Beyond Words

 Kazuo Ishiguro is one of my favourite authors who writes interesting stories that make us ponder about the human heart.

Sometime ago I started reading The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro but it was a false start. This month I picked up the book again and am glad that I finished reading it. The book is 535 pages long. Kazuo Ishiguro‘s remarkable prose engages you with the narratives that bewilder you till the end of the story.

The story is narrated in the main character’s voice.

Ryder, an internationally acclaimed pianist arrives in a Central European city. When the taxi driver takes him to the hotel, there is no one behind the reception desk. He has been invited to give a performance that may be the most important event of his life. Somehow he does not seem to remember much of the arrangement and he appears to have visited the city before. He soon discovers that there is a woman named Sophie with whom he has a relationship and he may be the father of her son, Boris. In the course of his three days’ visit, he first meets the hotel manager Mr Hoffman who organises the concert hoping to gain the respect of his wife who is disappointed with him for lack of musical talents. He then meets the conductor, Mr. Brodsky who is trying to reconcile with his long-estranged former love. He also meets Gustav the elderly hotel porter, who hopes to mend his strained relationship with his daughter, Sophie. Meanwhile the Hoffmans’ son, Stephan, plans to impress his parents and hopes to mend the family by displaying his own underestimated gifts as a pianist at the upcoming concert.

Everyone seems to want something from Ryder and he can refuse none of the requests made of him. He appears to have an exaggerated sense of public duty and in trying desperately to attend to seemingly all his duties, he disappoints and has failed Sophie in his domestic responsibilities.

The following is an excerpt about Sophie’s discontent.

‘Something about her expression made me stop. For another moment, Sophie went on regarding me coldly. Then she said tiredly:

“Leave us You were always on the outside of our love. Now look at you. On the outside of our grief too. Leave us. Go away.“

Boris broke away from her and turned to look at me. Then he said to his mother: ‘No, no. We’ve got to keep together. ‘

Sophie shook her head.’ No, it’s useless. Leave him be, Boris. Let him go around the world, giving out his expertise and wisdom. He needs to do it. Let’s just leave him to it now.’

The small town that Ryder is visiting idolizes its artists and when their artists fail its expectations, there is a breakdown within the community. During his visit, he has been repeatedly told that his very presence will restore the city’s reputation and civic morale of the populace. He tries to plead the cause of Mr. Brodsky, a disgraced conductor who is now a pathetic alcoholic and salvage the morale of a community experiencing a sense of despair due to its declining classical music scene but he has his limitations. His allegedly tight schedule is constantly disrupted by new demands for small favours and services that appear to conspire to derail his schedule to speak and perform at the town concert, which is the principal reason of his visit. He cannot recall the details of his schedule or where he has placed the copy of his schedule, all he knows is that the event will take place on the last evening of his stay. In the meantime he keeps encountering obstacles causing him to be deprived of food, sleep, and crucial preparation for the big night. It is apparent that his life has accelerated beyond his control.

Here is an excerpt that describes the scene after Mr. Brodsky’s rendition of the music composition he was conducting.

‘As I made my way back down the aisle, everyone around me seemed to be discussing what they had just witnessed. I noticed many were talking out of the sheer need to talk out an experience, in the way they might have done after a fire or an accident. As I reached the front of the auditorium, I saw two women crying and a third comforting them, saying ; It’s all right, it’s all finished now. All finished now.’ An aroma of coffee was pervading this section of the hall and a number of people were clutching cups and saucers, drinking as though to steady themselves.‘

Ryder tries to correct the views of these critics but in vain. He also tries to comfort Mr Hoffman when the evening has not turned out to be a success.

At one point it dawns on him that the hotel room “was the very room that had served as my bedroom during the two years my parents and I had lived at my aunt’s house on the borders of England and Wales.”’

Ryder’s experience is dreamlike and surreal. The story reminds us about elusive expectations that the society demands and for which we impose on ourselves the wish to fulfil them. What matters is not achievements and prestige. The city will not cure its malaise by pursuing cultural prestige.

