizable by the English language press. In a fashion similar to Olga Tokarczuk, Han Kang shares wining the Man Booker International Prize, while Annie Ernaux was previously shortlisted and considered the frontrunner with her collective social biographical history “The Years.”

There is some annoyance with this Nobel Prize in Literature continuing to abide by this routine conventional cycle of woman, man, woman, man award. As previously mentioned, it is well documented that there is a severe imbalance between how many men have received the Nobel Prize in Literature and how many women have received the Nobel Prize in Literature. with Han Kang, only 18 women have won the award, compared to 120 men. Now the Swedish Academy cannot be considered solely responsible for this. It is important to remember that the Swedish Academy can only evaluate writers who have been nominated for the award, and as the nominating archives open up and more information becomes available, we do know that many women were not nominated in many years. For example, in 1971, only one woman, the Estonian poet, Marie Under, was nominated. However, since the 1990’s the Swedish Academy has made a very conscious effort to evaluate and award more women writers, starting in 1991 with Nadine Gordimer. Since then, every woman Nobel Laureate has been excellent. Not one of them is mediocre or considered just good enough. As previously mentioned, each of the previous woman Nobel Laurates have been consummate and talented writers, tackling the weighted subjects of the human condition; no different then their male counterparts, even handling the subjects with more subtlety and weight, completely abandoning the panache polemics of their male colleagues. Others have become masters of their forms, completely expanding the forms potential beyond their preconceived limitations. Many in turn were also great innovators both in language but also in creating new forms and literary modes of expression in which to mull over the weighted complexities of the human experience, specifically of the 20th century. While I appreciate the Swedish Academy is taking a concentrated effort to remediate the Nobel Prize’s glaring imbalance of laureateship between the two sexes, I think to single a writer out simply because she’s a woman, really devalues her work and authorship. If anyone were to allege, for example that Wisława Szymborska only won the Nobel Prize in Literature because she’s a woman, I’d be disgusted and repulsed. As this (hypothetical) individual completely disavows and dismisses the beauty and approachability of Szymborska’s work, where some of the heftiest subjects and complexities of the human condition are turned into the most playful and approachable topics. A poem by Szymborska celebrates all the wonders and needs to be curious. The perennial response of: I don’t know, all the while indulging in humour, compassion, wisdom, and hope. I worry by continuing this convention and cycle, the Swedish Academy inadvertently and inevitably will open up the award and any future woman writer and laureate to be dismissed and disregarded on the nature of their sex, completely discrediting their work unjustly. Already this year alone, it appears there is criticism of Han Kang being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature because of her ethnicity and because of her sex. The current environment of hypersensitive identity politics only curates this problem further. There’s no disagreeing with the fact that the Nobel Prize in Literature has a huge imbalance between the number of men awarded in comparison to women, but I think the Swedish Academy should (and will) remediate this imbalance in time and organically. It is only a matter of time until two female writers receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in succession. Perhaps maybe next year it will finally happen, then we can collectively agree: there its done, they did it we can move on, at which point we can debate the merits of literature, not the metrics of sex. Furthermore, this continued alternating between the two makes the prize so predictable, and that’s boring.

It comes as no surprise that for years now, the (South) Korean government has taken considerable steps and investment in exporting their culture across the globe. As The Guardian (hopefully) cheekily wondered: “Could K-lit be the new K-pop?!” Regardless, for over a decade now, the (South) Korean government has worked significantly hard to promote and get their writers translated into foreign languages, and much like China has coveted the Nobel Prize in Literature, viewing the award as recognition of their culture and linguistic history, in addition to affirming their position as a rising global power, who in spite of lacking an abundance in natural resources, understands the power of human capital and investment and have become a major player on the world stage. Han Kang’s Nobel maybe an award granted to her for her current body of work, but in the context of geopolitics, for the (South) Korean government it becomes an acknowledgement of their literary contributions, cementing their reputation as a cultural powerhouse on the world stage rivaling the United States and Japan for example. The New Yorker ran an interesting piece on this back in 2016 called: “Can a Big Government push bring the Nobel Prize in Literature to (South) Korea?”, which provides some understanding regarding the push for (South) Korea to have a Nobel Prize in Literature and the cultural and financial investment the state has taken to really advocate for a Nobel Prize in Literature.

