Two by Hiroko Oyamada

     I don't view the kind of absurdly inessential jobs Hiroko Oyamada's narrators describe in her novella, The Factory (2013), translated from the Japanese by David Boyd (2019), as a looming threat, now or in the future. Consider the shit job. Granted, some traits overlap - forced contact with disagreeable coworkers, deadening work, unfulfilled potential, lost time. But then pick up your shovel and start adding to that dung heap: pay that's never remunerative, that never meets the definition of a living wage, however one chooses to define the term, whether the work is essential or not. (To say the least. Those unaware of what a "subminimum wage" is are hereby encouraged to look it up.) A dead end that, at best, leads to other dead ends. High stress. Higher than average risk of physical injury. At a company that likely doesn't care about your health and safety one way or another. In the US, health care linked to employment, with other obstacles thrown in before one finally receives coverage, which nevertheless may not be accepted at a health care provider. Also in this category would be gig work, innovative for combining most or all of the above with instability. Another threat: Automation that renders jobs obsolete before new jobs can be found to replace them, leaving a sizeable number of people out on the street or dependent on the state for survival. Compared to these, a sinecure that includes housing in a more or less clean, safe area doesn't sound nearly as bad (or as common).

The ad copy mentions that The Factory was based on Oyamada's experience working in a car plant. But it isn't fiction created entirely out of raw experience. And that's what drew me in, not the social criticism but a workplace, lived-in yet warped. Three narrators start from how they became employed at The Factory and take the reader through daily life on the job. The company has a prestigious reputation, though most of its staff members, as a cost-saving measure, are kept as contractors. Education and background aren't relevant. Tasks are simple or menial. Or pointless. The feel of such a workplace is unexaggerated: Awkwardness. Boredom. Weariness. Hostility (the narrators, mainly). Detachment (no close relationships among them, romantic or otherwise). And it's a world unto itself, located on a large tract of land that boasts such amenities as living spaces and restaurants. Management is cagey, workers hardly provided with guidance on their jobs, much less informed about what the company does.

They all go along to get along. One must collect a paycheck somehow. 

The Factory describes routines, which is to say it has circular rather than forward motion. But dread gathers in the background: unidentified creatures, the Forest Pantser. Since almost all information about The Factory is withheld, there's mystery by default. It brings the reader to an ending that's predictably, not uniquely, strange (and slightly heavy-handed). The novel isn't quite potent enough in form or substance to stand on its own but it did make me wonder how Oyamada would develop her method in later works. Soon after I picked up the second novella of hers translated into English, again by David Boyd, The Hole (2014, 2020).

Another unsubtle metaphor. Nevertheless the novella is an improvement over her first. Since it begins with a woman who does a job reminiscent of those seen in The Factory, it's as if the first bleeds into the second, or as if the second represents an alternate path from approximately the same starting point. Asa, the lone narrator, is also a contractor who appears to have no chance of becoming an employee of the company she works for and advancing. Employees get generous bonuses. Contractors get meager bonuses. (How bout never hearing mention of the word, "bonus." Instead, to take one example, would you like some expired food? Does your landlord accept payment in the form of expired food? We thank you for your contribution, here's garbage.) But unlike her earlier narrators, she's married. She and her husband get an offer they can't refuse from his mother to live in a house in the country rent free. It's next door to hers. Asa leaves her job and the couple moves in. 

This happens early in the novella. From there, it examines the unemployed domestic life. The sun doesn't go down on the first day before Asa gets bored. Another disagreement: I'd be among those who would never get bored of free time and could easily find productive uses for it (as well as fun unproductive uses for it). For Asa, a nap is a good way to kill time, not a good way to replenish your energy to better use waking hours. She's a healthy adult, younger than I am,  and the library is too far away for her, 30 minutes, about the same distance from where I'm sitting to my local library. That's a perfect pairing: exercise and illumination, by book and environment. Like Asa's part of Japan, it's sweltering in Bloomingdale, New Jersey. If you must, reduce the number of trips by checking out several books at once. But I did find less to argue with about the loss of free movement. She has no car of her own and there's no public transportation. And in a place without public transportation, job opportunities are scarce and, I'd bet, neither well paid nor interesting. She's not in contact with anyone her age. And her husband works late. (Oyamada captures marital chilliness with a single recurring detail: Her husband almost never looks away from his phone.) 

