The second section of Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight is entitled Inheritance. What has been inherited, you ask? Let’s continue, searching for answers. It begins: “In November of 1959, when I was twenty-eight, after some years of what had felt like wildness, I bought a home for myself in a Suffolk village that could be reached by a few hours train-ride from London.” A short digression on craft. Mr. Ondaatje lets we the readers know when and where we are in a direct and masterly way. The reader, it is said, should always know where and when she/he is in a story. The new time of this section of the story has jumped far ahead from the early post-war years. What has Nathaniel been up to? We are not told, only that it was wild. Where has his mother been during this time? His sister, the Darter? Arthur McCall? More questions than answers, best B. We shall see. We quickly learn that Nathaniel bought this house from a Mrs. Malakite and that, “It was a house I loved.” Nathaniel has been in the house before and knew both Mrs. Malakite and her husband, well. After the attack in which The Moth was killed, Nathaniel and his sister were sent to different boarding schools, he’d return on holiday and stay with his mother, who now lived in an area of England known as The Saints, in her parents’ home, and Mr. Malakite, Sam, becomes a trusted guardian. “It was a time when my mother and I were not close. The domestic ease we loved during those weeks before she abandoned my sister and me no longer existed. I could not erase my distrust, given her deceptive departure.” But at this time, Nathaniel still does not understand the reason for his mother’s disappearance. It is clear to the reader, and this irony helps to establish Nathaniel’s likability as a character; he is angry at his mother, mistrustful but still loyal. “I did not know at that time that my mother, Rose Williams, after the attack on us had ended all contact with Intelligence. Although the fracas at the Bark Theater had been quickly hushed up by authorities, there were hints of my mother’s wartime work in the newspapers…” This is the adult Nathaniel reporting—at the time, he was unaware (he didn’t read newspapers). Or did he actively avoid awareness? We are told immediately after the attack, that Nathaniel realizes his mother was doing some secret work and that, given the Moth’s fate, the stakes are life and death. He seems to approach the truth but always stops short. “The lost sequence in a life, they say, is the thing we always search out. But during my late teens when I would stay with my mother at White Paint (her house), I discovered no clues. Until one day I came home from work, walked into the kitchen where she, in shirtsleeves, was scrubbing a pot in the sink…I saw a row of livid scars like those cut into the bark of a tree by some mechanical gardening tool…I was never to know how many other scars there were on her, but here were those slate-red ones…evidence from that time. It’s nothing, she muttered. Just the street of the small daggers…She said nothing more about how she got those wounds.” ‘Kay. There is a real gulf between son and mother that neither wishes to cross. Many sons or daughters would say, “Holy Schmoley, Ma, how did you get those scars?” Nathaniel does not tell us he does. After the deadly attack on Nathaniel and Rachel and their mother’s re-appearance, many would say, “Ma! Where you been? Who are these people who murdered The Moth? What’s wrong with your arm?” And many mothers would say, “Look, I’ve been a secret agent and have been tortured, but I’m going to stop and try to be a proper Mum.” The fact that Nathaniel and Rose do not say these things tell us that Nathaniel doesn’t want to know. (at this time) and that Rose doesn’t want to tell. Why? Perhaps Nathaniel (more than his sister, who’s angry and distances herself from the family) tries to help keep his mother’s secrets out of loyalty. A paragraph break signals a leap in time: “A decade after my mother’s death, I received an invitation to apply to the Foreign Office.” This is, I believe, the first mention of Rose’s death, although there’s been plenty of foreshadowing. The Foreign Office is the Intelligence section of the British government—spies, my dears. Nathaniel is recruited to work with the same group that his mother worked for. “I assumed that nepotism and my bloodline must have been considered a reliable entrance into a profession that trusted lineage and the possibly inherited quality of secrecy.” His job is to review secret documents from the war and post-war years. Nathaniel concludes that this may be golden opportunity to find out what his mother was doing when she abandoned him. “It was the possibility of an inheritance.” The job is known as ‘The Silent Correction,” and its purpose is to review archives in order to judge which espionage activities worked and which did not. Nathaniel learns that in many ways, the war continued after the surrender of Germany in 1945. Fascists and Communists continued to battle each other, particularly in southern Europe. A new chapter jumps ahead to the previously referenced time of 1959 when Nathaniel buys the house from Mrs. Malakite who does not remember him. “…I decided to write down what little I knew of her (his mother) time in this place…When you attempt a memoir, I am told, you need to be in an orphan state. So what is missing in you and the things you have grown cautious and hesitant about, will come almost casually towards you. ‘A memoir is the lost inheritance,’ you realize, so that during this time you must learn how and where to look. In the resulting self-portrait, everything will rhyme, because everything has been reflected…So I believed something in my mother must rhyme in me. She in her small hall of mirrors and I in mine.” Let’s stop on this beautifully written note. We have several mentions of inheritance here to explain the use of this title for the section. Nathaniel seems to be rushing toward an understanding of his mother—years after the fact. A not so unusual state, eh? Till next time. #Warlight #MichaelOndaatje #AlanBray

At the same time that Nathaniel, the narrator/protagonist of Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight, is having sex with Agnes in otherwise abandoned buildings, the Darter, a family regular since the disappearance of Nathaniel’s parents, involves Nathaniel and his sister, Rachel, in nightly boat trips to smuggle greyhounds into Britain for dog races. Nathaniel enjoys it. Woof! “That first magical summer of my life we smuggled more than forty-five dogs a week at the height of the racing season, collecting the gun-shy creatures from a dock near Limehouse onto the mussel boat, and riding the river in darkness into the heart of London at Lower Thames Street.” Nathaniel loves these adventures, but “I was often exhausted by these far-flung duties I was given. Bone and blood tests needed to be fictionalized. False seals from the Greater London Greyhound Association had to be forged so our immigrants could enter any of the one hundred and fifty dog tracks in the country…” From the future, he reflects: “What kind of family were we part of now? In retrospect, Rachel and I were not