Greek Lessons (2011) by Han Kang

 

As his dying wish, Borges requested the epitaph ‘He took the sword and laid the naked metal between them.’ He asked this of Maria Kodama, his beautiful, younger wife and literary secretary, who had married Borges two months before he died, at the age of eighty-seven. He chose Geneva as the place of his passing: it was the city where he had spent his youth and where he wanted to be buried.

Do you ever read a book and get to the end only to find yourself wondering ‘did I enjoy that or not?’

Greek Lessons was like that for me.

It was also a book I finished reading the day before heading off on holidays. I made no notes (other than the underlined sections I noted as I read it) and gave it no more thought for 2 weeks. Now, a month later, I’m left scrambling to find something worthwhile to write about it.

It’s very slim, a novella really. Han Kang wrote it 12 years ago. It is also the first time I have read anything by Han and as the title suggests it is about language. The loss of language, the imperfections and limitations of learning another language and the imprecise nature of translation. It was a book that drew me in and kept me at arm’s length at the same time. It had some interesting things to say, some poetic, beautiful language but I also found it to be too contemplative, subdued and obtuse.

Starting her story with a Borges antecdote intrigued me and annoyed me at the same time. Borges has been haunting me in recent times to the point I am no longer surprised when he turns up yet again where I least expect him. Although I shouldn’t have been surprised to see him in a book all about language, time, identity and foreignness.

Language worn ragged over thousands of years, from wear and tear by countless tongues and pens.

The two unnamed characters in Greek Lessons are lonely and alone. She has become mute again (she was mute for a while during her teen years) and he is slowly going blind. He is a teacher of Ancient Greek; she is one of his students.

Words still reached her ears, but now a thick, dense layer of air buffered the space between her cochlea and brain. Wrapped in that foggy silence, the memories of the tongue and lips that had been used to pronounce, of the hand that had firmly gripped the pencil, grew remote. She no longer thought in language. She moved without language and understoof without language – as it had been before she learned to speak, no, before she had obtained life, silence, absorbing the flow of time like balls of cotton, enveloped her body both outside and in.

But there is a third character that grows larger as the story continues – language itself.

Language is not just a tool for humans to use, it is bigger, all encompassing, and a thing of itself that humans cannot quite grasp or contain. It has the power to convey more than we’re ready to accept. It can be self-sufficient, dangerous and unhelpful. Like Borges’ sword it has a sharp edge that can separate us.

Words and sounds track her like ghosts, at a remove from her body, but near enough to be within ear- and eyeshot.

It turns out that Han also had a year in her life when words failed her, when she was unable to write or read fiction. A year when she sought solace in nature and science books and documentaries instead. She understands completely what her two characters are going through, but I do not pretend to understand half of what Han was trying to say or do in Greek Lessons.

Facts:

• In 2018 Kang became the fifth writer chosen to contribute to the Future Library project.

Favourite Quote:

They say that to the Ancient Greeks, virtue wasn’t goodness or nobility, but the ability to do a certain thing in the very best way – arete was their word, the capacity for excellence.

Favourite or Forget:

• Although it felt like Han was trying to pack too many ideas in, which left the final pages almost impenetrable to me, I enjoyed her writing style, the tone she used and the premise of her story (‘the saving grace of language and human connection‘). I would certainly be tempted to read one of her other books. Can you recommend any of them?
• 2024 Novel Prize winner
• Judges motivation: “for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”

Title: Greek Lessons | 희랍어 시간
Author: Han Kang
Translator: Deborah Smith & Emily Yae Won

Death by Water (2009), by Kenzaburo Oe, translated by Deborah Boliver Boehm

Death by Water - perhaps the last novel by Nobel Laureate Kenzabure Oe - is a fascinating book.  A book to provoke both conversation and consternation, offering insights from the personal to the political.

The narrator Kogito Choko is an ageing author, reflecting on his life as a writer, and facing not only his own mortality but also the slow death of his books in the modern age.  As the parent of Akari, a disabled child, he must ensure this son's care into the future as well.  While the women of this novel are demanding change in gender relations, it remains his responsibility to manage transition for the most vulnerable one in his family.

Kogito is surrounded by people who have overcome the stereotypical Japanese reserve in order to tell him bluntly what his failings are.  This character shares with the author the distinction of winning that big international prize i.e. the Nobel Prize for Literature, but his unabashed critics include his wife Chikashi, his younger sister Asa who invokes his dead mother's criticisms as well, and an entire chorus of young people who want to use his books for their own purposes - but haven't necessarily read them.  His family is empowered to say what they think because, to their dismay and embarrassment, he has mined their lives and their history for his books; and the young actors are empowered to transgress because they don't share the psychological and behavioural boundaries of the past.  As Asa says, with envy for their outspokenness:

I've noticed young women nowadays don't appear to have any regrets about anything, or any awareness of the possibility that their present actions might be sowing the seeds for future regrets.  That's perfectly natural, of course, since they probably haven't had time to do anything they regret.  They seem to feel  completely fine about everything: clean and true and pure of heart. (p.83)

There is a universality about these indignities of old age which even a Nobel Laureate cannot evade...