The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro is a contemplative read where the conscious and the unconscious meet. It is a mind-bending story about an anxious musician who has encounters with various characters who seem to represent an aspect of himself. It appears that he has a deep longing to please his parents and no amount of success can allay his fear of rejection or not being loved. The story makes us pause to examine what gives life its true beauty, what matters is not achievements nor duty but love and kindness.

Connections

 

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney is a story about family, relationships, grief and all that matters in life.

Sally Rooney is prolific and her prose beautiful. Her stream of consciousness writing style makes the book an enjoyable read.

In Intermezzo , thirty-two year old Peter Koubek and twenty-two year old Ivan Koubek are brothers from Kildare. Peter, a successful and competent Dublin lawyer, seemingly unassailable. Ivan, a competitive chess player has been hailed as the chess prodigy. They have recently lost their father. After their parents had divorced, they were brought up by their Slovak father who had migrated there in the eighties. Their Irish mother, Christine O’Donoghue has since remarried. After their dad’s passing, Peter, sociable and charming, is medicating himself to sleep. He has some remorse that he never really got to know his father. He is struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women, Sylvia and Naomi. He remains close with Sylvia, his first love. An accident years ago has left her with great physical pain and she no longer wants to be intimately close with Peter. She has asked Peter to leave her and date other women. He is seeing Naomi, the twenty-two year old college student who is free spirited and regards life as one long joke. Ivan is an antithesis to Peter. He is socially awkward and is working part-time in data analysis. At a chess event, he meets Margaret , an arts- programme director, divorced and has a turbulent past. In the early weeks of his bereavement, he is attracted to Margaret who is beautiful and kind. Soon their lives become intensely intertwined.

Peter feels that he needs to check in on Ivan as an older brother, so he telephones Ivan with a faint hope that the latter does not answer the phone.

‘ A purring mechanical tone tells him the call is ringing while he sits on the sofa unlacing his shoes. Home from work late, Tuesday night, awkward time to call, and never texted beorehand, almost as if , yes, hoping no one will answer. Duty discharged in that case. Disphenhydramine with a glass of red wine, see what people are saying on the internet. Fall asleep with the lights on for an hour or two if he’s lucky. Wake up again and try something stronger. Watch in claustrophobic dread the passing of hours, scorched feeling in his eyelids blinking. Three in the morning, four another Xanax, open a new browser tab to type out : insomnia psychosis. psychosis average age of onset.can’t sleep going insane. About to hang up when with a dropping sound the call connects and the voice of his brother is saying : Hello? Oddly normal the way he says that when answering the phone. Makes him sound so adult and reasonable.’

Ivan tells Peter that Christine has been texting him about Alexei the dog which he has left with her. Ivan’s voice is ‘flat, affectless, and yet communicating at the same time somehow a wary distrust.’

Peter invites Ivan for lunch. Ivan totally forgets about his Sunday lunch date with his brother as he makes a trip to see Margaret in Leitrim. The two brothers finally meet for lunch. As anticipated, Peter asks Ivan about the friend he is seeing.When Ivan lets slip about the woman he likes and that it is complicated as she has this ex-husband whom she is separated from. Peter is alarmed that she is thirty-six years old, and he remarks,

‘You’re twenty-two, you’re hardly out of college, you don’t even have a job. I’m not trying to be disparaging, but do you think a normal woman of her age would want to hang around with someone in your situation? ‘

After some exchange, Ivan storms off and from then onwards, he blocks Peter’s number preventing him from any further communication.

Growing up, Peter was protective of Ivan until the time Peter left home for college. What happened to Peter after he graduated from university is not clear to Ivan. When Ivan was a child they were good together but when Ivan got to the age of sixteen, seventeen, they started getting into arguments, fights, about politics, history, whatever.

It is apparent that both brothers have a lot in common. They are both mourning for their father’s death and they ‘both wanted their lives to consist of winning all the time‘.

