In praise of Genji the book

{Photos by rocketlass.}

In yesterday's post about The Tale of Genji, I praised Royall Tyler's translation, but I should have taken the time to point out just what a wonderful production the entire book is. As I explained yesterday, the complex relationships and rules that govern Genji's world can make the book a challenge for a contemporary reader; what Penguin's edition of Tyler's translation does is to offer relatively unobtrusive aid at every point.

Tyler's introduction sets the scene, offering brief but informative accounts of the book's origins, style, and themes, as well as thumbnail descriptions of the life of Lady Murasaki and the society she inhabited and wrote about. In addition, each of the book's fifty-four chapters opens with a cast list, noting all the characters who will play a part in that chapter, along with their ages, titles, and relationships to other characters. Within each chapter, Tyler provides footnotes explaining terms that might be unclear; he also nimbly glosses the book's many poetic allusions, while line drawings scattered throughout illustrate details of costumes, housing, furniture, and the like.

No edition of Genji in English--including Knopf's edition of Edward Seidensticker's translation, which was the first Genji I attempted, years ago--has offered anything like this assistance to the reader; paired with Tyler's fluid translation, it makes this edition the standard.

And the production of the book is equal to its contents. The hardcover was published in two lovely volumes, with a slipcase, in 2001 and has since gone out of print, but the paperback is nearly as striking, with an elegant cover design, french flaps, good paper, and the strong binding necessary to the long-term survival of a 1,200-page book. The whole volume is a triumph of the publisher's art, a book designed to be turned to again and again over the years.

{That said, I may have to pick up yet another Genji soon. The Caustic Cover Critic recently drew my attention to some new editions of Japanese classics from Kodansha illustrated by Masayuki Miyata, including The Tale of Genji: Scenes from the World's First Novel, which pairs chapter summaries of Genji with Masayuki's intricate papercuts. I got to take a quick look at it in the seven-story Kinokuniya bookstore when I was in Tokyo, and it's absolutely lovely.}

"Almost the only people I know who agree word for word on what they saw on the night of 15 July are Phyllis and I."

On the recommendation of the Caustic Cover Critic, who recently revealed that the oeuvre of John Wyndham extends far beyond his justly famous The Day of the Triffids (1951), in recent days I've been racing through some of what Wyndham described as his "logical science fiction" novels. Had Wyndham not named his style, I would probably have tagged it with something clunky like "It was a day like any other . . ." science fiction. In the Wyndham novels I've read so far--the aforementioned Day of the Triffids, The Midwich Cuckoos (1957) (which is better known among American readers in its movie form, where it was called Village of the Damned), and The Kraken Wakes (1953), which I'm halfway through--space-borne entities of utterly inscrutable origin and intentions arrive and initiate a struggle for survival with the human race. What's so compelling about Wyndham's work is that by shifting the terms of our everyday life just a tiny bit he reveals--logically and convincingly--the shaky foundations and unquestioned assumptions on which our entire human world is based. It was an ordinary day . . . and then, again and again--sometimes suddenly, sometimes with dreadful, clawing slowness--it isn't.

I'll almost certainly have more to say about Wyndham in the coming months, as I work my way through the rest of his novels. For now, I simply want to share a great pasage from The Kraken Wakes. Whereas The Day of the Triffids is unrelenting in its tension, and The Midwich Cuckoos, though a bit more restrained, also rarely shifts its narrative attention from the creepy children at its core, The Kraken Wakes reads more like Wyndham's attempt to transplant Nick and Nora Charles into a particularly sharp episode of Lights Out. The couple who are its center are writers for the EBC, a commercial cousin of the BBC, and their comfortable banter offers considerable leaven to the slowly accumulating horrors of the first half of the novel.

This particular passage follows the late night-arrival of a couple of visiting friends, a husband and wife, and it shares the dry wit for which I praised Wyndham's prose earlier in the week--but with the addition of some finely honed thoughts about friendship and marriage, and a perfectly phrased observation to close it:

Wondering why one's friends chose to marry the people they did is unprofitable, but recurrent. One could so often have done so much better for them. For instance, I could think of three girls who would have been better for Harold, in their different ways; one would have pushed him, another would have looked after him, the third would have amused him. It is true that they were none of them quite as decorative as Tuny, but that's not--well, it's something like the difference between the room you live in and the one at the Ideal Home Exhibition. However, there it was, and, as Phyllis said, a girl who makes good with a name like Petunia must at least have something her parents didn't have.

Do you see why Wyndham has succeeded in enchanting me?