Trysting

Hello Gentle Reader,

It is difficult to imagine any subject that has been discussed, contemplated, adored, celebrated, inspired by, decried, raged against and written about, then love. Love is one of those eternal subjects. It is a subject as universal as death. A product of the human condition. Operating as both seductor and tormentor. How many poets have waxed and waned over the subject and its fickle nature. Each of them vexed, provoked, infatuated with it. Desire sweet as sick. The very same which occupies your waking attention, clouds your vision, haunts your dreams. A never-ending swirling intoxicating state. The lilting tune in your ears. The palpation in your chest. The quickened pace of your heart beat. The flush on your cheeks and skin. The way it leaves you breathless and dare you admit, wanting? Eros is a tempestuous state. Imperious as it is impulsive. One untethered and unencumbered. It has the uncanny talent and ability of stripping away inhibitions. Afterall, when it comes to love, everyone is punch drunk. Just look at Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of beauty, love and passion; who was born of the seafoam produced by the castrated genitals of the primordial god Uranus, whose testicles having been cast into the sea by his own usurper son, the Titan King Cronus. The goddess and personification of beauty and love spawned from violence and male virility. Other versions propose the genesis of Aphrodite sprouted from drops of blood falling into the sea from Cronus’s sickle after castrating Uranus, whereby the primordial god’s essence mixed with the waves and water to manifest the seafoam facilitating the inception and formation of the seaborn goddess. At which point one could argue the world would never know peace again. Best not to forget the story and myth of the Trojan War. Regardless, to be in love—that is to be, just head over heels; completely flung off the deep end; freefalling into a state of ecstasy—is to be whisked away down a rose laden garden path. The cost of admission? Discrete kisses, either relinquished or stolen; or worst still, rational thought. Though, this describes the impassioned state of rabble-rousing infatuations. The very ones which cause a kaleidoscope of butterflies to unfurl and riot within the depths of your core. Alit and a flutter. What a dizzying state of giddiness. No surprise though. Eros the god of desire, is the cherubic son of Aphrodite and Ares the god of war (depending on which mythic lineage you subscribe to, others state the father is Zeus while others mention Hermes; never Hephaestus), which explains the volatility of the mischievous gods golden tipped arrows, and their turnabout erisian effects on those shot through with them. Mythically speaking, love is usually depicted with violent cause and effect circumstances. Golden apples; bow and arrows. In the end the city is sieged and burning.

What then of other loves? Where is the one with no proclamations or announcements. The one who refuses to engage in exclamation or exaggeration. Its tender and gentle. The kind everyone else notices before you do. The one, were you sigh all day. Not from exasperation, but the quiet understanding of a still unacknowledged and unarticulated longing. Then there is that wistfulness in your eyes. A glazed over look, distant, though not forlorn. Theres a dreaminess to it; a private thought occupying you. All the while, your completely absent and unaware of your daydreaming. Despite this, it is obvious to everyone else why you are sighing and who you are thinking of. This is quieter love. One tended and cultivated with care, blossoming slowly, with a natural ease. The eroticism, the obsession, the burning adoration, have been exquisitely extinguished. In their stead, is a yearning. Love threaded with a stitch of the melancholic. The pinch of absence keeps the home fires burning.

Though not all love is tinted with innocent blushes, scored with the soundtrack of sweet nothings. It’s not the sighs punctuating the day. Its not love at all, but is misappropriated and described as such. In reality it’s merely the mechanics of copulation. Isn’t that all an affair is, a bit of fun on the side? An intimate betrayal with no real successor. Guilt all around. For him with his unsatiable appetite and wanting someone else to tend to. The other woman (as she is now known) whose taken in by his flirtations, his empty promises, a few sad sob stories about the frigid unaffectionate wife. Then the wife, who swears she gave him the best years of her life, as if she were a used car, and has taken to sleeping in the box room for the past two years of their strained and struggling marriage. Yet, they continue on. After each row, when another plate is smashed against the wall or another dinner ruined by their increasingly bitter and resentful insults. They collide again, reminded of somehow at sometime, they once (at the very least), liked each other. Where then does this leave the other woman? Edward Hoppers painting “Eleven AM,” (1926) captures the isolation and quiet humiliation of this subject, at least when reimagined as a poem by Joyce Carol Oates. The subject of the painting, is a nude woman (though she does have her shoes on) sitting on an armchair gazing out an open window. The light carries the late morning maturity. The kind of light overlooked during the working day. It’s an hour and a lighting of an early lunch. Code for a brief dalliance. All the flirtations repeated on loop; all the promises reiterated: I’m so crazy about you; can’t get enough of you; I’ll leave her for you, just be patient. In the poetic reimagining, the subject reveals she’s been stood up the night before, and has been waiting all morning for the lying bastard. This isn’t love, its regret. A rendezvous with no substance, leaving lingering disappointment. What a perfect subject for a painting. The promise of love and the failure of deliverance. What is in short, the abject and sober regret after sex and the affair concluded. The lies we engage in to coddle ourselves and sustain the fantasy, however infinitesimal it is in becoming a reality. 

