Last week, we began to look at Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes, specifically the first tale, Crooner. I cut the diamond in stating that I thought the narrator, Jan, was underreading vs. underreporting. Let’s look at this more closely. (whiny voice: Why is this even important?) For a deeper understanding of the story. Please settle down. James Phelan talks about this distinction in depth. To review, underreporting is when a character narrator does not admit to his narratee what both he and the authorial audience know about his personal interest. What does this mean? A simple example would be where the reader of a story knows that the narrator hates broccoli, let’s say because the narrator has reported in several scenes that reliable characters have said this to the narrator. You hate broccoli. But the narrator then says in his narration, “You know, I love broccoli.” The reader immediately wonders why the narrator is saying this, since it isn’t “true.” Underreading, on the other hand, is when a narrator does not consciously know—or is not able to admit to himself—what we infer about his personal interest. In the above example, let’s say the narrator has showed himself as being nauseous every time he eats broccoli. However, he keeps eating it and doesn’t seem to make the connection. Again, the authorial audience might wonder why is he doing this? Why can’t he admit he hates broccoli? (That’s ridiculous). A careful reader might say of the above examples that they seem pretty similar. On the face of it, it is difficult to distinguish between underreporting and underreporting. An effective way to determine whether a character narrator is underreading or underreporting is to link the unreliability to inferences about the narrator as character. In Crooner, what do we infer about Jan as a character? We know that he plays guitar in café bands in Venice, Italy, that he has a young and informal way of narrating. He’s different from other musicians he works with in that he plays guitar, a non-traditional instrument, (for the café bands) and he’s not Italian. He’s from an eastern European country and grew up under a communist government, raised by a single mother who has since died. He says, “Years later, when I was working in Warsaw…” and relates a story of buying his mother Tony Gardner records to replace those he accidently scratched as a child. “It took me over three years, but I kept getting them, one by one, and each time I went back to see her I’d bring her another.” When he spots Tony Gardner, “…I couldn’t quite believe it…Tony Gardner! What would my dear mother have said if she’d known! For her sake, for the sake of her memory, I had to go and say something to him…” Jan’s mother is his connection to Tony Gardner. “So I sat down and told him some more. About my mother, our apartment, the…records.” He can’t recall the titles of the records but describes the pictures on the sleeves, and Tony remembers the titles. There are some similarities between the two men. Tony is in a close relationship with Lindy, Jan with his deceased mother. Tony reveals he’s discarding Lindy for the sake of his career, Jan (we can infer) left his mother for the sake of his career and to become an adult. Eventually, Jan expresses disbelief at Tony’s coldness. When you love someone the way you’ve sung about, you stay together, he says. Jan is discovering that Tony doesn’t live the life he’s conveyed in his songs, he is much less romantic and more mercenary. (If Tony were an author, we could say that the “real” author is very different from the implied author. Heh, heh, heh). It’s disillusioning for Jan, who grew up admiring Tony, experiencing his mother’s love for the healing romance of the music. Tony isn’t like the “narrator” of his songs. This gives the story’s climax new meaning. Jan’s mother “never got out.” Tony wants Lindy to “get out.” Does this mean that Jan’s mother never got out of the romantic illusion? Persisting in tragic love affairs and listening to sad romantic music? Tony is apart from this and wants Lindy to escape it too. Yet, he serenades her with sad, romantic songs and she cries. Sobs—is this evidence that she hasn’t gotten out? Yet? Mebbe. Maybe that’s why Tony seems disappointed after the serenade. Hmmm. Tony is cold and calculating about his career. He tells Jan a story about tricking the maid when he and Lindy made love—tricking the help. He is tricking Jan too although Jan sees through it and is mad. Tony tries to project a romantic persona congruent with his singing, but he is not really like this and finally reveals it. The sardonic laugh. So Jan goes through a process of disillusionment that is more than just about Tony and his music; it’s about Jan’s whole life, the illusions he shared with his mother. But is he underreading or underreporting? Both I think, or it’s pretty hard to tell. Jan may not be admitting how he feels about his mother, perhaps out of guilt that he left her, perhaps still out of grief. Or he may not be aware of it—we just don’t know. He’s telling a story and wants his narratee to believe him, to accept what he’s saying, kind of on the level of: one time I met this celebrity, Tony Gardner, and he was “basically a good guy.” Is this denial? Or is it that he’s telling the story to the narratee and doesn’t want to spoil it by telling the truth—that Tony was a jerk. That’s what the story shows, what—best beloved—the implied author shows. I suppose that is underreporting. I think Jan is angry at Tony Gardner but will not admit this to his narratee because he wants to share in some of the celebrity glow. Let me tell you about the time I met Tony Gardner, the time I played with him, and he said I was pretty good. He was a good guy—that’s Jan’s story. Till next time. #Nocturnes #KazuoIshiguro #AlanBray

This week a new book, Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2009 Nocturnes, originally published in Britain and then by American publisher Knopf in the same year. It is dedicated to Deborah Rogers, Ishiguro’s long time literary agent. Nocturnes is a collection of five stories that Ishiguro himself has said were conceived of as a whole, like a piece of music with five movements. It is not a short story collection, as, to Ishiguro, a short story is complete unto itself, and these tales are not. Indeed, each story in Nocturnes has to do both with music and the close of the day but they each have different emotional registers. There is considerable humor. Two of the stories share a character, all five are told by a first-person narrator, who, as we shall see, is in each case, charmingly unreliable. On the surface, perhaps during a cursory read, the book may seem simple, almost banal, but I believe a closer examination reveals exceptional insight into we humans. The first section is entitled Crooner and is narrated by a young man named Jan who plays guitar in various café bands around Venice’s St. Mark’s Square. His narrative voice is casual, folksy; it’s difficult to give a sense of it without quoting long sections of the text, but I’ll try to give a briefer taste. “We’d completed our first full week outside in the piazza—a relief, let me tell you…” “I guess it showed in our music.” “But here I am talking like I’m a regular band member.” “Anyway there we were…” What I’m trying to convey is that Jan has a particular voice which is not the implied author’s voice. He’s a character narrator; he’s young and naïve. The story is told entirely through his perspective, but in a sense, it is given to him by the implied author who reserves a position of omniscience so that we the readers experience more than what Jan tells us. It wants the reader to read the story through the consciousness of a somewhat naïve young man. The story is more than this narration. What we learn is that Jan grew up in an Eastern European country, probably Poland. He was raised by a single mother whose favorite singer was American Tony Gardner. We learn that Jan’s mother is dead, but Jan is matter of fact about his life, expressing minimal regret or sadness. It’s difficult to tell from his narration how he feels about his life and his past. He randomly meets Tony Gardner who’s visiting Venice with his wife Lindy. This random coincidence—Tony Gardner sitting at a table where Jan can see him—provides the inciting incident for the story. It would be a different story if Jan had sought Tony Gardner out. As it is, the man who was Jan’s mother’s favorite singer “happens” to appear in Venice where Jan is working as a musician. Jan approaches Tony in the matter of a fan, and he and Tony talk in a friendly way. Tony’s wife, Lindy, joins them briefly. Jan observes some tension between the couple, Tony seems angry, but he and Lindy make up. After Lindy leaves, Tony has a proposition. He’d like to serenade her from one of the gondolas, with Jan accompanying him on guitar. At this point, the reader is being told a story by the narrator about something that happened to him. The reader may begin to form questions and theories about what may be going on beyond the level of narration. Specifically, is the implied author conspiring with the reader against Jan? Using him somehow, setting him up in a way that the reader may be able to grasp. What are Tony Gardner’s motives for this serenade business? It does not seem like he is being transparent with Jan. He says that he and Lindy are visiting Venice for a special trip, and