TWIB II-21: 2/18-2/24
Yes, I'm behind again. But only because one of these books was so gadawful bad that I needed some time to recover before I could confront it again.
1) The Woman Without A Hole & Other Risky Themes From Old Japanese Poems- Robin D. Gill
As its (quite clever) Japanese title suggests, this book may come as a shock to readers more familiar with the overly reverent tone and bland presentation in many volumes of Japanese poetry. In fact, from choice of subject onwards, this book flouts pretty much all of the established conventions, which is, in my opinion, a breath of fresh air.
"The Woman Without a Hole..." eschews the devotion to the Empty White Page found in so many similar poetry collections. No, a full page of text isn't as pretty as that single little verse floating all by itself in the middle of the page, but readers receive a lot more poetry with the former than they do with the latter, and if you're buying the book to read (as opposed to sticking it on a coffee table), I don't see how that can possibly be a bad thing.
The content is excellent, as well. Gill is certainly an expert on the form; the extensive essays and historical notes included with the verses provide valuable explication of and context for the verses--both of which readers will need to understand a form so predicated on allusion and brevity. But Gill also departs from convention in this as well--far from being just so much dry explication, punning, wordplay, and even unexpected font changes abound throughout the text. (The last, incidentally, is a technique used in some Japanese writing that I've always felt would make English writing much more interesting).
As for the poems themselves, Gill earns major points for including the Japanese originals, which would seem like the obvious thing to do in any serious book of translated poetry, but is something far too few authors actually make the effort to include. He also includes a transliteration beneath the Japanese text--another nice touch that allows readers to familiarize themselves with unusual characters or readings. Best yet, he keeps the untranslated verses in their original format instead of arbitrarily breaking them into three "stanzas," as so often happens in English language collections. This is, in my opinion, much preferable to imposing arbitrary breaks to facilitate "ease of reading." While most translators willingly admit that most verses contain ambiguous wording open to a variety of different readings, arbitrary formatting automatically prejudices readers toward one specific reading over the others, instead of allowing them to draw conclusions on their own.
Although Gill does break his translations of the verses into multiple lines, he more than compensates for the concerns I raised above by providing multiple translations of each verse--some intentionally more grammatically or nuance-faithful than others--thus conveying to readers without any knowledge of Japanese the multiplicity of interpretations possible for each poem. Yes, many of the translations are merely so-so, some downright groan-inducing, but a surprising number are transcendently clever and had me laughing as much, if not more, than did the Japanese originals.
The only complaint I can raise is that the book desperately wants for a good editor; it suffers from a lack of formatting consistency and the overuse of hyphens, but these are small issues in an otherwise excellent volume dealing with a much overlooked genre. This book will appeal to students of Japanese culture and language just as much as to hardcore fans of the form, and is definitely worth the reader's time and money.
2) Firefly Lane - Kristin Hannah
Firefly Lane is apparently Kristin Hannah's fifteenth novel, and given the "quality" of the writing contained therein, I shudder--shudder--to imagine how the earlier fourteen must read. Hannah writes at an advanced sixth-grade level, meaning that she can put together sentences containing subjects and verbs (and often direct and indirect objects), and that she has some notional concept of how elements like plot and theme are supposed to work. But dear god, tackling this novel is the equivalent of having one's teeth pulled, sans anesthesia.
Firefly Lane reads as if a thirteen-year-old girl, angry at her parents for some minor slight and convinced that no one has ever suffered as she is suffering, has set out to pen the saddest, most heart-wrenching story in, like, EVER, and "they'll all be sorry for they way they treated me after they read it!" Alternately, it reads like online fanfiction for some television series you've never actually watched: the characters are obviously well-rounded, complex, and likeable to Hannah, but convey all the dimensionality of a sheet of notebook paper to the reader thanks to Hannah's equally one-dimensional skill as an author.
One understands the copy she must have imagined for this novel: Firefly Lane is an emotional tour-de-force sure to entrance readers with its powerful depiction of the triumphs, losses, and enduring friendship of its protagonists. Readers will laugh, they'll cry, they'll revel in the warm glow of a sisterhood that endures in the face of all life's travails, they’ll blah blah blah. Unfortunately, Hannah can’t show a story to save her life, so she tells it to readers, over and over and over and over again. Indeed, what little development the characters display, they gain through the sheer stultifying weight of Hannah's endless repetition of their informed attributes. I'm hard-pressed to conceive of two more unlikable protagonists: one so passive and spineless readers will long to reach into the pages and smack her silly themselves, the other so obliviously self-absorbed it defies the limits of suspended disbelief.
As for the plot, it's as if Hannah got ahold of every episode of every soap opera produced in the last three decades, stuck them all in a blender, and hit puree. It's all here, folks: deadbeat teenage druggie mothers and the abandoned children who love them, date rape, parents who "love my friend more than me," May-December romances complete with "what could have been" bittersweet endings, wise mothers dispensing cliché-ridden life advice, best-friend love triangles, emotionally distant lovers, bosses, and children; war trauma, miscarriage, best-friends-forever torn apart by implausible misunderstandings beyond their control, gut-wrenching betrayals, tearful reconciliations, and a bonus cancer "tragedy" at the end that forces readers to grit their teeth and slog through over one-hundred pages of protracted deathbed scenes.
In conclusion, this book resembles nothing so much as a White Castle hamburger: you consume even though you know it has no nutritional value whatsoever, it causes mild discomfort to your digestive tract, and then it slides out and you forget all about it.
