Book Burning (Sci-Fi Ver.)

     In The Dog of the South, a novel by Charles Portis that once saved me, Ray Midge finds a novel in his hotel room but stops reading it a few pages in upon discovering that it's sci-fi. The first futuristic detail he comes across, a reference to a "helicab," turns him against the book. "I put it down, which is to say I didn't fling it, though I could tell it'd been flung many times before." From what I've gathered about the genre's history, it's the kind of reaction sci-fi writers have long been acquainted with. Attempt to envision the future, delve too far beyond what's known, what's easier to recognize as reality, and prepare to be jeered. I find I'm more sympathetic to the genre. I don't demand that a writer be "right" about the outward appearance of the future. I'm looking for, among other things, an engrossing vision, whatever the approach. I'm interested in what someone thinks the future might hold and the practice of rendering it on the page as an imaginative work. As for the potential for cheesiness, like any other defect to be found in a book, something can always be expected and a little more than expected can be tolerated. And fun cheese, I cry passionately, is to be duly appreciated.

The basic concept of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 seems to have endured and understandably so, I think: a society has established a policy of burning books. It struck me as true before I ever read it, hardly difficult to imagine, which is perhaps the secret of its resonance. Now having read it, a few other aspects of his world enhance the effect. Book burning isn't only a means of social control but a form of entertainment, at least for those in charge of igniting the flames. In a society hostile to all learning that isn't technical, ignorance and numbing distraction reign. Unlike other dystopian sci-fi novels like 1984 or We, Bradbury distinguishes himself by making ample room for a reasonable and rather moving hope, borne of a sincere love of books. These are aspects of a novel that could also save someone if not for the execution.

The details aren't a problem - the robotic dogs, the fireproof homes. I had trouble believing that there are full-time firemen after generations of them scrambling around starting book pyres. (They make enough to own homes and live comfortably on part-time or on-call wages?) A petty objection, I know, just something I amused myself with to distract me from the novel's real, fundamental flaws: Awkward lines, too numerous to overlook. Stilted dialogue, as if the writer were drawing on the idea of speech rather than actual speech. Characters with barely any personality. Straightfaced melodrama. The pathos intended to be derived from the situation is almost entirely undermined by the telling. Anything I've listed might be categorized as cheese but it is hardly fun, I cry dispassionately.

Insufficient humanity, discordant verbal music. The concept survived because, it seems, that's all there is to the book. That's worth something, this legacy - a warning, a collective nightmare, or at least a lingering trace of a collective nightmare, and the glimmer of a way out. I didn't fling it.

Cog

       It soon becomes clear why the novel Convenience Store Woman would be popular. Sayaka Murata does more than inhabit a ubiquitous world, probably taken for granted by many, the world of convenience stores. And she aims higher than providing an insider's catalogue of quirks and facts and doesn't adopt an easier (though justifiable) stridency of tone. Keiko, CSW and narrator, tells her story with love of the convenience store, taken to the comic extreme of an adherent for a religion. It's from this perspective that she inadvertently arrives at a harsh truth that applies to most any low-wage, essential labor you can think of, a truth people know or find one way or another to evade: For all her devotion to the store, she gets nothing much in return.

Nothing much by most people's standards, anyway. It's a dead end job. Crummy pay that doesn't seem to have increased since she started, almost two decades back. If anything, it's a liability when attempting to get another, better job. If and when her body breaks down due to the physical demands of the job, she'll have no place. Though acknowledged to be a model worker, she's looked down upon by coworkers and society at large, particularly because she's single and in her mid-30s.

Keiko isn't like most people. For one, she's a lifelong misfit. No real friends. No romance. No interest in romance. No notable academic achievements. No ambitions. No prospects. She resolves her problem with basic human understanding and interaction by imitating anyone she perceives as normal and keeping a low profile. This pre-convenience store backstory comprises a few pages. The decisive event of her life, making up the bulk of the novel, is her employment at the store, which gives her a role, complete with a script, and a form of human contact that is manageable. She's outlasted fellow clerks and managers alike. 

Where does a misfit go? Beyond work, the store is a microcosm of society itself. Keiko may seem as if she's at the bottom of the social hierarchy when really she has the best view of the true bottom: Those who can't passably function within the system at all. Enter Shiraha, who was briefly a coworker of Keiko's and might be described, in the pejorative sense, as an incel. He's angry, self-pitying, and misogynistic. He's incompetent, ugly, and a stalker too. Repulsive in every way. Keiko sympathizes and invites him to live with her in her dumpy apartment.