Mindful of his legacy and wary of writing a work not up to his previous standards, Kogito intends to write just one last book.  He feels that he is ready now to fulfil his long-held ambition of writing a book about his father, who drowned in a river in mysterious circumstances when Kogito was a boy of ten.  His sister Asa is ready now too, to provide him with long withheld materials that he needs: the contents of a red leather trunk that was retrieved from the river after his father's body was found.  Asa takes ill-concealed pleasure in revealing a painful and humiliating history that accompanies this red leather trunk: there is no doubt that she is asserting control over his life in more ways than one, and is aided and abetted in this by his wife and daughter.  One incident after another demotes Kogito in importance.  There's no veneration of the elderly for him!

Events conspire to alienate him from his family, physically and emotionally.  Since the novel is narrated from Kogito's point-of-view, supplemented by epistolary sections and long declamatory speeches from the other characters, the reader must weigh the evidence: is Kogito a passive-aggressive egoist suppressing the arrogance he's accused of? Is he an old chauvinist having trouble adjusting to the loss of privilege when more assertive women challenge the mores of a traditionally gendered society?   Or is he what he purports to be, a humbled recipient of all this unwelcome advice, an acquiescent man who just wants to drift into a quiet life in his old age?  What does it mean when - as token adviser to the creatives who develop a play based on his autobiographical books - he is relegated to the back seats, well away from the VIPS who attend the dress rehearsal?

For those of us with scanty knowledge of Japanese history and culture, the political issues that unravel in the course of the story are intriguing.   Most of us know that the Japanese conquest of southeast Asia was the product of an authoritarian militaristic government with a god-emperor on the throne.  Most of us know that during the post-war Occupation, the American victors of that war systematically demolished that culture and instilled democratic institutions and values in its place.  Some of us also know that Japanese 'reticence' about aspects of its wartime history and its role as a buffer between communist states and the west has led not only to suppression of embarrassing discussion about war crimes, but also to denial of compensation, for example, for the sexual enslavement of the 'comfort women'.  Oe, through his alter-ego Kogito, explores the duality that apparently persists in the Japanese soul.

So when Unaiko wants to stage a dramatic episode from Japan's past that involves rape, there is opposition from right-wing elements in the community.  Unaiko is a forthright young actor with a painful past of her own, and she believes that telling this story to a school audience is an important statement about the treatment of women and her country's attitude to it:

The dramatic axis of my play will be the ordeals of Meisuke's mother, the woman warrior, but I'm envisioning a larger story as well: a narrative that would illuminate Japan's historical conduct with regard to rape and abortion through this new performance piece. (p.373).

The older nationalistic generation in her community is equally determined that she will not raise these awkward issues for the next generation - and they take quite remarkable steps to prevent it...

Oe also presents the way the personal is entwined with the political in Kogito's quest to learn the truth about his father.  He was ten when his father drowned, and the boy was present at the scene.  He needs to believe that his father was a hero.  But in a country determined to absolve its past by adhering to new democratic and anti-militaristic values, is there a place for heroes who fought a losing war of brutal conquest?  In the West there is some ambivalence about the role of WW2 bomb squadrons and the ethics of the scientists who developed the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but there is general agreement about the morality of fighting a war against aggressors, especially those who do not abide by the conventions of war (whatever that may mean).  But in Japan as in Germany, even a visit to a war graves cemetery is fraught with diplomatic complexities and Unaiko's visit to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine is emblematic of the fraught response to right-wing nationalistic political views held by people like Unaiko's aunt.  Kogito's father might, or might not have been involved in an insurrection against the war-mongering god-emperor.  If this god-emperor loses his moral authority by leading his country to an immoral war, could such an insurrection perhaps be heroic? What about preventing such an insurrection?  Could that be heroic?  In our culture, military heroism has gone into overdrive in recent years, but although the story of Kogito's father is resolved in bathos, Death by Water still asks the question: what kind of war heroes can or should be venerated in modern Japan?

