Tag: religion

Life might have been totally different

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1Q84
by Haruki Murakami

It’s my own fault. I was really excited about this book. I built it up in my head. I believed the “magnum opus” hype. I was bound to be let down.

1Q84

I really like Murakami. He’s not my favourite writer but I have loved some of his books and really liked several more, so the prospect of a three-volume masterpiece by him sounded wonderful. Unfortunately it turned out to be my least favourite of his works so far. In fact, at times it had me angry enough to want to throw the book across the room and I nearly gave up on it multiple times. But I soldiered on because this is after all Murakami and there is an intriguing storyline that is not wrapped up until the last page. And I had to know.

So that’s it’s great strength: the story. It’s a very Murakami story, an idea that starts gradually, slowly forming, giving you room to guess what’s going on. It’s weird in a surreal sort of way but it has an internal logic that allows you to see the directions it might go in.

Because it takes most of book 1 (300+ pages) for the basic concept to become clear, I don’t want to say too much about what happens. The chapters alternate between the stories of Tengo and Aomame. Tengo is part-time teacher, part-time writer, who allows himself to be persuaded by an editor friend to rewrite someone else’s entry in a creative writing competition, a story called Air Chrysalis. The situation goes from a bit unethical to downright dangerous when it turns out that there is a lot more to Air Chrysalis than meets the eye.

Aomame is a fitness instructor and also an assassin. But not the ruthless kind who will kill anyone for the right price. She has just one client and kills one particular breed of very bad men. So what links her to Tengo? Well, that would be saying too much, but from the start it is clear that they have a lot in common. They are both about 30 years old, living in Tokyo, with no strong emotional ties to anyone. They have almost clinical attitudes to their sex lives. They are particular about cleanliness and eating well. And because they would clearly get on well, it was wonderful slowly learning about how they were linked, seeing their stories draw together. But.

For one thing, I think 1Q84 is far longer than it needs to be. Murakami has a reputation as a sparse writer but here there is lots of repetition, lots of restating facts – a lot of bulk could have been shed. After the initial teasing out of a detail or plot point it then gets overstated and too obvious. This was to the detriment of the more surreal, magical elements because it made them seem at times clumsy and over-thought.

But I also had issues with some of the major themes in the book. First up: sex. I have no problem with sex scenes, but here I frequently got the feeling that typical male fantasies were being depicted for no good reason. Aomame is straight and at one point turns down an offer of sex with a woman, yet Murakami has her linger on the memory of a teenage lesbian dalliance with a close friend more than once. For no reason that I could fathom, when she remembers two good female friends from her past she thinks about their breasts. And not in a jealous way but in a sexual way. It’s very strange.

Then there’s the parents thing. There are no good parent–child relationships in this book. Tengo is horribly self-centred in his attitude to his father. Both Tengo and Aomame chose to move out from their parents at the earliest possible opportunity, but neither describes anything particularly terrible to explain why. Aomame’s parents were religious, Tengo’s father a distant workaholic, and perhaps with some further details those would have indeed been in some way abusive situations, but for all the very many words, I was never able to see what had been so wrong with either childhood.

Which brings us to the last problem: religion. Oh my word does Murakami have an axe to grind here. I should point out that I am an atheist, I am no fan of organised religion and recognise that it has been the source of a lot of bad stuff. But it has its positive side too and in most cases is probably best described as benign. 1Q84 gives no stock to such nuances. ALL RELIGION BAD could sum its attitude up. Basically, you have a cult that somehow grew out of a non-religious hippy commune and became a child-raping place of evil. And all other religious sects, churches or organisations mentioned are spoken of as if they are just as bad. As if they all brainwash, make children miserable, expect unreasonable things of their followers. Some of the statements I read made me slam the book shut and shout out angrily. At one point there was so much of this nonsense I didn’t know how I could possibly read on, but thankfully the narrative moved past it. (Although this is also a problem because I felt it was very ambiguous whether the nasty child-rape situation had been resolved or not.)

It started well and it ended well. The anger I felt in book 2 never resurfaced, although the boredom with some of the “waiting” sections did. I kept on reading because I wanted to know more, but I could not honestly say I enjoyed the read. This was translated by Murakami regulars Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel so the style should have been familiar but it genuinely felt poorly edited in places and there were no moments when the writing stood out as beautiful or moving. Tengo and Aomame were typical Murakami characters in that they felt real but at a distance, slightly cold fish, so I could never be in their shoes truly living the story.

It saddens me that I cannot recommend this book and am even a little bit put off reading Murakami at all for a while. But I know other people have loved it so remember this is just my opinion. Others are available.

First published in Japanese in 2009 and 2010 by Shinchosa Publishing.
This translation published 2011 by Harvill Secker.

