asakiyume: (miroku)
The Memory Police
Yoko Ogawa


Japanese title: 密やかな結晶 [The secret/quiet/hidden crystal]
Original Japanese cover


The English title, jacket copy, and advertising totally misrepresent this novel. Yes, the memory police are present and as awful as you’d expect; yes, the protagonist, a novelist, hides her editor away, Anne Frank style. But this isn’t a novel about a dystopia or oppression—those elements are incidental. It’s fundamentally about forgetting, loss, and (because it’s the ultimate loss) death. What does it mean to remember? What does it mean to forget? When people who remember interact with people who can’t, it’s very painful—we know this from real life—but it’s a pain we embrace. If you’re going down by the minute, if you’re being diminished bit by bit, it doesn’t mean you can’t love. There’s an awful lot of resignation in this book, but there’s love too, and some characters stoutly stake out positions of hope.

R, the protagonist’s editor, who needs to be hidden because he can remember the things that have disappeared, says,
A heart has no shape, no limits. That's why you can put almost any kind of thing in it, why it can hold so much ... My memories don't feel as though they've been pulled up by the root. Even if they fade something remains. Like tiny seeds that might germinate again if the rain falls. And even if a memory disappears completely, the heart retains something. A slight tremor or pain, some bit of joy, a tear.

To which the narrator replies, poignantly,
I don't even know what I should be remembering. What's gone is gone completely. I have no seeds inside me, waiting to sprout again. I have to make do with a hollow heart full of holes. That's why I'm jealous of your heart, one that offers some resistance, that is tantalizingly transparent and yet not, that seems to change as the light shines on it at different angles."

The mechanism for the (f)act of disappearing is a little nebulous. People wake up knowing something has “been disappeared,” but in many cases it’s up to them to get rid of the thing—as with photographs, or (unfortunately for the protagonist) novels. They feel a compulsion to dispose of the items—it’s terribly sad:
The new cavities in my heart search for things to burn. They drive me to burn things and I can stop only when everything is in ashes

And when things like birds disappear, people simply stop understanding what birds are. Sometimes they can be made to remember, but it’s an arduous process and it doesn’t stick very well.

Here I need to take a brief digression to talk about fruit. Fruit disappear about a third of the way through the book:
The disappearance of fruit was much simpler. When we woke in the morning, fruit of every sort was falling from trees all over the island. A pattering sound could be heard everywhere, and in the northern hills and the forest part, fruit came down like a hailstorm.

To my intense botherment, the protagonist continues to refer to fruit throughout the whole rest of the novel—when theoretically she should barely be able to articulate the word (we witness examples of this with “hat” and “photograph”). She talks about burning a novel whose cover has a picture of fruit on it, she regrets that she can’t get strawberries for a birthday cake (without acknowledging that this is because they’ve disappeared), she smells something that reminds her of rotten fruit, and finally at one point the characters are actually eating slices of apple. What the heck?

It’s hard to believe that an editor would let this slip past—if I’d been Ogawa’s editor, I definitely would have queried this—so my best way of understanding it is that the disappearances aren’t total—that just as birds continue to exist, so does fruit—but not in a way that is reliably accessible to the characters. It’s like how sometimes you can do some processes unconsciously because they’ve become part of muscle memory, but if you try to do them consciously, you get tangled up.

In that sense, the novel is brilliant in creating in you the ragged, tattered sense that losing memories, losing your sense of the world, produces in people.

In the novel the protagonist is writing, which has some parallels with the life she’s experiencing, there’s an actual malevolent agent, a force behind the diminishment and erasure that’s lacking in the protagonist’s actual life … and in the novel we read, the memory police play a similar role. They do assuredly make existence worse on the nameless island that’s the location for the story—but they’re not the cause of the disappearances. They’re a big problem, but they’re not the central problem, which, I’d argue, is this: if you can see the end coming—your personal end, or the end of the whole world, or both—if it’s coming step by step, ineluctably … How are you going to face it? The answer the novel offers is a moving tribute to pricelessness of personal connections and the strength of weak things.
asakiyume: (Em reading)
I've started reading Sofia Samatar's The Winged Histories, and it's got the same finely realized scene setting that I loved in A Stranger in Olondria, but unfortunately the first of the four sections in it focuses on a soldier, and the first part of the soldier's narrative is bloody and depressing in a way that I'm not really in the mood for. But I'm going to push on, because there's more to this section than the war part, and it's only one of four sections in the novel.