that he wants to do something romantic to please her. Is this the truth or is there more? Jan is also curious. “It’s your anniversary, Mr. Gardner?” “Anniversary?” He looked startled. …then he laughed, a big booming laugh, and suddenly I remembered this particular song my mother used to play all the time where he does a talking passage in the middle of the song, something about not caring that this woman left him, and he does this sardonic laugh. Now the same laugh was booming across the square.” This is an interesting foreshadowing of what occurs, although Jan merely reports his association without making meaning of it. Jan is delighted at being asked to accompany Tony Gardner. “You can probably imagine, this was like a dream come true. And besides, it seemed such a sweet idea, this couple—he in his sixties, she in her fifties—behaving like teenagers in love. In fact, it was so sweet an idea it almost, but not quite, made me forget the scene I’d witnessed between them. What I mean is, even at that stage, I knew deep down that things wouldn’t be as straightforward as he was making out.” An interesting comment. Jan is referring to the moment of tension he witnessed between Tony and Lindy. He says the idea of the serenade almost but not quite made him forget it (as this story is past tense—Jan is remembering what happened) and that deep down, he knew that things wouldn’t be so straightforward. This passage accomplishes more than one thing. It cues the reader that the tension between the couple is significant and that, in the narrator’s opinion as well, things are not what they appear to be—although we don’t know if he is “reading” things accurately. Jan reminds me strongly of another Ishiguro character, Mr. Stevens, in The Remains of the Day—a story we have looked at in the past. Mr. Stevens tends to underread his motives, that is, he does not consciously know or is unable to admit to himself what his feelings are. This is in contrast to underreporting where a narrator doesn’t admit what both he and the reader know about his emotions. For Mr. Stevens, the result of this is that he denies his feelings and misinterprets other characters’ actions. Does Jan underread or underreport? Is he truly naïve or holding back on what he thinks? Jan and Tony Gardner set out in a gondola that night. They agree on the songs they will perform and then Jan wonders what he’s getting himself into. “To be honest, I was now beginning to wonder…what this whole serenade thing was about. And these were Americans, after all. For all I knew, when Mr. Gardner started singing, Mrs. Gardner would come to the window with a gun and fire down at us.” Tony tells Jan about his wife, how they met, the way that Lindy prepared herself carefully to meet and marry a famous man. He expresses some sadness and Jan says, “Mr. Gardner, it’s none of my business, I know. But I can see maybe things haven’t been so good between you and Mrs. Gardner lately.” He goes on to tell Tony about how his mother would get sad over a failed romance and then cheer herself up by listening to his recordings. “And Mrs. Gardner will hear us and who knows? Maybe things will start going fine between you again. Every couple goes through difficult times.” This is a bit of a leap for Jan, in that Tony Gardner hasn’t said directly that the marriage is troubled. Perhaps this, along with the association to his mother, is evidence of Jan’s sensitivity. The duo arrives at Mrs. Gardner’s window and Tony sings. Eventually they hear sobbing from Lindy’s open window. (Windows and doors recur in all five stories). “We did it, Mr. Gardner!” I whispered. “We did it. We got her by the heart.” But Tony doesn’t seem pleased and tells the gondolier to move them away. Jan feels mad at being left out of what’s going on—he’s being treated like the hired musician, the hired help, which is a major theme throughout all of Ishiguro’s work—the loyal servant toiling for an employer who treats her/him as less than human. Eventually they dock but remain sitting in the boat. Jan politely asks why Lindy was crying—was she moved by the songs or upset about something more? Tony tells him that she was crying because the couple will separate after this trip. Jan expresses dismay, and Tony explains that while they still love each other, Tony is trying to get his career going again and simply needs a younger wife. And he wants them to split up now while Lindy is still young enough to re-marry. I think Jan is underreading. Tony Gardner makes him remember his mother, how she would have sad love affairs and console herself by listening to Tony’s records. “She needs to get out before it’s too late,” Tony says of Lindy. Jan responds: I don’t know what I would have said to that, but then he caught me by surprise, saying: “Your mother. I guess she never got out…I don’t want that to happen to my Lindy…I want Lindy to get out.” Tony says he’ll try to come by to see Jan play again, but never does. Hmmm. I think we have to stop today. We’ll pick up next week on Jan and Tony’s story. Till then. #Noctures #KazuoIshiguro #AlanBray

Last time, we looked at the end of Kino and the way Kino the character transforms, driven to an extreme point by the experience of having his desolated heart trying to physically confront him. It is a painful transformation the story describes; it’s not as if, in the end, Kino becomes supremely happy running his little bar and listening to American jazz records, all conflicts settled. No, he winds up cowering in a bed in a seedy hotel. He’s in pain but it’s genuine pain, unlike many of his vicarious feelings earlier on. Some readers might read Kino—contained within the larger book, Men Without Women—and think, “Huh, this guy Murakami is Japanese but I’m not sure the story is tied much to Japan. It’s kind of a universal tale.” This take has some merit in that the theme of the destructiveness of ignoring your feelings—no, of actively denying them—occurs across many cultures, as does the theme of men living to their peril without women, something we will consider a bit more later. I’m no expert on Japan, but I’ve read a bit about Murakami, and I believe whatever the universal appeal of the story, he was writing about a specifically Japanese issue—the loss of identity. Murakami has been concerned about the loss of meaning and identity in Japan since WW11, a loss he associates with the modern Japanese obsession with work and material success. He is opposed to a lifestyle of materialism and acquisitiveness. Seen through this lens, Kino is sharp and clear, best beloved. The main character, Kino, is someone who does not conform with his peers’ attitudes. His first interest is professional sports, both as an athlete and then once he’s injured, as a sales rep for a running shoe company. But in both roles, it’s not so much the money-making orientation he seeks, but the beauty of running. Then after the breakup of his marriage, he opens a small bar in Tokyo, where he is uninterested in making a lot of profit, just in breaking even—not at all a common modern Japanese goal. It’s interesting to note that Murakami himself ran a small bar in Tokyo when he was younger. In any case, the fictional Kino is a maverick. Through a painful process of dealing with numerous allegorical figures and guardian spirits, he claws down to his identity, if you will. It’s a painful core but it’s him. Apparently, Murakami really wants his writings to help people see the need to have more in their lives than material success. ‘Kay. Yes, another lens here is that Kino is part of a story collection called Men Without Women, and this too is no accident. By my count, there are at least three women in the story—Kino’s wife, his aunt, and the scary lady with the cigarette burns—but they are distanced from Kino. His wife divorces him, his aunt lives elsewhere, and the scary lady? Well, have you read the story? She’s no helpmate. No sir, Kino is a man living alone without wife or children. Now, is this significant? Could it be that both men and women might live happily alone? Sure, I guess, but that’s not what Mr. Murakami (or more accurately, the implied author) thinks. I believe in this story and in the others in the collection, he shows that men living without women are diminished. Would he say the same for gay people? Polyamorous? Don’t know, this book is all about men without women. Apparently, Murakami really wants people to live as couples and families. But you might disagree with him. You might think the happiest, most authentic individuals are those who live alone. You might say, I don’t like the premise or theme of Men Without Women. That is probably a good argument for the value of a critical reading of fiction. It’s good to be aware of entities like the implied author, about themes. It’s important not to just assume that the author knows more than you do. It’s good to learn how tolerant you yourself are about opinions you disagree with. It’s good to be able to hold conflicting points of view in your head. Oh, stop. Too preachy. Because of the allegorical figures and the magical realism, Kino forces its readers to consider themes in the story. Kino himself is a finely drawn and sympathetic character; we relate to him in his struggles with athletics and the failure of his marriage as if he were real. He may have played a significant role in the dissolution of his marriage, but we are not shown that and are left with sympathy for a lonely guy. Other characters, like Mr. Kamita and the lady with the burns, are too one-dimensional to seem real. So we are limited if we want to read the story on the level of character and the emotions evoked. We have a hefty dose of theme, which is a reminder that this is fiction, that the implied author created this story and has an agenda about it. ‘Kay. Next week, a new one. Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nocturnes. Till then, you happy few. #Kino #Murakami #AlanBray

