Friday Friyay: 'Longing and Other Stories' by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, trans. by Anthony H. Chambers and Paul McCarthy.

 Happy Friday! I only have one more essay deadline to go before I can fully focus on my thesis but it's soooo hard to get motivated for it even though it's about The Lord of the Rings and Beowulf! But for this weekend I want to get into some short stories, specifically, Longing and Other Stories by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, trans. by Anthony H. Chambers and Paul McCarthy.

Jun’ichirō Tanizaki is one of the most prominent Japanese writers of the twentieth century, renowned for his investigations of family dynamics, eroticism, and cultural identity. Most acclaimed for his postwar novels such as The Makioka Sisters and The Key, Tanizaki made his literary debut in 1910. This book presents three powerful stories of family life from the first decade of Tanizaki’s career that foreshadow the themes the great writer would go on to explore.

“Longing” recounts the fantastic journey of a precocious young boy through an eerie nighttime landscape. Replete with striking natural images and uncanny human encounters, it ends with a striking revelation. “Sorrows of a Heretic” follows a university student and aspiring novelist who lives in degrading poverty in a Tokyo tenement. Ambitious and tormented, the young man rebels against his family against a backdrop of sickness and death. “The Story of an Unhappy Mother” describes a vivacious but self-centered woman’s drastic transformation after a freak accident involving her son and daughter-in-law. Written in different genres, the three stories are united by a focus on mothers and sons and a concern for Japan’s traditional culture in the face of Westernization. The longtime Tanizaki translators Anthony H. Chambers and Paul McCarthy masterfully bring these important works to an Anglophone audience.

Book Beginnings is at home on Rose City Reader, hosted by Gilion Dumas, and Friday 56 at Freda's Voice, hosted by Freda. I'll also be joining the Book Blogger Hop, hosted by Billy over at Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.

BB:

'Longing

The sky is heavily overcast, with the moon swallowed up behind thick clouds; and yet, even so, light must be slipping through from somewhere, for outside the house everything is bathed in a clear light.' p.1

Love this opening, with its description of the light and the way it shines through despite the clouds. I'm always looking for the way in which light fills a room, it lifts my spirit like nothing else when suddenly my room is filled with sunlight.

F56:

'from Sorrow of a Heretic

Shōzaburō sensed a different kind of sadness pressing against his heart. He would have felt better if his father held consistently to a firm position.' p.56

I kinda love this quote, because as a kid you really do need your parents to be consistent, to hold you to certain rules and obligations because how else will you know where the boundaries are?

BBH:

This week's question was suggested by Billy at Coffee Addicted Writer:

Have you ever attended a book signing? If so, who was the author?

I've actually never been to an event that was intended purely for the signing of books, but I have been to book events that were like talks and then there was a chance to buy the books afterwards and get them signed. I guess the ones that really stand out to me was when Carlos Ruiz Zafon came to the Foyles in London for a talk, but I was way too intimidated and in awe to approach him for anything. This was over ten years ago and yet it is still a  fond memory. And then there was a talk by Turkish author Sema Kaygusuz, which I attended at the LitFest in Shanghai in 2019. She was great to listen to and I bought a collection of her short stories called The Well of Trapped Words afterwards and she was kind enough to sign it for me :)

That's it from me! What are you reading this Friday?