Here's what I mean by finely realized scene setting:
The chair was wrote with curious forms of dragons, dogs and rabbits and stranger creatures, goat-headed lions and winged dolphins. It stood alone beneath the trees, a little away from the house, covered with dust and dried leaves. Siski cleaned it off with the hem of her skirt.

--It's that last line: dusting it off with the hem of the skirt. Thinking to mention it, how vivid and present it makes the scene.

I also impulsively purchased the anthology [personal profile] sovay mentioned, Consolations Songs: Optimistic Speculative Fiction for a Time of Pandemic, which features writing by several people on my friends list, and I promised a good friend of mine I'd read N.K. Jemison's The City We Became, which is his new favorite book of all time. Since he also really loved Ann Leckie's books and Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time/Ruin, I feel like chances are good I'll like it. I also have some other things humming in the background that I keep meaning to get to--what's springing to mind as I type is Sue Burke's Interference, sequel to Semiosis, but there are many others.
asakiyume: created by the ninja girl (wanderer)
One thing that really struck me about Ahmad's answers to my interview questions was how similar his journey to publication was to that of people I know here in the United States--being a vigorous fan, joining writing groups, participating in NaNoWriMo, going through the pain of rejection, and then at last publication--in his case, with a new small press. But I'll let him speak for himself:

You are a student. What are you studying? Will you pursue work in the field when you graduate? Or go on to postgraduate studies? Or are you contemplating something entirely different?

I’m currently taking a master program in forest and wood technology. For a long time, I’ve been aiming to work in ministry of forestry, or CIFOR, or WWF, or other NGOs. I like forestry, environmental science, and I want to write more on the science of ecology and natural resources.

You're also a writer. How old were you when you began writing? How have balanced the demands of your studies with the demands of your writing life?

I was . . . I don’t know. 16 and 17? It’s probably around high school, right when LiveJournal started becoming a trend in my country, and Facebook begun replacing Friendster and Myspace. It was a chaotic, but totally interesting time. I started by writing my daily activities, blogging, you know, and straight into fanfiction when I graduated high school (the last Harry Potter movie was approaching, and all HP fans were. . . I don’t know, in frenzy? Making incredible fan arts, fanfics, stories, theories, and everything else. It was a great period. I feel fortunate enough being able to participate in all of those awesomeness).

Balancing demands of my study and writing life is actually a bit difficult. I manage by trying to be able to write anywhere I am. I started using my phone to write. I write in notebooks, in classes, in commuters, buses. I write before I sleep, after I’ve finished my homework.

What writers and works have had the biggest influence on your writing?

J.K. Rowling is the first. She literally introduced me into the fantasy genre. And I also learned a lot from her, on how building plot, mystery, thriller, and so many more. Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game introduced me to science fiction.

Stephen King and Neil Gaiman taught me a lot on how to use poetical, lyrical, dreamlike plot and narrative in a story. Their description and narration is top notch. Lovecraft and Junji Ito showed me how to make a twisted horror even more twisted. And so many more.

What novels or short stories did you particularly enjoy in 2014?

Bird Box by Josh Malerman is probably the best Lovecraftian horror story I’ve ever read. The Shadow King by Jo Marchant is just amazing--one of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read, second only to How to Think like Sherlock Holmes by Maria Konnikova. Stories, a short-fiction anthology by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, is great, with my favourites being "Wildfire in Manhattan" by Joanne Harris and "Juvenal Nyx" by Walter Mosley.

Can you speak a little about your novel, Spora? What is it about?

Spora is a pseudo-lovecraftian horror story about a boy who faced an ancient monster who spreads diseases, making zombies, and planting nightmares by using its spores. It’s also a bit gory. Telling you more than that would be giving a lot of spoilers away, though, sorry!



How long did it take you to write? Did it change very much while you were writing it, or did it stay close to your original idea?

Surprisingly, it didn’t take a lot of time. I remember started writing it in January/February, and sending it to publishers in late March. It’s short, less than 35k words, and it was cut here and there in the editing session. There are changes, some of them make the novel a bit different from what I intended it to be, which is a pure lovecraftian horror, but I don’t really mind it.

