It is always strange to come back to a place... To find everyone and everything different... It makes you feel...melancholy and far too aware of mortality. Mono-no-aware, the Japanese say: the transience of all things. Though sometimes it's just as disconcerting to stay in one place and feel the outside world change.
"it's just as disconcerting to stay in one place and feel the outside world change." --> this is very true. I can never stay in one place for too long without a small break. Otherwise I break.
thank you for the novel recommendations. i just ordered lots of truman capote books (b/c i've only read "in cold blood" and watched "breakfast in tiffany's" which i know is different from the book). i'm going to get the kawataba books next time. i can't wait. there's always so much to read and never enough time.
I couldn't resist. After doing some research on Kawataba, I immediately ordered four of his other books - Palm-of-the-Hand Stories, The Sound of the Mountain, House of the Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories, and The Dancing Girl of Izu and Other Stories. I held off on the two you recommended for now b/c I don't have as much time to read longer novels and thought the short stories would be more engaging for the time being. I also read a few negative reviews regarding the translations. Did you happen to notice that while reading?
I liked the translations I read. And the title story of "House of Sleeping Beauties" is brilliant... I really think you'll like him. Everyone reads Tanizaki's "The Makioka Sisters" and loves it, but I'm more a fan of Kawabata.
Samantha Dunn, "Failing Paris" and Elaine Dundy, "The Dud Avocado"... Worth adding to your list.
My first Kawabata--- "The Master of Go", read in my dorm room at New Haven on a cold autumn afternoon long ago...
Oh my god...LOL...Added to list. I want to read everything. NOW! By the way, LJ is being naughty! I deleted one of your comments about the cafe because it was a repeat but somehow LJ deleted BOTH of them. Sorry! Please comment again because I wanted to say that I love Vienna and I'm pretty sure I know of which cafe you spoke! I went there for my last birthday as a gift to myelf. It was heavenly. I walked all around the city alone for 2 weeks (don't worry, I slept in a hostel- I wasn't wandering the streets 24/7)!
I think I noted that my cafe in Vienna was the Cafe Landsknecht, there at the corner of Porzellangasse and Muellnergasse. I lived at Muellnergasse 5, Nr. 7. That's a block or two from the Freud Museum at Berggasse 19, and just around the corner from the Servitenkirche. I miss the Landsknecht, miss long afternoons there.
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Mono-no-aware. Thank you for sharing that. :)
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There are so many places I want to see--- to see the changes in the wider world.
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i just ordered lots of truman capote books (b/c i've only read "in cold blood" and watched "breakfast in tiffany's" which i know is different from the book).
i'm going to get the kawataba books next time. i can't wait. there's always so much to read and never enough time.
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It's a fact: never enough time for books...
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Samantha Dunn, "Failing Paris" and Elaine Dundy, "The Dud Avocado"... Worth adding to your list.
My first Kawabata--- "The Master of Go", read in my dorm room at New Haven on a cold autumn afternoon long ago...
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By the way, LJ is being naughty! I deleted one of your comments about the cafe because it was a repeat but somehow LJ deleted BOTH of them. Sorry! Please comment again because I wanted to say that I love Vienna and I'm pretty sure I know of which cafe you spoke! I went there for my last birthday as a gift to myelf. It was heavenly. I walked all around the city alone for 2 weeks (don't worry, I slept in a hostel- I wasn't wandering the streets 24/7)!
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