See also: discussions on Tony’s Reading List and In Spring it is the Dawn

A peek inside

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Censoring an Iranian Love Story
by Shahriar Mandanipour
translated from Farsi by Sara Khalili

This is a complicated book to explain, and indeed to read and form a reaction to. But it’s also an illuminating look into a world we in the West don’t get to see in detail: modern-day Iran.

Mandanipour tells the story of an author (called Mandanipour, in a postmodern manner) who is trying to write a simple love story for publication in Iran. The problem is that censorship is so strict in Iran that he keeps having to delete or change sentences or whole scenes, compromising his art. So in this novel we get both his love story and his thought process about it inbetween, including his flashbacks to previous encounters with the chief censor, Mr Petrovich, and imagined future ones.

There are many complications to writing a love story in Iran, not least of which is how your characters can possibly meet. Unmarried men and women should never be alone with or speak to members of the opposite sex outside of their family. This is controlled both in reality – by a combination of genuine religious belief and militia – and in the arts, by censorship.

It’s a very eye-opening, important story to tell but the problem is that by using this two-layer technique, by explaining where the ideas for the characters come from and rewriting scenes as you try to follow them, it’s hard to get involved in the love story. But you also don’t really get to know the author as a character, so you are left at a distance from it all. This doesn’t stop it being readable and enjoyable even, but it did prevent it from being absorbing.

The love story is that of Sara and Dara (named after characters in now-banned learning-to-read books well known in Iran), a young pair whose love story begins with books, in particular banned or heavily censored books. The author explains how the books are either edited by hand with a black marker pen or printed with ellipses all over the place and how this leads the ellipsis to have an almost magical, often erotic, quality. He also explains the various methods Iranian authors use to evade censorship, including heavy use of allusion and metaphor, which he feels makes a story harder to read and less true to its art.

Dara is knowledgeable about great works of literature and film, and both he and the author reference both heavily, almost as though they are secret code, which I suppose for them they are. Dara has a “political past” which means that he can never earn a great deal or risk stepping out of line. Sara is young and nervous about breaking rules or letting down her family, though she does have a passionate nature that can get her into trouble.

What makes this book occasionally hard to follow is that Mandanipour blurs the line between the two stories, so that sometimes Sara or Dara speaks directly to the author, or an anecdote the author tells about his life merges into their story. But even without this, the story isn’t straightforward. There is some toying with magical realism and the fantastical, there is a recurring character who is a street pedlar selling spells and love potions, and there’s a dead dwarf who keeps popping up.

However, it isn’t a struggle to read because what shines through all the complexity of plot is a love of language and a playful humour. For all his frustration, the author loves his country and its rich history and references many Persian poets that I had never heard of. He introduces characters and stories from Persian literature, sometimes veering off again and again from his original point so that it is a jolt to come back to Sara and Dara.

Though he has been writing for decades, this was Mandanipour’s first full-length work to be translated into English. I would be interested to read more (and will look out for the short stories his bio implies are out there somewhere in translation).

First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Little, Brown.
Paperback published in 2011 by Abacus.

Flavour of the south

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The Romance Readers’ Book Club
by Julie L Cannon

I bought this book on my recent trip to the United States because it looked like both a fun, easy read and an authentic flavour of the southern US. It deals well with some big issues, though it doesn’t come to the conclusions that I would necessarily have hoped for or agreed with.

This book treads a fine line between sweet fluffy teen romance and deeper “issues”-ridden prose with some literary merit. For the most part it is well written and engaging but some of the exposition was clunky, especially at the start. That said, the characters are believable and the story had me interested enough that I read the whole book in one sitting.

The story is that of teenage Tammi, living a secluded life on a farm in Rigby, Georgia, with her strict religious grandparents, or rather step-grandparents, which adds an element of them doing her a favour that is the first clue that all is not actually sweetness and light. Tammi has a lot of chores to do, must dress in the shapeless clothes her grandmother picks out and isn’t allowed to listen to modern music (it’s the 1970s). Which doesn’t exactly make her Miss Popularity at school. Tammi’s only real friends are her Aunt Minna and Uncle Orr, who each live in their own house on the farm and provide an escape. Minna is colourful and eccentric, Orr is severely mentally disabled; both are devoted to young Tammi.

The story proper begins when Tammi gets hold of a stack of steamy romance novels that she knows her grandmother will disapprove of but is eager to read. She persuades a girl at school to join her Romance Readers Book Club and soon a small group is meeting secretly every four weeks to share the illicit thrill. Tammi’s burgeoning sexuality is being stifled by real life and she desperately needs this escape, but she is terrified that it is a huge sin and may be the cause of the endless drought that is threatening her family’s livelihood.