Loves complexities are rich and varied. While its fallout, its heartbreak, has been equal fuel for inspiration for centuries. In “Trysting,” Emmanuelle Pagano curates and cartographs the various facets and complexities of love as a subject. Both its universal experience but its deeply personally felt realities. From the eleven in the morning betrayals, to the strange ways we fall in love, all the way to the myriads of ways in which we fall out of love. Through it all Pagano explores the textures, colours, characteristics, personas and disguises love as emotion, response, and reality take shape.

“She puts her arms around me, talks to me, supports me with her words and her eyes. I cannot respond. So I lie to her. I need her in order to become the an I must become, but I’m not sure I love her.

This is much harder than I had expected. I often dream of stopping, but I see her smiling at me and I can’t think straight. I would like her to teach me not to lie anymore, but if I stop lying, I’ll no longer be able to tell her that I love her.”

Written in fragmented vignette’s, love may be the nucleus of “Trysting,” but the subject is anything but static. Emmanuelle Pagano chases, ensnares and encapsulates through the multiple voices and perspectives found in a fragment or a shard, the endless forms and possibilities of love. Be it juvenescent obsession; youthful rebellion in the orchard; the private pleasures of intimate embraces; the mundanity exalted to new heights by the whirlwind of companionship; the sudden sensation of being resurrected, rekindled and encouraged to live again; all of which is captured within beautiful turn of phrases, which continue to explore a literary sensuality when discussing the erotic, showcasing that an embracement of love or discussions of sex, does not denote something merely to sexualization or pornography:

“I wake up, and I can hear the sound of little creatures walking around on an invisible pile of cloth stretched tight next to my ear, stretched between me and him. Between me and him, just enough room for a cloth pulled taught like paper. I open my eyes and its nearly light. He’s scratching his stubble. The tiny sounds stop as he smiles at me. His hand leaves his face to touch mine.”

For good measure, however, “Trysting,” does not skip merrily through the rosy meadows of love without complication, or without consequence. Pagano turns to the complexities of love and their devastating aftermath with equal poeticism:

“It’s been a long time without her now. I’m starting to get used to the loneliness, the evenings, the little seven ‘o clock sadness.”

“Trysting,” often came across as reading the private intimate correspondence of anonymous people. It’s the discovery of ancient love letters, confessions and missives. Secret details tucked deep within their souls, never barred or let loose or revealed. It’s a beautiful book, which delights in the atomised nature of love. Its inability to be captured or distilled coherently in one unifying image or experience. Emmanuelle Pagano has provided a wonderful series of treatises on the eternal subject of love, which is often viewed as a treacle and sentimental subject or worst melodramatic and tiresome. Pagano has provided the cartography exploring how love is an attractive and binding force, while also being the very cause of our disconnect and severance from one another. “Trysting,” is not a remedy or tonic to sate or quell the concerns of a growing loneliness epidemic sweeping western society, but it is an enchanting piece of literature which celebrates the ties that bind and the ache of such absence.

“When she left me, I cried so much I became truly disgusting, full of phlegm. I began to wonder why tears are the only excretions we don’t find repulsive. Perhaps because they’re transparent—but then what about saliva or sweat? My tears come with snot, slobber, convulsive hiccups, and a torrent of ridiculous thoughts, stupid questions.”

While “Trysting,” is a short and beautifully written book, its atomised structure, lacking character or defined plot or story, can often mean the fragments and shards begin to blend into one another, and readers may find themselves skimming along, not quite taking in the beauty of the language or profundity of experience being remarked on. My advice when reading “Trysting,” dip in and read for short bursts and then walk away, it keeps the prose fresh and the subject engaging. While Gentle Reader, if I am to add my own slight confession, I’ve been a resident of singledom my entire life. Love and romance belonged to the more spirited and outgoing people; it would have taken a very special person to coax me out of my shell, let alone notice me. No regrets though. A life on ones own has its own merits, its own pleasures that are entrenched now. Yet after reading “Trysting,” there were times where the “what if’s,” were entertained. What is it like waking up with a man in bed? Who laying next to you, smiles when you open your eyes? It should be noted: when entertaining any speculative situation, you always imagine yourself significantly younger and beautiful, of course! What lovely flights of fantasy though, which were tempered with reminders of how many couples and marriages were in fact unhappy, but marching forward, somehow duty bound to go to hell with each other. Some take their vows seriously. Nonetheless, they were lovely little daydreams, punctuated with sighs.

