Weekend Review: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen & Radiohead

Dear friends,


This past weekend I saw Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, starring Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt.  I'm a fan of Ewan McGregor and the quirky title appealed to me, so I decided to check this one out (besides, what else is playing?).  It's essentially a conventional romantic comedy-drama with a slightly more interesting premise: a British scientist, under the directive of his government and with the the backing of a wealthy Yemeni Sheikh, attempts to introduce salmon fishing to the Yemen.  The British get a good news story out of the Arab world, and the people of Yemen gain access to the water created by a dam, as well as the salmon fishing.  Weird right? Ha!  Well, the movie is a cliched affair, but the interplay between Ewan McGregor and the cute Emily Blunt was nice.  I've always been a fan of British television and movies, and the production here was on par with what I expected.


I have to say, though, that I wasn't completely satisfied with how relationships were treated in the film.  Both leads end up leaving their significant others (who are portrayed as being shrewish and overly career-focused, or attractive but completely dull, so we're made to think that this is fine).  At one point in the film McGregor's character sends a text message to his wife that confirms the finality of their separation.  Yikes.  There is an interesting moment, though, at the end of the film, where it appears that things might not work out as expected for both McGregor's new love and his dam project, both of which he's come to embrace as his raison d'être.  This unresolved moment in the film reminded me of a couple of lines from on my favorite Radiohead songs, "Nude" (I know, the film has no place being compared to a great Radiohead song, but I like unusual comparions ha!):

Now that you've found it, it's gone

Now that you feel it, you don't 

Sometimes it's only through gaining and losing something that we realize what we were looking for, and there's no guarantee we'll ever find that thing again.  Of course, the film gives us the happy ending that many secretly crave. I guess that's why some people like romantic comedies so much!

Thanks for reading and enjoy the Radiohead song!


--Pianoesque

Norwegian Wood, Translation & the Other

Hello all (two of you),

Rather than introduce myself or my blog, I'll simply light the fire with a post on one of my favorite authors: Haruki Murakami.  I think this shall serve as introduction enough--for now. :-)

***

It's been a number of years since I've read Norwegian Wood in its entirety, though it still stands out as one of my favorite contemporary novels and probably my favorite Murakami novel along with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.  I love so many aspects about the novel from the evocative descriptions of doomed romance to the novel's subtle questioning of nostalgia and so-called "coming of age" stories.  And while the novel is certainly part "coming of age" story itself, it's also an existential crisis novel, a "coming apart" novel, if you will, in which a middle-aged man is still haunted by events that took place in his youth.

Well, I'd been taking a bit of a break from Murakami of recent months, but he popped up again when I decided to assign one of my students his short story, "TV People," and an article titled, "Haruki Murakami and the Ethics of Translation" by Will Slocombe.  The article was of particular interest because my student's assignment centered around the pros and cons of translated literature.  As I'm sure you know, there are many cons: lost meaning due to differences in language and culture, reliance on the translator's aesthetics and choices, et cetera.  Jay Rubin, Murakami's longtime translator, has even gone as far to state that he doesn't recommend reading literature in translation.  Tell that to Murakami fans!  Ha.  That said, so much of the literature I'm interested in these days is literature in translation, and I think the pros of being exposed to new literature and cultures make it more than worthwhile.

And, as Slocombe and others have pointed out,  Murakami is a bit unique in that he's infatuated with the West to the point where some have said that his prose reads as if it were translated into Japanese from the English (Murakami actually tried this when he was younger).  This dynamic strikes me as very much fluid and open to cross-cultural exchanges.  Slocombe suggests that Murakami is very aware that he's writing for audiences outside of Japan.  The most interesting part of the article, though, is the suggestion that translation isn't just from "source language" (SL) to "target language" (TL), but also between author to text, text to reader, ect.  The implications of this are quite interesting when one considers that we are all translating our own thoughts and actions into words on a constant basis.  Slocombe points out that this distance between Self and Other is a fundamental theme in Murakami's writings, and gives us several quotations as evidence.  I like this one he includes from Norwegian Wood, "I wondered if she was trying to convey something to me, something she could not put into words … something prior to words that she could not grasp within herself and which therefore has no hope of ever turning into words."  I've always thought that words are imprecise, messy things, yet Slocombe rightly points out that Murakami's fiction always entertains the possibility of becoming close with the Other--always suggesting that this effort is worth our while--however imprecise such a connection might be.

So, while Murakami has a reputation as being a bit of pessimistic, and he certainly asks hard questions of his characters, I've never read him as being nihilistic.  He's always struck me as a writer with a worldview. To the point, here's a quote of his from a recent NYT article (talking about the tsunami and its aftermath):

"It was a nightmare, but still it’s a good chance to change. After 1945, we have been working so hard and getting rich. But that kind of thing doesn’t continue anymore. We have to change our values. We have to think about how we can get happy. It’s not about money. It’s not about efficiency. It’s about discipline and purpose. What I wanted to say is what I’ve been saying since 1968: we have to change the system. I think this is a time when we have to be idealistic again.” 

I asked him what that idealism looked like, if he perhaps saw the United States as a model.

“I don’t think people think of America as a model anymore,” he said. “We don’t have any model at this moment. We have to establish the new model.” 

I'm not supposed to tell anyone this, as someone vaguely involved in literary criticism, but I have a hard time divorcing this worldview from Murakami's fictional edifices.  His characters frequently experience their own existential nightmares, sometimes against the backdrop of a (post)apocalyptic world.  Frequently these characters begin his stories malleable and/or vapid, only to take form as the stories progress.  Furthermore,  Murakami's embedding of Western references and aesthetics into his novels questions the Japanese literary establishment and begins to establish something new, more heterogeneous in its place.      

***

As an aside, I've been looking forward to the DVD release of the movie by the same name, especially for the cinematography, and I'll be sure to post some thoughts when I get the chance to see it.  I have to say, I was a bit annoyed that the film wasn't playing anywhere near me in its (limited) U.S. release. So much for American movie theatres! I'm sure I would have enjoyed it more than The Artist.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my first post.  Thanks for reading!

--Pianoesque

Further reading/Citations:

NYT Article

Slocombe Article

CLCWeb Volume 6 Issue 2 (June 2004) Article 6
Will Slocombe, "Haruki Murakami and the Ethics of Translation"
<http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol6/iss2/6>