Lafcadio Hearn, Japanese Ghost Stories

 

I had a read a few of Lafacadio Hearn’s ghost stories set in Japan in various editions over the years and never quite connected with them, maybe because I was expecting something that they didn’t offer. But rereading the stories in this more complete collection, I found them to be some of the most beautiful ghost stories I’ve ever read, equally capable of being tender and moving as of inspiring a subtle but genuine sense of fright.

Hearn lived all over the world and was often notorious in his lifetime (in 1874 he married in Ohio a biracial woman who had been born into slavery, breaking the law since interracial marriage was illegal in the state) both for his behavior and outspoken attitudes, in which he frequently and openly rejected American and British racism, and for some of his newspaper writing, in which he sometimes covered some of the most sensational murders and violent crimes of the day. It was after he moved to Japan in 1890 that he wrote these stories which are now the basis of his fame. The stories are highly regarded and frequently read in Japan, while he remains a familiar name in British and U.S. supernatural fiction.

If you like your moments of fright tinged with a melancholy and sometimes tragic sense of loss, and with a historical and cultural richness that isn’t that common in the history of ghost stories, you’ll be very happy reading Japanese Ghost Stories. You’ll even forget about the silly cover quickly enough.

Happy Halloween to those who celebrate it!

The Romantic Dogs by Roberto Bolaño

 

A lot of people find Roberto Bolaño’s poetry less interesting than his fiction. I can see why, in some ways. The poems lack the same scope, and they feel more youthful and more romantic, even as their political concerns seem in line with what he would do later in his fiction. On the other hand, the youthfulness and smaller scope is significantly the result of the poems being the work of a young writer on his way to greater heights. I found the poems in The Romantic Dogs enjoyable and insightful on their own terms, but they also seem like short blueprints for the later, more in-depth writing that he would do (at many thousands of pages of length overall, as his readers know). In some ways, The Romantic Dogs shows a more personal, approachable writer than Bolaño’s novels do, with more of his own personality and desires on display. In the poems I could see more of what was at stake for him personally, what concerns he was wrestling with, than I sometimes can in the novels. The poems show his struggles to break out of the restrained and limiting environments in which he finds himself. The novels are going to be that breakout, an expansive portrayal of many social dynamics that take him far beyond any one individual’s concerns. In the poems though, I could see him working his way towards what would happen next. They feel like they provide a very intimate look at what it might take to find one’s way towards literary greatness.

Raymond Chandler and Jack Spicer

 

The similarities between these two books are remarkable. Stylistically, they both feature taut understated prose that’s remarkably precise and filled with restrained tension. Thematically, both dwell significantly and harshly on the limitations of the larger environment of writing that they’re part of: in Spicer, the failings of poetry and poetry cultures, in Chandler, the failures of the detective fiction marketplace and publishers and the limitations of the Hollywood culture of writing for films. Both books significantly (if hardly exclusively) discuss California and California writing cultures. And both are written largely during the same time period, the 40s and 50s, although Spicer continued living into the 60s. Spicer was interested in detective fiction and likely knew of Chandler’s work, but Chandler almost certainly never heard of Spicer.

Neither of these writers has huge sympathy for others or for themselves. Their harsh takes might seem cynical if not for the fact that they also often seem painfully correct. Still, both men are also at points unpleasantly misanthropic. They are both loners and alcoholics who don’t quite seem able to find stable friendships or communities. Both did have a community context and were in touch with lots of people, but the written conversations they were involved in do not always seem sustaining to them as friendship.

I’m not sure what to make of these similarities except that the cultural contexts of these two writers were not as far apart as it might seem on the surface. However, because genre remains so divisive in U.S. literary contexts, how many readers are likely to be interested in both Spicer and Chandler? The similarities between these two might be very easy never to notice.

And that last point might be emphasized by the fact that it’s to some degree accidental that I’m reading these books simultaneously. I bought the book of Spicer’s letters when it came out. Suzanne recently found the book of Chandler’s selected letters in an antique mall and thought I might be interested, and since I’m teaching a Detectives in Film and Fiction class in the spring semester, I thought I would read it before teaching the class. I had no intention of looking for similarities when I started reading both books, but the similarities are impossible (for me anyway) to ignore.