Kino sets off, leaving a note that the bar will be closed till further notice. He stays at a hotel, goes to the movies, hires a prostitute, all the while pondering Mr. Kamita’s message. As per Mr. Kamita’s instructions, he sends his aunt a postcard with no identifying information. What had he not done that had caused such a serious problem? Hmmm. He feels increasingly alienated, watching office workers all day from his hotel window, mystified by their seemingly meaningful lives. He sends his aunt another postcard, but this time, writes a short note on it—in defiance of Mr. Kamita’s warning. “I have to somehow get connected to reality again…(he thinks in justification)…or else I won’t be me anymore. I’ll become a man who doesn’t exist.” So, he recklessly seeks contact with his aunt because alone, he is nothing. He’s becoming transparent. He’s not developing; he’s wasting away. Then, apparently in consequence of writing the note on the postcard, he wakes during the night and hears a booming knock on his door. “Kino knew who was knocking…The door had to be opened by Kino’s own hand, from inside…It struck him that this visit was exactly what he’d been hoping for, yet, at the same time, what he’d been fearing above all. The ambiguous ambiguity was precisely this, holding on to an empty space between two extremes.” This passage refers to several previous things in the text. First, Kino’s aunt had told him about how snakes—ambiguous creatures—hide their hearts outside their bodies for safekeeping. Then, Kino feels powerfully ambivalent about knowing who or what is knocking. An empty space is referred to, echoing Mr. Kamita’s warning about how things can slip inside spaces left by people who don’t do the right thing. “I wasn’t hurt enough when I should have been, Kino admitted to himself. (thinking of his divorce). When I should have felt real pain, I stifled it…I avoided facing up to it.” Good insight. Kino tries to hide, burrowing into the sheets and blankets. The knocking stops, then resumes right outside his hotel window, eight stories up. ”Like the sound of a heart beating with emotion.” Kino is terrified of confronting his own heart, to see how wasted it is. He thinks of Mr. Kamita and of the gray cat, clutching at those memories to save himself. But the knocking persists. “In a small dark room, somewhere inside Kino, s warm hand was reaching out to him. Eyes shut, he felt that hand on his soft and substantial. He’d forgotten this, had been apart from it for far too long. Yes, I am hurt. Very, very deeply…And he wept. In that dark, still room.” Ultimately, then, Kino must confront the deep sadness he feels. There is something in him that saves him, it’s manifested in the story in several forms—the cat, Mr. Kamita, his aunt, and finally an internal vision of a warm hand reaching for him. Our friends the Freudians would salivate over this, I’m sure. In any case, I think what we have in Kino is the story of an extremely reluctant transformation. Kino begins with a backlog of hurt that he denies. He dallies with evil and pain as ways to soothe his despair but maintains an ambivalent stance, unwilling to commit himself till the point at which he reveals his location and is tracked down by his wounded, ambivalent heart. But then in the final paragraph, he saves himself by admitting how he really feels. (whiny voice; ‘Scuse me, ‘scuse me, Mr. Pretentious Bully. Last time you said you were gonna talk about magical realism, so when are you gonna do it?) ‘Kay. I’m happy you reminded me, dear whiny voice. The least intelligent among us will grasp that some things in the story seem a bit…magical. Let’s remember our definition from last time. Magical realism is a narrative strategy that is characterized by the matter-of-fact inclusion of fantastic or mythical elements into seemingly realistic fiction. I think it’s fair to describe Mr. Kamita and the cat this way. In any case, Kino knows little about them except for the ways they affect him, they are one-dimensional characters who try to protect him from danger. We’ve talked about how Mr. Kamita appears to be an allegorical character, a character who refers to a larger theme or to the idea of being a guardian. Indeed, there is plenty of verisimilitude in Kino, plenty to seduce us into the illusion of it being a “real” story. But this device of allegory reminds us that this is fiction and makes us aware of the implied author at work, shaping our experience of the tale. On the dark side of allegory and magical realism, we have the snakes and then Kino’s heart, which tries to get to him, apparently to confront him with how it’s devoid of any depth or weight—due, I think, to his maltreatment of it. Both the snakes and the heart seem to be unrealistic, magical things put into a realistic setting. A heart that could knock at a hotel door in the middle of the night and then climb to an eighth-floor window outside? Magical. Snakes, I don’t know so much about snakes. But the story’s description of a series of multi-colored reptiles appearing outside of Kino’s bar seems mostly fantastic. And we have the story Kino’s aunt has provided of how snakes are ambiguous creatures who leave their hearts elsewhere for safety. That’s magic, best beloved. Real living creatures can’t remove their hearts. I also said, in Kino, magical realism is used as a tool to find an identity, not to confirm it, meaning that all the elements—the cat, the woman with the burns, Mr. Kamita, the snakes, the heart—work to push Kino toward the climactic final moment in the story when he acknowledges he is deeply hurt. His transformation is to go from being ambivalent and uninvolved to feeling intense and genuine pain. The thing Mr. Kamita warned him about, the thing Kino did not do, was to care for his heart. He mostly did not do the wrong thing. He did not assault his ex-wife or her lover, he did not water the drinks in his bar, but he did not do the right thing in acknowledging his pain. He tried to deny and hide it. ‘Kay. Till next time. #Kino #Haruki Murakami #AlanBray

When we last left Kino, he’d just had the encounter with the woman burned by cigarettes and was shown feeling ambivalently about her. Ambivalent—please note that word as it will reoccur. The next scene after a paragraph break concerns Kino’s now ex-wife coming to the bar at her initiative after the divorce has been finalized. The couple has a glass of wine, and then, “The cat padded over and, surprisingly, leaped into Kino’s lap.” This is an unusual occurrence as the cat is generally aloof. Kino’s ex-wife says, “I need to apologize to you.” There is a sense here of the cat as another guardian to Kino, protecting him from pain and danger as Mr. Kamita does. His wife wants to talk about their break-up, but Kino is reluctant. “…he was starting to forget all that had happened back then. He couldn’t recall events in the order they’d occurred. It was like a mixed-up jigsaw in his mind.” As she talks about what went wrong between them, Kino imagines his ex-wife’s back covered in burn marks. What’s going on here? His ex-wife seems to be trying to have an ordinary conversation with him, to apologize for her part in their break-up. But the reader is cued that there is more going on. The cat acts in a protective way, Kino imagines his ex-wife as similar to the woman he slept with, a woman he thought was vicious. When we last heard about that woman, Kino was imagining that she’d return when she wanted to, have sex with him again and show off her new burns. It’s not a very sexy or positive image, and now he seems to be mixing up the woman he slept with and his ex-wife. Kino is in trouble, I would say. After a paragraph break, “Fall came, and the cat disappeared. Then the snakes started to show up.” Well, an ominous beginning to this section of the story. “The cat…was like a good-luck charm for the bar. Kino had the distinct impression that as long as it was asleep in a corner nothing bad would happen.” It leaves, and then the snakes start appearing. Snakes, we are told, are rare in Tokyo. After seeing three different snakes outside the bar in a week, Kino phones his aunt who tells him that “Snakes are essentially ambiguous creatures…the biggest smartest snake hides its heart somewhere outside its body, so that it doesn’t get killed.” She tells him how snakes are ambiguous, having both good and evil qualities. Kino is disturbed; we are shown another section of imperfect time that collapses several nights. He closes the bar, goes upstairs, wonders if the woman with the burns will return. He hopes she won’t; he hopes she will. “Another case of ambiguity.” ‘Kay. Some important connections are being made. Snakes, according to Kino’s aunt, are partly good and partly evil. Ambiguous creatures—Kino feels a lot of ambiguity; is he like a snake? After a paragraph break, Mr. Kamita returns and lingers till he is the last customer. He addresses Kino. “Mr. Kino…I find it very regrettable, that