Finished reading Temple of Dawn

Finished reading the Temple of Dawn: In response to a previous comment, yes, Mishima is weird, but weird is really a weak word for it. Yet on the other hand, in comparison to Tanizaki, and some of the less presentable parts of Kawabata, it isn't that weird. (The Japanese literary canon really seems full of strangeness. I wonder how this affects what's required reading?). This book isn't set continuously, but in two parts: In the first, Honda visits Thailand shortly before WWII breaks out, and meets the current reincarnation of Kiyoaki Matsugae, now a seven year old princess, the daughter of one of the Thai foreign students they met in book one. He then has mystical experiences in India (I really am wondering now if Mishima did indeed visit India), and studies Buddhist theories of denial of the atman (soul), while simultaneously looking up Western views of reincarnation. Fast forward to the post-war period: Honda has become incredibly rich by chance, and once again meets Princess Ying Chan, and becomes obsessed with her.

Notes mostly for myself, as I want to discuss the spoilery elements and you shouldn't read this book without having read the first two anyway. (It'll make no sense, and to be honest, it isn't as good as the first two).

( Read more... )

Started reading Devices and Desires now. Pretty good so far, although I'm a bit puzzled by the author's statement that s/he doesn't have the chops to write a seven book series. When you're writing a trilogy w/ the books at around 700 or so pages, aren't you pretty close to writing seven normal books? Unless s/he means that they would write seven books at 700 pages. I have things to say about this interview, also... But shall wait till I finish the first book, at least.

Devices and Desires

Am about halfway through K.J. Parker's Desires and Devices. Since K.J. Parker is a pseudonym, there is no way to tell which gender the author is, which explains why I'm going to use "they" or "s/he" when talking about the author.

The book posits a semi-renaissance/medieval world. There are two mountain kingdoms, Eremia and Vadani, which are bitter rivals. Vadani is rich because of its silver mines, and Eremia, while having impregnable natural defenses, is poor. On one side, both are bordered by a vast desert, and on the other side is the Cure Hardy, where various "sects" of nomads live, and towards the coast, there's the city-state of Mezentia. The Mezentines arrived on the continent awhile ago from somewhere else, and are organized very hierarchically based on their guild structures, and possess advanced technology, by which I don't mean ray-guns or automobiles, but the principles of precision engineering and metallurgy. This has made them economically dominant on the continent. The Mezentine socity is pretty uptight, to the point where they'd condemn a man to death for a trivial deviation from their Specifications. This man, Zianni Vaatzes, escapes and comes up with a complex plot to somehow once again see his wife and daughter, a plot which will apparently involve betraying his city (though in his mind it's the current leadership which has betrayed it), betraying others, and the deaths of thousands), which rather does show a certain lack of perspective on Vaatzes's part. (Well, that's part of it, after all. Zianni is a product of Mezentine society to the core, and the books are almost anthropological in focus, showing the differences in culture and mindset which govern the conflicts between the societies)

( more rambling, and there will be some spoilers )