Booky Ooky!

Edition 69 / Vítěslav Nezval ; Jindřich Štyrský
Twisted Spoon Press, 2004 (hardcover)
134 p. — translated by Jed Slast

Edition 69 was a six-volume series of works published in Czechoslovakia from 1931-1933 showcasing avant garde erotic writing and illustration. Spearheaded by Jindřich Štyrský, the volumes were kept from the usual distribution channels for restrictions by censorship laws, and instead the volumes were distributed to collectors and friends off of a limited print run. Of the six original volumes, two are printed in this small, hardcover book. Of the unprinted, volume two was the Marquis de Sade’s Justine, which is available at any bookstore and too extensive. The others (erotic poetry by František Halas, a selection from Ragionamento by Pietro Aretino, and a selection by Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Nougaret) were excused for various reasons.

What remains are volumes one and six: Vítěslav Nezval’s “Sexual Nocturne” and Jindřich Štyrský’s “Emilie Comes to Me in a Dream”, both with illustrations by Štyrský. These are supplemented by a collection of dreams from Štyrský’s dream journal, an essay on sexual art by Bohuslav Brouk of the Surrealist Group of Czechoslovakia, and a translator’s note with historical background. Both works are of interest for largely historical reasons, having been written by the founders of Czech surrealism in the 1930’s.

The Nezval work details a young man’s sexual awakening in a silenced, conservative society and comments on censorship, the naughtiness thus inherent in sexual talk and action, and how naughtiness is perceived in differing contexts. The story loses something in being read in our modern society, though. There is not too much shocking in Nezval’s tale, but from the perspective of 1930’s Czechoslovakia, the story must have been extremely racy and therefore revolutionary.

The Štyrský strikes a more surrealistic tone, eschewing concrete plot for a more poetic examination of sex, incest, and infidelity. It’s a short piece of writing, but it’s followed by a huge selection of dreamlike, collage illustrations, some more effective than others. Again, this part of the book suffers from being taken from its original context, but it stands better on its own as a piece of art.

By far the most interesting parts for me were the Brouk essay and the translator’s note. The note is the standard few pages of historical background that helps you appreciate the work that preceded, but the Brouk is an discussion of pornography consumption in a conservative society as an act of rebellion that colors the consumption in turn. It’s more complex than that, but I’d probably mess it up. Anyway, it really brought the collection together because it was written by the man who founded this movement, and this more than the translator’s note really demonstrated the impetus behind the art of Edition 69.

I understand this wasn’t my more thrilling review, but this isn’t a book to evaluate in the same way as some novel or short story collection, so I figured I was better off telling you what it was rather than how it was. So now you know. If you’re interested in what 1930’s surrealist Czech erotica might be like, give it a try. If not… well there’s really no point. But I’m going to recommend you be interested. It’s something different at the very least.

Confessions of a Mask / Yukio Mishima
New Directions, 1958 (paperback)
254 p. — translated by Meredith Weatherby

Yukio Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask turned out to be a lot more than I imagined and a little less than I had hoped. I initially approached this book through the lens of Japanese fiction. Knowing this was a book about Japan during WWII and having read the author’s The Sound of Waves, I had a certain set of expectations.

What surprised me is that I also found myself evaluating the book as a piece of gay fiction, which I hadn’t originally intended. I knew the book was about a homosexual man, and based on the title, I assumed he was keeping this hidden, but for some reason, prior to starting the novel, to categorize it in the corpus of gay writing seemed inaccurate and insulting. Inaccurate because it’s older and by a heterosexual(?) man. Insulting because — and this should come as no surprise — I hate gay fiction.

Within the first 20 pages, I had completely changed my mind. During the first 100 pages of the novel, I felt like Mishima was living in my brain, pulling forth memories I didn’t know I had of my own coming-of-age and sexual awakening. In other gay works, there is a lot of emphasis on sex, relationships, alienation, and violence, but it’s often superficial and always contrary to my personal experience. The first third of this novel, however, is about the protagonist as a child, and Mishima captures so accurately many of the confusing and also nonplussing thoughts that a to-be-gay child might have, and certainly that I had. A lot of what went on in the character’s head felt perfectly normal to him, though they were thoughts that would later set him apart from his peers. The fascination with masculinity, the mistaking of sexual attraction for aesthetic appeal, the natural disconnect between fantasies in the mind and what they mean in life. It was so similar to what I experienced, it was scary. These aren’t things that I’ve talked about with anybody, so as sappy as it sounds, reading this book made me feel like I wasn’t alone.