it’s come to this…you’ll have to close the bar. Even if only temporarily.” Kino is startled, to say the least. Mr. Kamita continues: “I really liked this bar a lot…Unfortunately though, there are some things missing…That cat won’t be coming back…For the time being, at least.” Kino looks around the bar, seeing nothing out of the ordinary. “He did, though, get a sense that the place felt emptier than ever, lacking vitality and color.” Mr. Kamita continues: “Mr. Kino, you’re not the type who would willingly do something wrong…But there are times in this world when it’s not enough just not to do the wrong thing. Some people use that blank space as a kind of loophole.” Kino responds: “You’re saying that some serious trouble has occurred, not because I did something wrong but because I didn’t do the right thing?” Mr. Kamita nods. He tells Kino again that he must close the bar for a while and go far away. Maybe hang religious talismans around the house. “Don’t stay in one place very long. And every Monday and Thursday make sure to send a postcard…you can mail it to your aunt…do not write your own name or any message whatsoever. Just put the address you’re sending it to. This is very important, so don’t forget.” Kino, surprised, asks if Kamita knows his aunt. “Yes, I know her quite well. Actually, she asked me to keep an eye on you, to make sure nothing bad happened. Seems like I fell down on the job, though.” Kamita says when it’s all right for Kino to return, he’ll be in touch. Until then, stay away. Whoa! I believe this is another instance of the implied author cueing the reader that this is not a story written in a realist style about a lonely guy in Tokyo who owns a bar. Mr. Kamita makes his guardian role explicit here and links himself to Kino’s aunt, who may be the ultimate guardian. What is going on here? Mr. Kamita seems to be saying that instead of doing the right thing, Kino did nothing, and that this created a space in which bad people could get through. The woman with the burns, perhaps? The gangsters? It could be that Kino’s aunt, worried about her ambivalent nephew who has a poorly formed identity, had stashed him in the bar for safety with Mr. Kamita and the cat as guardians. However, Kino can’t stay out of trouble. He gets entangled with the lady with the burns, confuses her with his ex-wife, and those darned snakes start showing up. The guardians decide the only solution is for Kino to escape into anonymity for a time. Kino lives a life without meaning and is tempted by violence and pain as a way to feel authentic. If one views human life as an opportunity to develop and become more fully alive, he’s not doing so well. In order to show this, the implied author uses allegorical characters and supernatural elements. The story remains essentially realistic—the snakes don’t talk, although the bad gangsters are one-dimensional, they appear human. The woman with the burns seduces Kino in a stylized, film noirish way but she doesn’t fly through the air or turn into a cheetah. What? My point is that Kino makes use of magical realism. In “real” life, we don’t have guardians with superpowers. (Sorry, we just don’t). Let’s talk about magical realism. ‘Kay. A narrative strategy that is characterized by the matter-of-fact inclusion of fantastic or mythical elements into seemingly realistic fiction. In Kino, magical realism is used as a tool to find an identity, not to confirm it. Ooh! My friends, the clock on the clubhouse wall says it’s time to go. Wait, wait! We want to hear about magical realism. We’ll talk about it next time. Till then. #Kino #Murakami #AlanBray

Kino’s bar is a modest success. We learn more about “the man.” “My name is Kamita,” he said. It’s written with the characters for “god” —kami—and “field” —“god’s field,” as you might expect. It’s pronounced “Kamita.” The first two paragraphs of this next section are in imperfect time that collapses four months. Then we have a specific scene. While Mr. Kamita is at the bar, two guys come in to drink expensive wine. Kino thinks they may be yakuza, gangsters. They cause a disturbance and Kino asks them to quiet down. They become belligerent and threaten Kino, but Mr. Kamita suddenly appears and calmly challenges them to “step outside.” Kino is quite anxious that Mr. Kamita will be hurt or even murdered but he comes back into the bar after a period of time and asks for a towel to clean his hands, refusing to say what happened. After he leaves, Kino remembers a situation where he witnessed a yakuza beating the tar out of two guys and imagines that Mr. Kamita’s encounter with the two gangsters was similar. This is an interesting device—Kino doesn’t see Mr. Kamita’s confrontation with the gangsters; instead, the implied author has him remember a possible parallel, a sort of mise en abyme, if you will. We will. There is a theme of creatures coming into Kino’s bar, the cat, Mr. Kamita, the two gangsters—who are evil and threatening and are disposed of “outside” the bar. There will be other visitors to the bar, both good and bad. Mostly bad. Is it too soon to speculate that Mr. Kamita is a sort of guardian spirit sent by someone to protect Kino? No. Mr. Kamita’s name is ambiguous, its pronunciation is ambiguous, which is why he specifies that it should be pronounced a certain way. But the meaning “god’s field,” seems to fit the context above. To expand on this, I think his name refers to a plot of land where a god’s shrine is situated. He is the field that holds the god, “he” is a holy place. Huh. Another layer is Kino himself. As the character narrator, he shows himself experiencing the situation with Mr. Kamita and the gangsters and his subsequent association with the fight he witnessed. But Kino doesn’t show much internal reaction. The two gangsters smoke, and Kino doesn’t like that. When the men argue, Kino decides Mr. Kamita is disgusted by their behavior and that, as the bar owner, he has to do something. “I have to get this situation under control, Kino realized, I need to step forward and take care of this.” Then as the argument escalates, he understands he may be assaulted. “Kino steeled himself for something bad to happen. Sweat began to pour from his armpits.” Then Mr. Kamita intervenes. Kino’s only shown reaction is to remember the incident from the past. What’s missing? If Kino had a normal personality, we could speculate that he would feel anger and fear at the gangsters, and then anxiety and possibly intense relief at Mr. Kamita’s intervention. And maybe shame at not doing more. But what we are shown is that after Mr. Kamita leaves, no more customers come to the bar that night and neither does the cat. Kino has the memory that helps him understand more about “a mystery.” So we don’t see a lot of internal reaction but plenty of external action. In fact, arguably it’s all internal. Kino experiences a threat and is protected against danger by a mysterious, perhaps non-human entity. Emotions are represented and/or allegorized by other characters. The next “visitor” to the bar is a woman. “About a week after the incident, Kino slept with a female customer…He wasn’t sure if she would be classified as beautiful.” This is a significant comment that reveals something about Kino. He isn’t sure if the woman would be classified as beautiful—the implication is that he doesn’t know or trust his own judgement. He relies on what he thinks others would think. Kino lacks an identity. The woman “had been to the bar several times before, always in the company of a man of about the same age who wore tortoise-shell framed glasses and a beatnik-like goatee.” The woman talks to Kino about their mutual enjoyment of jazz. One night, she comes in alone and winds up showing Kino numerous cigarette burns on her body—apparently inflicted by the goateed man. A paragraph break, and then “Kino couldn’t remember now what had led him to sleep with the woman that night. Kino had felt, from the first, that there was something out of the ordinary about her. Something that triggered an instinctual response, warning him not to get involved.” But he does get involved, taking the woman upstairs to his apartment after closing time (again outside of the bar) and having sex most of the night in what’s described as an intense, almost animalistic fashion. Hmmm. Another “creature” coming into Kino’s bar. Apparently, she and the goateed chap have been having S and M sex, but she then takes a liking to Kino and wants to display these signs of pain to him. Well, I suppose we’ve all had some wild days (and nights), but what’s going on here? The woman and her companion are shown as being “out of the ordinary” and repellant. Kino doesn’t know why he sleeps with the woman; he’s aware of an instinctual response not to get involved but does get involved. Our psychologist friends would probably say letting someone burn you with cigarettes during sex has a lot to do with wanting to feel pain intensely, as in wanting to feel authentic because you usually don’t. We don’t know much about the woman, but we do know that Kino himself has a lot of difficulty feeling emotions. His wife was unfaithful to him, and they divorced, but he doesn’t really feel anger or sadness. He doesn’t know what he feels. So he hooks up with a woman who (maybe) doesn’t know what she feels and acts it out instead. The woman returns to the bar several times, accompanied by the goateed man and makes no reference to the sexual encounter with Kino. “Kino sensed something vicious entwining itself about the couple, as if there were a deep secret only the two of them shared.” Kino thinks that sooner or later, the woman would return alone to have sex with him again and show off her new burns. “Kino didn’t know when it would happen but felt sure it would someday. The woman would decide that. The thought made his throat dry, the kind of dryness no amount of water could quench.” So he apparently is both repelled by sex with the woman and also obsessed by it. It’s notable that Mr. Kamita, Mr. Guardian Spirit Kamita, doesn’t interfere in this whole situation with the woman. You’d almost expect him to, expect him to give Kino some advice, or assault the goateed fellow. But there’s no mention of him in this section. Maybe he wants Kino to learn something. Ooh. ‘Kay Till next time, my friends. #Kino #Murakami #AlanBray

