Where Have All The Good Times Gone? (They've Gone to Tokyo, Every One...)

Where Have All The Good Times Gone?
(They've Gone to Chicago, Every One....)

Michael K. Bourdaghs' Home Page

Welcome! This page contains information about my work in modern Japanese literature and culture, my creative writing, my everchanging musical likes and dislikes, and other useless information. All opinions, rational conclusions, emotional outbursts, etc., are my own. All errors are the fault of someone else.

What's Up Here in Chicago: My Blog

Check out my blog page here (Updated on 7/12/08).
(Entries from before 6/11/06 are logged here)

The Current Reading List:

Peter Robinson, The Look of Goodbye (2008). The latest collection from the British poet (and NOT the Canadian detective novelist, a distinction lost on certain befuddled reviewers at Amazon.com), most of these were written earlier this decade as he was preparing to end his long sojourn in Japan and return to the UK. He describes with intelligence and a keen eye how it feels to know you are out of place: "we've coped with the solitude,/the postal disappointments or delays/chewing seaward cloud/and other enigmatic food" ("As Like As Not").

P.G. Wodehouse, The World of Mr. Mulliner (1974). I return after a couple of decades to these wonderful short stories, the funniest things Wodehouse ever wrote, and this time I get to read them at bedtime to my eleven-year-old and make her laugh out loud.

Michael Denning, Culture in the Age of Three Worlds (2004). An exploration of what it might mean to pursue the humanities after the First, Second, and Third Worlds collapsed into a single domain called globalization. Denning argues for the continued importance of cultural studies, one of the legacies of that old three-world order, as well as for the re-emergence of certain forms that faded from view during that period -- including the one-world ethic of the proletarian literature movement.

Earlier entries are logged here (Updated on 7/9/08).

Artwork by Versea Bourdaghs (AKA: "Mom").

Good Things for Your Ears:

Caetano Veloso, Caetano Veloso (Tropicalia) (2000, Polygram International). The album that launched the Tropicalia revolution in Brazilian pop music when it was first released back in 1968. I've been a fan of Os Mutantes for some time now, so I'm pretty sure I'll like this one as well. "Alegria, Alegria" stands out, but so far I'm liking the other tunes too.

Mayra Andrade, Navega (2007, Cooking Vinyl). Debut album by a young Cape Verdean singer whose been attracting a good deal of favorable attention in Europe lately. To my largely uninformed ears, Brazil seems to provide the keynote here, but she mixes in all sorts of tasty musical influences to create an airy album that's perfect for summer listening.

The Zombies, Odessey and Oracle (2007, Big Beat UK). One of the more overlooked classics of late 1960s Britpop, this one sits comfortably alongside the Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society, also first released in 1968. The best-known track is "Time of the Season," but the whole album is terrific. Upon my first few listens, I keep hearing traces of Brian Wilson's late '60s production work.

(For a list of all my recent CD acquisitions, click here; updated on 7/7/08)

Some Cool Links:
For a list of some links that I like, see here.
(Updated 6/1/08)

Recent Fiction and Creative Writing:

Translations of haiku by Kikaku that I did for the February 2004 special "Japan" issue of BigCityLit.com, which I guest-edited together wtih Tomer Inbar.

"Memoirs of a Geist," short story, published in Hawai'i Pacific Review, Vol. 16 (2002). Man walks into a bar; turns out he's Hegel's Geist. You can read it on-line here.

"Disorientation Day," short story, published in Colere, Vol. 2 (2002). Rockabilly meets Husker Du on the streets of Tokyo, circa 1987. You can read it on-line here.

"A Hazard of New Fortunes," short story, published in Elysian Fields Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 1 (2002). Kuki Shuzo and the Minnesota Twins, together at last.... You can read a sample and order a copy here.

"Sister Carrie," short story, published under pen name Kevin Michaels (don't ask why) in Elysian Fields Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 2 (1998). You can order a copy here.

My Movie Challenge:

A friend once told me that if you want to earn the right to talk about films, you need to see at least 100 different titles every year. So my challenge to myself is to see at least a hundred movies each year. Here is where I keep track of how many I have seen so far this year. Current total for the year: 54 (updated on 7/12/08).

Recent Scholarly Publications:
(Complete listing available here; last upated on 6/1/08)

NEW!!! Natsume Soseki, Theory of Literature and Other Critical Writings, edited by Michael K. Bourdaghs, Atsuko Ueda, and Joseph A. Murphy, forthcoming from Columbia University Press. The publisher's blurb is here. You can pre-order it now from Amazon.com (US$50.00 plus shipping).

The Dawn That Never Comes: Shimazaki Toson and Japanese Nationalism, Columbia University Press (2003). Here's the publisher's blurb on the book. You can order if from Amazon.com (US$57.50 plus shipping) by clicking the icon below.

Contact Info:

webmaster@bourdaghs.com

Email:

Kamei Hideo, Transformations of Sensibility: The Phenomenology of Meiji Literature, translation edited and with an introduction by Michael Bourdaghs, University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies Publications, 2002. You can read the publisher's blurb on the book here. You can order it from the publisher (US$60 plus shipping); ordering information via Amazon.com is also available by clicking the icon below.

"The Calm Beauty of Japan at Almost the Speed of Sound: Sakamoto Kyu and the Translations of Rockabilly," in Minor Transnationalism, edited by Francoise Lionnet and Shu-mei Shih, Duke University Press, 2005. You can read the publisher's blurb here, and you can order it from the publisher by clicking the icon below.

"Tenko to kindai Nihon bungakushi to iu monogatari no seiritsu: Showa 10-nen zengo ni okeru Shimazaki Toson no saihyoka" (Political apostasy and the establishment of the narrative of modern Japanese literary history), in Bungaku Shiso Konwa Kai, editors, Kindai no yume to chisei: Bungaku shiso no Showa 10-nendai (Tokyo: Kanrin Shobo, 2000), a collection of new essays on Japanese intellectual and cultural history from the 1930s. You can order it from Amazon.co.jp (5800 yen plus shipping) by clicking the icon below.