In a previous post I noticed the parallels between Kogito's authorial dilemmas and the methods by which Oe himself has resolved them:

... I needed to find a way to incorporate bits of history and folklore into the narrative, one by one, without fretting about realism or verisimilitude.  At the same time I was trying to layer brief vignettes throughout the story. (p. 114)

Somewhat to my dismay, I found myself confronted by a lack of familiarity with Japanese culture and history.  However what I found as I read on was that - perhaps with an eye on Western readers? - Oe explains much of what I needed to know anyway.  He manages this by having the creatives explain at length the reasoning and the context of various dramatic choices, and their sources.   Which worked fine for me, though I wondered if the length some of these explanations  might be tedious for those already 'in the know'.

Occasionally the translation is clunky, and some of the Americanisms seem inept:

• I ended up playing a small role in implementing the plan, an assist from fate or happenstance. (p. 386)
• Unaiko, especially, looked completely shell-shocked and tuckered out. (p.249)

But generally the formality and wordiness of the dialogue seems to be part of the author's expressed intention not to worry about realism or verisimilitude. Some readers may not like that much, but I thought it was consistent with the way the character of Kogito was portrayed, and it kept the focus firmly on the issues.

Visit Tony's Reading List for another review (but beware, there are a couple of spoilers, though this is not a book to read for its plot), and Stu's at Winston's Dad where he discusses writer's block after winning a major award, something I had overlooked entirely in my review.

See also a bunch of other reviews at The Complete Review.

Author: Kenzaburo Oe
Title: Death by Water
Translated from the Japanese by Deborah Boliver Boehm
Publisher: Atlantic Books, 2015, first published 2009
ISBN:9780857895455 (hbk, RRP $39.99)
Review copy courtesy of Allen and Unwin Australia

© Lisa Hill

Crossposted at ANZ LitLovers

Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth (2021), by Wole Soyinka

 

Finer minds than mine have raved about the brilliance of this book, and Soyinka is a Nobel Prize winner and all, but … it took ages for me to read this book and even now I'm not sure that I've made sense of it.

So here are some reviews from expert reviewers:

• Ben Okri in The Guardian, who calls it a vast danse macabre.  (Yes, that Ben Okri, who won the Booker for The Famished Road which I really liked).
• Helon Habila, also in The Guardian, who says it's Nigeria unmasked. (Yes, that Helon Habila, whose books I really admire too).

You will have noticed that both Okri and Habila are Nigerian, which means they are 'closer to home' so to speak, about some of the satirical elements in the novel, elements which might pass some of us by.  But then there's this one by

• Juan Gabriel Vásquez in the NYT: Vásquez is from Colombia so he also knows what it's like to live under poor governance.  He writes that the novel is a caustic political satire, a murder mystery, a conspiracy story and a deeply felt lament for the spirit of a nation.

He also identifies the problem that I had with keeping track of proceedings:

The plot — convoluted, obscure at times, often tying itself in too many knots — turns on the aptly named Human Resources, a sinister online business that sells human body parts for private use in rituals and superstitions. As often happens in satire, the outrageousness of the fictional premise comes from its proximity to the truth: The belief that human organs have magical properties, leading to business success and political power, has been known to lead to ritual murders in Nigeria...

But, he says, the real interest in the novel lies elsewhere: it interrogates the state of a nation where these kinds of things can happen. That makes Chronicles more than just a satire, but for me, it got lost along the way.

The plot, such as it is, focusses on the fate of "The Gong [sic] of Four", idealists educated in England who wanted to 'give back' to their country.  Dr Menka who specialises in amputating the limbs of suicide bombing victims and the engineer Duyole Pitan-Payne are all that's left of this student bond, and they are hopelessly compromised.  They are, what's more, no match for the country's leaders, the pseudo spiritual leader Papa Davina and and Godfrey Danfere for whom I can find no more appropriate word than slimy.  These two preside over circuses without the bread, ignoring poverty, corruption, Boko Haram and the complete failure of the nation to transcend its colonial period because of poor governance.

The trouble is, that although it's often very funny in a macabre and sometimes undergraduate kind of way, Soyinka's style is so baroque, discursive and verbose, that it's hard to follow the thread of proceedings.  There's an overlong section about the conflict over one of the four who dies in Austria: his family wants him buried there and Dr Menka wants him buried in his homeland, and for quite a while I wasn't sure exactly who it was who had died and how, nor did I understand why his family didn't want to repatriate the body. (The Vasquez review explains how this is personal for Soyinka, but I didn't know that when I was reading it, and it just seemed interminable.)

Keishel Williams at the NPR, is a Trinidadian American book reviewer.  He sums up my problem with the book:

Chronicles is largely inaccessible to non-intellectuals, and florid beyond reason at times. More than that, the story's complexity makes it easy for readers to disengage if they're not intimately familiar with the inner workings of Nigerian politics.

Still, I'm not sorry I read it.  Soyinka has been ruthlessly honest about the shortcomings of his country; he's not into blaming colonialism for its flaws.  If the prominence of this novel makes Nigerian readers more aware of what needs to be done, perhaps some lasting beneficial change might come of it.