This week, a new story, Kino, a long short story written by Haruki Murakami. An English version of Kino first appeared in The New Yorker in February, 2015 and was subsequently included in his collection Men Without Women, published by Knopf in 2017. Kino was first published in Japanese in 2014. Readers may remember a similar process occurred with Jhumpa Lahiri’s story, Casting Shadows—a story written originally in a different language and translated to English, then published in the New Yorker, then published in English as part of a story collection. Nothing wrong with that, just sayin.’ The title has meaning, oh yeah. Dena speaks Japanese; what I’ve learned is that in that language, words in isolation don’t have much meaning. Everything is context but a translation of Kino that makes some sense in the context of the story is “wandering soul.” The story begins in imperfect time: “The man always sat in the same seat, the stool the farthest down the counter.” In other words, this sentence is describing an event which re-occurred over time. On more than one occasion, a particular man always sat in the same seat, a particular stool farthest down the counter. Please compare this with “The man sat at the stool farthest down the counter.” The fact that the man always sat at the same seat adds meaning—over time, the man deliberately picked the same seat on multiple occasions. He must have wanted to sit there, and the sentence—from the narrator’s perspective—indicates the narrator noted this repetition and made meaning of it. (whiny voice—Well, duh. Why are you making such a big deal about this?) We’re looking at technique here, best beloved. Why does Murakami start in imperfect time? I think because he wants to establish “the man” as a presence whom Kino must recognize. Many of Murakami’s stories seem to involve a more or less passive narrator/storyteller who describes someone he (usually a man) encounters and goes on to show the other person’s impact on him. Kino certainly begins like this, and the reader might think, “Huh, I’m reading a story about this guy who always sits in the same place at Kino’s bar.” But Kino takes this structure down different paths, as we shall see. (Are you going to go over every line? What a snooze fest). The narration is first person and generally past tense, which implies that the events shown have already occurred. And this, dear friends, reveals the presence of the implied author who tells the story. Heh, heh, heh. In the second paragraph, Kino switches to past tense and a particular event. “Kino remembered the first time the man had come to his bar…It was seven-thirty on a chilly mid-April evening, and the bar was empty.” For several paragraphs, the story describes this first meeting between “the man” and Kino. We already know the name or word Kino, as it’s the title. Now we learn that Kino is a human, that he owns the bar where “the man” identified in the first paragraph sat on a stool. And we learn that the story is largely told from Kino’s perspective. After “the man” leaves that first time, Kino “…glanced up occasionally at the seat the man had occupied. It felt like someone was still there…” Again, this is a statement about presence. “The man” remains present when he’s not there. In the next paragraph, the narration returns to imperfect time. “The man”—still unnamed—is observed by Kino becoming a regular at the bar, a regular who always orders the same thing, who says little, sits in the same spot and reads. After a paragraph break, we have a new section that is about Kino—not “the man.” It explains who Kino is and how he came to own the bar. It is not written from Kino’s perspective, more from the impersonal perspective of the storyteller. We learn that Kino wanted to be a runner but had to give up his dreams after an injury. He worked as a product rep for a running shoe company, excelled at it, but came home unexpectedly from a trip and found his wife in bed with one of Kino’s colleagues. After a divorce, Kino no longer wanted to work at the company. So in this section, we get a sympathetic portrait of Kino, a good fellow who has had some misfortune. After another paragraph break, the story explains that Kino has an aunt who wanted to retire from running a coffee shop. Kino offered to lease it, and his aunt agreed, she “…named a figure for the monthly rent, far lower than what Kino had expected.” Another thing we are being shown is that, whoever “the man” is, the story seems to be about Kino. He sets up a bar in what used to be the coffee shop and lives upstairs. He claims he doesn’t feel angry or bitter toward his ex-wife. “The most he could do was create a place where his heart—devoid now of any depth or weight—could be tethered, to keep it from wandering aimlessly. Kino (the name of the bar)…became that place.” A stray cat begins visiting; Kino feeds it and installs a pet door so the animal can go in and out. But the cat prefers to use the front door, just like the customers. We readers get a good deal of information here from the implied author explaining the background in summary fashion. Other writers might present Kino’s “backstory” as part of dialogue in a dramatic scene. A clumsy example might be that a customer at the bar asks Kino, “Hey pal, how long you had this place anyway?” and Kino tells the story. However, I think Murakami’s technique works very well. Much of Kino is dramatic scene, so the contrast provided by these background sections is welcome. As we begin the story, we have questions: Who is Kino? How did he come to run the bar? These are quickly answered. And amidst the background, we learn about his aunt and get the powerful image of his heart needing tethering—the first reference to Kino being someone who is suffering. As we will see, these elements become central. The question as yet unanswered, that the story must address, is: why is “the man” coming to Kino’s bar? ‘Kay. Till next time, my friends. I think I’ll take the whiny voice for a walk. #Kino #Murakami #AlanBray

A friend recently wrote that he would be interested in my thinking about Steppenwolf in light of recent mass and/or school shootings, as exemplified by the horrific Michigan high school killings. I had to do some brooding about this; it really “put me through the changes,” as another old friend used to say. I hadn’t been thinking of Steppenwolf in this way. Regarding violence, Steppenwolf is problematic. It depicts strong suicidal ideation, and then very realistically describes murder, although these are eventually recast as fantasy. There is a sense in which Harry treats real humans as chess pieces or toys, in the same way I believe some mass murderers have thought about their victims, de-humanizing them the same way the Nazis tried to de-humanize Jewish people, or certain Americans de-humanized African Americans to enslave them. If you regard someone as a toy, it’s much easier to abuse them. But does Steppenwolf promote this attitude? I don’t want to say this, but my answer is I’m not sure. Hermann Hesse was a pacifist; the book can be read as a protest against the mass killings of WW1. I think he would strongly condemn efforts to criticize Steppenwolf based on its encouragement of violence. However, I don’t think the book is appropriate for young people to read, frankly. I think it’s only okay to read it as long as you have a good sense of who’s human and that murder (and suicide) is wrong. Many adults don’t have these senses. I believe its (ironic) point is that if it’s okay to kill millions in a war, it’s okay to kill people in peacetime. I don’t think Hesse believed murder was ever a good thing, but without a good sense of irony, the reader may miss his point. In the Magic Theater, Harry enters the door marked: Jolly Hunting Great Hunt in Automobiles “I was swept at once into a world of noise and excitement…I saw at once that it was the long prepared, long-awaited and long-feared war between men and machines…On all sides lay dead and decomposing bodies and on all sides too, smashed and distorted and half-burned cars. Airplanes circled above the frightful confusion and were being fired upon from many roofs…In every eye I saw the unconcealed spark of destruction and murder and in mine too these wild red roses bloomed as rank and high, and sparkled as brightly. I joined the battle joyfully.” ‘Kay. Harry observes a scene of wild destruction and death—so far, he’s not a participant. But then he encounters his old friend Gustav and the two of them embark on a murderous adventure of ambushing and shooting the