1/ A 2 book collection of Osamu Tezuka short stories from 1976 "The Crater" - at first I thought it was "The Curator" - sinister Borgesian tales of fate and time shifts, not many happy endings. I didn't realise it was a Tezuka work, but liked the covers, and it was only 500 japanese yen.
- Actually I have only read one story so far, with the aid of kanji dictionary on the DS, but Mio has read all and pronounced it good. And you can't deny that it isn't an acquisition. Whether I read it or not, I have acquired it.
2/ "Organic Furniture Cellar" by a Jessica Smith, very young, relatively speaking, american writer of "plastic poetry", as she describes it in the introductory essay. This starts with a mention of Japanese architect Arakawa and his "Site of Reversible Destiny" a groovey looking messed-up park that I plan to visit one day. Together with Madeline Gins(bizarrely without a wikipedia entry) he has also made a messed up series of apartments for old decrepit people. The poetry is concrete/visual/language, with a lyrical content that could purely be the product of the reader ; as the introductory essay says:
"...The reader must hesitate, group and regroup, make leaps of recognition, doubt her success, and eventually construct pathways that can always change. When I think about poems like these, I recall my high school teachers saying that books are never read the same way twice, and that each poem brings about something different to the text. This is reciprocal becoming at the basic level, but in my poems I really mean it: you can read these poems differently every time, and your interpretation (although based on the words I provide) is always valid. Even I read each poem differently every time, and I usually forget what the smaller fragments were supposed to mean..."
I like this uncertainty of the author. Ron Silliman takes a shine to her in his 14thAugust 2006 entry here (can't link to individual posts, sorry - scroll down until you see the book cover)
- the subtitle of the book is "works on paper 2002-2004". This may be a good way of thinking about writing right now. Why feel a text must stick to conveying meaning in the conventional manner when the graphic designer, film maker, musician &tc, is happy, and encouraged, to find the new thing among what is belittled as obscurity?
Very nice covers on those Tezuka books - I don't suppose you could scan them? Who is the artist?
ReplyDeleteTezuka is a lovely chap because he always wears a beret. People don't wear enough berets these days.
it says, cover illustration: nakamura teruo
ReplyDeletecover design: toppan idea centre
- mio will do research tomorrow . she says the toppan people are used by kaikaikiki, but there is 30 years distance.
- unfortunately there is no scanner or even printer at the moment.