Title: Botchan
Author: Natsume Soseki
Translator: Matt Treyvaud
About the Book: Fiction, Japanese, Comedy, Awesomeness.
My rating: 10/10.
I've just mentioned Soseki being one of the few Japanese authors in my bibliography that I could read. Well, this book is definitely one of my favorites - for two reasons.
1. It's awesome.
2. The translation by Matt Treyvaud is more than awesome. (the link is at the bottom of this post)
The story in itself is fast-paced, funny, full of intrigue. The main character is a teacher who stumbles into a small town school to teach maths and falls into the world of students who prank, teachers who intrigue and people who just plainly need nicknames which he offers freely.
The title, Botchan, means 'little master' and it's offered to the main character by his loving old maid, who is certain that he is something special and wonderful and a gift to the world. The reader might be less sure about that, since Botchan is quite flawed, but he happens to be delightfully flawed. There's a very human element to his story, while it still keeps a light-hearted tone.
"I have no idea why, but the old lady just adored me. It was a total mystery. My mother had gotten sick of me three days before she died, my father never knew what to do with me, and the whole town called me devil-boy, but Kiyo thought I was the greatest."
And thus the reckless boy who manages to get through college and then acquire a job continues to be seen through life: something that's not quite within the lines of what he's supposed to be, something a bit out of the usual. Reckless? Devil? Greatest? Non-compromising? Well, I was fond of him, I'll tell you that.
While my colleagues from the same literature class were wading their way through a rough Romanian translation, I found Treyvaud's version and loved it to pieces. It's fresh, it's readable, it sounds English, not English made to break in all the wrong places to imitate Japanese and it's wonderfully full of life. There's a free translation available online, but it doesn't hold a candle to Treyvaud's.
From the translator's introduction:
"I gave Botchan himself the voice of the Platonic Ideal of the Assistant English Teacher in Japan blowing off steam: profane and outraged, hilariously aggrieved. As part of that milieu myself, I decided that too much polish would probably work against what I wanted to do, so I decided to translate the whole book in a month. And finally, I did virtually all of the work while drunk."
And that, my friends, is what gives it its perfection in this English version.
You can get it here.
Showing posts with label comedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comedy. Show all posts
Saturday, 19 November 2011
"I Am a Cat" - Natsume Soseki
Title: I am a Cat
Author: Natsume Soseki
About the Book: Fiction, Japanese, Comedy, The Narrator is a Cat (and how cool is that?)
My rating: 9/10.
There were a number of writers that I was required to read for my Japanese literature class for my undergraduate studies. Natsume Soseki was one whom I actually enjoyed. He combines Japanese finesse with just enough plot, just enough twists and turns that you end up enjoying yourself quite a lot (especially when you have a good translation).
"I Am a Cat" is a pretty self-describing title. The narrator, of course, is a cat. But not just any sort of cat. The Japanese for that phrase is "Wagahai ha neko de aru", which translates pompously. This isn't a cat. This is a Cat speaking to you, you poor, deluded mortal. You have no idea who you're dealing with.
The Cat is witty, cinical, observing the world around him - which contains such people as the professor whose house he lives in - with quite a bit of grandiloquence and irony. However, make no mistake. This isn't Disney and it isn't about the Cat, or any cat's view on the world. This is a satire of Japanese society, of humans and their follies and of people generally take themselves too seriously.
There is no particular plot to be followed, but there are a few happenings in the humans' lives that interconnect and reoccurring characters that have a bit of fun poked at them.
I'd give it a 10/10, but it does seem to rant a bit too much at times.
It can be bought here.
Author: Natsume Soseki
About the Book: Fiction, Japanese, Comedy, The Narrator is a Cat (and how cool is that?)
My rating: 9/10.
There were a number of writers that I was required to read for my Japanese literature class for my undergraduate studies. Natsume Soseki was one whom I actually enjoyed. He combines Japanese finesse with just enough plot, just enough twists and turns that you end up enjoying yourself quite a lot (especially when you have a good translation).
"I Am a Cat" is a pretty self-describing title. The narrator, of course, is a cat. But not just any sort of cat. The Japanese for that phrase is "Wagahai ha neko de aru", which translates pompously. This isn't a cat. This is a Cat speaking to you, you poor, deluded mortal. You have no idea who you're dealing with.
The Cat is witty, cinical, observing the world around him - which contains such people as the professor whose house he lives in - with quite a bit of grandiloquence and irony. However, make no mistake. This isn't Disney and it isn't about the Cat, or any cat's view on the world. This is a satire of Japanese society, of humans and their follies and of people generally take themselves too seriously.
There is no particular plot to be followed, but there are a few happenings in the humans' lives that interconnect and reoccurring characters that have a bit of fun poked at them.
I'd give it a 10/10, but it does seem to rant a bit too much at times.
It can be bought here.
