Releasing our Inner Critics

Book Review on The Samurai’s Garden by Gail Tsukiyama

I was all prepared to love The Samurai’s Garden because Gail Tsukiyama had come to our college in the Spring of 2005 and I found her to be a lovely person. Down-to-earth and articulate, she talked about her writing process for creating this book as well as her other best seller Women of the Silk. Other instructor I knew had used the book in their classes and thus, it was with the highest of expectations that I begin the book.

The Samurai’s Garden takes place during World War II, after the rape of Nanking and while Japanese forces were marching in to take over China. The main character, Stephen, the son of a wealthy Chinese businessman working in Japan, has contracted tuberculosis and has been sent to his family’s seaside cottage. There in Tarumi, as his body recuperates from the disease, he is befriended by Matsu, the reticent and pragmatic caretaker of his father’s estate. Through him, Stephen meets Sachi, a beautiful woman whose life has been marred by disease and now lives in a leper colony. Both Matsu and Sachi teach Stephen about the dignity and beauty that can be found in a life which is interrupted, yet perseveres. In the meanwhile, he has his own romance with a local girl, Keiko, whose brother serves in the Japanese Imperial Garden. At the end of the story, Stephen leaves Tarumi stronger in both body and soul, and wiser.

Although the story had so many potentially rich and interesting characters and plot possibilities, overall I found the story to be contrived and the characters flat. The Samurai’s Garden feels dreamlike in many ways because Stephen leaves his everyday life for this sleepy seaside hamlet. But the situations and people he encounters and the ways that he reacts to them does not ring true for me. For instance, the love triangle involving Sachi and Matsu seemed to contradict itself by the ending. Also, Stephen’s relationship with Keiko doesn’t get developed clearly and the difficulty for her in getting to know a Chinese man in the midst of a war with China is never fleshed out. I finished the book feeling somewhat dissatisfied and vaguely disturbed by the descriptions of Keiko as having the “scent of jasmine” floating around her. There’s just a bit too much exotica there for me.

Would I recommend this book? Yes, but with some reservations. The Samurai’s Garden definitely gave me insight into a group of people that I never knew existed, but it didn’t make me care much about them.

Here are some other reviews of The Samurai's Garden. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/product-description/0312144075/ref=dp_proddesc_0/104-1691088-2669556?%5Fencoding=UTF8&n=283155

The first one is written by Nancy Perl, the famed Seattle librarian with her own action figure doll. She's probably the one I agree the most with. Other reveiwers really enjoyed Tsukiyama's lyrical style, which I also agree with. I did, after all, finish the book.

Blind date

Show not tell version:

He came into Tully's a little red-faced from the cold. Looking around at the mostly empty coffee shop, his glance fell upon a dark haired woman dressed in a navy blue dress sitting next to the fireplace that is perpetually burning in Tully's. "Are you Chrissy?" he asked. When she replied yes, he stuck out his hand and shook hers vigorously. Then he sat down. She had been drinking a cup of coffee which she put down. He immediately proceeded to ask her how her day had been. They touched upon work, interests, trying to find some common ground. After about ten minutes, he asked her, "So, are you a sweet, fatty type of person or a fried salty person?"

She laughed, looking at him with her head slightly tilted, one eyebrow slightly arched. "What?" she asked.

"Sweet fatty people are the type who can't resist cake, donuts, ice cream and such. Fried salty are people who like chips and things like that.

Chrissy laughed again. "Oh, definitely fried salty. I can't resist a bag of chips. I'll buy them at the grocery store and they'll be half gone by the end of the night."

"I'm a sweet fatty," he confessed. "I love bread and cinnamon rolls and things like that." She smiled, amused, and leaned in a bit closer. The cup of coffee sat untouched in the middle of the table as the conversation continued.

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Show not tell plus analysis

I was sitting at a little round table with cafe latte when he came in--tall, a little red-faced from the cold, around thirty something in a beige knitted sweater. He looked around and then walked over to a dark haired lady at the loveseat next to the fireplace they're got perpetually burning in Tully's. After asking her name, he took a seat next to her and introduced himself. "Ooh, a blind date," I thought to myself. For the next ten minutes, they proceeded to chitchat about work and such, so I turned my attention back to my papers. "So are you a sweet, fatty type of person or a fried, salty?" he asked. My ears perked up. I've never heard anyone separate snacks into these two categories. And to ask a person on a blind date seemed somewhat daring--a little on the personal side. "Sweet fatty people are the type who can't resist cake, donuts, ice cream and such. Fried salty are people who like chips and things like that." The dark haired woman laughed.

