Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon

The last six or seven years, I have relied exclusively on a single make of ballpoint pen: the black Super-GP, preferably size 0.5, manufactured by Pilot. Whenever I travel back to Japan, I buy up a handful. I like their grip, their ink delivery, their basic feel. The one design flaw is the cap, which after extended use tends to get loose and fall off. Everything else about it is simply perfect.

I always carry two, in case one gets lost or malfunctions. A bit compulsive, I know, but sometimes it pays off. Last Thursday night, I arrived in Seattle for the annual MLA convention and rode the Downtown Airporter shuttle bus to my hotel. A few minutes before arriving, I felt one of the ballpoints slip out of my pants pocket. A second later, I heard the sound of plastic hitting the bus floor. The shuttle was moving, though, and it was quite dark inside. I felt around the floor with my shoe and then, when we stopped in front of my hotel, swept the area with my hand, but the pen was nowhere to be found. At least I had a spare, which I used to take notes all weekend at the conference.

Last night I flew back to Chicago. After the plane landed at O’Hare and taxied for what seemed like half an hour, we finally reached the gate. I waited for the rows of passengers in front of me to disembark, then made my way down the aisle, briefcase in hand. About halfway to the exit, I spotted it: sitting on the floor of a now-deserted aisle in the economy section, a black Super-GP 0.5 ballpoint. I patted my pocket to see if perhaps my other pen had dropped out, but it was still there. I of course reached down to scoop the pen off the floor, and now I have two again.

It really is a fine ballpoint. I recommend it to you. Apparently, it even knows how to find its way home when it gets lost on the other side of the continent.

Last week the University of Tokyo’s Center for Philosophy hosted a symposium on “Globalizing Natsume Sōseki’s Theory of Literature,” commemorating the publication of the English translation of Bungakuron (1907), Sōseki’s remarkable attempt to construct a fully scientific theory of “literature” complete with mathematical formulas and graphs, one that was supposed to be valid at all times and in all places.

In her talk, Noami Mariko (University of Tokyo) spoke on the role of emotion (small f) in Sōseki’s theory, in particular the indirect experience of emotion by the reader of fiction, tracing through the ways Sōseki put this theory into practice in his 1912 novel, Until the Spring Equinox and Beyond. Joseph Murphy (University of Florida) also explored the relation of Sōseki’s (F+f) formula to his fiction, especially the early story “Tower of London,” and talked about the missing, perhaps subconscious, possibility of (non-F, non-f) as an implicit possible permutation of the formula.

In the afternoon sessions, Atsuko Ueda (Princeton University) situated Bungakuron in the context of late nineteenth century literary histories, as well as the tradition of rhetoric studies that Soseki relied on–and the implications his transcending the categories of national language and national literature holds for contemporary area studies scholarship. Saitō Mareshi (University of Tokyo) raised the question of what kagaku means in the context of Bungakuron: science or discipline? He also traced Sōseki’s use of keywords from the Chinese literati tradition of rhetoric, looking in particular at what was at stake in Sōseki’s switch from that vocabulary to the mathematical language of (F+f). I followed with a talk exploring Bungakuron as a theory of world literature, reading Sōseki against his contemporary Rabindranath Tagore, as well as Pascale Casanova’s more recent attempt to theorize a “world republic of literature.” The final speaker, Komori Yōichi (University of Tokyo), explored the specific scientific contexts on the work, noting its connections to early twentieth century atomic theory, as well as the productive gesture Sōseki made in creating a horizon in which embodied sense perception and intellectual understanding were synthesized into a single entity within the bracketed space of (F+f).

We had lively discussions throughout the day, and the symposium was very well attended. My thanks to the organizers, my co-presenters, and to all who participated.

In the meanwhile, the Modern Language Association has announced that the volume has won the 2011 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Scholarly Study of Literature. From the award citation:

Theory of Literature and Other Critical Writings, by Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916), provides English language readers with major critical works by Japan’s foremost novelist of the twentieth century. Sōseki aspired to a grand and systematic explanation of literature, focusing on literature’s effects on readers. Based on the cognitive psychology of his day, his account explores how the content of the literary work generates emotional responses. Michael K. Bourdaghs, Atsuko Ueda, and Joseph A. Murphy have done a superb job of supplying the contextual information necessary for today’s non-Japanese reader to appreciate the subtlety and significance of Sōseki’s work.

On top of that, the Japan Times newspaper has just named it one of the “Best Books of 2011.” It’s gratifying to see this project, begun with my colleagues six or seven years ago, reach fruition in this way. Our goal from the start was to get people reading and talking about this remarkable book, and it feels like we’ve accomplished that.

It’s time to move on, methinks. I’ve been doing this blog in one form or another for nearly seven years. It is possible, of course, that I’ll resume blogging at some point in the future, but for now it’s time to try other pastures.

