Kobo Abe: The Face of Another

The Face of Another is a book I love and hate.  I began reading Kobo Abe's novels a few years back, and I think the first one I read was The Ruined Map.  It was an excellent, ghostly tale of a crime that may or may not have happened.  Someone literally disappeared on a sidewalk, but how?  It was enthralling and chilling.

I went on to read other books by Abe, and soon realized that his primary occupation in most of his work, as it was in The Ruined Map, was identity.  Who is a person, anyway?  Is that person formed by the perception others form of him?  Can a person form a true, objective, separate identity?

He revisits these questions, once again, in The Face of Another, in which the protagonist suffers terrible chemical burns to the face and is impelled to create a life-like mask for himself so that others will not be repulsed by his appearance and still accept him as a "normal" member of society.  Abe goes on to explore the implications of masks and how they might alter a person's identity and sense of responsibility to the world.

Though a novel, Face tends to read more like a first-person philosophical manifest.  It is at times turgid and difficult to penetrate.  Though the subject matter is fascinating, its presentation is so dense it borders on stultifying.  One is often left to wonder just what exactly Abe is trying to convey.

It could be that the murkiness of the delivery is intended to be part of the story's fabric.  The anonymous protagonist, who conveys his tale through the medium of a series of journals, is himself confounded by the process in which he is immersed.  What is hard to swallow is that, though the protagonist is caught up in a very deep and rigorous examination of his actions, he is painted as somewhat vain and superficial.  Would such a vain individual really be so concerned with the intricacies of how a mask effects a persons actions?  Perhaps the considerations of the mask cause him to be less superficial?

Ultimately, if one isn't familiar with Abe's work, this book can be skipped. Start with The Ruined Map or The Box Man.  If you have read some of his work, and not this book, it is, though difficult, a necessary read.

David Berman: Actual Air

Actual Air by David Berman is probably my favorite book of poems published in the last ten years.  It was published by Open City Books in 1999.  Sadly, no poetry by Berman has been published since that time.

I met him in 2006 at a show his band, Silver Jews, played in Charlottesville, Virginia.  When I asked if he planned to publish any poetry in the near future, all he did was grimace.  His reaction caused me to feel a little guilty, as if I had asked him to undress for me.

Whether he produces any more poems, or not, Actual Air stands on its own.  It is one of the few books I have ever read more than once.  In fact, I just finished my fifth reading, and it still managed to move me.

Honestly, when I read this book, my initial response is jealousy.  I envy Berman's ability to fuse lucid observations of the physical world with the tendency of the mind to mystify that world.  He manages to make life strange without obscuring its intimate details.  And that is exactly what the poems within this book are - strange and intimate.  It is as if he and the reader are sitting together on a twilit porch, drinking beer, as he whispers tall tales about an impossible world just right around the corner.  It is difficult not to believe him.

I have scoured this book in an effort to find snippets of poetry which could be presented as examples, but it is difficult to extract a few lines here and there from the totality of the poems.  They are so of a piece, that to quote a mere stanza would do a poem injustice, would not at all convey the textured nuance of the spell which Berman so deftly weaves and casts.

With that in mind, I leave you with a full poem.  I don't claim it to be one of the best in the book, but it is one of my favorites.

             ~  

World: Series 

When something passes in the dark
I make a note on the pad kept by the window.

Candlelight wobbles on the walls,
over the baseboard electrical outlets
that look like primitive swine masks

and I can't remember if I read or dreamed about them -
a sect on the Mayflower called the Strangers -
four or five adults who gathered in the hold
and spoke to no one through the three month passage.

When the boats landed on the beach
they walked into the North American forest
and were never seen again.

I put my book down and come to the window
where curtains are fastened to the sides
so it is like looking out at the world
through the back of a teenage girl's head

and my signature is drawn in magic marker
on the lower right hand corner of the window

so when something passes in the dark
it's captured for a moment inside my work.

I come to the window and title the eras
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,

and watch the wind in the tension of the blown trees,
the moon illuminated by my attention.
When something passes in the dark,
I try to tell its side of the story.

"I am passing someone in the dark," it thinks...