Monday, 7 November 2011
"813" - Maurice Leblanc
Title: 813
Author: Maurice Leblanc
About the Book: Fiction, Comedy, Adventure, Thievery, Disguise, Mystery!
My rating: 9/10.
Arsene Lupin! Gods, I love this guy. A charming, intelligent, moral thief who has adventures and whatnot. A master of disguise, of trickery, of drama, of jokes - and since we all have weaknesses, one of mine is tricksters. When I saw "813" in a second hand bookshop, I whisked it away in my backpack and ran home with it (after paying for it, of course).
"813" didn't disappoint. I'm afraid I can't discuss the plot, since any discussion whatsoever would lead to spoilers. There's twists and turns at every step and you never know exactly where you land. To give you a flavor of things, Arsene Lupin is accused of murder, which is the one things he never does. So with the police at his back, he rushes forward to find the real criminals and discover the answer behind the mystery of a young man and an important note saying simply '813'.
There's international politics involved and a bit of a French 'take that!' against Sherlock Holmes. For some strange reason, while his name in the original French (and in my translated Romanian) is Herlock Sholmes, in English they translated it as Holmlock Shears. Translators. Go figure.
So it's a thrilling, light-hearted adventure, cheery, fast-paced, engaging. The only reason why I didn't give it a 10/10 is because the style is somewhat sketched and jolted and despite my fangirl enthusiasm about Lupin, it kept nagging at me during my reading. But that's a small fault.
You can find it for free here.
Author: Maurice Leblanc
About the Book: Fiction, Comedy, Adventure, Thievery, Disguise, Mystery!
My rating: 9/10.
Arsene Lupin! Gods, I love this guy. A charming, intelligent, moral thief who has adventures and whatnot. A master of disguise, of trickery, of drama, of jokes - and since we all have weaknesses, one of mine is tricksters. When I saw "813" in a second hand bookshop, I whisked it away in my backpack and ran home with it (after paying for it, of course).
"813" didn't disappoint. I'm afraid I can't discuss the plot, since any discussion whatsoever would lead to spoilers. There's twists and turns at every step and you never know exactly where you land. To give you a flavor of things, Arsene Lupin is accused of murder, which is the one things he never does. So with the police at his back, he rushes forward to find the real criminals and discover the answer behind the mystery of a young man and an important note saying simply '813'.
There's international politics involved and a bit of a French 'take that!' against Sherlock Holmes. For some strange reason, while his name in the original French (and in my translated Romanian) is Herlock Sholmes, in English they translated it as Holmlock Shears. Translators. Go figure.
So it's a thrilling, light-hearted adventure, cheery, fast-paced, engaging. The only reason why I didn't give it a 10/10 is because the style is somewhat sketched and jolted and despite my fangirl enthusiasm about Lupin, it kept nagging at me during my reading. But that's a small fault.
You can find it for free here.
"White Teeth" - Zadie Smith
Title: White Teeth
Author: Zadie Smith
About the Book: Fiction, Comedy, Immigrants
My rating: 7/10.
I would enthuse wildly, but there's nothing to enthuse about. I would bash, but there's not much to bash. I'm pretty much 'meh' about this book. I expected more.
The first time I saw White Teeth it was in a huge ad on the side of my favorite bookstore. I looked at it, read whatever was written underneath and decided it was probably a serious book about racial issues, so I wasn't really interested. Incidentally, I was wrong about the first part. The book's a comedy through and through. But it's still about racial issues.
So eventually, when it was one of the options on my reading list for a Master's class and one of my colleagues recommended it with approximately the same enthusiasm I save for my own very dearest books, I decided I'd give it a try. The many favorable blurbs and awards were also in its favor.
First impression: the cover was impossibly colorful. Second impression: the way the book starts is light, humorous. Perhaps a bit too much, just like the colors of the cover. I like my books to have realism, to delve into the psychology of characters, to sparkle. I want to feel that things are real even when they're entirely unrealistic - which is what the first pages of the book entirely failed to do. Still, a deliberate lack of realism is a style in itself, so I tried to get over my disappointment.
The plot starts with Archie Jones, a 47 year-old man who intends to commit suicide by gassing himself. However, he is interrupted because he parked in such a way as to impede the delivery to a butcher's. Quote from the book: "'No one gasses himself on my property,' Mo snapped as he marched downstairs. 'We are not licensed.'" Archie realizes that he actually wants to leave, ends up at a New Year's party, where he meets the 19 year-old Clara, a beautiful black Jamaican whose teeth were knocked out in a motorcycle accident, and they marry in no time because she comes from a Jehova's Witnesses family and her upbringing gets her to somehow decide that she wants this man and she needs to marry him.