 

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

Anna Hallberg Elected to the Swedish Academy

Hello Gentle Reader,

Anna Hallberg, has been elected to the Swedish Academy. Hallberg will take Chair No. 18, which was left vacant after the Finnish-Swedish poet Tua Forsström resigned from the Swedish Academy in 2024. Following in what could be described as a conventional tradition now, Anna Hallberg is primarily a poet, as were both the previous occupants of the chair: Tua Forsström and Katarina Frostenson; while one could additionally include Artur Lundkvist in this tradition, Lundkvist is perhaps better recognised now his political positions and Soviet apologist attitudes then his poetry.

Anna Hallberg’s current poetry collection “AN,” is nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize.

Anna Hallberg will officially be instituted into the Swedish Academy during academy’s general meeting on December 20 2026.

 

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

Carol Rumens Dies Aged 81

Hello Gentle Reader,

For readers of The Guardian, Carol Rumens column “Poem of the Week,” was an institution of the paper. The column itself provided thoughtful and engaging literary analysis. Rumens herself, carried her columns with assured authority, not because she was an academic or former poetry editor or an accomplished poet in her own right; but rather, because she was a great reader, admirer and lover of poetry. This appreciation allowed Rumens to approach poetry with a affection of the form itself; celebrating its technical brilliance; a poet’s unique style; the forms historical context, legacy and roots; while delighting in the playful use of language. In Carol Rumens hands, poetry (which for the unrehabilitated facilitates a Pavlovian response, whereby readers slouch in their seats, eyes glaze over, minds drifting away, as an academic lecture is unleashed from a professor or teacher, droning on about meter, rhythm, rhyming scheme, syllabic count and stanza organization), becomes a pleasure and a joy. Poets, who have gradually been reduced to the ironically neglected top shelf of ivory tower heights, descend and return, whereby they are read for pleasure; not requirement or assignment. Carol Rumens analyses, only enhanced the poem of the week. Rumens never pathologised or autopsied the poem; dissecting and vivisecting them to provide readers a taxonomical overview of how it operates and functions; nor did Rumens strip them back or down to their baseline components and parts. Rather than looking at poetry through a clinical lens, splayed out on a metal examination table. Rather, Rumens operates as a delighted and excited tour guide, who is never exhausted by the wonders or treasures she will impart from her research and contemplation. Rumens toured readers through the poem as if it were a cathedral or basilica or palace or castle, praising the architecture, the craftsmanship; revealing the hidden cadences and inherent lyricism; reflecting on the imagery and symbolism; before pausing to review the entire structure, and cherish just exactly what the writer had painstakingly worked at crafting. Carol Rumens revitalised poetry appreciation, by showcasing its inherent human qualities, its ability to capture the strobe of lightning. Those flashes and fleeting moments which springboard into queries and existential ponderings, grappling with the eternal question of what is the human condition, and what is it to be alive. Carol Rumens herself, was a poet of equal renown, and had written one novel (“Plato Park,”), three plays, while being an avid translator and editor of Elizabeth Bartlett’s poems. When it came to her own column, Carol Rumens reflected on it modestly, revealing the sincere pleasure in reading and writing about poetry; while confessing to owing a duty of care to fellow writers and their poems. Though, perhaps most importantly, Carol Rumens conveyed the real frustrations about the challenges poetry faces:

“I’m sick of hearing that too much poetry is written and published. No, too little poetry is taught and read. A poem isn’t usually a butterfly or a mobile phone. It deserves a longer life. I wish I wrote better about poems and poetry, but I know I should go on writing, any way, as best I can.”

In this regard, Carol Rumens was a remarkable guide for reading poetry. Her columns were erudite and informative, but never dry in their discourse. Reading Rumens column was more like chasing butterflies in the meadows, rather than observing the lepidoptera pinned to boards encased behind glass. Carol Rumens “Poem of the Week,” columns revealed and celebrated the soul, the heart, the breath and life of poems.

Rest in Peace Carol Rumens, you will be missed.

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

M. Mary

For Further Reading

The Guardian: "Carol Rumens, poet and the Guardian’s poem of the week columnist, dies aged 81,"

The Guardian: "Archive: Poem of the Week,"

– LI –

Insisting on being right changes nothing, except annoying everybody.

