Hear the Wind Sing – Haruki Murakami (Japanese)

This will be a short review for two reasons: the novel was short and reading it was as easy as eating a bag of potato chips. The unnamed narrator is spending his last eighteen days before returning to college. He talks with his friend Rat, he gets halfheartedly involved with a girl who has four fingers, he drinks a lot of beer. Though his aimlessness may depict youthful ennui, it could also reflect an author with no purpose in mind. Supporting the latter theory are the many pages devoted to filler: long spiels from a radio DJ, lyrics of American pop tunes (“I wish they all could be California girls”), the life story of a dead novelist. In a two page “sequel” the narrator jumps ahead in time: at age twenty-nine he’s married, and he and his wife like Sam Peckinpah movies. And that’s about it. He says, “If someone asked me if I was happy, I guess I would have to say yes. Dreams are like that in the end.” I guess they are (whatever that means). This was Murakami’s first novel; he would go on to have international success. Though I haven’t been able to get into his more ambitious work, I enjoyed this. But if you put a bag of potato chips in front of me, I’d enjoy that too. Both are made up of empty calories, and though the novel has a sprinkling of ambiguity (to suggest deep mysteries hidden beneath the surface), that doesn’t slow down consumption. In his Introduction Murakami notes how “very easy” the novel had been to write and how little it meant to him; after he sent it out, he completely forgot about it. If it hadn’t been short-listed for a prize, he “most likely would have never written another novel. Life is strange.” Yes, it is strange. Some writers are committed, work extremely hard, and care deeply about getting even a shred of recognition.

Home Is the Hunter – Gontran de Poncins (French)

That this book fails is a shame, because it has a unique main character and a story that was worth telling. Jean is a cook on an estate; he sees his purpose in life as serving, and that includes keeping up the entire house and the grounds. This is an endless task, but he does it both lovingly and with vigor (he attacks a staircase with steel wool and wax, not content until each step glows). He can show love and kindness to the Monsieur and Madame, but to others (even his wife) he has no feelings. Jean is fecund, earthy, more of a creature (a hare, a carp, a beetle) or a thing (the waters of the lake, leaves, moss) than a man. His bond with nature is spiritual; that he’s an expert hunter is no contradiction, for do not all creatures kill in order to live? When Poncins presents these ideas simply, he’s effective: “For him, to Serve was everything. For forty years he had lived, magnified, lifted above himself by this one idea. There are people who in order to realize their greatness need a battlefield. He had found it in a kitchen.” Good, right? With a deft touch, Poncins said what was needed. But far too often he unloads a mass of verbiage that buries his point; the death of the Madame takes up seven pages, and becomes a meditation involving Nobility, Eternity, God. I won’t go into the plot; suffice to say it’s a tragic one and involves the loss of the old values. If Poncins had stuck to people and events this could have been excellent; instead, his ponderous etudes made it an ordeal to read. I continued to the end because I had admired two books by him. Kabloona is an account of his stay with the Eskimoes; Father Sets the Pace is a biography. In both he found the perfect approach which would serve his subject. But with Home Is the Hunter he uses his inarticulate main character, a man the color of the earth, to philosophize, and he does it in prose that is purple.

Polyglots – William Gerhardie
I liked this author’s first novel, Futility, but it had its faults, the major one being that it was futile to wait for something to happen. I hoped that in his second outing he would offer more than aimless people carrying on aimlessly. But – alas! – early on the narrator describes the book we are reading: “The next story I write will be a tragedy of people who imagine that certain things will happen: they imagine, and their drama is a drama of imagining. Actually, nothing happens.” This is a youthful affectation, and it has its pitfalls. Without a coherent plot Gerhardie needed a constant influx of new blood; midway through an already overpopulated novel we come to a chapter entitled “More Polyglots,” followed by “And Still More Polyglots” and then “A Nest of Polyglots.” I was reminded of a scene in a Marx Brothers film where people crowd into a closet until it’s stuffed to the point where it bursts and everyone comes spilling out. But there’s no bursting in this book; the continuous idiosyncratic chatter of eccentrics became tiresome, and when I quit reading it was with no regrets. The Neversink Library edition has rave reviews from the likes of Anthony Powell, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and C. P. Snow. In 1925, at the age of twenty-nine, the author became the toast of London’s literary world; in his introduction Michael Holroyd writes that “At Oxford, the book became the young man’s bible.” Yet, in Gerhardie’s words, it brought in “something equivalent, in terms of royalties, to nothing.” He would live to age eighty-two; at his death in 1977 he was impoverished and seldom left his apartment. One wonders where his band of admirers were. Gerhardie has a streak of cynicism that, it turns out, was justified. A characters in Polyglots muses, “ How strange: people meet, and then part, then write letters, grow tired of that, forget – and then die.”

