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2 Book recs, Satoshi Yagisawa and David Foster Wallace

On drifters and jobs

On the bookseller; on the accountant

The Music in Prose

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The truth is the heroism of your childhood entertainments was not true valor. It was Theater.

David Foster Wallace

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No Job Suits Me Better

Books on books are a favorite. It’s a way to be with others when you’re alone, but let me explain. When you read a book passage that you know to be true, there is a sense of commiseration, of shared feeling and experience. You are not alone because the author has been there too.

This 2023 English translation of Days at the Morisaki Bookshop has passages that give me that intensity of feeling, a resonance. When I pluck a string on the lever harp it picks up sympathetic vibrations from the harmonics, or other strings tuned to the same note at different octaves, bringing out the original tone; the resultant sound or resonance is greater than either pitch alone. Such writing is like that for me.

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Quick bit of background: the protagonist Takako suffers a sad breakup and accepts her uncle’s invitation to live above the family bookshop, passed on to the uncle from his father. The uncle spent his twenties drifting around and his father was always mad at him, until one day he dropped dead.

The uncle took over the store and realized, “there’s no job that suits me better than this one. For someone who loves books, there’s no place more wonderful than here.“

“That you’re doing what you want, and you’re making a living at it.”

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“That’s not really true. I resisted it a lot in the beginning. I mean taking over the store from my father wasn’t exactly what I dreamt of doing when I was young. Even now I still go back and forth all the time. But, I don’t know, maybe it takes a long time to figure out what you’re truly searching for. Maybe you spend your whole life just to figure out a small part of it.”

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“I don’t know. I think maybe I’ve been wasting my time, just doing nothing.”

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“I don’t think so. It’s important to stand still sometimes. Think of it as a little rest in the long journey of your life. This is your harbor. And your boat is just dropping anchor here for a little while. And after you’re well rested, you can set sail again.”

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(Satoshi Yagisawa. Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, p. 31)

It’s a slow burn, sweet and a bit sappy and sad. This exchange between the niece and uncle got to me, because I was that person, doing jobs long enough to know that they weren’t for me. What was I searching for then?

Maybe you spend your whole life just to figure out a small part of it.

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Number Hero

Another book I picked up during my NYC trip, was Something to Do With Paying Attention by David Foster Wallace, a 2011 McNally Edition, a repackaged ‘novella’ once included as part of The Pale King. If you’re familiar with DFW, the three-letter icon of writing, you’ll know that he is a giant among writers, with his quirky and delightful prose. He took his own life in 2008, so imagine my surprise when I saw a ‘new’ book of his on the shelf.

DFW’s narrator is a self-described “wastoid” in the seventies who writes of his failed and vacuous early life, college-hopping and partying, his parents and their divorce, drugs, his dad’s death, and how he found his way to a job at the IRS. The job for him.

The book opens, “From what I understand, I’m supposed to explain how I arrived at my career.”

****** SPOILER ALERT *******

The moment happens when he wanders into an advanced tax class and the substitute professor commands the attention of every student present with an authentic level of authority the narrator had not witnessed before, especially in the abstract liberal arts say-nothing and BS your way through papers and tests with who-knows-what-you-learned curriculum he was used to.

He said to the accounting students, “All right, then. Before you leave here to resume that crude approximation of a human life you have heretofore called a life, I will undertake to inform you of certain truths. I will then offer an opinion as to how you might most profitably view and respond to those truths.”

Very long DFW paragraph about the leap outward in choice of career and the sheer drudgery of accounting as well as the narrator’s thoughts follows. The prose packs exquisite tension. BUT, for the sake of space and long quotes, here is the essence of the advice from the teacher he refers to as a Jesuit in mufti.*

The substitute continued, ‘To experience commitment as the loss of options, a type of death, the death of childhood’s limitless possibility, of the flattery of choice without duress–this will happen, mark me. Childhood’s end. The first of many deaths. Hesitation is natural. Doubt is natural.’ [Wallace, p. 103]

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‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘–by which I mean, of course, latter adolescents who aspire to manhood–gentlemen, here is a truth: Enduring tedium over real time in a confined space is what real courage is. Such endurance is, as it happens, the distillate of what is today, in this world neither I nor you have made, heroism. Heroism.’ [p. 105]

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‘By which,’ he said, ‘I mean true heroes, not heroism as you might know it from films or the tales of childhood. You are now nearly at childhood’s end; you are ready for the truth’s weight, to bear it. The truth is that the heroism of your childhood entertainments was not true valor. It was theater. The grand gesture, the moment of choice, the mortal danger, the eternal foe, the climactic battle whose outcome resolves all–all designed to appear heroic, to excite and gratify an audience. An audience.’ [ p. 105]

Awareness, attention to detail. The accountant or IRS examiner is a monk of the mundane, a chronicler of the vast oceans of data, and, as the teacher exhorts, the decision to commit to a profession is to grow up.

