Japanland by Karin Muller

In Japanland, Karin Muller joins a crowd of Westerners (including, I should acknowledge up front, myself) who want to describe Japan.

She subtitles her book "A Year in Search of Wa." My dictionary gives one definition of "wa" as peace; harmony; concord; unity; union. One of the example sentences is "Harmony among people is most important."

In her preface, Muller says that she was 34, been married, divorced, blown through a half dozen careers, learned six languages and forgotten three, but there was only one place where her worries would temporarily disappear: a judo academy. "Most of my instructors were Japaneses; and they approached judo with a sense of utter dedication to perfecting a profoundly difficult art." She decided that if she went to Japan she could find peace and happiness. She could obtain wa.

Or that's the rational she gives. Actually, she went to Japan to make a documentary that was, I'm told, shown on PBS. And because she's there to make a video, she is looking for the off-beat, the colorful, the unfamiliar Japan—scenes that will entertain an American television audience. At the same time, she wants to explain Japanese culture:

Executives retire at 60 and their wives, who have been in charge of the house and the children, don't know what to do with them.

Adult daughters live at home as "parasites" until they get married. They have to marry by age 30 or they become "Christmas cake," something that has no value after December 25.

The majority of marriages are still arranged.

Japan is filled with colorful festivals and traditions. She goes to one where young men go for a naked New Year's Eve swim in the Pacific that turns out badly for her; climbing back from her own midnight swim, "I feel my body stiffening like a piece of roadkill after the sun goes down."

Because I am currently writing a novel tentatively titled Mt. Koya, I was particularly interested in what Muller had to say about her visit to the sacred spot. I'm afraid I found the brief chapter (most of the chapters are brief) superficial and condescending. She does not find wa (and Mt. Koya with its emphasis on meditative practice is probably a better place to find it than dressing up as a geisha which she does), but she takes a wrong turn in the temple in which she's been staying and finds  the student monk rooms. "They are anything but austere—in fact, they look like miniature versions of a college dorm."

I thought Japanland was fun but not as a guide to finding wa or learning about Japan. Muller is hard on herself--she is regularly thrown to the mat in her judo sessions; she so offends her host family's matron she's driven from the house; she comes down with pneumonia on a pilgrimage to the 88 temples on Shikoku. But the book's title, I think, suggests her attitude toward the country. It's not really a culture, a society, a place with real people living real lives. It's an amusement park fill with colorful, often charming, sights. That's what she looked for and that's what she found.

The Magicians by Lev Grossman

This is not Harry Potter for adults. This is for adults, however.  Unfortunately, I am not one of the adults it is for.

The magician is Quentin Coldwater (something he tends to throw on every happy experience). He is finishing high school as the book opens but rather than go to Princeton, he is admitted to a school for magicians where he learns real magic—sort of an American Hogwarts on the Hudson. Quentin has always been fascinated by a series of children's books in which four English siblings go to a magical land which is not called Narnia, in the last quarter of The Magicians Quentin and five friends find their way to it where, among others, they meet a talking bear and a talking tree.

A quick look at the Amazon reviews (176 five-star / 98 one-star) suggests that many of the people  who rated it highly liked for the very reasons the people who rated it one-star hated it. For example: "... Quentin is full of his own shortcomings and dichotomies. He's a brilliant, troubled man, searching as much for himself as anything else, and makes some bad decisions throughout the course of the novel. Midway through the novel, Quentin is let loose into the world with little direction, near limitless access to money and drugs, and all his relationships falling to pieces around him. This period of the novel was difficult to read, as Quentin becomes unlikable and brash and confused, deserving little sympathy from the reader [who] often wonders why they should even bother reading on, if there are any redeeming qualities left in Quentin...Grossman is very deliberate in this emotional breakdown of his protagonist, and it plays an important role in Quentin finding the motivation he needs to remove himself from the downward spiral."

To me, Grossman is writing against every fantasy novel, from Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia, The Golden Compass, The Lord of the Rings, and beyond. He's out to claim that while magic is real—it is possible to be turned into a goose, to create a protective spell and go to the moon, to manipulate this physical world, and to travel to an alternate reality—it's not very rewarding or satisfying. It's a lot of hard, nasty work and it's not much when you've done it. Even after you've trained to use all these powers, the best you can do with your life—given that you have unlimited money and freedom—is party, get drunk, do drugs, and recover enough for the next party. So you think you can escape your dull, boring life? Forget it.

I read the book to the end, which turned out to be a mistake because Grossman ends with a cliffhanger to promote the next book in the series. I'm afraid I come down on the side of those readers who found Quentin unlikable, brash, confused, and deserving little sympathy—and certainly not worth reading another word about.

The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

I don't ordinarily look at reviews until after I've read a book or watched a movie. Obviously that's difficult with a popular book or movie because the reviews are ubiquitous and because I like to read reviews. On the other hand, when a friend recommends a book that sounds interesting, I don't check the reviews so I can come to it with relatively fresh eyes.