The Tenth Man – Graham Greene
In his Introduction Greene describes how, in 1983, he learned of the existence of what he recalled to be an outline for a film he had written in 1948 (the same year he did The Third Man). In going through an old diary he came across a synopsis of the plot: “A decimation order. Ten men in prison draw lots with matches. A rich man draws the longest match. Offers all his money to anyone who will take his place. One, for the sake of his family, agrees. Later, when he is released, the former rich man visits anonymously the family who possess his money, he without anything but his life. . . .” When Greene was sent the script he was surprised to receive “not two pages of outline but a complete short novel of 30,000 words.” He found this forgotten story to be “very readable.” It is, despite a few problems. In the prison section there’s much ado about a cheap alarm clock and an expensive watch; they show differing times, and the owners have a dispute about which is accurate; in the second section the watches play no part. Also, after those four dots in the original synopsis, Greene waffled on where to take his premise. His tendency to delve into moral conundrums is out-of-place, and the villain who makes a late arrival is weak. If Greene recognized these defects, at age eighty he couldn’t be expected to rework something he had done thirty-five years ago. So the book stands as an intriguing idea that doesn’t quite come off.

A Time to Kill - Ennio Flaiano (Italian)

This novel was published in the USA under the title The Short Cut, which I prefer. If only the young lieutenant hadn’t taken the short cut through the Abyssinian bush. If only he hadn’t come across the native girl bathing alone in a pool. But he does, and I was drawn with him into a nightmarish vortex. I followed his thinking, I accepted his baffling actions because they were what someone driven beyond the brink – eventually into madness – would do. The ending is enigmatic; he’s suddenly (miraculously) free of all entanglements. But . . . no, it’s not that simple. He’ll never be free; you don’t free yourself from your inner demons so easily. The novel is filled with ambiguities. Although the events described are comprehensible and scenes have the substance of reality, I was often – while feeling complicity with the lieutenant – perplexed. I even wondered if the events related in the first person really happened the way they were presented. Flaiano provokes those kinds of doubts. All is inconclusive in this book. I only know it was an experience. Not a pleasant one, but an experience. *

Father Sets the Pace - Gontran de Poncins (French)

I wonder if the author read Clarence Day’s Life with Father. The structure of this book is so similar, even in the chapter headings (“Father Takes the Train,” etc.). Yet while Day’s portrayal of a family tyrant was sweet-natured, Gontran de Poncins’ father emerges as a man of overriding selfishness. He cares for nothing but his comfort and his horses. He insists that his every need (and he had many) be indulged to the fullest. Episodes are presented with a light, humorous touch, but the cumulative effect is to lay bare a man’s lack of humanity. Gontran’s father sets the pace in French society – that is, he’s the epitome of the cultured gentleman. He believes not in doing (accomplishing things of any sort) but in being (witty, well-dressed, etc.). His son feels an element of respect for one so self-centered, so sure of what he wants and so manipulative in getting it. Many times Gontran comments that his father never should have married; he also never should have been a father. In fact, he wasn’t a father, in any sense. This trenchant character study cuts to the bone. *

Apologies to the Iroquois - Edmund Wilson

An article by Joseph Mitchell called “Mohawks in High Steel” comes first, but after reading a few pages of what was a dry recitation of facts I skipped to Edmund Wilson’s section (which makes up 95% of the book). Wilson writes sedately, with no fireworks or attempts at creating pretty sentences, but he provides a personal touch and has the ability to recognize what’s interesting. He reports – with intelligence, fairness and clarity – on how the Iroquois are faring in the larger society. In the process he disposes of stereotypes. Apologies was written in the late 1950s; the Iroquois were making progress to assert their individuality and legal rights. At the end I was left wondering how they’re doing now.