That will be all.
1) The Woman Without A Hole & Other Risky Themes From Old Japanese Poems- Robin D. Gill
As its (quite clever) Japanese title suggests, this book may come as a shock to readers more familiar with the overly reverent tone and bland presentation in many volumes of Japanese poetry. In fact, from choice of subject onwards, this book flouts pretty much all of the established conventions, which is, in my opinion, a breath of fresh air.
"The Woman Without a Hole..." eschews the devotion to the Empty White Page found in so many similar poetry collections. No, a full page of text isn't as pretty as that single little verse floating all by itself in the middle of the page, but readers receive a lot more poetry with the former than they do with the latter, and if you're buying the book to read (as opposed to sticking it on a coffee table), I don't see how that can possibly be a bad thing.
The content is excellent, as well. Gill is certainly an expert on the form; the extensive essays and historical notes included with the verses provide valuable explication of and context for the verses--both of which readers will need to understand a form so predicated on allusion and brevity. But Gill also departs from convention in this as well--far from being just so much dry explication, punning, wordplay, and even unexpected font changes abound throughout the text. (The last, incidentally, is a technique used in some Japanese writing that I've always felt would make English writing much more interesting).
As for the poems themselves, Gill earns major points for including the Japanese originals, which would seem like the obvious thing to do in any serious book of translated poetry, but is something far too few authors actually make the effort to include. He also includes a transliteration beneath the Japanese text--another nice touch that allows readers to familiarize themselves with unusual characters or readings. Best yet, he keeps the untranslated verses in their original format instead of arbitrarily breaking them into three "stanzas," as so often happens in English language collections. This is, in my opinion, much preferable to imposing arbitrary breaks to facilitate "ease of reading." While most translators willingly admit that most verses contain ambiguous wording open to a variety of different readings, arbitrary formatting automatically prejudices readers toward one specific reading over the others, instead of allowing them to draw conclusions on their own.
Although Gill does break his translations of the verses into multiple lines, he more than compensates for the concerns I raised above by providing multiple translations of each verse--some intentionally more grammatically or nuance-faithful than others--thus conveying to readers without any knowledge of Japanese the multiplicity of interpretations possible for each poem. Yes, many of the translations are merely so-so, some downright groan-inducing, but a surprising number are transcendently clever and had me laughing as much, if not more, than did the Japanese originals.
The only complaint I can raise is that the book desperately wants for a good editor; it suffers from a lack of formatting consistency and the overuse of hyphens, but these are small issues in an otherwise excellent volume dealing with a much overlooked genre. This book will appeal to students of Japanese culture and language just as much as to hardcore fans of the form, and is definitely worth the reader's time and money.
2) Firefly Lane - Kristin Hannah
Firefly Lane is apparently Kristin Hannah's fifteenth novel, and given the "quality" of the writing contained therein, I shudder--shudder--to imagine how the earlier fourteen must read. Hannah writes at an advanced sixth-grade level, meaning that she can put together sentences containing subjects and verbs (and often direct and indirect objects), and that she has some notional concept of how elements like plot and theme are supposed to work. But dear god, tackling this novel is the equivalent of having one's teeth pulled, sans anesthesia.
Firefly Lane reads as if a thirteen-year-old girl, angry at her parents for some minor slight and convinced that no one has ever suffered as she is suffering, has set out to pen the saddest, most heart-wrenching story in, like, EVER, and "they'll all be sorry for they way they treated me after they read it!" Alternately, it reads like online fanfiction for some television series you've never actually watched: the characters are obviously well-rounded, complex, and likeable to Hannah, but convey all the dimensionality of a sheet of notebook paper to the reader thanks to Hannah's equally one-dimensional skill as an author.
One understands the copy she must have imagined for this novel: Firefly Lane is an emotional tour-de-force sure to entrance readers with its powerful depiction of the triumphs, losses, and enduring friendship of its protagonists. Readers will laugh, they'll cry, they'll revel in the warm glow of a sisterhood that endures in the face of all life's travails, they’ll blah blah blah. Unfortunately, Hannah can’t show a story to save her life, so she tells it to readers, over and over and over and over again. Indeed, what little development the characters display, they gain through the sheer stultifying weight of Hannah's endless repetition of their informed attributes. I'm hard-pressed to conceive of two more unlikable protagonists: one so passive and spineless readers will long to reach into the pages and smack her silly themselves, the other so obliviously self-absorbed it defies the limits of suspended disbelief.
As for the plot, it's as if Hannah got ahold of every episode of every soap opera produced in the last three decades, stuck them all in a blender, and hit puree. It's all here, folks: deadbeat teenage druggie mothers and the abandoned children who love them, date rape, parents who "love my friend more than me," May-December romances complete with "what could have been" bittersweet endings, wise mothers dispensing cliché-ridden life advice, best-friend love triangles, emotionally distant lovers, bosses, and children; war trauma, miscarriage, best-friends-forever torn apart by implausible misunderstandings beyond their control, gut-wrenching betrayals, tearful reconciliations, and a bonus cancer "tragedy" at the end that forces readers to grit their teeth and slog through over one-hundred pages of protracted deathbed scenes.
In conclusion, this book resembles nothing so much as a White Castle hamburger: you consume even though you know it has no nutritional value whatsoever, it causes mild discomfort to your digestive tract, and then it slides out and you forget all about it.
That will be all.