Hello Gentle Reader
In a globalized world it must become rather difficult to understand or even comprehend or at the worst outcome it is on the verge of a dying figment of the past. National literature in a globalized age is a difficult phenomenon. People migrate, and cultures shift from once traditional nostalgia to a progressive state of abandonment of the past as well as alienation of the once traditional culture. China, Japan, and Korea can certainly testify to this. Though there are elements of traditional culture like Shinto religion, or traditional medicine, there are also now elements of political turmoil, western influence on the culture, mass media and elements of interconnected people through technology – all of these new and progressive concepts have become something that is slowly changing the world, and of cultures. A great example would be to look at four Japanese novelists, of international reputation. The first being Yasunari Kawabata, who used modernism and western influence, but also kept a very strong view on traditional Japanese culture, to impersonate probe and study the Japanese mind. He was a psychological novelist, and delved into the depths of modernism, and his impressionistic and melancholic writing almost expresses his own views on the inevitable and what would eventually (and has happened) to Japan and its culture. In today’s world the mention of Japan one thinks of crowded city streets, school girls, crowded public transportation, subways, and a techno culture that would cause any techno-geek to have premature-ejaculation. It’s a place of progress, of human ingenuity but also a society that has been over taken by the concept of consumerism and marketing advertisement. The world now either a science fiction dream of a utopia or a consumerist dystopia – of a capsule houses, eating out regularly, and traditional home life replaced with solitary single life consumed by career driven paths – and any home life that was once there or a place of family units, is now a place of study and career pressure at a young age, parental units regularly missing, and televised baby sitters in the place of any human companionship. Yukio Mishima took a more a hard lined and radical step from his mentor Yasunari Kawabata, whose refusal to actually participate in the actions to prevent the fatalist future. Mishima wrote of the twentieth century Japan or rather the early twentieth century Japan – a Japan that was at its height of its power. A place where a small little country could play with the power houses of Europe; rival their economies and military might, as well as expand its imperialist interests beyond its own solitary borders. However Mishima also writes of the longing for Japans traditional past, as well as the overtly acceptable influence of the west of the greatest country in the east. His writing probes the nihilistic wanderings of a defeated nation and the bitter demands of the victors, but also shows the resilience of the Japanese people. However it is quite clear in many of the authors pieces of work and off the top of my head personally “Runaway Horses,” which foreshadows the own authors own Coup d'état and his eventual ritual suicide. The next author is much like Yasunari Kawabata, in the fact that both hold the distinction as being the only two Japanese authors to date, to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Kenzaburō Ōe, is different from Yasunari Kawabata and Yukio Mishima in two ways. For one he does not see the beauty of traditional Japan, like Yasunari Kawabata, because it would appear from the few pieces of work that I have read by Mister Ōe is that the world is cruel and openly barbaric. A place where bad and horrible misfortunes can befall anyone and everyone. Kenzaburō Ōe had also turned his own personal tragedy into a universal theme of human suffering and the human predicament. His first novel dealt with the cosmic and primordial themes of the human spirit. Whereas in his later work where he became more denser and stylistic he focused more on societal and inferior social concerns rather than his first work of grotesque cosmic wonderings – in this later works he became far more influenced by the left leaning political and philosophical writer Jean-Paul Sartre whose political activism often over shadows his literary and philosophical achievements, which always makes me a rather reluctant reader of his. With his existential ponderings and wonderings of his education, mixed with his elemental homeland that had been scarred by war, lost its identity and then hung in a unbalanced purgatory, Kenzaburō Ōe had than picked up the task of writing about the contemporary society of Japan. This makes him far more alienated from Yukio Mishima and Yasunari Kawabata – for one, Kawabata lamented on the fall of Japanese society and its traditional culture; Yukio Mishima on the other hand and his political right wing views, pushed for a reinvention, of cultural Japan and a political unique Japan – a Japan that was, not that is. It is here that Kenzaburō Ōe had to take up his mantel piece as a postwar Japanese author to write about the reality; not lament it or politically try to change it. Just accept what has come. At times a punishment; at times a reward – but nonetheless an evolution of human society. The last and most contemporary writer of these four is Haruki Murakami, Ladbrokes little Nobel Darling this year so far. Murakami writes of the alienation of Japan and Japanese citizens, but writes of a whimsical and quirky surreal world that it is as well. For many people who hear of Murakami and have no concept of what he writes, its described as alienated characters, wondering a nameless and almost formless landscape that has become Japan. Odd and surreal, and often questionable occurrences happen, that shake the foundation of reality, and the characters themselves. Than when it’s all over and done with, we all eat instant Raman noodles – and yes I am being facetious. But this is the world Murakami inhabits; as well as his characters. A place overly postmodern and industrialized as well as mechanized, where without technology the entire civilization and culture of this contemporary Japanese society (and all societies in general) would collapse. That is why supernatural or fanatical elements are introduced into his narrative, which allows for one to see a techno-Kafkaesque world but also further reflect on the alienation of the characters and of the modern Japanese person.