If you read this, though, bear in mind that the guy’s obsession with death and stuff was NOT part of my experience. It’s icky.

After the first third or half of the book, though, the protagonist’s experience varies drastically from mine, so I was able to bring my mind back to a more subjective place from which to evaluate the novel. It’s here that his story becomes intimately tied with his life in Japan during and after the war, and what the rest of the book focuses on other than his thoughts are his relationships with women and how lying about sexuality to the world inevitably led to tension and a great deal of self-deception. It remains a good book with that quiet, introspective style I’ve come to associate with Japanese literature, but it does get a little dry at times and somewhat repetitive. Every now and then I wanted to say “Ok! We get it! You’re conflicted! It sucks to live a lie. Now can we please move on?!” But ultimately, the book is still insightful and engaging.

One thing the book encouraged me to do was take another look at some gay fiction. I replaced a category in that mammoth 888 Challenge to include 8 books that I feel will span a spectrum of themes (and quality, I’m sure.) I replaced the category called “Professionally Relevant” because I figured you guys wouldn’t want to read about that boring stuff anyway.

The Woman in the Dunes / Kobo Abé
Vintage International, 1991 (paperback) [orig. 1964]
239 p. — translated by E. Dale Saunders

I have this goal–more of a hope really–that 2008 will be a better reading year than 2007. “Better,” in this case, is not a measurement of quantity of books, reading focus, or really anything having to do with me. It’s more an issue of the quality of books I read. There was a lot of disappointment in 2008, so much so that when everybody was saying how hard it was to narrow down a Top 10 of 2007, I couldn’t find 10 books that deserved to be on such a list. The Murakami, the Card, the… well I don’t remember now. The point is, we (royal) have to do better.

So far, so good. The Woman in the Dunes, which I finished almost a week ago, is a fantastic novel.

Niki Jumpei is an amateur entomologist. A bug collector. Yeah, it’s an odd sort of hobby, but it probably keeps him from murdering young girls or setting cats on fire, so just go with it. He’s also fascinated by sand, on which he has done much research, in part with hopes of finding a heretofore undiscovered species of sand-dwelling insect. Again my sociopathy-sense is tingling, but I have to admit it was these obsessions of the character that provided Abe the opportunity to, within the first 20 pages, convince me this would be a favorite book of mine with his lyrical, heady, and insightful style. On sand:

Because winds and water currents flow over the land, the formation of sand is unavoidable. As long as the winds blew, the rivers flowed, and the seas stirred, sand would be born grain by grain from the earth, and like a living being it would creep everywhere. The sands never rested. Gently but surely they invaded and destroyed the surface of the earth. […] While he mused on the effect of the flowing sands, he was seized from time to time by hallucinations in which he himself began to move with the flow.

The part omitted with the ellipses make this excerpt come together even better, but it was kinda long.

Anyway, Niki takes a couple days off work to visit some dunes and look for bugs. He needs to stay the night in the village there, so–and bear with me here–I guess they lowered him into a sort of pit in the dunes where a woman lived alone in her house. The physical layout of this house and the surrounding dunes was never clear in my mind, though this was the setting for 90% of the novel. This was actually a minor drawback, as I had to take it on faith that things happened the way they did. Though I suppose it’s fiction, so taking it on faith is the only way…

The point is, this was all a trick. The sand enters this house constantly, and it is the woman’s full-time job to shovel the sand into buckets that will be lifted out and discarded. She must do this because if the sand builds up in her house–her pit–too much, it will upset some sort of balance and the entire village below will be destroyed by sand. Again, I have no idea why this was or what this village looked like. The physics of the thing are totally beyond my grasp, so just go with it. Anyway, now Niki’s trapped in there with her to help her out because the townspeople took the rope ladder away. Ha ha.

I’ve rambled already. Basically, the book’s about a guy trapped in a sand pit with a woman. The entire book. A sand pit. Excited yet? It’s a hard sell, I’ll admit, but Abe manages to transform this strange plot into a deeply moving, intensely psychological, and non-stop page-turning study on this man and both his relationship with the woman and how he deals with his entrapment. It touches on identity, acceptance, adaptation, sexual politics, and most of all Niki’s struggle with himself.