The original appeal to me in blogging was the opportunity to engage in the pleasures of purposefully purposeless writing–to string together and polish up sentences for the sheer enjoyment of doing it. Putting the results out there in public brought a measure of discipline to the proceedings: it made me want to write as well as I could do. I’ll still engage in the playful stringing of words together, but it will be in other sorts of venues.

I don’t much like Twitter (@sayonaraamerika), since their 140 character limit doesn’t allow for much in the way of creative composition. But I’ll still use that account to announce new publications, etc., if you want to keep track of what I’m up to. I’ll also still maintain my homepage (www.bourdaghs.com).

I’ll keep the existing blog contents on-line for a few more weeks. Then, at some mysterious moment early in 2011, they will disappear from the Internet. My sincere thanks to all who have stopped by to read this over the years. I hope our paths cross again in other realms.

As for us, aside from shoveling snow and watching our daughter play Debussy beautifully in a piano recital on Sunday, we spent a good part of our weekend giggling over these television commercials for Panda cheese.

Last night we attend my daughter’s high school winter concert here in Chicago. She sings in the choir, but we also enjoyed sets by the school orchestra, chamber ensemble, band and jazz ensemble. The band played a very striking piece I’d never heard before: “Whirlwind,” composed by Jodie Blackshaw. The worktakes a number of important elements from twentieth-century avant-garde classical styles (aleatory passages, nonconventional instruments, offbeat instructions to the players) and briiliantly arranges them into a form that is fully accessible to an amateur youth orchestra. The kids seemed to enjoy playing it last night.

I snooped around today a bit and came up with this website from the publishers of the score. The site informs us that Blackshaw won the Frank Ticheli Composition Contest with it. On YouTube, I came up with video of a performance by the Singapore American School Sixth Grade Band. It’s just cool to see an ambitious composition like this enter the musical repertoire of high school bands.

I’ve just stumbled across this very nice video clip introducing the Suicide Commandos, the godfathers of the Twin Cities musical scene that produced the Replacements, Husker Du (add an umlaut or two there), Soul Asylum, Trip Shakespeare, Golden Smog, the Jayhawks, and eight dozen other great bands you’ve never heard of. The clip combines archival footage with interviews and concert footage from the reunion gig they did earlier this year as part of a tribute to the late Bruce Allen, guitarist for the Suburbs (another fabulous band from the scene).

In 1977-8 (which is to say, my junior year in high school), the Commandos defined cool in Minnesota. I only got to see them play a couple of times in their heyday, because I was too young to get into the Longhorn and the other clubs around town, but I wore out my copies of their records. They really laid down the cultural pattern that other Twin Cities bands would follow: they insisted on fun, on an ethical rejection of pretension (no mohawks or safety pins allowed!), and on an appreciation of the revolutionary potential of pop. They even covered the Monkees’ “She,” except the line “why am I missing her/I should be kissing her” morphed into a commentary on the Nixon/Ford national security bureaucracy: “why am I Schlesinger/I should be Kissinger.”

“Complicated Fun,” the last song the band released (and later a Target TV commercial jingle), is one of the great unknown rock anthems of our time.

One of the things on my to-do list this past week was to compose a blurb for a forthcoming book on modern Japanese literature. I get asked to do this once or twice a year; often it is for a title that I’ve already reviewed as an external referee, meaning that I’m already quite familiar with the work. I’ve even had a publisher approach me once for permission to use a blurb they had composed by patching together key phrases from my referee’s report. In case you were wondering, we don’t get paid for supplying blurbs, though the publisher usually sends us a free copy of the book once it appears.

There’s an art to writing a good blurb. If you’re too effusive, you lose credibility and might even offend the potential reader you are trying to charm. I remember many years ago reading a blurb on a study of Japanese literature that asserted ‘there is no comparable study in any language.’ The arrogance of this pissed me off: had the reviewer really read all the books on Japanese literature published in Polish, for example, or Swahili? Through no fault of the book’s author, I acquired an unfavorable gut feeling toward the work.

Another time, I was thinking about buying one of Thomas Pynchon’s novels. When I picked up the thick paperback at a bookstore, a blurb on the cover proclaimed it “a 747 of a novel.” I immediately put the book back down and left the store. I hate 747′s. Why would I want to read something that would remind me of stale air, crying babies, bad food, smelly bathrooms, and crabby flight attendants?

In other words, it’s important to find the appropriate tone. Sometimes, I think I get it right — like here, for example, or here and here. The one I submitted this past week was only so-so, I’m afraid.

What’s the worst experience you’ve had with a blurb–either writing or reading it? Or, conversely, has a blurb ever single-handedly sold you on a book? I’d love to hear your stories on this: comments, please.