J.H. Prynne Dies Aged 89

Hello Gentle Reader,

Some poets have the quality and fortune of forever being lauded and appreciated. Canonized into some literary sainthood. Others are less fortunate. Sentenced to dusty tomes and shelves, neglected, but adored by an almost cultish following. J.H. Prynne is a poet who embodies and could be described by some as the epitome of the later. As a poet, Prynne was considered a defining pillar of what is now reflected on as the mid-century (and therefore late) modernist school, “British Poetry Revival,” which continued the modernist traditions of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, while taking inspiration from the poets across the pond, with their postmodern sensibilities encapsulated by John Asherby, Frank O’Hara and Robert Creeley. These poets sought to push against the poetry corralled under the banner “The Movement,” which promoted a return to a traditional formalistic approach to poetics, rejecting the metaphysical wonderings and natural rhapsodizing of Dylan Thomas. “The Movement,” also claimed membership of Kingsley Amis and Philip Larkin, who would later go on to be grouped in with the “Angry Young Men,” crowd. Truly mid 20^th century literature had no shortage of movements and ideas. They swelled, crested, crashed and receded, with alarming regularity. Difficult to imagine how some writers didn’t end up shipwrecked, stranded, or drifting as mere flotsam. As for J.H. Prynne, there is no contemporary who could be considered his equal. Prynne was a poet of competing contradictions, erudite and intellectually flexible, while being obfuscating and obtuse. Here was a poet whose love of language would also be the reason which alienated readers and was ignored by academic and literary circles. As critics and academics viewed the work as being to willfully hermetic in nature and indentured to an inflexible aesthetic form, which was not only out of fashion but out of place. Regardless, J.H. Prynne found resounding success in the avant-garde and small publishing houses, who would become his poetry collections homes throughout his long career. It wasn’t until the eighties, however, that Prynne’s poetry found academic and critical evaluation with his first collected poetry selection titled “Poems.” A further collected poems edition titled “Poems,” was published in 2024; Prynne’s prolific nature is equally a point of admiration for its industrial scale. J.H. Prynne poetry can always be viewed as the antithesis to the violent firebrand music of Ted Hughes or the pinched bleak misery observations of Philip Larkin, as Prynne’s poetry held onto a lumine opacity. Incomprehensible and argumentative, yes, but shimmering with singular opalescence. Beyond his poetry, J.H. Prynne was an influential academic teaching in Cambridge and was a Life Fellow of the Gonville and Caius College, additionally he was the colleges librarian. Despite not being canonized in the public or literary imagination, J.H. Prynne will endure in a legendary capacity, not just by his complex verse, but also due to his refusal to participate in publicity campaigns, readings, or photographs. J.H. Prynne is and was no Charles Causley or Wendy Cope in his deliberations, but his language, however difficult it was to parse, is Prynne’s enduring legacy to literature.

Rest in Peace J.H. Prynne.

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

David Malouf Dies Aged 92

Hello Gentle Reader,

David Malouf, one of the great Australian literary statemen has died at the age of 92. Best remember for his Booker Prize shortlisted novel “Remembering Babylon,” which captured the essence of Malouf’s literary themes, a clash of oppositional worlds and forces. In the case of “Remembering Babylon,” it is the colonial history of Australia and its Aboriginal inhabitants, bringing for questions of belonging, the nature of exile, the abject shock and horror of displacement, and the loss of a promised land. Written in Malouf’s sensuous and luxurious prose, the kind of prose writers used to aspire to. Prose that was worked at, full bodied in perspective and composition, allowing readers to appreciate the amount of kneading chiseling the writer had put into the sentences; not stripped down to a freshly flensed raw bone. David Malouf remains in many ways one of those rare writers. Whose eloquent and elegant language never worked to conceal a lack of depth or capacity for storytelling. Malouf was in continual philosophical inquiries with regards to memory and its expansive influence on individuals, but in terms of identity but also personal history; the experience of time as a component of human nature, an understanding that we age and decline; the intersection between natural landscape and personal character, how the natural world and upbringing influences ones character, in this Malouf celebrated the Australian landscape; while also being a writer who was acutely aware of the interior world of his character, teasing at their consciousness as the prism in which experience is filtered, categorized and understood. Malouf’s ability to capture the language of feeling separated him from younger generations of writers, who have all but abandoned the interiority in favour of external action and reactions. Captured in a language that is neither full bodied or eloquent in execution, but rather dry, calcified and anorexic. Though, David Malouf’s prose was not always appreciated. While an accomplished poet before turning to the novel, Malouf’s debut “Johnno,” was decried by critics and battered fiercely about in the literary circles. Though it found praise from Patrick White, and in due spread via word of mouth, leaving readers to make up their own minds about the coming age story of two youth’s growing up in Brisbane in the war time and postwar years. “An Imaginary Life,” does just that, imagines the final years of the exiled Ancient Roman poet Ovid; while the novel “Ransom,” retold and reimagined parts of the “Iliad,” on style and cue, David Malouf has always proven himself to be a masterful prosaist, capable of exploring the human condition and consciousness through a variety of lens, settings, be it autobiographical, historical or mythic. Beyond novels and poetry, David Malouf wrote essays, short stories, a memoir and libretti (including an operatic adaption of Patrick White’s “Voss,”). Australia has lost one of its great literary statesmen, David Malouf was an exceptional writer.