That's the case with The Book Thief by Australian author Marcus Zusak. It was published in September 2007, and it a YA best-seller. Zusak has said that he grew up hearing stories about Germany during WWII, about the bombing of Munich and about Jews being marched through his mother's small, German town. "We have these images of the straight-marching lines of boys and the 'Heil Hitlers' and this idea that everyone in Germany was in it together. But there still were rebellious children and people who didn't follow the rules and people who hid Jews and other people in their houses. So there's another side to Germany," said Zusak in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald.

The Book Thief dramatizes that other side by telling the story of a young girl living in a small German town during the years 1939-44. It might have been a mirror image of Diary of a Young Girl—the Aryan girl who also suffers under Nazism—except that Zusak does an interesting thing: He has Death tell the story. Because Death is everywhere, Death sees things and knows things no one of the characters can know. The result, I found, is an interesting, and convincing, picture of small town German life from the perspective of the children at that time.

The book is popular. When I checked a minute ago, it had 1,174 five-star reviews on Amazon.com. And with a book that's so many people are willing to take the time to rate and review, I am always curious about those who didn't care for it, the 37 people who gave it one-star reviews. What is their problem? Many of them found it slow-paced and boring. Some didn't like the writing, i.e., "...the premise of this seemed so original and fun, but I was sorely disappointed. I couldn't get past the first 30 pages. The voice of the narrator was so irritating I wanted to scream..." "... I found [the language]  to be empty, fruity, and ultra-pretentious..." "...this book was so confusing, and hard to understand..."

Few of the critics feel the problem with the book is in themselves. "The book is boring" not "I thought (or felt or found) the book to be boring." Many of them are mystified that other people enjoyed the book and are angry that they got sucked into trying it or, worse, buying it. Almost no one who hated the book goes into any detail why. On the other hand, these are Amazon reviews and one can hardly expect the reviewers to spent more than a moment warning off potential readers. Nonetheless, it does not help the author or the potential reader to write with no examples or detail why a book succeeds for you or fails for you.

By the way, I read The Book Thief through. It convinced me that this is what it might have been like to be a pre-teen at that time in that place. Which, for me, is a lot.

Japanese ramen museums

The Sunday New York Times travel section recently ran a "36 Hours in Osaka, Japan" feature.  The writer recommended as among the city's highlights the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum. It's "an entertaining pilgrimage site for noodle lovers that is named after the inventor of instant ramen — yes, that’s a statue of him outside. Mix and match flavors and ingredients to create a personalized cup of instant ramen at the My Cup Noodle Factory, or purchase one of the limited-edition varieties from a vending machine in the tasting room."

I've never been to the Osaka museum, but I've visited the Shin-Yokohama Raumen Museum twice. ("Rauman" is the way the museum spells it.) It's only about half an hour from downtown Tokyo by train, and an easy walk from the Shin-Yokohama station. It features a large hall that recreates the Tokyo of 1958, the year instant ramen noodles were invented. Surrounding this two-story hall are branches of famous noodle restaurants from around Japan, each featuring a local specialty.

The museum's ground floor has a detailed explanation of noodle manufacturing (in Japanese), the history of ramen, and a gift shop. While this is an exhibition tailored for Japanese visitors, you don't have to be able to speak Japanese to enjoy the ambiance, the feeling of 1958 Tokyo, or to order a very nice, and not very expensive, meal. 

Returning to Earth by Jim Harrison

I've been aware of Jim Harrison for a long time, exclusively through positive book reviews. The man is prolific, over 31 books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Born and raised in Michigan, Harrison currently divides his time between Montana and Arizona. He has a B.A. and an M.A. (in comparative literature) from Michigan State University. He is a writer worth knowing.

Returning to Earth was published in 2010 and I found it interesting on several levels. Four people tell their own stories, Donald, K (for Kenneth), David, and Cynthia in four virtually equal segments. Donald, half-Chippewa/half-Finn, is married to Cynthia; they have two children, and Donald is dying of Lou Gehrig's disease.

K is (I believe) the son of David and his ex-wife Polly. (I believe, because the book is stuffed with characters and, while I had no trouble keeping them straight, I did have trouble keeping their relationships straight).

David and Cynthia are siblings, children of a wealthy landowner/industrialist on Michigan's Upper Peninsula where most of the action takes place with side trips to Chicago, New York, Montana, and Mexico.

The story is simple: Donald dies and his survivors have to live on. But of course that's like saying life is simple: you're born, you live, you die. A lot goes on in between, and Harrison, while helping to know the four narrators intimately, touches on Native Indian beliefs, the ecological rape of the Upper Peninsula and the effect on the local tribes, relations between siblings and parents, the pressures of sex, life in the woods, how one comes to accept the inevitability of death (or not), and more.

I found the book exceptionally rich and interesting. Here, almost at random, is K musing on his parents: "At the time I looked at them as childish in their refusal to accept that life was chaotic and inconclusive. Life is slow and I watched movies to know immediately what happened next. I even made notes on what the characters might be doing during scenes in their lives that weren't in the movies. Parents often only see what they wish to see. Polly never knew that my sister Rachel and a girlfriend had sold nude Polaroids of themselves for money to buy marijuana. Clare [his step cousin] sent me some money and I managed to buy the photos back from a half dozen boys. With two of them it took money and physical threats. My sister thought of herself as a free spirit and couldn't care less. She asked me, 'Why are boys always embarrassed when you give them what they want?' A solid question, I think."