too different in our anonymity from the dogs with their fictional papers. Like them we had broken free, adapting to fewer rules, less order. But what had we become? When you are uncertain about what way to go as a youth, you end up sometimes not so much repressed, as might be expected, but illegal, you find yourself easily invisible, unrecognized in the world…Did my assignations with Agnes insert a thief’s guile into my nature? Or my escapes from school to spend time with the Darter?” Well, as I’ve tediously mentioned, we don’t know the answer as we are not told much about Nathaniel’s present life, only that he is alone. And he does seem a bit resentful. There is a sense that, as he says, he winds up illegal, invisible and unrecognized—certainly to himself. Of course someone having such unusual experiences would be affected by them. Is he a smuggler? Don’t think so. A dog lover? Sure. A spy? Well, let’s delve in further for the answer. At this point, another individual, Arthur McCash, begins frequenting Nathaniel’s home. “What did we ever really know or discover about Arthur McCash? He spoke French, as well as other languages…McCash claimed he’d been recently stationed abroad doing crop studies in the Levant.” Arthur will assume even greater importance for the adult Nathaniel. Nathaniel muses: “I am still unable to give precise ages to the individuals who had taken over our parents’ home. There’s no trustworthy recording of ages when seen through the eyes of youth, and I suppose the war had further confused the way we read age or the hierarchies of class.” A scene occurs in which Nathaniel is dancing with Agnes at a club and glimpses a woman watching them who resembles his mother. He tries to approach her, but she disappears. Much later, he will learn that it was indeed his mother. There is a growing sense that Nathaniel and Rachel are being stalked and menaced by anonymous parties, and this culminates in an attack on the siblings during which the Moth is killed, and Rose emerges out of hiding. This is the fear (Mahler’s schwer) that the Moth has warned will overtake them all. Let’s step back for a moment. We have a story told—a story that reads as memoir but is expertly crafted fiction—about an adolescent whose parents mysteriously disappear, leaving he and his sister under the supervision of several eccentric criminals. And Nathaniel has his first sexual relationship with a young woman. In this story, Nathaniel looks back from middle-age and, now knowing exactly what was going on, reinterprets his circumstances in the past. The adult Nathaniel explains it all: “You return to that earlier time armed with the present, and no matter how dark that world was, you do not leave it unlit. You take your adult self with you. it is not to be a reliving but a rewitnessing.” Rose appears after Nathaniel and the others are assaulted by anonymous assailants. She tends to their wounds after angrily denouncing the siblings’ guardians for not protecting her children. “’Always knives,’ she murmured. ‘Felon always said they were going to come after us. Revenge. If not the survivors, the relatives, their children…People don’t forget. Not even children. Why should they…’ She sounded bitter.” Nathaniel and Rachel—who’s been rescued by The Darter, are escorted into a van by their mother and the police. “Where were we going? Into another life.” This is a halfway point in the story, and the point at which Nathaniel realizes his mother had disappeared because she was doing some secret work, evidently for the government. And he realizes the stakes are life and death. Let’s stop there and pick it up next time. Till then. #Warlight #MichaelOndaatje #AlanBray

The overall theme of Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight, seems to be how the past effects the present, or, to put it another way, how our experiences make us who we are. One of the experiences the narrator Nathaniel reflects on in the story is his relationships with women. He undergoes the disappearance of his mother, Rose, just before his sexual awakening. Coincidence, you ask? As our old friend Don Juan said, there are no coincidences—especially in fiction. (He didn’t say that last part). In any case, we could say that, just before he becomes sexual, a solid boundary is established between he and his mother. Roughly a year after Rose’s disappearance, Nathaniel takes a job at a busy London hotel where he meets a number of interesting co-workers, including Mr. Nkoma, a man in his forties who entertains the younger boys, including Nathaniel, with tales of his sexual exploits, providing the story with a mise en abyme as he describes an encounter he had with an older woman who taught him about sex and life. The older Nathaniel reflects from the present: “What did that glimpse of storytelling do to the boy I was?” Indeed, it should be said that we the readers never get the answer to this, as Nathaniel gives us few clues about his adult life, only, as I indicated last week, that he is solitary and a recluse. Perhaps the implication is that he is dissatisfied in the book’s present and is looking back in time to try to figure how how he became the person he is. Nathaniel became fascinated by Olive Lawrence, a woman The Darter is “dating.”. “Like the Darter, she was tall and slim, with a dazzle of unkept hair, shaped and reshaped I am sure by whatever weather she was in…Olive was the only person who came into our house who appeared capable of clear judgement…Hers was the calmest voice I knew when I was a boy. There was never argument in it. She had just this tactile curiosity about what interested her, and that calmness allowed you to be within her intimate space. In daylight she always caught your eye as she talked or as she listened; she was completely with you.” As things develop, Nathaniel learns Olive is an ethnographer who was (and is) involved working for the British government. She and the Darter end their relationship, and Olive leaves London but continues to send postcards to Nathaniel and his sister from faraway places. Nathaniel reflects: “There are moments after I’ve put down such thoughts about Olive Lawrence when I almost believe I am composing a possible version of my mother.” “In any case, the curious pleasure of female company was in me now.” He takes another job in a restaurant, and it is here that he meets his first love. “A girl, a green ribbon holding back her hair…asked if she could “borrow” the small piece of ham out of my sandwich. I did not know what to say. I must have handed it to her silently. I asked what her name was and she looked shocked at my forwardness, ran back and organized a group of three or four waitresses to circle me and sing about the dangers of desire. I was about to enter a borderless terrain between adolescence and childhood.” Nathaniel and this woman go to an empty house on Agnes Street, a house that is for sale—the young woman’s brother is the realtor and provides her with the keys. She and Nathaniel go through the darkened, empty rooms having sex. ‘Kay. Nathaniel refers to the young woman as Agnes. “Along with the wildness of her talk, I loved her voice, the thickness and rhymes of it, a sea change after the way the boys at my school talked. But something else made Agnes different from others. The Agnes I knew during that summer was not the Agnes she would be later…Was that future woman I imagined aligned with her wishfulness for herself? …During that era teenagers were locked into what we thought we already were and therefore would always be…” This is an important comment on the book’s theme. Nathaniel, looking back, reflects on how he did not expect to change with time, as if the feel of that youthful, erotic connection would persist forever. And, of course, he understands that this was an illusion. Once, when they are leaving the house on Agnes Street, they are menaced by a man. They evade him, feeling guilty that he may be the owner of the house they’ve just occupied. And this is a foreshadowing of what is to come. Let’s stop there and resume next time. Till then. #Warlight #MichaelOndaatje #AlanBray