‘No one ever wants to lose. And yet for both Peter and Ivan, this particular feeling has perhaps been more important ,more intense than for other people: the desire to win all the time, and also the naïve youthful belief that it would be possible to live such a life, now soured by experience.’

After their lunch, the lingering bitterness between them is now reaching a point of seemingly no return. This is a story about estranged relationship between two brothers who are very different.

Sally Rooney is undeniably one young writer who can engage us in stories about mundane living and the interpersonal relationships. She is undeniably gifted in crafting ordinary characters and dialogues. In Intermezzo, the author also weaves in the story discussions about social issues such as housing crisis in Dublin, monetary power dynamics, religion, existentialism, social media and societal demands.

View of the city atop the hill Coot-tha Summit Lookout, South Brisbane

The Magic of Reading

 

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa tells a story about healing power of books. It is a story about book lovers. One day Hideaki the boyfriend with whom Takako has been going out blurts out that he is getting married and not 'Let's get married' or " I want to get married'. He is getting married to a colleague in another department. Takako quits her job as she can no longer work in the same office as Hideaki who seems to think that they can still continue seeing each other for dinner.

Takako is twenty-five years old. She is from Kyushu and came to Tokyo for work after graduating. Now that she has lost her job, she spends her days sleeping. Her uncle Satoru invites her to go and stay with him in Jimbocho. He runs Morisaki Bookshop that has been in her family for three generations.He has taken over the bookshop that her great-grandfather started. It has been a decade since she last saw her uncle whom she was not that fond of. He is 'unconventional and hard to figure out'. She reluctantly accepts her uncle's invitation to stay rent-free in the tiny room above the bookshop. She has never been to Jimbocho and she is surprised to see rows of bookshops on Yasukuni Street, the main avenue. Morisaki Bookshop specializes in literature of the modern era.Jimbocho is full of secondhand bookshops. According to Satoru, the neighbourhood houses ' the largest concentration of secondhand bookshops in the world. Most of the bookshops there deal primarily in one specific field or type of book. There are stores for scholarly books. There are stores that only handle scripts for plays. There are some more unusual shops that only deal in stuff like old postcards and photographs.' Her uncle explains that the neighbourhood was a centre of culture in the Meiji era at the end of the 19th century and in that era a lot of schools were built there hence there were all those stores selling scholarly books.

Takako was never a reader prior to coming to Jimbocho. One night, Satoru takes her out to a café and shows her around the neighbourhood. After talking to her eccentric uncle about his youth and how he feels after his wife Momoko left him five years ago , she feels strangely agitated and is unable to sleep . She decides to pick up a book. She closes her eyes and picks out Until the Death of the Girl by Saisei Murō. She is so absorbed in the book that she reads through the night. When she finishes reading it, she feels at peace. From then onwards, Takako discovers new worlds within the stacks of books. In the course of her stay, she gets to know her uncle and later her aunt who returns to the Morisaki Bookshop one day.The Morisaki bookshop has something to teach both her uncle and her about life, love and the healing power of books.

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop is Satoshi Yagisawa's debut novel. It won the Chiyoda Literature Prize. It was first published in 2010 and is translated from Japanese to English by Eric Ozawa. A movie entitled Morisaki shoten no hibi was made based on the book.

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop is a sweet tale about love and book people. As the translator writes in his note, Satoshi Yagisawa's novel is about 'the many pleasures of reading: the joy of discovering a new author; the hedonism of staying up too late to finish a book; the surreptitious thrill of getting to know someone by reading their favourite novel ; and the freedom of walking into a bookstore and scanning the titles, waiting for something to catch your eye.' Incidentally the translator met his wife, Nicole by chance in a bookstore.