Last night we headed down to the Museum of Contemporary Art for a concert by Stew and The Negro Problem. Stew is best known for his recent Broadway musical, “Passing Strange,” but I’ve been a fan for more than a decade, ever since I bought a copy of the album Joys and Concerns (1999) after reading a rave review in the L.A. Weekly. I’ve followed his career closely since then, but this was the first time I’d seen him and his collaborator Heidi Rodewald perform live.

It was a terrific, witty show — but also unexpectedly somber. The light and lush tone that characterizes Stew’s studio recordings gave way in concert to a darker, jazzier sound. The show opened with “Bleed,” with Stew fingering a plastic toy horn that he would pick up again from time to time throughout the evening. This was followed by a heavily reworked version of “Re-Hab.” The set included a few new songs — “Speed,” “Curse,” and one about young upscale Brooklyn mothers and their aggressive stroller-pushing habits. They also played many older songs, including “Gary Come Home” (the tune Stew wrote for an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants, albeit with a few choice new lyrics), “Bong Song,” “Black Men Ski,” “Ken” (a comic take on the sexual preferences of Barbie’s male companion: “My name’s Ken/and I like men”) and “Kingdom of Drink.” Stew apologized for performing just one number from “Passing Strange,” (“We Just Had Sex”), promising he would do more songs from that show on his next visit to town. He hinted about ongoing negotiations from an upcoming residency here in Chicago.

The main set closed with “Peter Jennings” in a jazzed-up epic version that somehow morphed midway through into a tribute to John Coltrane. For the encore, they did a marvelous version of “The Naked Dutch Painter,” one of Stew’s best compositions. All through the evening, Stew held up his legendary stage patter–very funny riffs on how cold it is in Chicago, on how great it was to having washing machines in their backstage dressing room, on what it was like to be the sole black man at an upscale resort in Aspen.

Stew was in fine voice all night, repeatedly hitting even very high falsetto notes. He showed off some slick guitar work in the last few numbers, as well. Earlier in the evening, he’d done what he later joked was his museum performance piece: playing his guitar by setting it upright in its stand and throwing coins against the strings.

After the show Stew and Heidi came out into the lobby to mingle with the audience. We were able to chat briefly with them. I got to thank them for the special Valentine’s Day song they recorded for my wife in 2006 (Stew offered to make personalized songs as special Valentine’s Day gifts that year, and I took him up on it: by far the best VD gift I’ve ever managed to come up with). Heidi said that they’d met a few of the other Valentine’s Day couples from that year during the current tour.

A new album is due early next year, and they continue to develop new theatrical projects. I’ve written here before that I think Stew is a living national treasure. It was a pleasure to find him that he is also approachable and down-to-earth in person.

If like me you grew up a Beatlemaniac, the release this month of Come and Get It: The Best of Apple Records, a compilation of recordings by the other artists signed to the Beatles’ indie label Apple is a revelation. We finally get to hear music we’ve been reading about for decades—Jackie Lomax’s “Sour Milk Sea” (1968), written and produced by George Harrison, for example, or the original studio version of Billy Preston’s “That’s The Way God Planned It” (1969), a song we know from the scintillating live performance at The Concert for Bangladesh.

Some of the material is very familiar (Badfinger’s hits, for example, or James’ Taylor’s debut single, “Carolina on My Mind”), but much of it is new to my ears: Trash, Brute Force, Lon & Derrek van Eaton, Doris Troy, etc. And it all starts off with Mary Hopkins’ beloved Klezmer-meets-The-Band smash hit from 1968, “Those Were the Days.”

I have about 20,000 songs stored on my I-Pod. A few months ago, I became haunted by the bizarre notion that I should listen to them all at least once: some vague idea about the ethics of ownership, about taking responsibility for music that I’d decided to hoard. I started going out of my way to listen to tracks with a 0 play count, proceeding alphabetically by artist name.

I’d gotten up to K with that method. But I was faltering, because this procedure required me to devote, for example, several days to listening solely to the Beatles or Blur. I’d get bored listening over and over to the same artist. Wasn’t there a better way?

I finally figured it out this past Monday: I’ve created a “Smart Playlist” consisting of all the songs that have zero plays (excluding those from the genres of classical and podcast) and then use the “shuffle songs” setting when I play it. The I-Pod now randomly plays songs from the list and, because I used the “live update” setting, it eliminates them from the collection once they been played. I started out with about 3500 songs in the playlist; that’s down to 3300 at this point.

You can’t imagine how pleased I am with myself over this technological breakthrough. I’m exploring the nether regions of my music collection, skipping around from artist to artist so rapidly that I never find any particular style tedious.

While typing in this entry, I’ve listened too:

“All Night Stand,” The Kinks (bootleg unreleased demo)
「慕情」, Southern All Stars
“Love’s Gonna Walk Out on Me,” Toots and the Maytals
“COLORS,” Utada Hikaru

Four down, 3296 to go…. I’m so excited about this.

It’s kinda sad, really.