A deadpan novel, laughs on practically every page. Straightforward in its structure and sentences. It's slim, which might invite the charge of being undercooked, slight. But Murata is shrewd in paring down the story and providing only an amusing hint here, an amusing aside there.

Considering the politics of the book lends to the darkness of it. The concept of, say, demanding better pay and working conditions, if it ever crossed Keiko's mind, might strike her as an offense against the store. The model worker, a boss's dream, permanently smiling, forever eager, willing to toil for free if necessary, so immense is the privilege. Cheerfully acquiescent. The book is fun but make no mistake: the religious fanatic, no matter the religion, is always a figure to be wary of.

Yet she's no mere fanatic and this doesn't exactly read as a cautionary tale. Again: she's a misfit. And when dealing with her "pet" or her friends, she displays some self-awareness and assertiveness. She quickly observes that the form of freedom Shiraha seeks, which also conflicts with society's norms, necessarily comes with suffering. He falls silent. Ultimately Murata says more than I initially thought. Self-pity is foreign to Keiko too. She's undeceived about what to expect by living her life as she wants, without striving for a relationship or children or elevated status or power or financial gain and without inflicting herself upon others: reproach, mockery. And she doesn't care. She loves being a cog in the machinery of the convenience store, accepts being less than human. A bold and frightening choice. 

Then again, "normal," Murata lightly illustrates for the reader, doesn't look so great (or so normal, for that matter), either.

Translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori.

I Get It!

     A book like Jacques the Fatalist, by Denis Diderot, should endear to me. That's what I thought going into it. The same thought always arises whenever I read a book that examines the artifice of storytelling, the kind typically promoted as wild or zany or madcap or something. A ludic sort of book should speak, above all, to a ludic sort of person. After years, I've slowly come to realize that my relationship to them may be more complicated than that. Haruki Murakami, when asked if he'd read much Thomas Pynchon, suggested the opposite, that writers with similar impulses tend to stay away from each other. It's proved true of me, anyway.

Diderot has an excellent sense of humor. His timing, individual lines, slapstick, and throwaway gags merit intense study. So it is with some difficulty that I say it's not enough to sustain his wild and zany (and bawdy) - well, it's an extended fiction, let's say, not a novel. The narrator mentions somewhere that, with few exceptions, he doesn't really like novels at all. In case the point isn't clear, he stresses more than once: This is not a novel. More of an antinovel than the picaresque novel it seems to be at first. His characters, Jacques and his master, traveling to nowhere in particular, traveling and waiting for things to happen and telling stories about what has happened in the meantime, are fun but all surface, philosophical moments notwithstanding. In terms of plotting, it occurs on the fly and, no surprise, Diderot drifts, coming off as if he's killing time. The narrator frequently and rather ostentatiously interrupts to inform the reader that he's quite capable of doing this or that with his story. "How easy it is to tell stories!" Maybe not. After the initial shock wears off, the bit gets old real quick. All of it combined distracts me from his primary theme in the end. If pressed, I couldn't say what he clarifies about fate that truly cuts deep. I'm drawn in only to be repelled.

The back cover credits Diderot with pioneering techniques of experimental fiction still considered so today. And it is true that it's another work that illustrates the problem with the term "post-modern," coined long after Jacques was written. But while Diderot's approach to fiction is useful for highlighting and perhaps justifiably poking fun at conventions, and anticipates such works as The Trial and Waiting for Godot, it doesn't satisfy as a replacement for the basic pleasures of storytelling. 

Part of my reluctance to read such books is that I've never felt the urgency to be alerted to the idea of the artifice of fiction. I certainly understand why writers chafe within the bounds of established rules or seek a drastic shift from whatever comes to define the real. But I prefer the method of Cervantes, Borges, Murakami and others, writers who are as loose and playful as advertised without being in such a rage about pulling back the curtain. Borges finally pays tribute to Herbert Quain for inspiring his story "The Circular Ruins." Toru sits on the couch, feeling as though he's in a novel.... They acknowledge the game without losing their taste for playing it. This is My Style. Diderot, on the other hand, for all his experiments and criticisms and cleverness, seems exasperated to be telling a story in the first place, exasperating me once or twice in the process. Not My Style. (It might be worth noting that somewhere Diderot preempts criticism of Jacques by saying: "Good." Less people to read it. Inspiring exasperation would seem to be his intention, in which case I have no choice but to admit he succeeds.)

