Alta Ifland's Blog: Notes on Books - Posts Tagged "novella"
Zero and Other Fictions by Huang Fan (Trans. from Chinese by John Balcom. Columbia UP, 2011)
Huang Fan is a Taiwanese author who is worth reading, but who had the misfortune of having been translated too late. Zero is a dystopian novella written in the speculative tradition and originally published in 1981. To predict a world in which the upper classes live in a sterile environment in which they often interact only through computer screens, books have been digitized and print no longer exists, and the planet is a global village led by an international elite with a dubious past, would be impressive in 1981—but not in 2012.
The book has other short stories, some with political references (“Lai Suo”) and others told with dry humor within a sophisticated, metafictional frame (“How to Measure the Width of a Ditch”). For all these reasons, this should be a captivating book, and yet, it’s not. As often with Chinese literature, it is hard to know whether the problem is the translation, the original, or both. The reader can tell that the writer is intelligent and (sort of) witty, but the humor is sometimes flat. And the stories are uneven, oscillating between the (desire for the) sublime and the ridiculous.
The book has other short stories, some with political references (“Lai Suo”) and others told with dry humor within a sophisticated, metafictional frame (“How to Measure the Width of a Ditch”). For all these reasons, this should be a captivating book, and yet, it’s not. As often with Chinese literature, it is hard to know whether the problem is the translation, the original, or both. The reader can tell that the writer is intelligent and (sort of) witty, but the humor is sometimes flat. And the stories are uneven, oscillating between the (desire for the) sublime and the ridiculous.
Confusion by Stefan Zweig & Kokoro by Natsume Soseki
Confusion by Stefan Zweig (Trans. from the German by Anthea Bell. Intro by George Prochnik). NYRB, 2012.
Kokoro by Natsume Soseki (Trans. from the Japanese by Meredith McKinney). Penguin Books, 2010.
I don’t know about you, but when I read I encounter synchronicities about as often as I do in real life. I happened to read Confusion by Stefan Zweig immediately after having read Kokoro by Natsume Soseki, and the similarities between these books are uncanny. They are all the more unexpected considering that the former is a novella published in 1927 by an Austrian writer, and the second a novel published in 1914 by a Japanese writer.
Both books have three main characters: the narrator—a young man who is a student; the narrator’s friend—an elder who, in Confusion, is the narrator’s teacher, and in Kokoro, although not a teacher per se, is the narrator’s mentor and is called (by the narrator) “Sensei” (i.e., “teacher” in Japanese); and the friend’s/teacher’s wife. Both stories consist in the narrator’s ruminations about a “secret” his teacher/friend seems to have. In both, there are numerous dialogues between the wife and the young narrator whose main topic is the mysterious teacher—an enigmatic character the young narrator attempts to decipher. Even the titles have similar connotations: in Japanese, “kokoro” means both “heart” and “mind,” and its use by the narrator appears to indicate his emotional and mental confusion regarding his friend.
But the endings couldn’t be more different, and one could say that they are emblematic: in Kokoro, the “secret” has to do with a shameful act Sensei had committed in his youth; in Confusion, shame is also associated with the secret, but it is—of course!—of a sexual nature (let’s not forget, this is the period when Zweig’s compatriot, Freud, is at the peak of his career). Another difference is stylistic: Kokoro is written in a simple, straightforward way; Confusion, on the other hand, in Anthea Bell’s masterful translation, is one of Zweig’s best stylistic accomplishments.
Both stories are rather slow and monotonous, but it is a pleasant monotony, like the purring of a cat.
Kokoro by Natsume Soseki (Trans. from the Japanese by Meredith McKinney). Penguin Books, 2010.
I don’t know about you, but when I read I encounter synchronicities about as often as I do in real life. I happened to read Confusion by Stefan Zweig immediately after having read Kokoro by Natsume Soseki, and the similarities between these books are uncanny. They are all the more unexpected considering that the former is a novella published in 1927 by an Austrian writer, and the second a novel published in 1914 by a Japanese writer.
Both books have three main characters: the narrator—a young man who is a student; the narrator’s friend—an elder who, in Confusion, is the narrator’s teacher, and in Kokoro, although not a teacher per se, is the narrator’s mentor and is called (by the narrator) “Sensei” (i.e., “teacher” in Japanese); and the friend’s/teacher’s wife. Both stories consist in the narrator’s ruminations about a “secret” his teacher/friend seems to have. In both, there are numerous dialogues between the wife and the young narrator whose main topic is the mysterious teacher—an enigmatic character the young narrator attempts to decipher. Even the titles have similar connotations: in Japanese, “kokoro” means both “heart” and “mind,” and its use by the narrator appears to indicate his emotional and mental confusion regarding his friend.
But the endings couldn’t be more different, and one could say that they are emblematic: in Kokoro, the “secret” has to do with a shameful act Sensei had committed in his youth; in Confusion, shame is also associated with the secret, but it is—of course!—of a sexual nature (let’s not forget, this is the period when Zweig’s compatriot, Freud, is at the peak of his career). Another difference is stylistic: Kokoro is written in a simple, straightforward way; Confusion, on the other hand, in Anthea Bell’s masterful translation, is one of Zweig’s best stylistic accomplishments.
Both stories are rather slow and monotonous, but it is a pleasant monotony, like the purring of a cat.
Notes on Books
Book reviews and occasional notes and thoughts on world literature and writers by an American writer of Eastern European origin.
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