An important question to ponder in reading Warlight by Michael Ondaatje is, just what kind of story is it? Fiction or memoir? If it’s fiction there should be elements of traditional story structure therein—a dramatic question, an inciting incident, beginning, middle, and end, climax and resolution. Is it a memoir? “A memoir is a factual, narrative nonfiction account written from the author’s personal perspective. Derived from the French word mémoire (meaning "memory"), it focuses on a specific theme, period, or transformative event in a person's life rather than spanning their entire chronological existence.” Hmm. Well, Warlight doesn’t appear to be factual non-fiction. Nathaniel Williams, the book’s protagonist is not Michael Ondaatje. Nathaniel says he is 14 in 1945; Mr. Ondaatje was born in 1943—he had a very different experience of WWII and the postwar era. Right? Hmm. Warlight does seem to fit with the other part of this definition. It does focus on a specific theme, period, and transformative event in a person’s life. So maybe Warlight is a hybrid memoir/fictional story. I’m going to call it, best B. I think the fact that Warlight is not “factual” precludes it being memoir. But is does give the impression of being memoir. It’s a trick! Well, no, it’s not a trick in any malicious sense. Like so much great fiction, it’s illusion and sleight-of-hand, and that’s enjoyable. What, then, you say, is the specific theme, period, and transformative event in Warlight? The theme is the way humans “fill in” a poorly remembered past in order to see how it constructs a present. The period is WWII and its aftermath. The transformative event? The death of Nathaniel’s mother, Rose. Nathaniel is looking back from the future and trying to make sense of his mother’s death. Why did she abandon he and his sister to pursue such a dangerous path? (that of being a spy). Who was she? Who and what did she care about? What affect did her life and death have on Nathaniel? ‘Kay, plenty of questions to answer. The first section of the novel is titled “A Table Full of Strangers.” Then, the first line: “In 1943 our parents went away and left us in the care of two men who may have been criminals.” This really is the whole story, encapsulated. The text proceeds to show us how this happened—not why, that will come later along with the narrator’s understanding. Nathaniel and his slightly older sister, Rachel, live in London with their parents, who announce they’re going away for a year to Asia. The year is 1943. The Blitz, the bombing campaign waged by the Germans against Britain, lasted from 1940-1941, but in 1943, the war remains pervasive. Nathaniel and Rachel were puzzled by their parents’ announcement and preparations to leave, but leave they did, first the father and then their mother, Rose, who was supposed to follow him. Nathaniel and Rachel, in their teens, were to attend boarding schools and be looked after on holidays by their parents’ lodger, a man the siblings nicknamed The Moth for his shy demeanor. Later, he introduced a man into their household known as The Pimlico Darter, a former boxer and current smuggler. “The arrangement appeared strange, but life still was haphazard and confusing during that period…so what had been suggested did not feel unusual.” Before their mother leaves, Nathaniel often observes she and the Moth talking, and it is revealed that they used to work together as fire-watchers during the Blitz, stationed on the top floor of a tall building to report on the damage from the bombing. At one point, the Moth reveals their mother worked as a driver to take men at night to the coast where they would embark on clandestine activities. While the Moth describes this, “my mother listened so carefully to what he described that she held the iron with her right hand in midair so it wouldn’t rest on and burn a collar, giving herself fully to his shadowed story.” And Nathaniel observes from the future: “I should have known then.” But he does not, or at least, does not say that he knew his mother was a spy at that time. Rose tells the siblings stories including one they loved about when she was a child and men worked to re-thatch their roof. This foreshadows things to come strongly but at this early stage is thought of as a fairy tale by Nathaniel and his sister. In fact, this first section of Warlight has a fairy tale quality in that the siblings are separated from their parents and tended by two people who seem almost other-worldly and magical, like elves or dwarves. “My sister made a list of his (the Moth’s) attributes. Thick black horizontal eyebrows. A large though friendly stomach. His big honker. For a private man…who drifted through the house mostly in silence, he had the loudest sneeze. Bursts of air were expelled not just from his face but seemed to originate from the depths of that large and friendly stomach.” Rachel searches the house and discovers their mother’s trunk, full of the clothes she packed for the trip to join their father. The two realize that their mother has not gone on that trip but is somewhere hidden to them. The Moth, who is a classical music enthusiast, tells them that Mahler’s scores are often marked with the word schwer, meaning difficult or heavy. The Moth seemed to use the phrase as a warning to them, that the future would be difficult. Nathaniel and Rachel began to say it to each other as a code word for their present. Let’s stop there and resume next time. Till then. #Warlight #MichaelOndaatje #AlanBray

