FundamentallySound Blog

I've been reading a lot recently. Maybe I've just had more time on my hands these days. Or I might be refueling my need for written words that are in a familiar language after living abroad last year. Either way, I've found some really good fiction recently. A few of them:
Number9Dream by David Mitchell
Gunter Grass' Danzig Trilogy
This Is Not a Novel by David Markson
My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk, which came highly recommended from my friend Mitch, a writer whose judgment I trust.
And the book Where Europe Begins is just what I've been looking for. It's written by Yoko Tawada, a native of Japan who has been living in Hamburg for years, and now writes primarily in German, but occasionally still in Japanese. This book resonates deeply with me. It's a poetic study of the veils of culture and language that we all wear, and the way language begins to fall apart a bit when living in a place where your old language doesn't function anymore, not only in the practical sense that no one else speaks it, but also with a visceral impact in the way current ideas, memes, to be discussed are of a different breed in this other culture.

I think she sees language as being a murky swamp that doesn't get enough sunshine. Her frustration with it is summed up in the line, "Often it sickened me to hear people speak their native tongues fluently. It was as if they were unable to think and feel anything but what their language so readily served up for them." I've never been so aware of that frustration before this most recent return to the United States, and am reminded of it every time I turn on the television.