"Oh, definitely fried salty," she replied. "I can't resist a bag of chips. I'll buy them at the grocery store and they'll be half gone by the end of the night."

"I'm a sweet, fatty," he said. "I love bread and cinnamon buns and things like that."

It made sense. Snacking preferences or weaknesses could generally be broken into these broad groups. Their admission of their weakness for a certain type of snack broke the ice for them. The conversation turned again, so I went back to my work. When I left half an hour later, they were still laughing and talking, her cup of coffee cold on the table in between them.

Sanctioned Eavesdropping

Sometimes when I watch a movie, I'll be struck by a line or comment that is made which reverberates as absolutely true with me. Back in the 90s, a movie called "The Paper" starred Michael Keaton as a newsreporter who is a classic workaholic, driven by the adrenaline of getting the perfect story before the paper goes to press. He and his wife Marisa Tomei, who is equally driven, are expecting the birth of their first child at any time. She has been given time off though and there's a slight rift between them because she no longer has the same kind of pressure from deadlines. One evening, Keaton's character is supposed to join his wife and her parents for a long-delayed dinner. He promises to be there but a lead on a story comes in and he ends up missing the dinner. Later that night they have an argument and Marisa's charcter gives him a scenario:

Marisa: Suppose there was a terrorist. And he had a gun to my head and he told you to choose. The paper or me. What would you do?
Michael: Don't be ridiculous. Of course I'd choose you. But that would never happen.
Marisa: Exactly. We never have to make big choices like that. It's the little choices that we make every day that make a difference.

Of course this is all an approximation of what was said and my memory isn't so hot, but I remember being struck by the absolute truth of it. So this week, that's what we'll be doing--noticing the conversations that go around us and seeing what is interesting, strange, revealing, or even profound.

All Ye Who Enter Domesticity Beware--phebe's five finger exercise

Linda lets me into the house, helping me with the stack of belated Christmas presents which I had hastily wrapped just previous to arriving. While I take off my shoes, Linda walks back to the dining room table where Scott sits eating BBQ chicken pizza out of the box and seats herself. Christmas cards and photo cards adorned with neatly dressed children and holiday greetings are pinned evenly to a ribbon hanging from the side door. A dark stained maple bookshelf filled with professional portraits of the family taken at JC Penney and the taupe microsuede couch crowd the path to the table. As I walk towards them, Anne, one year old and sitting in her high chair, stares at me, eyes big and brown, while baby Samuel lies in his stroller facing Scott and Linda. Behind them, the kitchen remodeling project continues. There are planks of wood and a table saw on the floor. A plastic tarp covers the wall in the back. The table is crowded with a Sesame Street coloring book, plates, broccoli in a plastic container, the cardboard pizza box, and at the end, against the wall, a shelf dominated by a leaning tower of Tupperware threatening to fall over. “We’re still living in a war zone,” Scott says unapologetically. I lean in to say hi to 3 month old Samuel, grabbing his little toe and wiggling it. “Hi, baby,” I say and as he smiles back at me, Linda, trying to sound casual, asks, “Would you mind washing your hands?”

Seeing the details

Welcome to our English 101 blog.

"The essential purpose of art is to overcome the deadening effects of habit by representing familiar things in unfamiliar ways."--novelist David Lodge

Our purpose for this space is to have a place for the convergence of our best thoughts and writing throughout the quarter. We will regularly post our reflections on our lives as well as our thoughts on things that we are reading and questioning. Through literature and writing, we hope to "re-see" the familiar, like Ebay and McDonald's hamburgers, with new eyes.

Our first post is an observation exercise that comes from Hemingway. Hemingway, when asked by a young man who had come to him for advice on how to become a writer, says this:

Watch what happens today. If we get into a fish, see exactly what it is that everyone does. If you get a kick out of it while he is jumping, remember back until you see exactly what the action was that gave you the emotion. Whether it was the rising of the line from the water and the way it tightened like a fiddle string until drops started from it, or the way he smashed and threw water when he jumped. Remember what the noises were and what was said. Find what gave you the emotion; what the action was that gave you the excitement. Then write it down, making it clear so the reader will see it too and have the same feeling you had."

(from Rossenwasser and Stephen, Writing Analytically, 4/e, ThomsonWadsworth, 2006, p.3)

Hemingway called it a "Five finger exercise." Here are our posts--our own five finger exercises--on seeing the details.