Rest in Peace, David Malouf.

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

M. Mary

Territory of Light

 Hello Gentle Reader,

The Guardian recently ran an article by Blake Morrison about the memoirs dilapidated positioning within the literary field in an era dominated by new social and electronic media, which has democratised the form and flooded this new media landscape not with a torrent, but a deluge of narratives and personal anecdotes, which at one point and time would have been described as literary confessionalism. A term itself reminiscent of the intimately burning style of the mid-century modern poetry of the last century, which included practitioners of the form: Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath. Now, however, it has subsequently been cheaply redefined as ‘oversharing.’ Morrison quotes the late Martin Amis, who in turn also wrote a memoir (“Experience,”) who best sought to summarize or at least enlighten the appeal and excuse to writing a memoir: “We are all writing it or at any rate talking it: the memoir, the apologia, the CV, the cri de coeur.” It’s not a stretch of the imagination to consider the fact that everyone in their own way, on their own terms (or as close to) is struck with main character syndrome regarding to their own life, and is in the process of mentally compiling, recording, drafting their own narrative. Though, as Morrison points out, the memoir was a reserved form with geriatric qualifications. Written (or ghostwritten) by those who were considered and defined as distinguished in life and profession; politicians, generals, starlets, celebrities; who in the process of looking back at their lives and careers, tended to their expired juvenescence, but also celebrating their accomplishments of their illustrious lives and professional careers. The battles they won; the elections they fought, the reforms and the policies they instituted; their lives of silver screen glamour and equally brilliant and beautiful personal lives, both the ones captured by the intrusive flashes of the paparazzi, but also the staged portraits elevating them from mortal to demigod; while also providing the platform to set the record straight and settle old scores. This once reserved form is now swept up in the influx of what Lorrane Adams has classified as “nobody memoirs.” Given the platform’s availability and affordability (if not outrightly free), individuals are no longer narrating their lives internally, but instead disseminating them for public consumption. What is striking regarding this cascade of personal voices and revelations entering the public sphere, is their candor. These intensely personal narratives embrace the recently revered principles of vulnerability and authenticity to new heights of unrestrained concentrated earnestness turned brutalism. Where confessionalism was ground breaking for its burlesque fire dancing qualities. Intimate narratives and poetic scopes grappling with taboo or sensitive material concerning the authors lives and their lived experience and not through allegory, persona or mythic metaphor. They were fire eating narratives of raw emotional intensity, whereby the personal is elevated through beautiful language and haunting imagery. They were rebellious exorcisms besmirching and usurping the collectively held perspective of the post-war American dream. A necessary tonic. What is on offer today, however, flagrantly reject even the sense of poeticism and instead lay bare their experiences with chisel bluntness of an austerity that is matter of fact and testimonial in nature; to the point intrapersonal inquisition.

The incursion of these unflinching candid testaments from individuals, proves to be the counterbalance to the curatorial ‘highlight,’ appeal of social media content creation, whereby individuals go to great lengths to pose, curate, stage and exhibit the supposed luxurious side of their lives. Those beach getaways. Improvised and spontaneous trips with their loved ones or their best friends. The advertised fantasy of living that life. The envy of all. Whereas the excavation and exposure of revealing personal details, satisfies another form of exhibitionism and voyeurism. The need to release and explode, coupled with the bystander’s shock at the spectacle, yet so engrossed they are powerless to turn away from it. Writers, however, have long turned to self-exploration or personal experience to mine for material. In a similar fashion to confessional poetry, the new journalism movement of Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion, sought to question the previously held principles of objectivity within reportage, by introducing subjective perspectives, incorporating multiple points of view, utilizing extensive dialogue beyond succinct quotes, all to saturate their reportage, beyond the cut and dry sharpness of traditional journalistic standards. Then there is autofiction, a paradoxical form employing fictional or literary devices to authorial or autobiographical experience to structure new ways of reviewing and understanding truth within the construct of lived experience. One of the most respected and well-known practitioners of this form is Annie Ernaux, who has described her bibliography as a form of personal ethnography. Ernaux staves off the indulgences of solipsism through her literary language, which the Swedish Academy aptly described as ‘clinical acuity.’ Ernaux abandons the language of confession and heightened earnestness, by recording with bleached exacting sterile language the facts of the matter. This includes distilling the hardscaped life of her parents; her mother’s dissolution with dementia; the traumatic experience of a failed back-alley abortion; the infatuation and obsession of a love affair. Before any of these forms, however, there was the Japanese literary form the ‘I-novel.’ A genre which intentionally blurred and crossed the line between first person narrative and authorial voice turned intervention to personal exploration. This form was a reaction to the previously prescribed traditional literary sensibilities, which ignored the emotional resonance and psychological acuity of the characters. As a reaction to this and from the influence of newly introduced and imported western media, the I-novel sought to explore the psychological interiority, the framework of consciousness and emotional responses in a literary perspective, these forms were previously employed in diarists structures. Unsurprisingly, many writers soon used this particular form as confessionals and literary social critiques. 