Mostly, the first part of the book feels like a rushed comedy. Imitated accents, characters sketched rather than portrayed, all sorts of unrealistic happenings, weird tics, but a humor that saves the day, I suppose. I can understand the appeal the book had to the critics: post-modernism, today's cultural movement, is intensely political. It just loves its minorities, colonials, race differences, culture clash and whatnot, sometimes to the point where the art trails behind the ideology. And if it's something this book has, it's minorities (religious, cultural, racial). There's Jamaicans and Jews, English and Bangladeshi, black, white, Islam, Jehova's Witnesses, scientists and just people off the street... It seems to have everything. For the first hundred pages, my question was just "Why?" The plot was contrived, the characters flat, everything essentially seemed to be there just to make the cultural clash humor go on.
Later, however, Smith starts to get into it. Her characters gain some weight, some greater motivation, some personality. Not a lot, mind you. Just enough so they can function as people and you can understand their motivation and their decisions. You can feel life seeping into these people, mostly when the second generation - Archie's daughter and his best friend's twin sons - come into play. The characters start bouncing off on each other in all sorts of ways, children get 'adopted' by other parents, while those parents tend to ignore their own offspring, there's a generation clash, much sexuality that is hard to handle (not that we ever get to actually feel it, but just observe its effects on the characters) and a ton of problems that spring everywhere, which are handled not in the best of ways.
Overall, however, the book doesn't do it for me. The characters are mostly observed from the outside, like in family photos, not really seen from the inside. The plot seems to exist on and off, to have no real point in existing. Even though in the last pages somebody gets shot, there's no real climax, no ending.
...meh. I'm too disappointed and neutral about it to come up with anything more interesting to say...
You can get it here.
Author: Zadie Smith
About the Book: Fiction, Comedy, Immigrants
My rating: 7/10.
I would enthuse wildly, but there's nothing to enthuse about. I would bash, but there's not much to bash. I'm pretty much 'meh' about this book. I expected more.
The first time I saw White Teeth it was in a huge ad on the side of my favorite bookstore. I looked at it, read whatever was written underneath and decided it was probably a serious book about racial issues, so I wasn't really interested. Incidentally, I was wrong about the first part. The book's a comedy through and through. But it's still about racial issues.
So eventually, when it was one of the options on my reading list for a Master's class and one of my colleagues recommended it with approximately the same enthusiasm I save for my own very dearest books, I decided I'd give it a try. The many favorable blurbs and awards were also in its favor.
First impression: the cover was impossibly colorful. Second impression: the way the book starts is light, humorous. Perhaps a bit too much, just like the colors of the cover. I like my books to have realism, to delve into the psychology of characters, to sparkle. I want to feel that things are real even when they're entirely unrealistic - which is what the first pages of the book entirely failed to do. Still, a deliberate lack of realism is a style in itself, so I tried to get over my disappointment.
The plot starts with Archie Jones, a 47 year-old man who intends to commit suicide by gassing himself. However, he is interrupted because he parked in such a way as to impede the delivery to a butcher's. Quote from the book: "'No one gasses himself on my property,' Mo snapped as he marched downstairs. 'We are not licensed.'" Archie realizes that he actually wants to leave, ends up at a New Year's party, where he meets the 19 year-old Clara, a beautiful black Jamaican whose teeth were knocked out in a motorcycle accident, and they marry in no time because she comes from a Jehova's Witnesses family and her upbringing gets her to somehow decide that she wants this man and she needs to marry him.
Mostly, the first part of the book feels like a rushed comedy. Imitated accents, characters sketched rather than portrayed, all sorts of unrealistic happenings, weird tics, but a humor that saves the day, I suppose. I can understand the appeal the book had to the critics: post-modernism, today's cultural movement, is intensely political. It just loves its minorities, colonials, race differences, culture clash and whatnot, sometimes to the point where the art trails behind the ideology. And if it's something this book has, it's minorities (religious, cultural, racial). There's Jamaicans and Jews, English and Bangladeshi, black, white, Islam, Jehova's Witnesses, scientists and just people off the street... It seems to have everything. For the first hundred pages, my question was just "Why?" The plot was contrived, the characters flat, everything essentially seemed to be there just to make the cultural clash humor go on.
Later, however, Smith starts to get into it. Her characters gain some weight, some greater motivation, some personality. Not a lot, mind you. Just enough so they can function as people and you can understand their motivation and their decisions. You can feel life seeping into these people, mostly when the second generation - Archie's daughter and his best friend's twin sons - come into play. The characters start bouncing off on each other in all sorts of ways, children get 'adopted' by other parents, while those parents tend to ignore their own offspring, there's a generation clash, much sexuality that is hard to handle (not that we ever get to actually feel it, but just observe its effects on the characters) and a ton of problems that spring everywhere, which are handled not in the best of ways.
Overall, however, the book doesn't do it for me. The characters are mostly observed from the outside, like in family photos, not really seen from the inside. The plot seems to exist on and off, to have no real point in existing. Even though in the last pages somebody gets shot, there's no real climax, no ending.
...meh. I'm too disappointed and neutral about it to come up with anything more interesting to say...
You can get it here.
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