What was your publishing journey like? How did you find your publisher?

My publishing journey is a bit difficult.

Read more... )

What are your plans for 2015?

I’m currently writing two books, one of them has been signed to a major publishing house. I’m also doing a bit of translating works to help sustain myself while waiting for the royalties to come. I plan to publish more books, at least three, in this year. I plan to start a sci-fi series and write a horror novella. And I hope I can still balance my study (which is getting crazier by each day) with my equally maddening writing life.

What about you?

Me? I'll be writing too! And enjoying the adventure of finding new and interesting people to talk to online.


asakiyume: (miroku)
Last week I engaged in *three* cultural experiences, which is three more than I usually do--and *all* of them I want to share about. . . but somehow I suspect that won't happen, or it may be some time in coming. So here's a Cliff Notes version. If you read this, you will probably pass the pop quiz.

Lois Ahrens on the real cost of prisons

Lois Ahrens is a long-time activist against the prison industrial complex, who spoke a little about her experience documenting the cost of prisons. Her talk about bail reform particularly galvanized me; I'm actually going to write up a nonfiction piece on alternatives to bail to try to get these ideas in front of new eyes. Two relevant websites: The Real Cost of Prisons Project and The Pretrial Working Group.

Gerald Vizenor: Native American poet, novelist, and scholar

I heard him speak about researching his most recent novel, Blue Ravens, about young men from the White Earth nation in Minnesota who fought in World War I.



He dropped poems right into the talk, and even his ordinary speech was alive--he talked about troubled words, enthusiastic silences. He said, "It's difficult, always, to make poetry out of horror, but it must be done."


The Magna Carta . . . and some other documents

One of four extant copies of the original 1215 Magna Carta was visiting a [not quite] nearby museum, so we went off to see it. So that there would be some other things to look at, the museum had also gotten first printings of the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Declaration of the Rights of Women, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as a draft copy of the Constitution, complete with copyediting insertions and critiques.

The Magna Carta was written in what was described as a tiny but legible script . . . and boy, was it tiny! Except for the first line, which tall, lean capital letters before each word.

As for the other documents, one thing that impressed me was the IMPRESSION of TYPE on PAPER--if we could have reached under the glass and touched them, we could have felt the depressions where that hot lead was pressed into the fibers of the paper. So tactile. Not like now, when words are just photostatically stuck to paper, or laser jetted onto it.

More in dribs and drabs, if I get a chance. And now, back to work. . .


asakiyume: (autumn source)
You can choose between poems, novels, folklore, cool nonfiction, or nature, or--you can have all of them

poems


People who read this blog will no doubt be aware of the new zine Liminality. Well its first issue is out! With a lovely portrait of a mangrove dryad by [livejournal.com profile] haikujaguar on its cover and so. many. wonderful. poems.

Maggie Hogarth's cover
LIMINALITY


some of the poetic goodness under the cut )

novels


Just one: Prisoner, by Lia Silver. I haven't written up my review of it yet, but it's just so good.


some effusive gushing )

Folklore


Part one of a two-part introduction to mythic, folkloric creatures from around the world is up right now at the Book Smugglers. Cultures covered include Mexican, South Asian (Vedic based), Maori, and Filipino, as well as a look at dragonlike beings around the world, and the wonders of actual, real-world trees from around the world. A great read.

"A Diverse Mythical Creatures Round Table"


Cool nonfiction


I haven't read this yet, but I'm going to: Quilombo dos Palmares: Brazil's Lost Nation of Fugitive Slaves, by Glenn Cheney.



Did you know that there was a nation of escaped slaves that existed for almost 90 years in the 1600s in Brazil? I did not. I wonder what stories and legends must come down through the generations from that nation? I expect Glenn's book will help answer that question. He's written about the dispossessed farmers of Brazil, Promised Land, which I reviewed here, so I have confidence that this book will be an in-depth, thoughtful treatment.

nature

a leaf falls on its face--you have a hint at what that face will show, but you're not sure:


. . . so you must turn it over.



There now. Perfect.


And with that I leave you for a bit, my friends. Gotta earn some money. But I will drop by your pages and answer comments later today.


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