One of the forms renowned and most recognized figures is Dazai Osamu, whose novels charted the course of what is often described as nihilistic clowns or self-stylized ‘losers.' Individuals who are often considered alienated, defeated and existing on the margins of society. Naturally these narratives reflected Dazai’s own complicated and tumultuous scandalised life, which inevitably ended in suicide. Throughout his short-lived literary career, however, Dazai Osamu developed an enfant terrible reputation. While this originally eclipsed his work, it is now a marketing feature and has cemented Dazai as one of the great and daring Japanese writers of the 20^th century. Japan remains a nation that is often considered a literary powerhouse; similar to Ireland or France. Famous writers of the 20^th century include but not limited to: Sōseki Natsume, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, Nakahara Chūya, Tanizaki Jun'ichirō, Kawabata Yasunari, Mishima Yukio, Abe Kōbō and Ōe Kenzaburō; with contemporary writers being Kanai Mieko, Murakami Haruki, Ogawa Yōko, Kawakami Hiromi, Kawakami Mieko and Murata Sayaka. Japanese literature has inevitably always charted its own course and path on the international stage, with previous generations of writers (Sōseki, Akutagawa, Kawabata and Mishima) gained appeal for blending western literary traditions with Japanese aesthetic sensibilities, while contemporary writers have turned towards whimsical magical realism in the case of Murakami, or out of kilter societal critiques as in the case of Murata. While Tsushima Yūko is of the old guard, while being a seasoned practitioner of the I-novel, with “Territory of Light,” being exquisite and elegant introduction to the form and the author. 

“Territory of Light,” is framed as a novel, recounting the first year of a mother navigating single motherhood. The novel was originally serialised in the late 1970s (78-79) in the Gonzu literary journal. Each segment or chapter reads as its own fragmented vignette. The sinew connecting them is the shared perspective of monitoring the situation between the mother and her three-year-old daughter as they navigate their newfound singularity. The opening chapter states factually that the father/husband wants to separate, though remains committed to finding his former family a suitable home to live, seeing as the narrator refused to move back in with her mother. Despite his drive to depart from the marriage, no rental unit meets his standards. What is startling by Tsushima Yūko’s style is its drifting and observational nature of the writing. Where Ernaux writes with flensing shortness, stripping away all artifice to its bleached clinical base elements. Tsushima writes with a lightness of touch to point of effervescent neutrality. Problems and issues are insinuated; they are never directly delineated. For instance, the former husband (Fujino) remarks about her going to listing agents on her own, will produce no results and find the rates increasing. In the end, however, the narrators locate an apartment on the fourth floor of a dilapidated office building, whose outer walls are covered in windows embracing and filling the room with light. What follows is not a regurgitated diary of events and itineraries, outlining the logistics of commuting to work while managing daycare drop offs and pick ups, or a case study in the financial hardship of what is a socially skewered sexist dive into poverty. Rather, “Territory of Light,” captures this immediate slice of life between mother and child and their unconventional lives against a society which is renowned for having a strict sense of conformity and social structure.