Another solid question: How have I missed reading Jim Harrison for so long?

Meeting with a book group

Last night, I was a friend's Meet-the-Author guest at her book group's monthly meeting. The group has been discussing books for at least twenty years, and they recently decided to read the books of local authors and invite the authors to the discussion. I was the third this year (which may reflect the literary activity in my little town).

The nine women liked Getting Oriented, but had trouble with all the characters, keeping them straight at the beginning of the book. (The tour guide, ten guests on his tour, his boss back in Chicago, and more.) They didn’t have any suggestions on how to fix that, nor was it a problem once they’d read into the book; it’s just that there are a lot of names to keep straight. But they recognized that too few people on a tour would also be a problem with veracity. My friend had printed out my book group guide and whenever the conversation flagged, she asked one of the leading questions.

They wanted to know how I constructed the book. I said that having the tour gave me a structure and a movement through time. I also said that I’d originally tried to keep every chapter rigidly to a single day, but it was clear that was too strict and now events from one day slop over into the next chapter where it makes sense. I did not know how the book was going to end when I started, and I wrote a biography for the main characters so I knew something about them.

They said my love of Japan came through clearly, and felt they’d learned a lot about the country in the book. At the same time there was enough of a story to pull them through; it is not simply a travel guide. They wanted to know why I had the sex scene in the book. I said I wanted to show the main character’s gradual recovery from his depression, and being sexually attracted to a woman (and doing something about it) was one way to show his being on his way to recovery.

They wanted to hear me speak Japanese, which I did. (On the other hand, as I pointed out, I could have said almost anything and how would they know?) Two school teachers had exposed their students to Japanese and calligraphy, so they were interested in the language.

Two women said they'd like to write and I talked about how to start (get up early, sit at the desk, and do it). One woman asked about writer’s block. I said what I believe: It's a symptom, not a disease, and once you recognize the disease, the block tends to go away. Usually, I think, it’s a symptom of fear—fear of failure, fear of offending someone, fear of revealing too much. My suggestion and cure for writer's block, which I have suffered: Realize every first draft is crap, and just write without thinking. You can always go back.

For show and tell, I brought my hanko and an ema, like the votive prayer tablet I'm holding in the picture above, and some pictures from Japan showing real places the fictional tour visits. I inscribed and stamped books the ladies had bought and told stories about tour-leading that aren't in the book. I had a wonderful time.

The Year We Left Home by Jean Thompson

The Pulitzer Prize committee did not award a fiction prize this year. The New York Times Magazine editors invited a number of writers to make their own recommendations, and Gregory Cowles, an editor of the book review, suggested Jean Thompson's fifth novel, The Year We Left Home. It is extraordinary.

It begins in a small Iowa town in January 1973 (Thompson labels each chapter with a place and date) and ends outside the same town in June 2003. Over the 325 pages and thirty years we watch an ordinary family's four children and a cousin grow, change, get married, divorced, have children themselves, deal with death, and try to live as the country changes around them.

Thompson uses a limited third person point of view for each chapter, and each chapter is a different person, at different time, and set in a different place. They could, it seemed to me, almost be short stories (she's published five story collections) except that we follow virtually the same cast of characters through the entire book, and things that happen in one character's life resonate and connect with another character's. Moreover, she's done something very difficult to do (I know because I'm trying to do it myself in my new book): She's made each point of view character an individual, with individual perceptions, attitudes, and personalities.

Not only that, but she's been able to use the larger events of the period—the Vietnam War, the emptying out of small Midwest towns as family farms failed, the Reagen assassination attempt, the dot-com bubble, and more—to indicate how they affected these individual people. On the one hand, Thompson is not heavy handed about these influences; on the other, her characters are living in a recognizable world of news, television, and pop culture, and social change.

And Thompson is brilliant in sketching a relationship in a few sentences. A character thinking about his wife: "At some point in their life together he had assumed the burden of making her happy. Her most familiar mood, what he thought of as her default position, was one of exasperated suffering. Which he must attend, coax, tease, and try to reason away. He would never be entirely successful; at best she would only be not unhappy. But he would always be obliged to try."

One more example, a description of Norwegian relatives: "They lived out in the boondocks, what his father called Jesus Lost His Shoes territory, and their church still held services in Norwegian the third Sunday of every month. Most of them farmed. They believed in backbreaking labor, followed by more labor, and in privation, thrift, cleanliness, and joyless charity. If you wanted a tree taken down or a truck winched out of a ditch or a quarter of a cow packaged for your meat locker, you called a Peerson. If you wanted lighthearted company, you called someone else." If you have write exposition, that's the way to do it.

I don't know if The Year We Left Home should have won a Pulitzer Prize (I plan to read the other recommendations). I do know it's a wonderful book.