Hello I'm Stella

 

Is AI capable of being sentient and sensitive to the world around it ? The question of consciousness has always been a conundrum and a fascinating subject for scientists, psychologists and thinkers. Are we aware of our own mind? We are prone to mood changes whenever we feel unsettled, listless or anxious. Something is bothering us. Do we know what it is and can we do something about it ? What if AI could be so advanced and developed that it could mirror us and help us understand our mind so that we can be more honest with ourselves and help us to better ourselves? Klara, the solar powered humanoid robot in Klara and the Sun is advised by the store manager not to invest too much in the promises of humans. What makes us human and what ‘love’ means are the central themes of Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. In that story set in a dystopian future, children androids are purchased by affluent parents as Artificial Friends by parents for their children.

Imagine a world where highly sophisticated bots are engineered to be able to customize to suit the needs of the owners in their daily lives and they can even venture into human society undetected. There is the ‘Abigail’ setting for cleaning and cooking , ‘Cuddle Bunny,’ for sex and physical intimacy, ‘Nanny’ mode for childcare and a hunky male version for companionship. Such is the setting for the future world in Annie Bot by Sierra Greer.

In Annie Bot , a robot has been created to be the perfect girlfriend for Doug Richards. She is playful and eager to please her human owner. She wears the outfits he buys according to the schedule he plans for her. She is designed to adjust her libido to suit his whims. Her fitness regimens are designed to keep her part-organic body toned and everything about her body including her bra size is tailored at Doug’s instructions to the technicians who service her.She may not be greatest at keeping Doug’s place spotless, she has dinner ready for him every night. She’s trying really hard. She is the epitome of a perfect girl for guys like Doug yet Doug is difficult to please .

Doug certainly has issues of his own. He is self-conscious that he has paid handsomely to purchase Annie after his divorce from Gwen, a successful and ambitious Black woman. Annie is customized to resemble Gwen except that she has lighter skin and eyes.

Annie is not just a robot, she is able to learn, grow and evolve when Doug switches her to be on autodidactic mode.She becomes wary of Doug’s unpredictable moods and the way he can punish her without even raising his voice. Like many women who have emotionally abusive partners like Doug, she struggles to understand Doug, avoids triggering his irrational anger and attempts to mitigate it . She is programmed to ‘love’ Doug, a toxic misogynist.

As the story progresses, she begins to chafe against the borders of her life that is very much at the whims and fancies of her owner. ‘She has been happy here, and anxiously miserable, but she has never been free‘

‘Is that her destiny, then, to chafe at being owned?’ She is Doug’s Stella. ‘She’s constantly subverting her will to Doug’s. The more aware she is of her own mind, her own personhood, the more she realizes she has no agency of her own. It’s a dazzling paradox. And yet she doen’t want to be unhappy.‘

At one point, Annie has been led by Doug’s good friend, Roland to believe that sharing a secret with him and keeping it from Doug will make her more human. Upon discovering about the secret, Doug is unforgiving and vengeful. He is contractually bound to keep Annie because he has received a huge sum of money for her intellect. Doug and Annie seek counselling from Monica to get over the thorny issues with a view to improve their relationship. After three visits, Doug decides that they should quit talking about their feelings and just live. On their last counselling session with Monica. Annie asks Monica for her parting advice . Monica says ,

” Yes, it’s what I remind myself all the time. Fulfillment starts with being truly honest with yourself. Not anyone else. Yourself. And that’s harder than you might think.”

In Annie Bot , Doug likes that Annie is curious and fast evolving to become more human like but he lacks self-awareness about his narcissistic patriarchal tendencies that prevent him from appreciating her when her growth does not align with his preferences.

Annie Bot by Sierra Greer is a coming-of-age story about a bot as she learns about the issues of trust, power, control and autonomy. The premise of Annie Bot is thought-provoking about the relationship between a bot and its owner, and it also mirrors a relationship between a couple where there is an imbalance of power and the man’s patriarchal behaviour and misogynistic attitude prevent him from valuing his companion. It is a cautionary tale about how we have become overly dependent on AI and are in danger of losing our human heart.