This week, dear friends, a new story, Michael Ondaatje’s 2018 Warlight. Like Ondaatje’s The English Patient, this novel is set in the aftermath of WWII. In fact, one reviewer said that Warlight is like the B-side of English Patient—this was meant as praise, meaning that Warlight explores similar themes but is not as overtly romantic; in a sense, quieter and more restrained. (There are no planes in Warlight. There are boats—barges and leaky fishing craft). The title refers to the dimmed orange lights that guided river traffic in blacked-out England during the Blitz, a particular quality of light, a crepuscular murk in which disguise and lying persist. I first read Warlight when it came out, being a huge fan of Mr. Ondaatje. At a first reading, I have to say I remember being underwhelmed, perhaps disappointed by the more reserved pace. No longer, best B. Things get going with a quote before Chapter One: “Most of the great battles are fought in the creases of topographical maps.” This implies, I think, that maps are valuable more for the accidental features they accumulate over time than for their original purpose. The story is often told in first person, sometimes third, and occurs in simple past tense and present tense. The narrator, the “I,” is Nathaniel Williams, an Englishman who is looking back at his adolescence years after WWII, and the way he was gently misled by his mother and other adults. He is trying to reconstruct his youth and that of his slightly older sister’s, Rachel. However, the story is steered by a largely hidden narrator into the perspectives of other characters, chiefly Marsh Felon, who knew Nathaniel’s mother Rose even before Nathaniel was born. Rose, too has herself presented, although another way to look at this is to say that Nathaniel imagines the world of others who were significant. These passages are in present tense. Here is Nathaniel as he introduces a new section and narrator. It is the way Mr. Ondaatje transitions to these distinct parts of the story: “My last night…two nights after the funeral, I went to my mother’s room, got into her narrow, sheetless bed and lay there in the dark, the way she must have done, looking up at the ceiling. “Tell me about him,” I said. “Who?” “The person you lied to me about. The man whose name you said you couldn’t remember. The man who spoke to me at your funeral.” This concludes a section of the book; next we have a new section in present tense, the story of Marsh Felon and Nathaniel’s mother before Nathaniel was born. Is this a kind of magical realism, you ask? Conversing with the dead? No, I say. It’s a person coping with raw loss who imagines a past he is otherwise shut out of forever—another loss. And it provides a neat bridge to a different interlocking story. What is it about Mr. Ondaatje’s prose style? It is poetic; it uses no contractions. It is instantly identifiable. “Felon watches Rose with the daughter tucked under her arm. She places Rachel on the grass and picks up the fishing rod, his gift. He knows her first response will be to test its weight, balance it on her fingers, then smile. She rubs her open palm against the grain of the impregnated rod, then picks up the infant and walks over to embrace Felon…” It’s a series of declarative sentences in present tense that describe behavior, very patient, very expressive. Very present—the way a poet observes the world and translates it to language. A sense of a silent narrator observing Felon observing Rose, someone hidden from the characters in the scene. A major difference between The English Patient and Warlight is that Warlight is all about someone trying to re-construct a past, to “fill-in” a story from memory fragments and stories told by others, while English Patient is about (I think) a known past indelibly marking the present. Here’s a small story in Warlight—which may be a mise en abyme—that suggests what Nathaniel is trying to do: “…a parrot that had been found in the Far East, that had lived for decades with a tribe that was now extinct, its whole vocabulary lost. But a zoo had the parrot and it turned out the creature still knew the language. So the man and the linguist were trying to re-create the language from that one bird.” Nathaniel is trying to understand the way he is by working like an archaeologist to re-construct the past. The story has to do with Nathaniel’s mother Rose being a spy who is involved in the mass killings that occurred in Italy and the Balkans after WWII, killings which were often motivated by revenge. Communists against Fascists. And Rose herself is eventually murdered in an act of revenge by a relative of one of the massacres’ victims. Near the end of the book, we encounter the protagonist/narrator, Nathaniel, in the story’s present: “A year ago, I came across a book by Olive Lawrence in our local store and that afternoon…I kept waiting for evening so I could read it without interruption. Apparently it was the basis for a forthcoming television documentary, and so the next day I went out and bought a television set. Such an object has never been a part of my life, and when it arrived it was a surreal guest in the Malakites’ small living room. It was as if I had suddenly decided to buy a boat or a seersucker suit.” There’s a sense here of a rather restricted and solitary life. No mention is made of others. How did he get there? The question the book poses is whether this existence is a result of the protagonist’s earlier experience or the result of conscious choice. Here’s the answer: “We are foolish as teenagers. We say wrong things, do not know how to be modest, or less shy. We judge easily. But the only hope given us, although only in retrospect, is that we change. We learn, evolve. What I am now was formed by whatever happened to me then, not by what I have achieved, but by how I got here. Who guided me to something better? …how much damage did I do?” This just in! The last novel we covered here, Taiwan Travelogue, has won the International Booker Prize. Well, deserved, in my opinion. Till next time. #Warlight #MichaelOndaatje #AlanBray

As we approach the end of our stroll through Yang Shuang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue, it would be good to give further consideration to the intriguing preface and several afterwords, known collectively and formally as paratext. Our friend A.I. says, “Paratext refers to the elements surrounding a text—such as covers, titles, prefaces, and footnotes—that frame, promote, and help readers interpret it. Coined by Gérard Genette, this "threshold" material, including design and formatting, shapes audience reception.” This also includes peritext—elements inside the book like dedications and footnotes. The whole phenomenon serves to “package” the text and provide context. Well, sure, AI. I’d say Ms. Yang is a master of using peritext to shape Taiwan Travelogue a certain way, and this, as we know, is the work of the implied author. Yay! We’ve talked about the book’s introduction, entitled, ”A Truncated Dream, a Foreign Splendorland,” purportedly written by a Japanese woman (I mistakenly said she was a man earlier) after the year 2015 when she claims to have first become acquainted with the text. Let’s not belabor something we’ve already discussed but point out again that this intro was really written by Ms. Yang around 2020. It states that the text was written around 1954 as a novel based on the author, Aoyama Chizuko’s, 1938 travels in Taiwan. A close and clever reader might say, hmmm, why did the author do this? Why write a novel based on travel experiences? Of course, it is all a fiction, best B. The character Aoyoma Chizuko is a creation of the real author, Ms. Yang, who wanted to give the text a particular meaning—that is, a book that was written long ago, based on the “real’ experiences of a “real” person. Yes, this makes a claim to give the story authenticity but it’s so obviously part of the fiction that one must wonder why? Why did the author give the book this feature? This feature, which might be called a framing