My curiosity about the man and his work, which covered several intellectual fields, remains. As for Jacques, for now I'll keep it around when I want to enjoy certain exchanges, certain laughs.

Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life

     It's the first good biography I've read in which the subject isn't rendered vividly. There seems to have been little drama. A loving family. No demon on his tail. A focused and businesslike career, built mostly on the road. Jonathan Gould says Redding is beloved - not just by music fans but by most everyone who knew him. And yet it isn't exactly packed with stories about who he was, day to day, that leave quite the same impression on the reader. But neither is there reason to object to this characterization. Reading the opening chapter, for example, detailing his great five-song headlining performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in the summer of 1967, backed by Booker T and the MGs and the Mar-Keys, and rewatching it again (and again) on YouTube, one glimpses what they mean. Asked by his manager backstage what songs he was going to sing that night, Redding "teasingly pretended not to have given the matter much thought" (5). His joking belied his uncertainty of whether he and his brand of Southern soul were really a good fit for the festival audience. In a day of music dominated by scruffy local folk and rock acts of varying quality, Otis Redding and the crew appear, in their colorful tailored suits and air of professionalism, as Gould has it, like the adults in the room. The performance that follows, his voice never sounding better, the energy, lightness, and good humor he exudes, gets the crowd to its feet and pushing toward the stage. You want to know how it's done? This is how. Masterful. At the end, forced to cut his set short, he reluctantly exits telling the audience he wants to stay but can't. And, at least to me, it doesn't sound as if he's just stating fact. 

Then, for a dozen chapters or so, Redding recedes, at times almost entirely. I was a bit taken aback at first as I came to realize how Gould approaches the singer: through history, starting in the 19th century. Redding once emphasized the importance of his background and Gould takes up the challenge, delving into it deeply, eventually prompting me to reflect that it'd be natural even for Redding, a big and tall sort of man, to appear smaller, perhaps a little more vague, as anyone would placed on such a large canvas. 

He goes into the earliest form of native popular entertainment to spread within the US, minstrelsy. And he gives the reader a necessary reminder of the utter viciousness of the Southern way of life, post-Reconstruction, as well as the revisionist history meant to romanticize such mindbending hideousness, sentimentally endorsed by, among others, President Woodrow Wilson. Despite a dearth of information, Gould manages to locate the thread of Redding's family within this shameful past, in Georgia.

Braided with the social history is the history of black music in the US from its beginnings through the 1960s, especially gospel, R & B, and soul: luminaries and obscure figures, development of sounds, advances in technology. Of particular fascination for me were the music labels, such as the story of the rise and fall of Redding's musical home, Stax. It grew in stature even while those who built it started out merely waiting for talent to come through the door, as Redding did, and was ran by someone, Jim Stewart, who liked the songs that wouldn't go anywhere and disliked what became the hits. Another mark of a good biography, it seems, is generating interest in other histories and biographies.

 

I'm not sure that the aesthetic pleasure of music can be captured on the page. From personal experience, playing it doesn't involve language. Instinct, color, feel, rhythm, structures - explanation and interpretation hardly plays a role. Some have suggested that it does something language wishes it could.... But Gould is a sensitive, astute observer of what's going on in a track and the shifts in an artist's catalogue. The most I might say about the lapses in his writing in general are a few gauche lines and a misuse of irony. Based on his summation of Otis Redding's work and subsequent listens, it seems that he had everything going for him - classic vocals, celebrated showmanship (though, like Marvin Gaye, he wasn't much of a dancer), command of the studio, stamina on the road, the looks, the charisma - except material. Soul music of the period was a singles medium. Albums were recorded quickly and commonly featured lots of covers and filler. What's more, Redding struggled to write songs and, when he did, neglected words. 

The Beatles, as for many others, proved to be a crucial influence. Recovering from throat surgery after countless gigs, he repeatedly listened to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band while working on a new batch of songs. Among those he wrote was "Sittin on the Dock of the Bay." (I smiled at Gould's comparison to "A Day in the Life.") Gould insists that it's not confessional, Redding plays a character in it. For instance, he sings that he has nothing to live for when he had everything to live for. That's true. The reader might surmise, however, that the weariness - understandable after years on the road with no big hit - connects singer and song. Anyway, revealing or not, in tone and lyrics, it's by far his most sophisticated song, a true breakthrough moment. And it's a hit. (Which is to say Jim Stewart didn't like it.) It was supposed to inaugurate a new phase in his career. 

He was 26 years old when he died in a plane crash. The song was the first posthumous #1.