Some of these books have to got back to the library. Let’s write ‘em up.
***
Some Prefer Nettles (1929) by Tanziaki Junichiro. A married couple has fallen out of loe with
each other, and the wife in love with someone else. They should divorce, probably, but then what’s
the hurry. Every literature has, at some
point, its divorce novels, and here is a Japanese example. It is mostly from the point of view of the shallow
Westernized husband, whose Westernization is described in two fine scenes, one
where he buys a multi-volume Richard Burton Arabian Nights in order to
read the dirty parts (which he never finds), and another where he visits his
Western “mistress,” who is a Russian-Korean prostitute working in a
brothel. Some readers may wish the story
had a different point of view character, but I had a good laugh at him.
My puzzle was how this tight but flatly-written domestic
novel is a candidate for “greatest novel by greatest Japanese writer.” Let’s see what Donald Keene says in the “Fiction”
volume of Dawn to the West (1984):
Some critics consider this to be Tanizaki’s finest work, not only because of its intrinsic literary excellence but because it presents both subtly and effectively the great transformation in Tanizaki’s life from a worshiper of the West to a believer in the Japanese heritage. (759)
The intrinsic excellence is unspecified, and the last part
is not remotely an aesthetic quality.
So I am still puzzled. The
Japanese cultural detail, including several substantial sections about the
puppet theater, is of high interest, the ironies of the marriage are
well-observed, etc. etc. But “finest”
and so on, I don’t see it.
***
Cop Hater, Ed McBain (1956). I am continuing my education in the history
of crime fiction with a key police procedural, the first of a long line of 87th
Precinct novels that abandon any hint of a puzzle mystery for the grind of ordinary,
tedious police work. Or at least make
steps in that direction. My sense of the
realism of Cop Hater is based entirely on subsequent cop shows deeply
influenced by these novels, so what do I know.
Salvatore Lombino was a classic hack writing science fiction
under these pseudonyms and crime fiction under those, more or less settling for
the McBain name when these books became his biggest hits. In classic hack fashion, his prose can get kinda
purple, when I would expect nothing but plainness:
The clear silhouettes of the buildings slashed at the sky, devouring the blue; flat planes and long planes, rough rectangles and needle sharp spires, minarets and peaks, pattern upon pattern laid in geometric unity against the wash of blue and white which was the sky. (1)
A little purple is all right with me. I enjoyed this book, and if I were a real
fan of mysteries I would seek out more, but really I would rather know what
else was out there.
***
Gigi (1945) by Colette. Age 71, writing in occupied Paris, Colette writes
the biggest hit of her life, a novella about a fifteen year-old girl being
groomed to be a courtesan by her grandmother and great-aunt, both courtesans
themselves. The story is not as creepy
as it sounds only because it is not clear what is going on for quite a
while. Maybe the grandmother is just
unusually obsessed with etiquette, or something. And the real story of the story is Gigi’s
subtle resistance, ultimately successful, to her groomers. The character in the 1958 Vincente Minelli
musical is surely aged quite a bit?
The book titled Gigi includes the novella and three
other pieces. “The Sick Child” is the
saddest thing, a lovely piece about the imaginative life of a boy bedridden
with polio. “The Photographer’s Wife” oddly
has more detail about the lost profession of pearl stringing – “Because I had,
in the old days, a pearl necklace like everyone else” (2nd paragraph) – but the
title character takes over by the end. “Flora
and Pomona” is not a story but an extended wander through Colette’s love of
flowers, plants, and even, why not, fruit.
Colette mostly writes at my reading level, but with that last one she
kicked me around pretty hard. The
flowers, the parts of flowers, just to begin. Good for my French, I tell myself.
“Gigi” is easy to find in English. The next two stories are in the big Collected
Stories, although all translation above is mine. “Flora and Pomona” is in a 1986 collection of
Colette’s essays titled Flowers and Fruit. All a pleasure to read, setting aside the
difficulty of the French.