device, gives the reader the impression that several people or voices are telling the story. A sense of polyphony, of a sort of community packaged as a novel. Perhaps, the illusion of being a “real” story contributes to the urgency of the book’s messages—prejudice is wrong, it’s easy to delude yourself by thinking you’re righteous. After this introduction, there is a page of dedications. However, they are written by the story’s narrator, Aoyama Chizuko, who, as we know, is a fiction. In a self-deprecating manner, she thanks three of the characters in the story as if they were real—including “Miss Ong Tshian-hoh,” Aoyama’s translator and companion, Chi-chan. Well, these dedications continue the illusion that the story was based on real people and narrated by a real person. Then in the English edition, we have two elegant pencil drawings of the house Aoyama resided in while living in Taiwan. Is this a real house or imaginary? We don’t know. But the drawings were done by Aoyama Chizuko. This whole introductory section is credited to two fictitious people and written, we can only assume, by one real person, Ms. Yang. (Wink, wink). Let’s look at the afterwords: The first is credited to Aoyama Yoko, identified as the adopted daughter of Aoyama Chuzuko. She writes a tribute to her mother that is said to have been done in 1970, the same year she says her mother died. Here it is said that Aoyama included the twelfth chapter in a later edition of the novel. This is the final chapter that describes Aoyama seeing Chi-chan one last time. Then there is a Translator’s Notes section, said to have been written in 1977 in Columbia, Missouri, by Chi-chan. It is claimed in a footnote by Lin Kang, that Wu Cheng-mai, the Mandarin name of Chi-chan’s eldest daughter, published a self-funded and self-translated edition of the book—translated from Japanese to Mandarin Chinese—in 1977. In this note, Chi-chan claims that Aoyama’s daughter Aoyama Yoko visited her at her home in Missouri and showed her the Japanese book Taiwan Travelogues, and the two women exchanged stories about Aoyama Chizuko. The third afterword is purportedly by Chi-chan’s daughter Wu Cheng-mai and is entitled “Editor’s Note” and written in 1990. It concerns Aoyama’s book and how it came to be published in Mandarin and also tells the tale of Chi-chan’s death. The fourth offering is by Yang Shuang-zi and is entitled “Translator’s Note,” written in 2020. This piece tells how the author and her sister “discovered” Aoyama Chizuko and got her book published in 2020. She writes: “Why did Aoyama Chizuko choose to rewrite the story as a novel instead of publishing her travel essays on Taiwan as a collection? …would travel/historical writing have been more ‘real?’ Are novels/fiction ‘made-up’ by comparison? …a novel is a piece of amber, one that coagulates both the the real past and the ‘made-up’ ideals. It is something that can be visited again and again in its unparalleled beauty.” Finally, there is an afterword by Lin King from 2023 about her work translating the story into English. So what we have is a foregrounded story commented on by a number of voices, not unlike a play where other characters are meta-communicating in asides to the audience. And the story contains two fictional characters who are somewhat hidden and one-dimensional, but who appear in an extremely well-done scene at the book’s end, a scene of forgiveness and letting-go. I think the author’s description of a novel as a piece of amber is a beautiful conclusion. Thank you, Ms. Yang. Next week, a new one. #TaiwanTravelogue #YangShuang-zi #AlanBray

Two-thirds of the way through Yang Shuang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue, a shift occurs, a shift in both plot and tone. As I mentioned last week, the novel’s protagonist Aoyama, asks her Taiwanese interpreter, Chi-chan, to accompany her to Japan where they will live together and Chi-chan can pursue her interest in translation. However, Chi-chan refuses and says that Aoyama has a “blind spot.” The two women continue to travel through Taiwan but, looking back from the vantage point of when she’s writing the story (of course, as we’ve noted, that’s a fiction), Aoyama realizes there’s been a change in their relationship, a return to more formality and less intimacy. Then, after warning Aoyama about continuing to ignore her blind spot, Chi-chan says: “’If you really cannot change your attitude toward me, I will have to resign my post.” … “’Chi-chan!’ ‘Please lower your voice.’ We were in public; I didn’t care. ‘No matter what you say, nothing will change the fact that I see you as my best friend. You are the only person in the whole world—in all of heaven and on all of the earth—who has regarded me and the so-called monster in my stomach seriously.’ (This is a reference to Aoyama’s appetite for food). The winter daylight, filtered through the cafeteria’s glass windows, shone a halo around Chi-chan’s body… ‘That’s why I can’t bear that you have to settle for a lesser life here on the Island. What can you do after marrying a man like that? If you can’t work as a translator on the island, then why don’t we go to the mainland?’” This is the point at which Chi-chan resigns her position, saying that Aoyama can instead be assisted by her original interpreter, a man, and that she, Chi-chan, will return to her family home, the whereabouts unknown to Aoyama. Aoyama is stunned. “I had enraged her. But how?” Aoyama does indeed have to use the help of a different interpreter, Mr. Mishima, whom she doesn’t like. However, Chi-chan returns, and the two women share marvelous meals. Ultimately though, Chi-chan refers back to the mise en abyme I mentioned last time regarding the two girls at the school, the Japanese (mainlander), Ozawa-san, and the Taiwanese, Tan-san, who were in love with each other but also in conflict. Chi-chan says; “’Ozawa-san shielded Tan-san from falling flowers and from blinding sunlight—she acted like a knight in shining armor, but did Tan-san wish for this? In a girl’s school where Mainlanders are the majority, it is likely that such special treatment only makes Tan-san’s situation more difficult, yet Ozawa-san may not have realized this at all. I believe Tan-san’s resistance was an act of protest against Ozawa-san’s misguided treatment.’ …’You are noble, considerate and kind, Aoyama-san—you are willing to go above and beyond on my behalf. But it is precisely because you would never let me sleep in the servant’s room, because you are outraged when someone looks down on me for my status, that I have no idea how to make you understand. How do I explain myself so that I don’t seem like an unreasonable child who covets your equal treatment yet paradoxically defies your kindness? The truth is that I am the same as Tan-san. The truth is that gentle Aoyama-san never once asked me: Do you want this protection?’” Chi-chan explains that the problem is that Aoyama thinks she offers true friendship but is blind to how she patronizes Chi-chan, and this prevents them from being equals and true friends. Chi-chan leaves for good. Among other things, this is a strong statement about, well, colonialism. Aoyama, a Japanese woman (called the mainland in the book) views Chi-chan as a downtrodden “lessor” person, a diamond in the rough, who needs Aoyama’s help and protection in order to blossom. Aoyama believes she has found someone who stands out from the crowd of Taiwanese, someone who, with a little help and affection, can overcome her humble origins and shine. She makes an implicit assumption that the Taiwanese are inferior to the Japanese even though Aoyama resists the Japanese expansionist policies and is made angry by their expression. Chi-chan senses this condescension and calls it out even though the two women genuinely care for each other. She doesn’t want the “protection” which implies a one-down relationship. So is the story “really” about this racism? I don’t think so, best B. The story touches on any kind of prejudice—against women, against gay women; it shows the injustice of any situation where people are judged not for who they are themselves but for their outer characteristics. And it’s all set in an intricate narrative framework. More about this next time. Till then. #TaiwanTravelogue #YangShuang-zi #AlanBray