Asa is isolated and pretty much housebound. Without work, and feeling guilty about even turning on the AC without collecting a paycheck - but then why save money if it means torturous deprivation? - a feeling of oppression comes over her. Strange things begin to seep into her daily life, heat and fatigue, boredom and lonely rudderlessness blurring real and unreal. It's then that she falls into a hole in the ground, "a trap made just for me."

Somewhere in the middle of what follows, reference is made to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. Usually referred to as one work, as it is here, "Alice in Wonderland." I must take the time to marvel and pay tribute: A universal classic if there ever was one. Unforgettable situation, images, characters. Truly dreamlike fiction that speaks to children and adults, generation after generation. Invulnerable to screen adaptation. Outrageousness never to be outdone. Pure kick on the page to be continually rediscovered.

Again, not too subtle, at least in theory. But I enjoyed Oyamada's variation - spare, boiled, drowsy, closer to the everyday. And when Asa comes back from Wonderland, the final image the reader of The Hole is left with has surprising poignancy. The trap isn't just hers after all. 

Excellent Women

     Put two people together and something will eventually cause friction between them. Once it does, one weighs the bad, weighs the good, and decides to accept, or tolerate, speak up in hopes of promoting change, or make an escape. This is probably obvious to most, not all. Mildred Lathbury, the narrator of Barbara Pym's early novel Excellent Women (1952), is beginning to think she's destined to be a drab lonely spinster. Her comic style provides one clue as to how it came to be. In her world, no one is quite desirable. Outwardly she remains polite and can be counted on to lend a helping hand whenever someone needs it. Everyone needs it and she hardly complains. Good old reliable Mildred. But she doesn't like Helena Napier. She doesn't like Allegra Gray. Winifred Malory is simple. Julian Malory does nothing for her. Dora Caldicote is irritating (and she insists on wearing that brown dress). William Caldicote is a gossip. Everard Bone has a gruff manner. Rocky Napier is superficial. Don't get her started on her past schoolmates. And she's unsparing of herself too. Her observations produce tart lines and consoling laughter from a comfortable distance, the bad at best negating the good, leaving her where she started, nowhere with anyone. She's the sort of person who can't get past the fact of human imperfection. I think of a scene from Seinfeld. At the coffee shop, George listens as Jerry details yet another silly cause for a breakup. Then, fed up with his own quibbles, he runs both hands through his hair and says with a sigh: "What kind of lives are these?" Not the kind conducive to romance.

For all her awareness of her faults, Lathbury doesn't face a similar realization. (Jerry learns nothing because that's the joke: "no hugging, no learning.") Awareness doesn't inevitably lead to forgiveness. Hyperawareness of faults or "faults" is antithetical to forgiveness. But then again, our narrator doesn't always quibble. At a planning meeting for a church function, she overhears an exchange:

"Really, Mr. Mallett, it's a good thing your wife isn't here," said Miss Statham indignantly. "Whatever would she think to hear you talking like that?"

"My good lady leaves the thinking to me," said Mr. Mallett, amid laughter from the men.

Later that same day, as the discussion winds down, she notes another separation between the genders.

The men went on smoking and chatting while we gathered the cups together and struggled to fill the heavy urn between us. They belonged to the generation that does not think of helping with domestic tasks.

Nor does Lathbury have routine contact with men besides these, in church, at work, or anywhere else. Another reason for persistent loneliness: few options to get excited about.

Lathbury is dismissive of her own physical appearance and taste in clothes, notices when she blends among other "excellent women," doesn't seem to have a record of getting approached by eligible bachelors. A third reason: the intriguing stranger from outside her routine never materializes and says hey. And a fourth: A disappointment so traumatic one loses years, decades to fear of a repeat of The Incident. 

Together these form an imposing barrier to companionship. In presenting the situation, alongside such mundane problems as an uninspired meal or a shared bathroom or flowers that wilt upon turning around, Pym is as true to the melancholy in it as the comedy. But, whether as a concession to an audience demanding to go out on some uplift or in eagerness to rescue her character, she wraps up the book with a forced resolution. It isn't happy, precisely, but pat. I've known seemingly mismatched couples bonded together mysteriously and tenuously. It's hard to believe Mildred Lathbury, so skeptical and satirical, so exacting in her estimation of others (and rather unimpressed by her findings), and protective of her humble bit of independence, would settle for a mismatch so willingly, then suggest it'll last without a better explanation. Suddenly the fog breaks and the reader gets celestial choir and strings, technicolor Hollywood. Did Pym really want to end the novel like this? Excellent Women is good enough that I'd track down at least another of hers to see.