drivers of cars. “Aim at the chauffeur,” commanded Gustav…I aimed and fired at the chauffeur in his blue cap. The man fell in a heap. The car careened on, charged the cliff face, rebounded, attacked the lower wall furiously with all its unwieldy weight…and…crashed…into the depths below. “Got him!” Gustav laughed. “My turn next.” So far, I’d say this reads a bit like a description of playing a violent video game. It’s cold and the victims are de-humanized. Gustav remarks after the next murder. “…it is all one what our victims are called. They’re poor devils just as we are. Their names don’t matter…we do not kill from duty, but pleasure, or much more, rather, from displeasure and despair of the world. For this reason we find a certain amusement from killing people.” Indeed. And there’s no remorse, no consequences. Murder is shown as being an amusing game. The victims are not real. In what is arguably the climax of the story, Harry enters the last door of the Magic Theater. Inside, he sees a naked Pablo and Hermine, “side by side in a sleep of deep exhaustion after love’s play. Beautiful, beautiful figures, lovely picture, wonderful bodies. Beneath Hermine’s left breast was a fresh, round mark, darkly bruised—a love bite of Pablo’s beautiful, gleaming teeth. There, where the mark was, I plunged in my knife to the hilt. The blood welled out over her white and delicate skin.” Pablo and Mozart chide Harry for this murder, and Harry tries to justify it by saying that Hermine wanted him to kill her. Pablo ultimately transforms the dead Hermine into a small toy figurine and puts it away in his pocket. Nevertheless, Harry must face punishment for his crime; he anticipates execution, but the sentence is to be laughed out of court. It seems clear that the implied author’s intention is to show that all the scenes in the Magic Theater are from within Harry. He does not commit murder; he only fantasizes it. But is this so different from the way real mass murderers operate? A troubling question. Even more troubling is the way Steppenwolf is written, with beauty and lyricism. A pretty package containing poison that the reader must have an antidote for. Yet, I can imagine many fans of the book and critics saying, “You are reading the text in a naïve way. Steppenwolf certainly doesn’t promote murder. You are missing the point. It’s supposed to be all fantasy. Irony, my dear.” ‘Kay. I’m troubled. I can think of other novels that show violent acts. Madame Bovary, as an example, shows a graphic suicide. Does it make the reader fantasize about the romance of suicide? No, it’s horrible. The suicide is presented in a horrible way, and there’s a harrowing lead-up to it of despair. Does reading Steppenwolf make the reader want to shoot the drivers of cars or stab naked women to death? Keep in mind, each act is presented with an absence of consequence—but we all know there are consequences for murder, right? Did the young man who killed four of his fellow students in Michigan know this? Read Steppenwolf, please. It’s a magnificent novel. But be prepared to become uneasy about the questions it raises. Maybe that’s one of the purposes of literature. On a seasonal note, may all your end-of-year celebrations be joyful, best beloved. Till next time. #Steppenwolf #HermannHesse #AlanBray

Last week, I said, “Although it masquerades as one, this (Steppenwolf) is not a realist novel that attempts to show “life as it really is.” Steppenwolf is a story of supernatural events.” There was a lot of uproar about this, many audience members wanted to know more about my thinking in making such a dramatic statement. Well. A realist novel is “A type of novel that places a strong emphasis on the truthful representation of the actual in fiction. Generally, the realist is a believer in pragmatism, and the truth he seeks to find and express is a relativistic truth, associated with discernible consequences and verifiable by experience.” It’s a stretch and a disservice to try to jam Steppenwolf into this category. Why? Last week we talked about coincidence, albeit plotted by the implied author, and found a lot of it in Steppenwolf. Harry sees a sign about the Magic Theater, is given a little book that seems to be about him. He goes to a bar and the only empty seat is next to a woman named Hermine who quickly (ahem) warms up to him and says she’s his sister and/or double. After a later night of brooding, he goes into his bedroom and finds another beautiful woman in his bed. Okay, maybe some of these things have happened to me (I had to write the book myself) but in general these are not realistic occurrences, “associated with discernible consequences.” Anybody want to disagree? Huh? Huh? Let’s step outside then. (sorry, please disregard. Wrong blog). So, if Steppenwolf isn’t a realist novel, what is it? With brilliance, Hermann Hesse “played” with several other forms and genres in writing this book. It may be seen as allegory (more on this later), as a mystical/magical tale of an inner journey, and as a bildungsroman, a novel about a character’s development. And indeed, the structure of presenting the content of the book as a journal which is discovered after the departure of its author refers to Werther by Goethe, who as we know, figures prominently in Steppenwolf. This reference gives a legitimacy and a realist cast to an un-realistic tale which would come across quite differently if Harry’s story were written as a first-person novel. Steppenwolf can be seen as allegory. “An allegory…is not just another word for a metaphor. In essence, it’s a form of fiction that represents immaterial things as images.” Harry interacts with three characters, Hermine, Maria, and Pablo, and each one of this triumvirate can be taken as a symbol. Hermine is the younger self, a sister, a twin, Maria, adult female sexuality, and Pablo, the Dionysian artist. The three of them elicit and reflect different aspects of Harry as he undergoes a process of education. Harry himself can be seen as being symbolic of one who is seeking enlightenment, a student. Perhaps it can also be said, best beloved, that Harry symbolizes the generation of men and women who survived WW1 and were profoundly affected by its trauma. He is a broken man who requires healing. And that brings me to the Bildungsroman—a class of novel that depicts and explores the manner in which the protagonist develops morally and psychologically. The German word Bildungsroman means “novel of education” or “novel of formation.” (whiny voice. Why not just call it that then, Mr. Pretentious Bully. Leave out the German). ‘Kay. I think this last type makes the most sense to describe Steppenwolf. The novel has quite a bit to do with Harry Haller’s transformation due to the education he receives from Hermine, Maria, and Pablo. There is a long tradition of the bildungsroman in literature which connects the form and story of Steppenwolf to such works as Flaubert’s A Sentimental Education and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. But Hermann Hesse gives the genre a twist. Steppenwolf is not the story of a young person maturing and changing but rather about an older person who is unhappy and who undergoes considerable personality change as a result of particular and unusual experiences. In his 1961 Author’s Notes in the Bantam edition, Hesse says, “Of course, I neither can nor intend to tell my readers how they ought to understand my tale.” Then he goes on to say how he would like them to understand Steppenwolf—as a story of healing. I think Hesse is being disingenuous when he disavows any intention that his readers understand the book in a certain way. I think it’s clear he intentionally structured the story to “preach” and “teach” a message. Consider this: Steppenwolf is told by two reliable first-person character narrators, the unnamed landlady’s son, and Harry Haller, whose notebooks form the meat of the tale. The landlady’s son, in the preface, tells the reader how to read the notebooks, that they were written by a strange but good man who disappeared, leaving no opportunity to question him. Harry is shown meeting Hermine, Maria, and Pablo, who all teach him certain “truths” which are not questioned. Pablo, in particular, is a kind of magus-type entity, a magician if you will, who spends his time in the book arranging for Harry’s enlightenment. He and the two women are shown as one-dimensional characters who do not question themselves or their motivations. The whole story is structured as a lesson for Harry. (Yes, they are all allegorical figures). He (and the reader) is not asked to decide whether he wishes to continue, not given a choice. On the contrary, Harry is drugged and seduced into “school.” And the lesson that is taught? That bourgeois life is stifling, that technology is dehumanizing, that every person contains a multitude of possibilities that should be embraced. That a meaning of life is available to those who are open to it. Amen. #Steppenwolf #HermannHesse #AlanBray