There’s quite a lot going on in Tammi’s world, with peripheral characters having their own dramas that sometimes crash into Tammi’s life. I did find it odd that, aside from sexual matters, Tammi seemed to lack curiosity – maybe she has been too well trained in politeness and not asking questions but she seemed happy to find out what’s going on in dribs and drabs. And even when it came to sex there was a for me heartbreaking scene where she realises she doesn’t actually know what all these metaphors and allusions about passionate encounters are actually getting at. She has no idea what comes after kissing.

I definitely felt a strong sense of place in this novel. Not that I’m familiar with Georgia, but it somehow persuaded me of its authenticity of accent, terminology and people. I also felt that Orr was depicted well; his friendship with Tammi was touching and his inability to cope with having steamy romance novels read aloud to him was surprisingly sad because it marked the first division between Tammi and her favourite companion.

It’s worth pointing out that this book comes from a part of the world where going to church is all-important. Cannon uses some clever misdirection on this topic but actually faith itself is never questioned, only how to interpret the word of God. Tammi’s revolt against the strictness of her grandmother is never very extreme and she repents every tiny thing. In a way, this is actually very clever, because if Tammi had broken away from everything dramatically this would be a story about how romance novels are a corrupting influence, whereas the point of course is that these novels are a natural and badly needed escape and the only harm done is the temporary confusion that Tammi would probably have gone through anyway.

There are a lot of short “excerpts” from the romance novels in question and they really did take me back to being a teenager myself, devouring these books before I had ever even kissed a boy, daydreaming obsessively of being a character in one of those exotic locales with the clichéd dark handsome man. By the time I got my first boyfriend I’d realised those books were trash and moved on but they played their part in my “coming of age” and I suspect I’m not alone in that.

One final point on this novel – the blurb on the back was particularly poor. I know a lot of people say to always ignore it anyway and if I’m buying a book because I like the author or read about it in a review I do ignore the cover as much as I can. But when I’m just browsing unknown books, that blurb is providing useful information. Theoretically. But in this case whoever wrote the blurb got the wrong end of the stick and almost certainly hadn’t read the manuscript. There are several factual errors and it misses out some of the more interesting, serious themes. That said, I’m still glad I picked it up.

First published 2008 by Plume, an imprint of the Penguin Group.

Goodness for goodness' sake

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I am an atheist. This is not a lack of belief. I am not wishy washying around, searching for something to believe in that’s better or more convincing. I actively believe that there is no God or gods. I believe that religions are coping mechanisms created by humanity to deal with the unknown and/or scary things in life, particularly death. Which makes total sense. Life can be scary and death is downright terrifying. I will stop existing one day. My thoughts, these thoughts, will just stop. Blink out. Be no more. This person, me, everything I am, will be gone. Of course that’s scary.

I’m not easily offended. Though I care deeply about a lot of things, most potential insults wash over me without great effect. I accept that other people think differently to me. But one of the things that I do struggle with is repeated nonchalant attacks on atheism that are apparently acceptable in a country where any attack on religion is not acceptable.

Godlessness does not equal immorality. I believe in being a good person and doing good things for all sorts of reasons, some selfish and some not. I particularly like this quote by Ivan Ratoyevsky: “If anything, an atheist has to be more morally responsible precisely because we don’t blame a god for our own actions.”

Of particular concern to me – why is it okay for state-funded schools to be affiliated to a particular religion? For that religion or local church to have a say in what is or isn’t taught, in who is or isn’t accepted to their local state-funded school. In many areas, especially rural ones, the only local school is a church school, usually Church of England. I went to a C of E primary school. It wasn’t a bad school overall. But we sang hymns and said prayers every morning. The only religious speaker we ever had was the local C of E vicar. RE was 90% or more Christianity. We did a passion play at Easter and a nativity play at Christmas. It was ingrained in us that these were not just stories.

I do not want my children to be taught that way. I strongly believe in secular state-funded schooling, with religion staying at home (or church, temple, mosque, whatever). It makes me angry that religious divisions in our society are aggravated by this continued policy. Of course it doesn’t help that it’s still frowned on to openly admit that you don’t believe in God, which makes it a difficult thing to do.

A big problem is that countries like the UK (and, I believe, Australia and much of western Europe) are considered to be predominantly Christian countries even though only a small percentage of the population actually practises any sort of Christian faith. This is for all sorts of historical reasons but it is not helped by the fact that the UK government relies on census data and the census question has been proven time and again to produce skewed figures, with a significant number of people ticking “Christian” when they are nothing of the sort.

So, I have decided to publicly out myself as an atheist and ask you all (UK peeps, that is), next March, to honestly answer what your current religion is, not how you were raised or what your parents are or whether you were christened decades ago. Do you right now (or rather next March) consider yourself to be practising a religion? If not, then for goodness’ sake tick “No religion” and let’s see some accurate numbers on this subject for a change.