15. Larry Watson: Montana 1948

Montana 1948, Larry Watson

Washington Square Press, 175 pages, 1993

Damn, I'm behind on book posts. I'm on book number 18 now, so I'll try to get through these quickly and get caught up. Anyway, I picked this up at random at the midyear seminar book sale, having never heard of the book or its author before, and was quite pleasantly surprised. The obvious comparison is to To Kill a Mockingbird: small American town, racial injustice, a father taking a difficult stand for what's right, told through a child's eyes. I haven't read To Kill a Mockingbird in about a million years (okay, I can tell you exactly how many years: eight. Oh God.), so I can't really compare the two in any significant way, but I did enjoy Montana 1948. Watson has that kind of writing style that doesn't call attention to itself; it's so easy and transparent that you almost don't notice how well-crafted it is. It's a short read, and suspenseful, but also a good and important one.

Next up: The Left Hand of Darkness by  Ursula K. Le Guin

今日の単語：災厄

Today's word: 災厄 (さいやく saiyaku)
Meaning: calamity, disaster
Commonly used in the following situations:

• Not receiving a sticker
• Being told "No" when you ask if you can wear the ALT's glasses
• Being required to write a sentence in English
• Taking a speaking test
• Breaking a pikopiko hammer

Example sentence: さいやく～～～～～～～！！！！！！！ (Okay, I've never actually heard this used in a sentence.)

I think I might start posting these regularly, using only words I've learned from my students. They certainly make up the most colorful portion of my Japanese vocabulary.

14. John Updike: Rabbit, Run

Rabbit, Run, John Updike
Fawcett Books (Random House/Ballantine), 264 pages, 1960

When I was about 16 and trying desperately to seem intellectual, I pulled this off the shelf at the Folsom Library, read the summary on the back, and put it back because I thought it was about basketball. I'm kind of glad I did because I don't think I was ready to read it then. It took me a while to get into it this time, despite the beautiful prose. What finally gave me an "in" was reading on Wikipedia that Updike wrote it as a response to Kerouac's On the Road (which was the first and only book read by the ill-fated Joetsu book club last year). I have no idea whether that's true, but having spent so much time dissecting On the Road, thinking about the two books together helped me realize what exactly the story was that Updike was trying to tell.

The stories are actually very similar--dumb, misogynist everyman decides that the tedium of American family life is beneath him and that he's meant for something greater, takes off on road trip, eventually is smacked in the face by divine retribution (Dean Moriarty goes crazy; Rabbit's wife accidentally drowns their daughter). But the writers take completely different approaches. Kerouac really believes in the lifestyle he sets forth in his books, and describes it with breathless joy; Updike is more cautious, and makes it clear that what he's describing is an attempt to escape from something that has no escape. There are so many late '50s/early '60s American novels on this theme--if you were a thinking person in America at that time, it seems, you were looking for a way out.

There is one more novel I've read recently that fits this formula: Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. I read Rabbit, Run the way you take medicine (it's good for you), and On the Road was like a trainwreck (can't look away), but I genuinely enjoyed Revolutionary Road, and I finished it in about 3 days. The difference, I think, is that it tells the story of a married couple instead of a single male protagonist, and so includes a female perspective. In fact, the wife, April Wheeler, is the one pushing for the family's escape to Europe--she's the smart one, the one who acts, causing her husband to react. Rabbit Angstrom and Dean Moriarty can go to hell, but I actually felt for the Wheelers as I watched their lives get torn apart.

Next up: Montana 1948 by Larry Watson

Joetsu, one year later

It's that time again--JET placements are coming out, and in the next few days 11 lucky people will be frantically scouring the internet for information about Joetsu. I wrote this post a little over a year ago, before I came to Japan, and apparently it's come up in Google searches about Joetsu, so I figure this is as good a time as any to update those impressions now that I've been here almost a year.

(I also posted these pictures from Google Earth, which I now find hilarious because you know that "OMG, snow" picture of Takada? That's clearly beginning-of-winter snow. That's PUSSY snow. Two months later, shit gets real.)

Um... anyway, I may or may not continue to indulge in this kind of good-natured hazing, but the truth is that I love it here. I was more or less bang-on with my attempt to describe the layout in that old post: there's a town center (Naoetsu is north, Takada is south), and outside that, miles and miles of rice fields and some teacher housing. Joetsu itself isn't total inaka; there's a JUSCO, a Uniqlo, a movie theater, restaurants, a coffee shop, three McDonalds, a nice park, some okay bars (though the regular Saturday night crowd is nothing to write home about). There are also a ton of big box stores, which might surprise you if you've never been to Japan; apparently suburban sprawl and architectural eyesores are not unique to my homeland. It ain't San Francisco, but it has more or less everything you need.

And then there's the rest. There are still vast parts of it that I haven't explored (a project for an upcoming weekend, I think), but Yoshikawa, where I live, is a more or less typical example. It takes 30 to 40 minutes to get here from town. There are a few shops (conbini, pharmacy, gas station) within about 10 minutes' walk, and a bit farther out there's a 7-11, a sake brewery, and a nice little onsen with a restaurant (typical teishoku fare). There are two mountains, Yoneyama and Okamidake. The nearest supermarket is about a 10 minute drive away, in the next ward. Other than that, Yoshikawa consists entirely of rice fields. 

I probably haven't sold anyone on it with what I've said here, but Joetsu can be a great place if you let it. I was never a nature type before I got here but watching the changes in the rice fields throughout the seasons is an awesome thing (awesome as in "full of awe," not "totally tubular"). The mountains, the coastline, the snow--all of them are absolutely stunning. We're no more than an hour away from awesome snowboarding (by that I DO mean "totally tubular"), and Nagano City is a lovely little city (with real shopping, jazz bars, Starbucks, Thai food and a famous temple) that's about an hour and a half away by train. 

It has been a pretty intense year, but Joetsu has been good to me, good enough that I've signed up for another year. Bring on the snow!

Literary homesickness

Here in Japan I'm reading what I can get my hands on, which mostly consists of the piles and piles of books I bought indiscriminately in a kind of feeding frenzy the last time I was in an English-language bookstore in Tokyo. I definitely have enough to keep me busy until July when I go home, but these are the ones I'm aching to get my hands on once I touch down in the U.S.:

The Great Night

Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays

Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas

Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin

Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Tales of the City

San Francisco, I miss you.

edit: and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. I'm going to stop now before this gets out of control