My 2015 Reading Journal: April 2015

Summer Sub Club read with Beth
Originally published in 1970
2nd novel in four part series, "Sea of Fertility"
Japanese author
Link to blog post re: 1st of the four......http://my2014readingjournal.blogspot.com/2014/05/snow-by-yukio-mishima.html
Characters:

Honda, now a judge, believes Iinuma to be the reincarnation of his childhood friend, Kiyoaki
Isao Iinuma, son of Kiyaoki's former tutor, Shigeyuki Iinuma, kendo champion
Satoko, Kiyoaki's love, now the beloved Abbess of Gesshu
Makiko, daughter of a general, supports Iinuma's dream
Sawa: mysterious servant who offers to kill the leader to spare Iinuma Sr. any disgrace

Vocabulary:

chalcedony:a microcrystalline, translucent variety of quartz, often milky or grayish

Quotes:

p.7..."These dreams, left like a handful of gold dust in a winnowing pan, were charged with wonder."
p.12...."Somewhere deep within him, however, Honda did harbor a secret concept f sin, a concept as fragrant and stimulating as a pungent lotion soaking into dry, chapped skin."
p.21..."And I am here not because of power, not because of money, but simply because I represent reason foe the nation. A height upheld by logic, like a tower formed o steel girders."
p.22...."Just as a groom smells of stables, so Honda, at the age of thirty-eight, had become permeated with the aroma o legal justice."
p.29..."So it is that time reenacts the most curious yet earnest spectacles within the human heart. The past makes its appearance again, with all its mingled dreams and aspirations, the delicate tarnish of falsehood left undisturbed upon its silver."
p.35..."A miraculous phenomenon with no link to reality had only a shadowy, dubious existence. But any mystery that could maintain itself beneath the pitiless glare of the sun was a mystery fit to occupy a place beside clearly acknowledged principles."....Honda's mystery...seeing three moles on Iinuma under the falls, as predicted by Kiyoaki at his death in the first volume of the series
p.43..."A dangerous gift. Like a shimmering sphere of changing course it came plunging int the midst o the cold but well-regulated structure of order and reason."...the mystery
p.49..."The bud of one especially long-stemmed lily seemed as pale as a tense young man on the verge of fainting."
p.55..."Just as sea and sky blurred together at the horizon, so, too, dream and reality could certainly become confused when viewed from a distance......This operative law was like a heavy ion lid upon the pot in which the multifarious stew of the day-to-day world simmered."
p.63...."Divinity is the source. The visible world is its issue."
p.94...."Nature had never been more beautiful than on this morning after defeat."
p.110..."How wretched and pitiable that men so splendidly faithful should, counter to all expectations, perish in a single night, like blossoms scattered by a storm, like the fleeting frost and dew, and in an enterprise conceived and executed under the guidance f the divine will!"
p.114..."Now, indeed, it is the beauty of danger rather than the danger of beauty that affects me with the utmost vividness, and there is nothing comical to me about youth."...Honda reflecting on the change within himself from his youth to his adulthood as he speaks to Iinuma
p.116..."I think it would be well if you would try to think of history in terms of a vast stage of events and of purity of resolve as something that transcends history."...Honda to Iinuma
p.119..."That man would never touch hot fire tongs He'd touch only the hibachi. But how different fire tongs and the hibachi. One is made of metal, the other of clay. He's a man who is pure, but he belongs to the clay category."...Iinuma about Honda
p.125..."Before the sun...at the top of a cliff at sunrise, while paying reverence to the sun...while looking down upon the sparkling sea, beneath a tall, noble pine...to kill myself."...Iinuma's response when asked what he wished for more than anything else
p.127..."The way for elders to cure the impetuosity of youth is to give it their unqualified approval, but this is a bit of wisdom that they never seem to learn."...lure of the forbidden
p.161..."The guests, however, enjoyed watching the shadow of evening steal over their hands and faces while the thunder afforded the further pleasure of thrilling to a peril far removed from them."...metaphor for impending end of their social class
p.179..."For the first time Iinuma (sr.) realized that there was an inviolable core within his son, and no he, who had failed in attempting to form Kiyoaki, in another time and in quite different circumstances, felt the same enervating frustration with Isao and could not stem a sudden rush of anguish."
p.183...""Blood and flowers were alike, Isao thought, in that both were quick to dry up, quick to change their substance. and precisely because of this, then, blood and flowers could go on living by taking on the sole stance of glory. Glory in all its forms was inevitably something metallic."
p.199..."However, the lingering beams of the warm summer sun sinking into the woods of Hikawa Shrine shone through the busy, soiled fingers of the two boys, and from the direction toward which time was slipping came the distant, burnt odor of the inevitable killing to come."
p.207..."Because of he hidden name, because of the agreement not to speak her name, she was transmuted into a marvelous essence, like a moonflower, its supporting vine invisible, floating high up in the darkness. This essence which preceded existence, this phantasm which preceded reality, this potent which preceded the event conveyed with unmistakable force the presence of a substance yet more powerful. This presence which showed itself as gliding through air--this was woman."..Isao thinking of Makiko
p.217..."If the subject of the transmigration was the Alaya Awareness, then the mode f activity of transmigration constituted its Karma."
p.289..."The petals of a drooping flower decay and fall away, leaving not a single one, but the hardy stamens stand firm together, still lustrous."....the group of committed youths
p.291..."But men knew that a single glint from a Japanese sword was like the pale blue of daybreak along a mountain ridge."
p.306..."The eagle's nest that he had constructed at a dizzying height in the structure of legalism, which by now had become second nature to him, was - something wholly unforeseen!--threatened with the floodwaters of dreams, with the infiltration of poetry."...Honda
p.307..."From the viewpoint of reason, nothing so resembled the stains n an untidy mans clothes as an obsession with dreams."...Honda
p.336..."it was in the nature of authority to fear purity more than any sort of corruption."...true of fear of religious warriors who are willing to die?
p.336..."But when men gather together to form a group devoted to a purity not of this world, their evil may remain, purged from each member but coalesced to form a single pure crystal."
p.337..."The purest evil that human efforts could attain, in other words, was probably achieved by those men who made their wills the same and who made their eyes see the world in the same way, men who went against the pattern of life's diversity, men whose spirit shattered the natural wall o the individual body, making nothing of this barrier set up to guard against mutual corrosion, men whose spirit accomplished what flesh could never accomplish."
p.338..."So the highest morality itself is punished by the very personification of the highest morality.".....the emperor punishing the effort to re-assert the monarchy
p.338..."The law is an accumulation of tireless attempts to block a man's desire to change life into an instant of poetry."