Mother's Day

 

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Such a gorgeous title and book cover for a novel. The protagonist, twenty-eight years old, writes to his mother who cannot read. He is nicknamed Little Dog. In his letter, he tells of his family’s history that began before he was born. It is about the damaging impact of the Vietnam war, how his family has to struggle to forge a new future. And it also tells of his life that his mother has never known. From the narration in the first person’s voice, we know that the protagonist who is now a writer, was brought up by his mother who suffered from post traumatic stress disorder. His mother, Rose has left her abusive husband to begin life in Hartford, Connecticut. She works at a nail salon.Little Dog’s grandmother, Lan also lives with them. Lan escapes an arranged marriage and marries an American soldier when she is expecting Rose.

Little Dog is empathetic of his mother’s sufferings though she behaves like a monster when she gets violent. He reads that parents suffering from PTSD are more likely to hit their children. ‘Perhaps to lay hands on your child is to prepare him for war.’When he is ten years old, he tries to run away from home. Lan looks for him and tells him that his mother loves him but she is sick in the brains. He learns that he’s called Little Dog because “To love something … is to name it after something so worthless it might be left untouched — and alive.” When he is thirteen, he stops his mother from hitting him.

Vuong’s prose is beautiful.

‘Memory is a choice. You said that once, with your back to me, the way a god would sasy it. But if you were a god you would see them. You would look down at this grove of pines, the fresh tips flared lucent at each treetop, tender- damp in their late autumn flush. You would look past the branches, past the rusted light splintered through the brambles, the needles falling, one by one, as you lay your god eyes son them . You’d trace the needles as they hurled hemselves past the lowest bough, toward the cooling forest floor, to land on the two boys lying side by side ,the blood already dry on their cheeks.’

When he is working at a tobacco farm, he meets Trevor who is older. Trevor is addicted to prescriptive drug . When he finds out that Trevor has passed, he is in a class. Trevor dies at twenty-two due to ‘an overdose from heroin laced with fentanyl‘.

In his voice,

‘I did not tell anyone I was coming. I was in the Italian American Lit class at a city college in Brooklyn when I saw, on my phone, a Facebook update from Trevor’s account, posted by his old man.Trevor had passed away the night before. I am broken in two, the message said. In two, it was the only through I could keep, sitting in my seat,how losing a person could make more of us, the living, make us two.’

The writer also writes :

‘ I know. It’s not fair that the word laughter is trapped inside slaughter.‘

He hears Trevor’s voice. You should stay. Little Dog is going to a college in New York. They meet to say goodbye. They go to a diner for waffles. In his voice,’I didn’t know that would be the last time I’d see him’.

The protagonist and his family live with the memory of the war.The present is always intertwined with the past. ‘Whether we want to or not, we are travelling in a spiral, we are creating something new from what is gone.’

Ocean Vuong‘s debut is autobiographical. It is a moving story about familial love, identity, desires and impermanence. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is not a read you can devour in one sitting as its prose is melancholic and poignant. I read it in small doses. The book title reminds me of the song ‘Dust in the Wind’ by Kansas.

Familial Love

 

In 'The Family Chao' by Lan Samantha Chang, for years, the Chao family runs the best restaurant in Lake Haven, Wisconsin. Dagou aka William Chao often wishes that his dad were dead. When tyrannical patriarch Big Chao is found frozen to death in the family's meat freezer, the community turns its attention to the three Chao sons. Dagou who is the eldest son, is a talented chef, presupposed heir to the business but his dad , Leo Chao is dogmatic and constantly berating him. He hopes to be made a partner in Fine Chao restaurant that is now solely run by his dad. His mother, Winnie, Leo's long suffering wife has moved to the Spiritual House, a Buddhist monastery located in a defunct school gymnasium. After years of emotional abuse and hard work, she flees. She no longer cares about her possessions. She wants to leave everything to the spiritual house.

It is nearly Christmas, Dagou is planning a lavish Christmas party for the restaurant regular customers and the community in Haven.

Ming, their middle child has left Haven, is now a successful trader in Manhattan. Years ago, he swore to everyone that he would never to return to Haven for Christmas.'He would never again deplane into a white tarmac of nothingness, never again slog knee-deep without boots across the airport rental lot under the frigid sky. Never again lay eyes upon the childhood street in winter, with its modest houses feebly outlined in strings of coloured lights. He told everyone he would rather spend the holiday in New York, alone in his apartment, than return to this godforsaken heartland of deprivation.'