The lives of the narrator and the child are difficult. The disruption of the family unit has rippling consequences for both of them. For the child there is an increase in behaviour issues and developmental slips, from wetting the bed, to violent outbursts, and an attempt to maim another child at daycare. For the narrator she has become a pariah. A single mother is the epitome of female failure and as such faces repeated criticisms, slights, and insults from the world at large. The narrator, however, is no pinnacle of innocence either. She’ll hurl insults at her daughter or physically strike her. Routinely leaving her alone to go out drinking; while neglecting to clean the apartment. Yet, the work is routinely prevented from being moored in a miserable self-expose of personal squalor, by how Tsushima Yūko works with the material, capturing the texture and interplay between light and shadow as it frames the events. These scenes are juxtaposed against other tender moments. One instance is shortly after the two move into the apartment, the roof floods pouring down into a neighbour’s commercial office space. Understandably the neighbours are less then impressed with the situation, but their indignation towards the narrator is palpable, leaving one to wonder if they would have been as aggressive or outrageous if a man was present? A similar scene plays out with a nearby sweet shop owner and his wife. In the wake of the water burst, both the mother and daughter investigate the roof to find it flooded, with the daughter delighting at the new found sea. In the closing vignette, the narrator returns to the roof looking out towards the sky as a chemical factory explodes in the distance. This is where Tsushima Yūko strengths as a writer are, capturing intensity of moments through images, not by pathologizing. The prejudices and ostracisation faced by the par are recounted as a fact of life. Tsushima is cognisant about never depicting the narrator as a victim, as she frequently perpetrates and engages in questionable behaviour herself.

“Territory of Light,” will certainly be considered a I-novel tradition, for two reasons. Tsushima Yūko was indeed a singe mother raising her daughter, but was also a product of a single mother. Additionally, Tsushima Yūko is the daughter of Dazai Osamu who died when she was one year old, and makes a brief cameo via memory in “Territory of Light.” The I-novel may be considered a natural form for her to gravitate towards and inherent, but a vast amount of Tsushima’s work is yet untranslated, and the recent novel “Wildcat Dome,” is certainly not written in the subjective singular intensity the form demands. The wonder and delight of “Territory of Light,” shines through when Tsushima highlights the inconsequential gravitas mundane life and the sense of randomness of the events, with a literary language that is understated and routinely avoiding the hysterical. When the train is delayed because of a suicide, the narrator approaches the incident and recounts the scene before fleeing back. While other moments are otherwise oneiric in their delivery. “Territory of Light,” succeeds by Tsushima Yūko observing and recording the caustics of light rippling and shimmering throughout her apartment and life. It’s a strange book which never critically stakes its claim as a social critique, but retains an undercurrent solidarity pushing against the strident conservatism and conformity of the society, which fails to provide a social net for the most vulnerable. Reading “Territory of Light,” provided further context as to why it was considered a major media announcement in 2020 when the Japanese minister, Koizumi Shinjiro announced he was taking two weeks paternity leave. The goal was to break the stigma regarding men in Japan taking childcare leave. All of which comes when the country’s decreasing and aging population are becoming defining social crises for the nation. Regardless, “Territory of Light,” reads like an effervescent dreamy book, which is in stark contrast to a great deal of autofiction with its rendered and stripped-down prose.

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

For Further Reading: 

Blake Morrison, The Guardian: "‘Enough of this me me me’: Blake Morrison on memoir in the age of oversharing,"

The International Booker Prize Shortlist 2026

Hello Gentle Reader,

This years International Booker Prize has come leaps and bounds over last years award. This year’s shortlist is both surprising but not without merit in its inductees and exclusions. It’s a mixture of internationally recognized giants and writers who are finding their foothold in translation. Without further delay here are the six shortlisted titles:

            “On Earth As It Is Beneath,” – Ana Paula Maia
            “The Director,” – Daniel Kehlmann
            “Taiwan Travelogue,” – Yáng Shuāng-zǐ
            “She Who Remains,” – Rene Karabash
            “The Witch,” – Marie Ndiaye
            “The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran,” – Shida Bazyar

The most telling feature of this year’s shortlist is how easily dominated it is by female writers, with the German Daniel Kehlmann being the only male on this year’s shortlist. This further supports recent macro trends in publishing and literary consumption, whereby female readers out pace men in consumption and interest, and there are subsequently more and more women being published than men. Kehlmann is an internationally renowned writer, whose novels with their appreciation for the absurd and ability to subvert and bringing into question reality, have delighted his readers both in his native German and abroad. “The Director,” continues Daniel Kehlmann’s exploration and reinvention of the historical by interrogating the strange relationship between the director and the Nazi’s. The novel poses serious questions about the integrity of art in service to political brutality; the absolution of being a cog within the machine and spared the conviction of collaborator or conspirator; all while questioning the sanctity of survival when compared to the destitution of sacrifice. “The Director,” is by in large the biggest name on this year’s shortlist and perceived by many the breakout front runner.