(The reason why I use these four authors, their themes, writing styles, and characteristics in general as well, is because they provide a sustenance and simple – but equally complex narratives and examples; at the evolution and change of Japanese literature and also because Japanese literature is one that the change and process of its evolution can be identified.)
However in today’s world, the world has shrunken. Where once was large and vast is now small and easily connectable – at least in most places. When Gao Xingjian was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, China reacted coldly to the announcement, and had congratulated the author and also France for their Nobel win. The world is full of these cases. Herta Müller faced similar feeling when she had won the Nobel Prize; Romania had looked at it as a German author winning the award not a Romanian. In today’s world, and since the geography has changed, Nobel Prize winning author Ivo Andric a Yugoslavian author would be hard to classify in which field of literature he writes in his region. The Vietnamese novelist Linda Le, lives and works in France, is she considered a Vietnamese novelist or a French author? Doris Lessing lived for the first part of her life in the Imperial colonies of Great Britain. However there is no denying the fact that Doris Lessing has the sensibilities of an English novelist. Alice Munro could easily be identified as a Canadian writer, because of her concerns with her native homeland, and area of the southern Ontario region, but also the wilderness of British Columbia. Her omniscient narrator who makes sense of the world and of the story; as well as her work shows a more complex side of women. Her work often is mundane and banal in its dealings with the lives of the characters. However its realistic sensualities give its timeless sensualities, when it discusses the ambiguities of life itself. Does this mean that she is strictly a Canadian writer in these themes? Not necessarily though she does give it a Canadian flare. Much like Marcel Proust’s literary masterpiece “In Search of Lost Time,” with its discussion of time that has past, and time that moves forward, in a restless stampede to the infinite end; and how along the way someone’s journey comes to an end; strictly speaking its avant-garde and very fashionable and very French. No different in some ways or another then the authors who came after the death of modernism led by Alain-Robbe Grillet, and proclaimed the advancement of a ‘new novel.’ Yet there lie other ambiguities, what about Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio whose works that at first followed the almost isolationist desire for art purely for art for the sake of art, but then moved away from such a concept and started working more closely on his own interests as a person, and transported them as a writer. His visual and almost photographic style, describes the migration and uprooting of people and cultures, and the author himself, is a cosmopolitan author, who is well traveled and experienced. Then come other authors out right reject their homelands, and yet still write about them – Herta Müller for example; or Adonis from Syria. Then there are others who are grand literary figures in their country like Alice Munro or Tomas Transtromer.
This overtly international world now is good and it is also bad. It’s a globalized work, where internationalism is everywhere. One can travel to France and see the great works of art and architecture and then go and eat a McDonalds down the street. One may be able to traverse the solitary alpines or go for a skiing trip there, but they will find a vending machine with Coca-Cola written on it. There is no escaping the dark cloud of globalization and consumerism. It’s a bright neon lite cancer. A polluted disease that has wormed its way into the very fabric and nature of society, and has also become acceptable part of ‘culture.’ Does national literature in today’s world still exists. Yes it does. It exists, because each nation deals with certain elements differently. A Vietnamese novelist would deal with the Vietnam war, much differently than an American author. South Korean’s will lament the Korean war, and the loss of their families and the split of their identity from a troubled neighbour to the North. Chinese authors will always be divided. A vehement venomous spitting war of words will always come from China and its dissident authors who refuse to sit idly beside as their country and people become comfortable in a ever more stable routine government. Russia will always be dealing with the recent past of the twentieth century of the former Soviet Union, in absurd and surreal ways like that of “The Master and the Margarita.” The English novel whether one admits it or not will always deal with the class system in some way or another. It’s part of the game – though it is no longer a big problem as it once was.
National Literature Exists Gentle Reader, it just works in a large cog of spinning wheels of cogs that has become a globalized society, which is either going to implode on itself, or going to fall to fragmented pieces. But this is what makes Literature and the Literature from around the world so interesting.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
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M. Mary