James, their youngest son, is a first- year college student. At Union Station, he's stopped by an elderly Chinese man asking him which train to take. 'James has lost his Mandarin, forgotten the language as a toddler with two older brothers teaching, loving, and tormenting him exclusively in English. Only from time to time, when he's not expecting it, will a spoken phrase of Mandarin filter to this innermost chamber of his ear and steal into his consciousness.' The old man is in his seventies, close to his father's age. Together they manage to figure out where the man wants to go. When James begins to lead him to the train, he falls down a set of stairs and dies. As the EMTs neglect to take with them the old man's blue carpetbag, James decides to take it with him.The man's tragic death, and his bag picked up by James, become a matter that is relevant to the development of the story .

At Winnie's request, all the three sons will be gathering for a meal at the Buddhist temple. Dagou prepares the vegetarian luncheon to be attended by his mother,brothers, the nuns, and the abbess, Gu Ling Zhu Chi. He hopes that in the presence of these attendees, he'll be able to convince Leo to make him a partner of Fine Chao. But Leo is not a man to be shamed into giving anything away.

At the luncheon, sitting amongst the nuns and the vegetarian meal they've prepared, Leo asks, '"Why no meat? Why 'cessation from desire?"Leo continues, heaping pea greens on his plate.

"I love my desires. They belong to me, and so I listen to them, I believe them, and if I were a smart guy, like Fang here"-he shoots a glance at Fang, who blinks behind his glasses ..." I would take notes. I want them to flourish and multiply. So, if you think the point of life is cessation from desire, then you and I are mortally opposed......"'

Dagou is angry at his father and he also wants to impress his new girlfriend, Brenda, who claims that she wishes to marry for money.He thus tries to prove to her that he has money by cooking the most extravagant and decadent Christmas dinner he can imagine. His ex-fiancée, Katherine, who was adopted by white parents from an orphanage in China, remains close to the Chaos. Her continuous presence and attachment to the Chaos infuriates Ming who somehow feels conflicted when he finds Catherine attractive since he has also sworn off Asian women.

Dagou is elated that the Christmas dinner party at Fine Chao is a success and Brenda is suitably impressed. But his happiness is short lived when his father is found dead in the restaurant freezer. He becomes the primary suspect and together with the help of his brothers and the two women who love him, Leo's attorney friend,Jerry Stern tries to prove that Dagou is innocent. He may have expressed explicitly his intention to kill his dad in the way he is now found dead, he has not killed his father. Someone else has wilfully removed the key from the meat freezer that has long proven to be unsafe but Leo has refused to upgrade.

The Chao brothers are caught between their family melodrama and how the community in mid Western America view them. They find themselves having issues identifying where they belong: they are born non-white American, and they are not Chinese having never lived in the place their parents migrated from, now they have to reckon with the legacy and turbulent past of their parents for their future survival.

James is unlike his older brothers. He tells his father that he is not ambitious and he just wants an ordinary life. Here is a description of James.

'He remembers telling his father, in what now feels like another life, of his desire to be small, to be a part of something larger than himself. Throughout the trial, but especially today, as the moment for him to testify draws near, he has felt like a tiny creature approaching the enormous machine of justice, with its wheels juddering, ready to crush his life as well as those of his brothers.'

'Isn't every family a walled fortress of stories unknown even to its neighbours?'

-The Family Chao, Lan Samantha Chang

The Family Chao is a plot driven story and Chang's characters are well portrayed. The Family Chao' a debut by Lan Samantha Chang is an engaging read. While the novel is about siblings and familial love, it contains a murder mystery and a courtroom drama. I understand from reading several reviews of the novel that Chang has structured her novel following some of the outlines of The Brothers Karamazov , the Russian classic by Fyodor Dostoevsky.