In Yang Shuang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue, the story continues in a somewhat playful tone through the middle section of the book. The narrator. Aoyama, describes a chaste infatuation with her interpreter/companion, Chi-chan, who remains inscrutable. Around page 174, after learning that Chi-chan faces an unhappy arranged marriage with an older man who will expect her to do nothing more than produce sons, Aoyama asks her to come to Japan with her, where they will live together, and Chi-chan can pursue her desire to be a translator. There is no overt evidence of Aoyama hoping for romantic involvement, but plenty of eroticism. But Chi-chan refuses. Here, Aoyama remarks on something she has noted throughout the story so far, that Chi-chan seems to wear a Noh mask, meaning she is impossible to read. “Noh masks (noh-men or omote) are carved wooden masks worn in traditional Japanese Noh theater, originating in the 14th century. They represent demons, spirits, women, and gods, crafted from Japanese cypress and painted with natural pigments.” Aoyama becomes angry, deciding that Chi-chan has led her on, flirted with her, encouraged a one-sided intimacy. Chi-chan has played a role; she is not whom she seems to be, which, of course, is a central theme of the story. Here is a scene with the two women, beginning with Aoyama: “’Are you aware of your mask?’ ‘My…mask?’ ‘Can you deny that you’re wearing a mask right now? You’ve hidden your true feelings from me since the day we met.’” Aoyama believes Chi-chan’s coldness is because Aoyama gave her a luxurious kimono—a traditional Japanese garment. By giving such an expensive gift, Aoyama believes she offended Chi-chan. Chi-chan replies: “’Liking or disliking kimonos isn’t the crux of the problem…you have a blind spot that you cannot possibly be aware of.’” Chi-chan continues: “’I believe that it is most ideal for us to maintain a strictly professional relationship.’” This statement leads to a separation between the two women. Chi-chan disappears, leaving Aoyama no way to contact her and a sense that she does indeed have a blind spot that she cannot see. Let’s re-focus on how the story is told. There are few traditional flashbacks in Taiwan Travelogue; the text stays anchored in the story’s present, although as we have noted, the introductions and afterwords playfully jump all over time (mostly ahead). In the story itself, time moves essentially in one direction—forward. The story could certainly bear digressions into the past that would contextualize the characters’ behavior, however, this is not presented. Our friend the implied author has made a choice here, one that helps to define the book’s style. Primarily, there are dramatic scenes with a helping of dramatic summary, often in imperfect tense. There are also the expository sections on cuisine. What do I mean here? Let’s look at an example. “After we returned to Taichu, there was no more talk of Noh masks or of friendship. The clock seemed to have rewound to my early days on the island, with Chi-chan angelically preparing nutritious and delicious lunches and dinners for me on my writing days…A rainy season was upon us, much like when I first got here; but this was wintry rain…” ‘Kay, this is dramatic summary. We are not shown moment to moment what the narrator describes; time is collapsed and there’s a sense that the events described occur and re-occur from day to day. Here is an example of the “travelogue” -like descriptions of cuisine. “Back when sukiyaki was first introduced in the Meiji era, it was known simply as beef hotpot. There were originally different ways of making the dish in Kamigata and Edo, but these eventually merged in the Taisho era.” (And these passages are usually footnoted, which contributes to the verisimilitude). Here is a dramatic scene: “’If shuto means ‘alcohol robbery,’ then perhaps we ought to call sukiyaki ‘rice robbery,’ I said. Chi-chan laughed. ‘Is that why you made three whole cups of rice?’ ‘I would have made four, but I wanted to save some room for the meat.’ … In the ensuing silence, I saw that the clock had not turned back after all. The Chi-chan who had heartily enjoyed the Yanagawa pot with me would not have been silent now.” (This inner reflection is a comment on the change in the women’s relationship). ‘Will you not ask me what we’ll eat in the spring?’ I asked. This scene begins slowly, with the discussion of food but drama arises when Aoyama asks Ch-chan about the spring, bringing up the question of whether they’ll be together in the future (they won’t). The point is that these frequently occurring passages consist of quoted speech, with some “beats” and some inner thoughts of the narrator. (a beat is an action that a speaker of dialogue makes, a description of what they were doing as they spoke—Chi-chan laughed). One of the primary injunctions fiction writers are given is to “show, not tell.” The reader should be asked to make meaning of a story, not have it explained to her/him. However, a story devoid of any telling or exposition would be quite challenging to understand, so a balance is needed. In the above scene, we the readers are shown Chi-chan uttering a question about how many cups of rice Aoyama made. This question could be construed several ways but the beat “Chi-chan laughed” provides us with helpful context and explanation of how her question fit into the scene (she’s teasing). Ms. Yang generally does a fine job as she weaves in considerable culinary and tourist exposition to the dramatic scenes. And this relates handily to the theme of Aoyama being a tourist who loves to eat as well as the idea that things are not what they seem to be. Let’s stop here and continue next time with a discussion of the climax—Aoyama’s realization—and its aftermath. Till then. #TaiwanTravelogue #YangShuang-zi #AlanBray

I want to say a big thank you to those posting five-star reviews on Amazon for my books, The Hour of Parade and The Puppet's Tattered Clothes. Your kind remarks are appreciated. I am currently revising The Hour of Parade and hope to re-publish it. Thanks again. (I am smiling inwardly. At you.).