Author: Wole Soyinka
Title: Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth
Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2021
ISBN: 9781526638236, pbk., 444 pages
Source: review copy courtesy of Bloomsbury

© Lisa Hill

Crossposted at ANZLitLovers

Cain, a novel (2009) by by José Saramago, translated by Margaret Jull Costa

 

*chuckle* I was going to place a cultural warning that readers who are very religious might not like this book or my review of it, but I see from consumer reviews at Library Thing that a punctuation warning might be more important to some readers!

Cain, the final novel from José Saramago, (1922-2010), is at 159 pages more of a novella than a novel, so it fits the brief for #NovNov (Novellas in November).  But — quite apart from the author's provocative stance on the Old Testament God and his deeds — although there are chapters to break up the text, there's barely a paragraph to be seen and the other punctuation crimes include run-on sentences, the absence of quotation marks to signal speech and the lack of capital letters to signal proper names.  I didn't mind it, I was too busy laughing...

Saramago sets the tone from the start with God's realisation that he has forgotten to give Adam and Eve the power of speech.  Like many who can't find anyone to blame but himself, he gets into a temper:

In an excess of rage, surprising in someone who could have solved any problem simply by issuing another quick fiat, he rushed over to adam and eve and unceremoniously, no half-measures, stuck his tongue down the throats of first one and then the other.  From the texts which, over the centuries, have provided a somewhat random record of these remote times, be it of events that might, at some future date, be awarded canonical status and others deemed to be the fruit of apocryphal and irredeemably heretical imaginations, it is not at all clear what kind of tongue was being referred to here, whether the moist, flexible muscle that moves around in the buccal cavity and occasionally outside it too, or the gift of speech, also known as language, that the lord had so regrettably forgotten to give them about which we know nothing, since not a trace of it remains, not even a heart engraved on the bark of the tree, accompanied by some sentimental message, something along the lines of I love eve. (p.1-2)

Cain, as we know from the Bible stories we were told when young, was jealous of Adam because God preferred Adam's sacrifice, and so Cain bumped him off, earning himself a place in Biblical history as the first murderer.  In Saramago's novel, this is the first of many occasions when Cain challenges the logic of the lord's punishments.  In summary, Cain's argument amounts to this: God, for no rational reason, tests the faith of those who serve him devoutly, (think Abraham, Noah, Job etc) by treating them very badly, and inflicts his punishments on people who had nothing to do with whatever caused the lord's displeasure, (think of the innocent women in Sodom, whose homosexual husbands had been the catalyst for the lord's rage.  And the hapless children too, of course.)

Though the role of the bolshie angels is a departure from scripture, and so are Cain's interventions in God's plans to reboot the human race with a better version, there is nothing particularly original about Cain's challenges to Old Testament faith.  Any competent atheist could do much the same, though some of them are a good deal more long-winded and abrasive about it.  (Yes, I am thinking of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens).  What makes this book fun to read is the tone of the narrator, wryly observing proceedings, and occasionally reminding the reader that the present day exists by inserting comic anachronisms, as when God was absent for the launch of the Ark.

God was not there for the launch.  He was busy examining the planet's hydraulic system, checking the state of the valves, tightening the odd loose screw that was dripping where it shouldn't, testing the various local distribution networks, keeping an eye on the manometers, as well as dealing with tens of myriads of other tasks, large and small, each of them more important than the last, and which only he, as creator, engineer and administrator of the universal mechanisms, was in a position to carry out and to which only he could give the sacred ok.  Parties were for other people, he had work to do.  At such times, he felt less like a god and more like the foreman of the worker angels, who, at that precise moment, were waiting in their immaculately white overalls, one hundred and fifty on the starboard side of the ark and one hundred and fifty on the port side, for the order to lift the enormous vessel... (p.148)

Cain's argumentative personality earns him a rebuke from the angels, who warn him that the lord is listening and, sooner or later, he will punish you.

To which Cain replies:

The lord isn't listening, he's deaf, everywhere the poor, unfortunate and wretched cry out to him for help, they plead with him for some remedy that the world denies them, and the lord turns his back on them. (p.124)

I heard a woman on TV the other day, spruiking the success of her prayers for the recovery of her loved one.  Good luck to you, I thought, but hey, if my prayers had that kind of power, I wouldn't be wasting them on the welfare of just one person...

Author: José Saramago

Title: Cain, a novel

Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa

Cover design by Michaela Sullivan, detail from 'Cain and Abel' (1542-44) by Titian.

Publisher: Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012, first published 2009

ISBN: 9780547840178, pbk., 159 pages

Source: Personal library.

 © Lisa Hill
Crossposted at ANZLitLovers