The Brazilian writer Ana Paula Maia equally confronts questions of brutality and violence with her novel “On Earth As It Is Beneath.” The penal colony of the novel is founded on the blood-soaked grounds of a colonial atrocity, where the enslaved were tortured and murdered, and while the penal colony was built under the auspicious understanding that it would rehabilitate its inmates to realign with societal expectations, what it actually succeeded in doing was merely detaining and retaining the inmates. Trapping them in their own world. What happens then, when this world is no longer sustainable? Violence breeds further violence. The inhumanity of it spreads with rabid fervor. In this Ana Paula Maia reckons with the baseline component of the human condition, one nurtured in our inherent primordial violent nature, which has only refined itself further into a sociopolitical context. It is here Ana Paula Maia begins to probe the unfathomable consequences of our failure as a species and as a society, to come to terms with our social and politically violent nature of our actions or as is so often common now, in action. One of you, Gentle Readers, João Böger high lighted Ana Paula Maia as quite the talent, and while the premise of “On Earth As it is Beneath,” may sound unsettling and dark in the tradition of say Golding’s “Lord of The Flies,” this novel and its thematic preoccupation with the shadow of human nature continues to be relevant to our times.

To some extent I am surprised to see Mathias Énard and Olga Ravn omitted from the shortlist. Perhaps more so for Ravn with her novel “The Wax Child,” than Énard. “The Deserters.” All the while, Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and her novel “Taiwan Travelogue,” has the air of a dark horse and should not be ruled out. It is not surprising to see “The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran,” also make it to the years shortlist, considering the events currently unfolding in the Middle East. Though all in all this year’s shortlist is decent enough. A curious offering of different genres, perspectives and narratives.

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

Wiesław Myśliwski Dies Aged 94

Hello Gentle Reader,

Olga Tokarczuk once commented on the precarious state of Poland after reviewing an archaic encyclopedia in England, which described Poland in an entry as a “country which pops up on the maps of Europe time to time.” This external perspective of the country surprised Tokarczuk who was raised to believe that Poland had always existed. Poland, however, is one of those middle powers, who throughout its existence was always in danger of being absorbed by larger power. Its sovereignty partitioned; its borders changeable, shiftable, malleable. Despite being a formidable imperial power at one point in its history, the country disappeared from maps for over a hundred years. This sense of history erasure inevitably would leave to some sense of nationalistic existential fear. The 20^th century in turn was no kinder to the nation, whereby it was subject to the avarice of its neighbours. First the Nazi’s then the Soviet Union. Each one carved out their mark on the nation with authoritarian malice. Rather than demoralizing the nation, however, Poland has rebounded, becoming an emerging contender on the world stage and is often discussed in hushed tones as an up-and-coming superpower. Recent Russian aggression towards its neighbours – specifically Ukraine – have also seen Poland further galvanize itself, investing heavily in its military infrastructure and defense capabilities. Poland understands the hard-earned truth: one’s sovereignty is only guaranteed by their capacity and willingness to defend it. Culturally, Poland is another one of those nations, which punches far above its weight. Wiesław Myśliwski was one of the grand masters of contemporary Polish literature. A master of the literary monologue, Myśliwski’s novels often found themselves framed in the ancient and primordial narrative structure of the orator’s monologue. The essence of the storyteller’s soul. Through novels such as “Stone Upon Stone,” winner of the now defunct Best Translated Book Award in 2012, and “A Treatise on Shelling Beans,” and the recently translated “Needle’s Eye,” Wiesław Myśliwski employed and perfected the dramatic monologue, which distilled the epicism of time, the upheaval and tragedy of history, into a singular individual voice, resilient as it weathers the course of both time and history. Wiesław Myśliwski was often praised for maintaining the ‘peasant narrative,’ in his novels, which is part to his rich earthly language; one which had profound understanding of hard work and hard life, forged through authenticity and experience of having tilled the soil or digging graves. This is further captured by an employment of a rich colloquial language of the rural landscape, one which is at home beneath the broad sky and open fields. The provincial and rural landscape of Myśliwski’s narratives is equally transformed beyond its meager borders, taking on a philosophical and universal appeal, being the backdrop to greater existential ponderings and questions, confronted through daily life and work. Wiesław Myśliwski’s novels are equally renowned for being rich and textured. Narratives move through memories with a meandering rivers touch, never on a direct course or in a linear fashion. Novels can be fragmented in structure, connected by the sinew of thematic concern rather than by chronological events.

The death of Wiesław Myśliwski is a significant loss to Polish literature. Myśliwski was a writer whose rustic epic narratives captured a provincial Poland through the past tumultuous century. Rest in Peace Wiesław Myśliwski.

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

– L –

Loneliness isn’t what kills people. Rather it’s the sudden realization, after the noise and din recedes, that they have no original thought; an echo of silence is deafening as it is hollow.