The middle part of Yang Shuang-zi’s Taiwan Travelogue shows a slow escalation of the themes introduced during and after the book’s inciting incident. Aoyama is increasingly attracted to O-san, and vice versa—seemingly, although this is put into question later. After all, it’s all presented through Aoyama’s perspective. And there’s a strong sense of Aoyama being outraged by the racism shown to the Taiwanese by the Japanese, although, again, this is later re-contextualized. There is a strong presence of the implied author, more so than in other books. Just for a fun review, the implied author refers “to the textual, reconstructed "persona" or "second self" of the writer, distinct from the actual, flesh-and-blood author. It is the version of the author inferred by the reader based on the style, ideology, and tone of the work.” Ideology in this book refers to beliefs expressed about the insensitivity of certain people from Japan who look down on the Taiwanese and wish to dominate their country—beliefs that are shown in a negative light. The style and tone of Taiwan Travelogue is realist; the book seems very much like the chronicle of a “real” person, Aoyama, who narrates her adventures on the island of Taiwan in 1938. However, below the surface, we discern that this is all “magic” and of clever design, the work of the entity who wrote the book. Isn’t this Ms. Yang? you ask. The concept of the implied author involves the idea that the real Ms. Yang is capable of writing other books (she actually has) and that these other books may vary in style, ideology, and tone. Taiwan Travelogue is a particular novel, a one of a kind creation by an entity who goes to elaborate lengths to disguise the fictional nature of the work, creating introductions and afterwards, peppering the text with many footnotes that add to the illusion that the text is a sort of memoir or travelogue based on “real” events instead of being a contemporary novel. The footnotes are often credited to the book’s translator, Lin King, sometimes to the author, Yang Shuang-Zi, and sometimes even to the narrator, Aoyama. Lin King may indeed be another implied author who shapes the translated narrative and provides extensive commentary on the text, with notes on food, historical and natural sites, and poetry. I believe she is a “real” flesh and blood human. The first footnote occurs on page 1 and is credited to Yang Shunag-zi, described as the “Mandarin Chinese translator of the 2020 edition.” ‘Kay. This is intentionally misleading. Ms. Yang is the real author, not someone who translated an already existing text. Subsequently, she and the English translator, Lin King, take turns adding footnotes which continue to support the fiction that the book was actually written in 1954 and that it refers to real events in 1938. These footnotes, unusual in a work of fiction, provide a false sense that the novel is a memoir. On page 75, we actually have a footnote from the narrator, Aoyama, who explains some details of Taiwanese cuisine. This, I must remind everyone, is a footnote by a fictional character. “What’s going on here” indeed. Mid-way through, we have our old friend a mise en abyme. Aoyama and Chi-Chan visit a girl’s school and are introduced to two young students, Ozawa Reiko, a Japanese girl, and Tan Tshiok-bi, (sparrow), a Taiwanese, as they stand outside beneath a flowering bougainvillea tree. “One of the girls, who had the build of a star athlete, raised a hand to brush the fallen petals off the shoulder of the shorter, slighter girl.” This physical description is quite similar to the description of Aoyama and Chi-chan, and this gesture of the larger girl brushing fallen petals off the slighter girl’s shoulder is congruent with the way that Aoyama wishes to protect Chi-chan. That night, they sleep in one of the girl’s dormitories, near a bathroom which is rumored to be haunted or enchanted by spirits. “There are tales about a mythical dimension in the lavatory,” Tan Tsiok tells them with a mischievous smile. Of course, this is all Aoyama and Chichan need to hear. In the middle of the night, they go to the bathroom and hear voices. They discover a photo lying on the floor of a very thin and boyish young woman. Things are mysterious and shadowy, but it develops that two girls have been using the bathroom as a romantic rendezvous, as it is a safe place others are afraid to go to at night. This is a mis en abyme indeed, best B, one that presents Aoyama’s desire of the way things should be between she and Chi-chan. ‘Kay. We’ve brought things up to a point where the novel changes significantly in a sort of climax—a drawn out one. Let’s stop there and pick up next time. Till then. #TaiwanTravelogue #YangShuang-zi #AlanBray

Last time, in a first discussion of Yang Shuang-zi’s novel Taiwan Travelogue , I mentioned that the book’s form conveys information about and is congruent with, the story. It was only a day later that a man came up to me on the street, tears in his eyes, and said, “But what did you mean by that?” Alarmed by random encounters, I hurried away, but ever since, his question has nagged me, and I will attempt to explain. In a story about things not being what they seem, the novel’s introduction is not what it seems to be. It is supposedly written by a Japanese man who possesses a copy of what he describes as the first edition of a book published in 1954 and who provides this to a translator who renders the book into English and publishes it in 2024. None of this is true; it is fiction. There is no Japanese man, the real author of Taiwan Travelogue , Yang Shuang-zi, wrote all of the above; Taiwan Travelogue  wasn’t written till 2020. So the form or structure of the novel communicates information about the content. It is not the random work of typesetters, best B. If we then approach Taiwan Travelogue  as a novel disguised as a sort of memoir, with some sleight-of-hand regarding the introduction (and the afterwards, which we haven’t got to), we should be able to apply concepts about the structure of fiction to it, i.e., how it begins, an inciting incident, progressive complications leading to a climax, leading to an ending showing the consequences of this climax, featuring some transformation of the protagonist. As I said above, in fiction, there are no coincidences (to echo Don Juan, which is always good to do). Let’s begin. Last time, I presented the beginning of the purported novel itself, and it’s worth doing so again. “Hold on. What’s going on here?” I couldn’t help but voice the thought out loud. For, in the moment, I seemed to have been transported back into the midst of Shokyokusai Tenkatsu’s Magic Troupe. I’d crossed paths with Tenkatsu’s troupe long ago, before I’d started high school. They had been on tour, and on the day they arrived in Nagasaki, my Aunt Kikuko and I happened upon the opening parade.” The narrator then describes the long-ago magician’s parade. Then: “And here I was, decades later, on the outpost island of Taiwan, reliving this old reverie. It was May, in the thirteenth year of Showa (1938), yet the sights and sounds coursing before me were just like those of Tenkatsu’s Magic Troupe.” Then, the narrator describes seeing the market area which has evoked a long-ago memory of a magic troupe parade. ‘Kay.   So the novel itself begins with a description of the narrator having an experience in which memory takes her into the past, and she is surprised by this. The past links with the present; two separate realms collide, provoking shock and confusion. (and wonder, I think). The present is disguised as the past and vice versa, providing a neat continuation of the novel’s theme. If we subscribe to the theory that a story’s beginning should resonate at the story’s end, we should expect this theme to re-surface at the end. We’ll see. After the beginning, we have a section of the story that establishes the characters and provides a sort of steady state for them to exist in prior to the inciting incident. The protagonist, Aoyama Chizuko, is a native Japanese woman, a famous author, who has traveled to Taiwan by ship to write a series of articles or dispatches on the island. The year is 1938; Aoyama’s age is never specified, but she refers to herself as in her forties. She describes how publishers in Japan wanted to send her to Taiwan out of a wish to promote imperialist ideas in Japan. As I mentioned last time, Japan controlled Taiwan in the 1930s and saw at as a central part of its expansion into the southern Pacific. Aoyama is reluctanct to be used as an instrument of Japanese imperialism, and this establishes an important aspect of her character—her rebelliousness. However, she needs money. “The Government-General of Taiwan had always been fond of bringing Mainlander authors to Taiwan, and thus…sent a joint invitation naming Taichu town hall (Taichu is Japanese for the Taiwanese city of Taichung) as my official host. Even without the lectureship compensation, their offer to cover transportation, housing, and dining immediately dispelled all of my financial woes.” She describes sailing to Taichu and going to a market area where she encounters some difficulty because of not speaking the language. There, for the first time, she meets the woman who becomes her interpreter and companion. The woman says: “’I beg your pardon—would you like any assistance?’ I followed this flawless Japanese to its source: the face of a petite young woman who came up to around my jaw. Silken cheeks like an infant’s—and two dimples that punctuated them when she smiled.” Aoyama is clearly smitten with the young woman, but the woman withdraws without saying her name. However, serendipity arranges another meeting; she is O-san, a native Taiwanese who will be Aoyama’s interpreter. This, I think, is the story’s precipitating incident. “The sudden swelling in my chest made me choke on a lungful of air.” Aoyama is persistently upbeat and self-deprecating. There are many scenes where she is gently corrected by O-san after making farcical blunders. Aoyama is fascinated by food, and a strong feature of the book is the in-depth description of Taiwanese cuisine. I believe all these features make up her pre-transformation state. Aoyama is not entirely reliable as a narrator—not because she intentionally misleads the reader but because she is naïve and un-curious. She presents her story in very surface fashion, and we the readers must attend more to the implied author’s work in order to get the story’s meaning. She endlessly describes the charms of O-san but doesn’t reflect on (or at least isn’t shown as reflecting on) the deeper implications—that she is attracted to another woman. Perhaps what is being shown is that her sexuality has been determined long ago and is unsurprising to her. Or it could be that she is spectacularly unaware. Or, it could be that she is an unreliable narrator who “sugar-coats” the story. Let’s stop there and resume next time. Till then. #TaiwanTravelogue #YangShuang-zi #AlanBray

This week, a new and very interesting book, dear friends, Yang Shuang-zi’s 2020 novel, Taiwan Travelogue. Originally published in Taiwan,   this book has been short-listed for the 2026 International Booker Prize and was translated to English by Lin King in 2024. What the heck is very interesting about this novel? you say. Well, on the surface, it appears to be a reprint of an old travel book about a Japanese woman visiting Taiwan in the late 1930s. The publisher has taken pains to encourage this idea with the book’s cover design and layout. The cover of the English edition I’m reading quotes the first page of the purported “travelogue” which begins, “Hold on. What’s going on here?” The quoted text presents the narrator describing a parade of magicians she once saw, and this description of magic and sleight-of-hand is a wry commentary on the whole book. The text itself has a generous sampling of descriptions of Taiwanese cuisine and shows the protagonist/narrator, and her companion visiting numerous tourist sites—features common to many tourist guides, or travelogues. However, below the surface, we have a novel. By way of background—which does help in one’s enjoyment—" From 1895 to 1945, Japan  colonized Taiwan, transforming it into a "model colony" to support its imperial expansion . While implementing strict, often brutal, authoritarian rule and cultural assimilation (Japanization), Japan concurrently built extensive infrastructure—railways, sanitation, and education systems—that modernized the island's economy, particularly in agriculture and industry.”    Japan was forced to give up Taiwan after WWII, and currently, Taiwan is a sovereign nation (China is not pleased). Today, let’s consider the book’s introduction that seems to be separate from the story. In fact, I began reading the book by skipping this section, thinking I’d get at it later, that it was exactly what it purports to be, an introduction written by someone else. It’s entitled, Introduction to Taiwan Travelogue , New Mandarin Chinese Edition, 2020. Then we have, A Truncated Dream, A Foreign Splendorland and the author’s name, Hiyoshi Sagako. (I wonder if this name has some meaning in Japanese culture—or Taiwanese). “My affiliation with this new translation of Taiwan Travelogue  began in 2015, when I heard via word of mouth that Ms. Yang Jo-hui, a translator, was seeking a copy of the first Mandarin translation, published in 1977. I found this an unusual quest, considering that the book had been out of print in Taiwan for many years…” ‘Kay, what’s going on here? (To echo the text’s first line). On the publication page, we’re told simply that Ms. Yang wrote the book in 2020, so how could it now be said to have been written much earlier, in 1954? The writer claims that in 1938, a Japanese woman, Aoyama Chizoku, a famous novelist, was asked by the Japanese government to travel to Taiwan and write a series of dispatches describing the island. She did so amid the build-up to WWII, publishing the dispatches first as a travelogue. Then in 1954, she published a novel based on her experiences. A nice story, but—you guessed it—a fiction. The novel, Taiwan Travelogue , was indeed written by Yan Shuang-zi in 2020, and the translation is now nominated for a Booker Prize. Why do these literary acrobatics? you ask. The concept of time travel comes to mind, as well as the work of magicians. As does that old idea of a text’s implied author. The introduction continues with a summary of one of the main themes of the book, that Taiwanese—including those born of Japanese families living on the island—were looked down on by people in Japan as inferior and, in the case of ethnic Japanese inhabitants, not “really” Japanese. Here we have another theme—authenticity vs. inauthenticity. Fiction vs. non-fiction. Ms. Aoyama’s being invited to Taiwan to write a Travelogue is characterized as an attempt by the Japanese government to further their expansionist ambitions (think Pearl Harbor). In a very curious passage, the authenticity of Ms. Aoyama’s interpreter, Ms. Wang Chien-ho, is questioned: “I will admit that, back when I first read Aoyama-sensei’s serialized essays, I had assumed that Ms. Wang must have been a fictional character…I therefore deduced that Ms. Wang must have been a clever metaphor, a vessel through which Aoyama could imply her true views under the veil of patriotic writing.” This passage of course is based on the fictional idea that Ms. Aoyama is a “real” person, instead of a fictional character. The introduction continues: “Today, there is no longer any doubt that Ms. Wang was very real indeed; those who attended Ms. Aoyama’s lectured testified to seeing Ms. Wang at her side. But while Aoyama’s motives for publishing the book were rooted in her relationship with the real Ms. Wang, she ultimately chose to present the work as fiction, and the novel’s very premise rests on the fictionality of Ms. Wang as a character. For better or worse, Ms. Wang has  become a metaphor—one without which the novel Taiwan Travelogue  cannot stand as a work of literature.” ‘Kay. Once again, on the surface, this seems quite plausible, but when you consider that Taiwan Travelogue is a work of fiction published in 2020, the introduction becomes a hall of mirrors. Ms. Yang is real/not real. The book is fiction/not fiction. Why does the novel’s very premise rest on the fictionality of Ms. Wang? The author (implied author) is saying that the character of Ms. Wang is symbolic of the racism and oppression that Japanese people inflicted on the Taiwanese. The introduction then comments on the insertion of a key chapter after the first publication of the novel. We’ll get into that later. As a preliminary step toward making sense of this story, let’s say that it’s form—here, the introduction—conveys a lot of information. Let’s stop there and continue next time. Till then. #TaiwanTravelogue #YangShuang-Zi #AlanBray