And by “sexual politics,” yes, I mean sex in a sand pit. As if he wasn’t chafed already.

The point is, this book is exceptional. Had I read it a week sooner, I may have been able to eke out a Top 10 list with this at the top. As it is, Mr. Abe will have to wait until December for this illustrious honor.

I already read a lot, but despite starting this blog, I never feel compelled to write about what I read unless I’ve somehow committed myself to doing so. This is sad. SO, I’ve decided to commit to the 888 Challenge, which is large, but open-ended. I’ll get me writing.

It’s easy. Pick 8 categories. Pick 8 books for each category. A lot of this is to get stuff off my shelf. Some of it is to start reading stuff I REALLY need to be reading. Let’s see.

1. Books I’ve Been Avoiding Because They’re Way Super Too Long
   • Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell / Susanna Clarke
   • The Mists of Avalon / Marion Zimmer Bradley
   • A Son of the Circus / John Irving
   • The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay / Michael Chabon
   • The Dragonbone Chair / Tad Williams
   • The Tale of Genji / Murasaki Shikibu
   • The Name of the Rose / Umberto Eco
   • Infinite Jest / David Foster Wallace
2. Samuel R. Delany
   • Nova
   • Dhalgren
   • Hogg
   • Triton
   • Tales of Nevèrÿon
   • Neveryóna
   • Flight from Nevèrÿon
   • Return to Nevèrÿon
3. Getting Somewhere in My Serieses’ses’s
   • Superior Saturday / Garth Nix
   • A Storm of Swords / George R.R. Martin
   • Mort / Terry Pratchett
   • The Shadow in the North / Phillip Pullman
   • Death of Riley / Rhys Bowen
   • The Grey King / Susan Cooper
   • The Lost City of Faar / D.J. MacHale
   • The Opal Deception / Eoin Colfer
4. Japanese Authors
   • I Am a Cat / Soseki Natsume
   • Kokoro / Soseki Natsume
   • Norwegian Wood / Haruki Murakami
   • Coin Locker Babies / Ryu Murakami
   • Out / Natsuo Kirino
   • Spring Snow / Yukio Mishima
   • The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle / Haruki Murakami
   • Kangaroo Notebook / Kobo Abe
5. Nonfiction About Pop Culture
   • The Lure of the Vampire / Milly Williamson
   • My Wicked, Wicked Ways / Errol Flynn
   • Burton on Burton / Tim Burton, et. al.
   • Reading Comics / Douglas Wolk
   • Why Buffy Matters / Rhonda Wilcox
   • The Art of Maurice Sendak / Selma Lanes
   • The Anime Art of Hayao Miyazake / Dani Cavallaro
   • Slayers and their Vampires / Bruce McClelland
6. Professionally Relevant
   • Ambient Findability / Peter Morville
   • Information Architecture for the World Wide Web / Peter Morville
   • Don’t Make Me Think / Steve Krug
   • Microformats / John Allsopp
   • Designing Web Usability / Jakob Nielsen
   • The Nextgen Librarian’s Survival Guide / Rachel Singer Gordon
   • Rethinking Information Work / G. Kim Doherty
   • Designing Interfaces / Jenifer Tidwell
7. Small Press
   • Edition 69 / Vítěslav Nezval ; Jindřich Štyrský
   • The Sky Is a Well / Claudia Smith
   • Tony Takitani / Haruki Murakami
   • The Logogryph / Thomas Wharton
   • Eeeee Eee Eeee / Tao Lin
   • The Boy Detective Fails / Joe Meno
   • On Subbing / Dave
   • The Haunted Vagina / Carlton Mellick III
8. Books That Have Been Sitting on My Shelf For-Freaking-EVER!!!
   • Still Life with Woodpecker / Tom Robbins
   • The Metamorphosis / Franz Kafka
   • The Shipping News / Annie Proulx
   • The Satanic Verses / Salman Rushdie
   • Molly Moon’s Incredible Book of Hypnotism / Georgia Byng
   • The Life of Elizabeth I / Allison Weir
   • Trainspotting / Irvine Welsh
   • Memoirs of a Geisha / Arthur Golden

Ok, that should be 64. I like planning, ok? And you wouldn’t know it based on this blog, but I do read way more than 64 books a year. Maybe now I can start to prove it.