– Don Juan, in Carlos Castenada’s The Teachings of Don Juan No coincidence, no story - an ancient Chinese saying. Two mutually exclusive statements, best beloved. However, Don Juan was talking about real life, and the ancient Chinese, about story or fiction. Let’s tease this out. Essentially, coincidence is the coming together of two events. ... Coincidence is often what gives fiction its chance to mean something. When two things come together, improbably or not, a spark is struck. Making those things happen simultaneously suggests that meaning is just beyond the surface—meaning and/or causality. However: “Coincidences always seem contrived, and more than one or two in a story will make the whole plot seem contrived. Now, the whole story is contrived – that’s what fiction is – but if your reader becomes aware of that as he or she is reading, you’ve got a “yeah, right” waiting to happen. The Willing Suspension of Disbelief is what we call the aura that’s cast around a story while the reader is immersed in it. It doesn’t merely seem to be true, it seems to be happening, right there, in front of his or her eyes. We break this aura at our peril.” With apologies to Don Juan, here’s a possible real-life coincidence. Let’s say two people are in love, and both talk about how great it would be to someday live in Hartford Connecticut. (?) They lose touch; ten years later they meet each other in…wait for it…Hartford Connecticut, where they’re both living. What a coincidence! they say. Unbelievable! It must be fate that has brought us together. But the truth is they both chose to move there; they have similar tastes in restaurants, entertainment, etc. It was inevitable that they’d meet. A famous fictional example: In Casablanca, Rick and Ilsa meet in Rick’s bar after a separation of several years, and Rick utters the famous line, “Of all the gin joints, etc.” suggesting a coincidence. But it makes sense that they’d both be in Casablanca and at Rick’s. Everybody, after all, goes to Rick’s, and Ilsa is married to a famous Resistance fighter who must escape the Nazis and leave Europe. Casablanca is the way out so it’s no shocker that she turns up there. And there’s those mysterious letters of transit that bring them together. And Rick—actually I don’t know how Rick wound up in Casablanca—but my point is that it’s really not much of a coincidence that they meet, more of an inevitability, just like with our real-life friends in Hartford, Connecticut. ‘Kay. What about in Steppenwolf? you ask. Aren’t ya supposed to be writing about Steppenwolf? Indeed, coincidence abounds in this novel. It’s no coincidence that there’s coincidence. But here it’s a different beastie than in Casablanca—there’s no rationale that can be easily seen, and Harry spotting the Magic Theater sign seems more like divine interference—or interference from the implied author. There’s a long tradition of this sort of thing, connecting with ancient Greek drama, where the gods “play” with mortals. Think of Oedipus and his mom. The implied author doesn’t show Harry being particularly surprised when he “happens” upon these meaningful events. Harry “happens” upon the Magic Theater sign, “happens” upon the man who gives him the Steppenwolf Treatise, “happens” again on this man who tells him to go to the Black Eagle Tavern, where Harry “happens” upon a young woman named Hermine who will change his life. There is a long literary tradition of characters meeting seemingly by coincidence who are, in fact, related. Charles Dickens is full of such devices. Why do I mention this? Because as Steppenwolf develops, Harry comes to accept that Hermine is his sister, even—his double. Even—himself! Yet, there is no mention of any divine or otherwise outside provocation. At the Black Eagle, Harry sees one a seat at a table and sits down next to an attractive young woman. (explosive laughter from the audience, a loud voice calls, Yeah, right). No, really. “I soon found myself near the bar, wedged against a table at which sat a pale and pretty girl against the wall…She gave me a friendly and observant look as I came up and with a smile moved to one side to make room for me. “May I?” I asked and sat down beside her.” (Laughter continues). Please, I’m not trying to be funny. Does this seem like too great a coincidence? I can see many of you are nodding. Well, this is actually a stylistic issue—hey, settle down! I’m trying to make an important point here if you’ll all please listen. Steppenwolf is a story of someone in despair who is brought back to life by mysterious and mystical means. By coincidence? Not if we define coincidence as random. If we return to our original definition of coincidence—which does not mention randomness—we can see that in each case, there are two incidences that meet. One: Harry goes for a stroll at night. Two: A sign appears on a wall reading “Magic Theater.” Harry “happens” on this sign—no one tells him to go to it—and this sets off a chain of events that runs throughout the rest of the book, leading him to a mysterious woman who seems to be his younger self. At a later point, the young woman tells Harry: “Think of that evening when you came broken from your despair and loneliness to cross my path and be my comrade. Why was it, do you think, I was able to recognize and understand you?” Why indeed. It's worth considering that coincidence is what makes the plot of Steppenwolf. Without it, Harry might be trapped in his miserable and meaningless existence. With it, his life changes and has meaning. Whether or not anyone else sees the sign is outside of the scope of this book, which is about Harry, who does. Although it masquerades as one, this is not a realist novel that attempts to show “life as it really is.” Steppenwolf is a story of supernatural events. The encounters seem at times to be coincidental, but they are planned by the implied author who desires to tell a story of a character being taught a lesson about life. Instead of the ancient Greek idea of the gods creating apparent coincidences to change characters, we have the implied author doing the manipulation. Maybe Don Juan was right—there are no coincidences. Till next time. #Steppenwolf #HermannHesse #AlanBray

Last week, we talked about how the first section of Steppenwolf—after the preface—describes Harry Haller’s painful existence. He is glum, dysphoric; he believes his personality is divided into two parts, permanently at war with each other. This is classic storytelling in the western canon; a story begins with a showing of the protagonist’s conflicted condition just prior to an inciting incident that sets off a process of change. Aristotle would be proud. In Steppenwolf, this incident is Harry’s discovery of the Magic Theater. “With these familiar thoughts I went along the wet street through one of the quietest and oldest quarters of the town. On the opposite side there stood in the darkness an old stone wall which I always noticed with pleasure…the wall was peaceful and serene and yet something was altered in it. I was amazed to see a small and pretty doorway with a Gothic arch in the middle of the wall, for I could not make up my mind whether this doorway had always been there or whether it had just been made…now that I looked more closely I saw over the portal a bright shield, on which, it seemed to me, there was something written.” Magic Theater Entrance Not For Everybody Then on the path he’s walking on, he sees: For Madmen Only! Harry doesn’t seem to think these messages are unusual. After lingering a few moments to see if there will be more, he continues on his walk. He goes to a local tavern and drinks wine, then goes out again, stops to hear a jazz band playing, and, to his surprise, likes what he hears (he usually doesn’t like jazz). Then: “From the black mouth of an alley a man appeared with startling suddenness at my elbow…He wore a cap and a blue blouse, and above his shoulders he carried a signboard fixed on a pole, and in front of him an open tray suspended by straps such as pedlars carry at fairs…I called out and asked him to let me read his placard. He stopped and held the pole a little steadier. Then I could read the dancing, reeling letters: Anarchist Evening Entertainment Magic Theater Entrance Not For Everyone Harry pursues the man and says he wants to buy something from him. “Without stopping, the man felt mechanically in his box, pulled out a little book and held it out to me.” The man “disappeared.” What is the significance of the word “Anarchist?” During the first decades of the 20th century, the anarchist movement flourished in most parts of the world and had a significant role in workers' struggles for emancipation. For the bourgeoisie, it meant something dangerous. An anarchist entertainment would be a show that challenged the basic order of things in the guise of fun. ‘Kay. This makes me think of the film Field of Dreams where the Voice makes dramatic pronouncements to Ray that change his life. “Go the distance!” “Ease his pain!” The difference is in the protagonists’ reactions. Neither Ray nor Harry react in a realist way; Ray gets mad, but Harry doesn’t seem particularly surprised by these events. However, when he gets home, he looks at the pamphlet. “It was with great astonishment and a sudden sense of impending fate that I read the title…Treatise on the Steppenwolf. Not for Everybody. As we know, Harry thinks of himself as a Steppenwolf. So what’s happened is that he’s out walking at night and sees a sign he’s never seen before, an enigmatic and intriguing sign concerning a Magic Theater. Then he encounters a strange, cartoonish sort of fellow who sells him a book—about himself! Whoa. Another facet of this is the repeated condition: Not for Everybody. The implication is that if you’re allowed entrance, or access to the pamphlet, you are somehow chosen, you are special. A time-honored way to create