The Sound of the Mountain

By -
The Sound of the Mountain, by Yasunari Kawabata


Kawabata first became famous in the West for his short stories and two short novels.  He won the 1968 Nobel Prize for literature.  This novel was published in 1949, but not in English until after the Nobel Prize.  My book blurb lauds it as "one of his most important works--both longer and more complex" than his other novels.  The Sound of the Mountain describes the inner life of an elderly businessman named Shingo, who observes his dysfunctional family and his own old age.  His childrens' marriages are foundering, he is more fond of his daughter-in-law than of his own daughter, he is distant from his wife, and his most intense feelings seem to be reserved for flowers and art.

I honestly did not care about this book, or the people in it, or anything much.  I planned to like it.  I expected to like it.  At the beginning I was rather tickled to see that Shingo lives in Kamakura, where my mom lived for several years just after this story was published in Japan.  But I was underwhelmed, which made it difficult to want to read.  Brona took up this dare at the same time, and she also didn't really care for it, so at least I'm not the only one and I don't have to worry that I'm a total philistine.
They made a movie!  1954.


This was the first Classics Club Dare book, and reading it gives me the right to give you a literary dare.  Should you choose to accept it, I challenge you to read Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh.  I have never read it myself, nor any other Waugh, but I would like to read it this year.

















Comments

  1. ArenelFebruary 23, 2014 at 1:09 AM

    Brideshead Revisited is a great choice! Certainly much more accessible than The Sound of the Mountain is, according to Brona and you

    ReplyDelete
  2. AllieFebruary 23, 2014 at 10:21 AM

    My copy just arrived this week, so I'll be diving in soon. I'm curious to see how I feel about it!

    I'll probably take on your dare as well!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousFebruary 24, 2014 at 6:09 AM

    After reading both your and Brona's review, I am not sure I am going to read this book. But I want to take you up on your dare. Like you, I would like to read Brideshead Revisited this year.

    ReplyDelete
  4. BronaFebruary 24, 2014 at 12:51 PM

    I love your brief synopsis - it covers all the bases!

    I'd be curious to read a review from a blogger I know, who enjoyed or loved this book to try and see it from another angle...but that's as far as my current interest in Kawabata goes.

    Brideshead is one of my favourites :-)
    I first saw the fabulous, fabulous BBC series in the 1980's (hunt it out if you can) starring Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews.
    It fleshes out the book beautifully.

    ReplyDelete
  5. JeanFebruary 24, 2014 at 4:34 PM

    I would also like to hear from someone who liked it! I really want to know why so many people think this is a masterpiece. I am missing something.

    I've seen pictures of the BBC series. Wonder if it's on Netflix...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of...
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the s...
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he ...
Read more