For years the only speculated Korean language writer who was expected to receive the award was Ko Un, as the poet had the monopoly on the public’s imagination of Korean language literature, yet in due course, this position was usurped, as more and more Korean language writers began to be translated and start contending for international literary awards. Kim Hyesoon for example, is one of the most staunched feminist poets of (South) Korea, her poetry is visceral as it is violent, all the while retaining a sense of playfulness. Hyesoon often reminded me of Elfriede Jelinek for her poetry having a linguistic zeal and intensity to it, but also for its unapologetic feminist preoccupation. Hyesoon won the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2019, the Cikada Prize in 2021, and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2023. As Ko Un’s chances certainly became less probable over the past few years as allegations of sexual misconduct were leveraged against him; Kim Hyesoon appeared to be a more then worthy candidate and in essence the antithesis to Ko Un, in addition to shaking the cage against (South) Korean society’s very limited view of women. On a sidenote, she has an amazing sense of style. When Han Kang won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016 for her novel “The Vegetarian,” as testament to my character as a reader, I eyed it up suspiciously and as more and more people recommended it with glowing appraisal, I staunchly refused to read it. The novel at the time didn’t seem interesting to me, and the few passages that I did read did not compel me to read it any further. Instead, I turned my attention towards Bae Suah, who appeared more daring and more compelling, often described as the Korean Kafka, and criticized in her native country for “Committing violence to the Korean language,” and I immediately thought to myself: now this is someone worth reading; and Bae Suah is. If Han Kang is the empathic explorer of emotional intensity and responses, Bae Suah was the cerebral counterweight, exacting and experimental in form, continually testing and twisting literary conventions and forms to suit her whims. To describe Bae Suah as the dark horse of Korean literature would be an understatement. What I appreciate the most about Bae Suah, is she’s an autodidactic writer. She’s famously said her first story came from practising her typing. Bae Suah is not a writer who has been manufactured or indoctrinated into what literature she’s expected to produce. She retains a very deconstructionist perspective to literary forms, and while her experiments are perhaps not always successful, they are engaging and invigorating. Still, there are so many more Korean writers in translation in large part, thanks to the governments explicit effort to see their writers translated into other languages.

Regardless though, Han Kang has won this years Nobel Prize in Literature, and I don’t think the Swedish Academy made a poor decision. If anything, it was a premature decision, but I do think Han Kang will be a very decent Nobel Laureate. I’m looking forward to seeing more of her work translated too, especially getting her short stories: “Convalescence,” and “Europa,” wrangled into more definitive publications alongside still untranslated works. I think the marvellously infectiously joyous Peter Englund has described Han Kang best:

“This year's Nobel Prize in Literature goes, as is now widely known, to Han Kang. There is an impressive fear in her, in approach, in style, in object. She can often be bewildering. Her central theme is loss and pain. But there is not, as is often the case with Western writers, a search for reconciliation or healing. Rather, for her, loss and pain are a basic condition of existence, to be dealt with.”

I particularly enjoyed Englund’s analysis of Han Kang’s work being concerned with loss and pain, but rather than turning its attention to reconciliation and healing, Kang presents pain not as a transformative experience as if often the case in the western perspective, but is part of the foundation of existence, which are managed and endured, but true ‘healing,’ or absence of that pain is never truly remediated or remedied.

Congratulations to Han Kang, I do look forward to reading more of your work as its translated and see what your future output will be.

Thank you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary 

— Edit —

Due to a powerful geomagnetic storm, the Aurora Borealis was in dazzling for this morning/last night, and I was fortunate enough to capture a few beautiful shots of it (after taking a trip into the country). The following are three of the photos that I captured. While not specifically described as in Sjon's novel “The Blue Fox,”:

 

“The rim of daylight was fading.

In the halls of heaven it was now dark enough for the Aurora Borealis sisters to begin their lively dance of the veils. With an enchanting play of colours they flitted light and quick about the great stage of the heavens, in fluttering golden dresses, their tumbling pearl necklaces scattering here and there in their wild capering. This spectacle is at its brightest shortly after sunset.”

Here's to the Nobel Prize in Literature: 

 

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2024

 Hello Gentle Reader, 

The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to the South Korean writer Han Kang

“For her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”

Congratulations are in order for Han Kang!

 

Thank-you for Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care 
And As Always 
Stay Well Read

M. Mary