desire, as in, “I’ve got to have the thing I’m not allowed to have!” So, there are several “hooks” cleverly designed to grab Harry’s attention. (The fisherman is the implied author, heh, heh, heh). He reads on till the end. His first reaction is to remember a poem he’d written about the wolf. “So now I had two portraits of myself before me, one a self-portrait in doggerel verse, as sad and sorry as myself; the other painted with the air of a lofty impartiality by one who stood outside and who knew more and yet less of me than I did myself…Both were right. Both gave the unvarnished truth about my shiftless existence. “Death was decreed for this Steppenwolf. He must with his own hand make an end of his detested existence—unless, molten in the fire of a renewed self-knowledge, he underwent a change and passed over to a self, new and undisguised. Alas! This transition was not unknown to me. I had already experienced it several times…” So, Harry seems to conclude that the Treatise is telling him he must go through a painful transition to a new self. He describes other transitions wherein he lost his profession, his wife and family, becoming alone. “And every occasion when a mask was torn off, an ideal broken, was preceded by this hateful vacancy and stillness, this deathly constriction and loneliness and unrelatedness, this waste and empty hell of loneliness and despair, such as I now had to pass through once more.” Interesting—he says the Treatise was “painted with the air of lofty impartiality by one who stood outside and who knew more and yet less of me than I did myself.” So, it’s only a partially accurate portrait. He disagrees with the Treatise on suicide, thinking that it is an acceptable out, not a weakness as the Treatise advises. “On the other hand, all suicides have the responsibility of fighting against the temptation of suicide” In fact, the Treatise says that the Steppenwolf plans to kill himself on his fiftieth birthday, a plan Harry has not divulged to the reader. After reading the Treatise, he gloomily concludes it’s a long time to wait to his fiftieth birthday! There is no specific mention of Harry in the Treatise, so he decides, although it has merit, it’s too general to take at its word. However, although he denies it, Harry seems to be trying to follow the Treatise’s instructions. He doesn’t kill himself; he becomes more intrigued by the Magic Theater and tries to find it and the odd fellow who sold him the Treatise. He finally does find him in a funeral procession. He accosts the man who tells him gruffly to go to the Black Eagle bar. (More on this next time). Is the Treatise another example of the implied author telling, in this case, how the protagonist should act? Could be, could be. Hesse himself wrote of Steppenwolf that he wished to show a sufferer’s state of mind measured against a positive and cheerful world of beliefs above person and time. Well, that’s essentially what the Treatise is, a device that shows a positive world of beliefs that oppose Harry’s dysphoria. As we will see later, the Magic Theater shows the enactment of those beliefs. On a level of writing, Steppenwolf has layers: the Preface, Harry’s journals, the Treatise. As Ralph Freedman noted in his book The Lyrical Novel, this technique allowed Hesse to present a very inner view of a character in the context of a realist novel. In other words, Hesse could have written Steppenwolf a la James Joyce or Virginia Wolf, using the journals without the device of them being “found” by someone else. The book could just have been a portrait of Harry’s consciousness, but Hesse wrote in a different style. Till next time, all you Steppenwolves. Ow-ooh! #Steppenwolf #HermannHesse

Harry Haller’s purported journal begins with a description of his day—written in past tense, something we must return to later. He is, to put it mildly, rather glum. He describes suffering from physical pain, a headache, gout, all of which he attributes to old age—he is forty-seven. He writes of his anger at mediocrity, his desire to smash order, disrupt complacency. This has a very contemporary feel, and one can see how Tim Leary and later rebels would like this. He lives in a very orderly and bourgeois house, and delights at the contrast of his disordered room. He contemplates suicide. As a narrator, he is unlikable; it’s challenging to feel much compassion for such an old crank. He sees himself as old, diseased, hopeless. But Harry’s unique and perhaps redeeming feature is that he believes part of his nature is a Steppenwolf, a wolf of the steppes. Our trusty electronic dictionary tells us that the Steppe Wolf is a subspecies of grey wolf native to the Caspian steppes, the steppe regions of the Caucasus, the lower Volga region, southern Kazakhstan north to the middle of the Emba, and the steppe regions of the lower European part of the former Soviet Union. They are dangerous; they like to eat seals. They often carry rabies. Where do they find the seals? In consideration that the character of Harry, being a creation of the real author who wrote this in 1926, we could speculate that Hesse, a German who was a non-combatant in WW1, tried to come up with a frightening image for his character to admire. A predatory wolf from the steppes of Russia! Harry believes he has a dual nature, half highly civilized European aesthete, and half slavering beastie boy from the dangerous wild. It should be said though, that Harry never kills anyone (except in the Magic Theater, of course—more on that later). He feels this brutal and uncivilized side in his nature but is never violent. He does not behave like some sort of werewolf in the streets of the unnamed city he lives in. What he describes is that he wants to experience beautiful things, art, music, friendship, but always runs up against his wolf nature which ridicules him for liking beauty. Then when he feels more wolf-like, his human nature ridicules him for being an animal. He is rarely happy. The 1920’s were famous for being inhabited by the “lost generation” of men and women who experienced the technological and human horrors of WW1, and who subsequently found themselves unable to fit into postwar life. Ernest Hemingway comes to mind. "You are all a lost generation," he wrote as an epigraph for his 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises. T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, Jean Rhys, and F. Scott Fitzgerald are other notable figures. And so is the Steppenwolf, a wild creature who must exist always on the fringes of society. However, Harry never makes mention of WW1, in fact, makes no mention of any historical events, a feature of the story I commented on last week. It tends to give the story a curious, timeless feel, making it a tale that could occur anytime. And anyplace, since there’s no anchoring of the story to a particular city or country. After the preface, in which the character narrator explains how the story should be read, we have a classic story beginning. Harry describes and shows his condition at the beginning of the story, before the events of the story change him. We have a good eight pages of description of his miserable existence before he happens (?) upon the Magic Theater, a place that will alter the course of his life. Another philosophical angle on Steppenwolf is existentialism. Yes, you read it right. The beginning of Harry’s story can be seen as a presentation of the existentialist concept of the longing for immediacy. Harry dreams of being a wolf, an animal with an immediate grasp of sensory reality without any mediation of consciousness. The wolf doesn’t think “Huh, I’m pretty hairy,” the wolf just is hairy. It has direct access to “reality.” In contrast, Harry the human (who may be hairy, ha, ha!)— Mindless alliteration. Sorry. (whiny voice—‘scuse me, Mr. Pretentious Bully. “Scuse me. Why do you put apostrophes around certain words?) Is that a “real” question? Heh, heh, heh. I’ve been asked about my usage of parentheses set around certain words. I do this to indicate the subjective nature of these words. For instance, there is not one “reality” that everyone more or less experiences. We all have our own perspective on reality, and this particularity is a key concept in modern fiction. (whiny voice—I think you do it to make fun of me.) Let’s move on. Harry the human, must be conscious of all the beauty he experiences, painfully aware that he can never immediately “be” in a Mozart sonata; he can only have a second-hand awareness of it, as in, “Now I am listening to Mozart.” This is the pain of Harry’s life, that he yearns for immediacy but can never attain it. And if he did attain it, he would be a wolf, not a human. The ancient philosopher Parmenides outlines this problem, writing that where a gap appears between words and things, the philosopher in search of Being tries to differentiate what is stable and instable in language, the permanent and the fluid, the “true” and the “deceptive.” (He liked using parentheses too). He persists in trying to sift Being from what he calls words or names, which he regards as a ceaseless flow of things at the level of language. Harry Haller has a lot of difficulty doing this “sifting,” and that annoys the heck out of him. ‘Kay. Next time, we’ll look at the inciting incident of the story, Harry’s discovery of the Magic Theater and of the Treatise on the Steppenwolf. Till “then.” Happy Thanksgiving! #Steppenwolf #HermannHesse