Machida Kō 町田康. Kiregire きれぎれ. 2000. Co-winner of the 123rdA-Prize, for early 2000. The title
story was the winner. The title could be
translated as “Fragments,” and rarely was a story more aptly titled. Kind of painfully obvious, actually. Not the only thing painful about this story.
This is
one that, I think, makes best sense in terms of authorial biography. The author, in 2000, was already a
celebrity: an ex-punk rocker who had
gone solo and branched out into acting (TV, film, commercials) and then
writing. He published a couple of books
of poems before turning to literary fiction.
He wasn’t necessarily a youth-culture figure in 2000 – he was 38 – but
he was already a cult figure, and his prose was, evidently, building up
something of a buzz. And now’s the time
to confess that I never noticed any of this personally: with my spotty-at-best knowledge of Japanese
rock history, I never heard of him, and never read him until my A-Prize
spelunking took me back to early 2000.
It’s
cynical to say that giving the prize to him was an attempt by the Prize
committee to stay relevant. So I’m not
going to state that categorically. But I
will say that this is the only way I can wrap my head around it. Because (echoing what some of the committee
members themselves said) I can’t see the attraction of this story otherwise.
Yes, it’s
fragmented. Plot summary is not going to
be real helpful here, but it basically seems to be about a failed/failing
painter and the mess that is his personal life.
Poverty, unhappy marriage, dissolution, rivalry. It’s hard to make sense of it all on a plot
level, though, because it’s narrated (by the painter) in such a, well,
fragmented, stream-of-consciousness way.
Not in and of itself a bad thing, or a good thing, just a thing. It’s all in what you do with it.
What
Machida does with it is, essentially, indulge his fondness for wordplay. “Wordplay” seems to promise too much,
though. He’s amusing himself with words,
surely; but as a reader (one who normally
delights in wordplay, I assure you!), I seldom felt much joy in it, much sense
of play. I wasn’t amused, dammit. It’s all very clever, smart, whatever, but
the reading experience – hacking through this writer’s digressive,
distractable, attention-grabbing style to try to get a handle on what the hell
he’s actually trying to say – was dreary where it should have been fun.
Maybe it
didn’t have to be fun. Wordplay isn’t
always about pleasure, of course. Kuroda
Natsuko gave me similar headaches through her relentlessly
inventive/destructive use of language.
But as hard as I found it to admire Kuroda I could at least see, or
imagine, what she was aiming at. I could
recognize something worthwhile there, and occasionally appreciate some of her
more baroque constructions. (I’ve taught
her, in small doses, a few times since writing my review, and I’ve mellowed on
her considerably in the process.)
I don’t
see anything like that with Machida.
He’s not fun, but neither does all his language-twisting seem to be
aiming at some radically new mode of expression, so that he can get out
something that needs to be gotten out.
The loser failed artist who makes life miserable for himself and those
around him is a pretty hackneyed literary trope, after all – a Naturalist
chestnut, really, but he doesn’t seem interested in any of the edifying
excoriation of self that they brought to the idea. The impression is of a bored narrator playing
with the reader’s head for no reason other than because he can.
Reading
that makes it all sound very punk, right?
But no: it’s far too
self-indulgent for that.
“Self-indulgent” is a word I try not to throw around lightly: I believe most art is profound
self-indulgence, and that’s a good thing, since the road of excess leads to the
palace of wisdom, etc. But self-indulgence
was one of the critical terms that punk (and its champions) used to define
itself against the stuff that had come before.
‘70s classic rock was about excess, about self-exploration, about drama,
while punk was supposed to be a return to basics. Discipline was at the heart of it, even at its
most corrosively antisocial: attitude as
a weapon, musical fun subordinated to power of statement. But I don’t get that here: no big artistic statement, no rebellion
against society. Just boredom, and
wanking. Punk is supposed to be
anti-wanking.
Anyway. I don’t get this story.
I don’t
get the other one in the volume, either:
Jinsei no hijiri 人生の聖 (“Saint of Life”). There’s
no point in summarizing. It’s more of
the same, essentially. This one revolves
more around worklife; at some points the
narrator seems to be working, or remembering working, as a salaryman, while at
other points he’s a janitor, and then sometimes he’s begging. But like the first story it displays a
combination of wilful pointlessness and resolute tediousness: it’s literary nonsense, but with none of the
delight that term promises. Your mileage
may vary, as they say.