Enduring tedium over real time in a confined space is what real courage is.

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Both books teased out a sort of complicity and understanding. I hadn’t experimented with drugs or college hopping, or suffered bad breakups. But I know what it is to wonder about what job suits me best and just what kind of career would be worth enduring tedium over real time.

When I write TreeHouseLetter to you, I lose track of time. Enduring tedium, which for most would be a ludicrous amount of time at the desk, with dictionaries, usage manuals, large swaths of text, stacks of books, poring over words and lines and paragraphs. Tedium.

Occasionally a reader writes to me. Then, for a moment, I rise above the tedium and I see you. The human connection transcends the book on books. And the passage, while dry text on a page or characters on a screen, is alive with the reader who recognizes the soul and sensibility of the author who wrote it into being.

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After the accidental tax class, the narrator pivots, and then he gets a haircut, buys a dark-gray suit with tight vertical weave, and finds his way to the IRS office. It’s extraordinary and dark and comical. The quote above does the lengthy pages of the teacher’s speech and the narrator’s commentary a grave injustice. But, I can show you my reaction, by sharing it with you here.

What I leave you with, is knowing that these books are like a bridge. The author Satoshi Yagisawa reached me across the planet from Japan where he is very much alive. And, DFW reached me across time from the grave, as his writing remains very much alive.

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Rise Above the Tedium

Dear reader, taglines for TreeHouseLetter are “Always learning with a bit of fun” and “Rise above the tedium.“ Because of course we live in the tedium of our lives, day to day, chore to chore, letter to letter as it may be, and I’m hoping that you find meaning, if not a degree of heroism that the ‘Jesuit in Mufti’ suggests. And, it is in the simple awareness, rising above it, to see yourself more fully, in your daily tasks, in books, in others, in the world around you, that give tedium the meaning I believe DFW is after.

Walking into the advanced tax class meant seeing his wastoid life in full relief. Now, to get about his business. Same for me. And if you made it this far, thank you, as always, for reading THL.

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FOOTNOTES

*Yagisawa, Satoshi. Days at the Morisaki Bookshop. (Harper Perennial, English Translation by Eric Ozawa 2023). I picked up this English translation of the original Japanese (201) in Three Lives & Co in NYC, which is an wonderful Indie book store. If you’re a book nerd and in the city, put it on your schedule. The translator has a note at the book’s end with other works mentioned. The actual bookshops mentioned in the book exist in the outskirts of Tokyo, like 170 to 200 some used book storefronts, which has now become a destination I hope to visit: Jiimbocho the famous book district.

*Three Lives & Co Bookseller on154 West 10th Street, NYC.

*Wallace, David Foster. Something to Do with Paying Attention. McNally Editions, 2022. Not clear on your career? Or, curious about the truths across pages from the Jesuit in Mufti substitute teacher of advanced tax accounting who provided the pivotal moment in the narrator’s otherwise ‘wastoid’ existence? Who is this Jesuit in Mufti? The substitute has the aura of true authority and speaks from a position of power, not to impress or befriend, but because he has been there and knows. He is like a Father, a Jesuit, with a divine sense. Mufti, which I imagine is no longer appropriate or PC, is a term to refer to plain clothes. As in, there’s the Jesuit priest in plain clothes, coming to tell us, the lowly student, the truths as he sees it. BUT NOT, not until he is done a full class lecture filled with detail and references. He is ready to leave, but the class remains seated and waiting. How will he close, what will he say? That is the climax of the book and the answer to the question stated on page one: “From what I understand, I’m supposed to explain how I arrived at my career.”

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BOOK UPDATE: The manuscript has been submitted to the publisher.

Here’s the elevator pitch, which is actually the blurb on the book page.

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