Notes:

Four existences in Buddhism: conception, life, death, and an intermediate period of existence prior to reincarnation
"The League of the Divine Word" by Tsunanori Yamao, given to Honda to read by Iinuma, is a real book, and the uprising really occurred

separation of government from worship seen as a "rush to destruction", led to uprising
edict abolished their right to carry swords, so they prayed and believed they were the "army of the gods"
those who survived the uprising committed seppuku

Isao's logic is that he will commit a sin to achieve purity then commit seppuku to pay for the sin
Honda leaving the judgeship to become an attorney to defend Isao...wow
Water imagery abounds as always with Mishima
Honda perceived Iinuma's jealousy of Isao's possible glory
Why the bit about the tattoo artist in jail wanting to tattoo lions and peonies on Isao?
p.343...A beautiful moment in prison when Isao becomes one with all..."there was only endless sea"
p.344...Mishima compares men who must prove their manliness each and every day while women are women from beginning to forever
Lilies became a symbol of Isao's resolution
p.394..."To join heaven and earth, some decisive deed of purity is necessary. To accomplish so resolute an action you have t stake your life, giving no thought t personal gain or loss. You have to turn into a dragon and stir up a whirlwind, tear the dark, brooding clouds asunder and soar up into the azure-blue sky." Isao

Review: Magnificent! Tragic! Beautifully written! Characters I will remember for a very long time! This second of four novels by Yukio Mishima was even better than. the first, "Spring Snow". The reincarnation of the protagonist from the first novel, a 19 year old kendo champion, must come to terms with his notions of purity and honor in a Japan which has moved away from the ancient pathways. I couldn't put the book down. It was deeply engaging on both emotional and intellectual levels.

Book Club selection, April
Non-Fiction
Originally published in 2014
Epigraph:

"I see it now -- this world is swiftly passing." - the warrior Karna, in the Mahabbarata
"They come to rest at any kerb; All streets in time are visited." - Philip Larkin, "Ambulances"

Quotes:

p.6..."We did little better than Ian Ilyich's primitive nineteenth century doctor--worse, actually, given the new forms of physical torture we'd inflicted on our patient."
p.9..."This experiment of making mortality a medical experience is just decades old. It is young. And the evidence is it is failing."
p.259..."Being mortal is about the struggle to cope with the constraints of our biology, with the limits set b genes and cells and flesh and bone. .....but again and again, I hav seen the damage we in medicine do when we fail to acknowledge that such power is finite and always will be."
p.259...".the vital questions are the same. What are your fears and what are your hopes? What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make? And what is the course of action that best serves this understanding?"
p.260..."If to be human is to be limited, then the role of caring professions and institutions -- from surgeons to nursing homes -- ought to be aiding people in their struggle with those limits."
p.262..."When to shift from pushing against limits to making the best of them is not often readily apparent. But it is clear that there are times when the cost of pushing exceeds its value."

Review: This was a tasteful and thoughtful look at shifts in attitudes towards the elderly, cultural differences and generational differences in attitudes, and the role of medicine at the end of one's life. A very nice book, especially for someone who is just beginning to think about these issues.

My 2015 Reading Journal

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

"Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English" by Natasha Solomons ****

"Zeitoun" by Dave Eggers ****

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

"Runaway Horses" by Yukio Mishima *****

Thursday, April 16, 2015

"The Martian" by Andy Weir ****

"Old Maid" by Edith Wharton. *****

"A Dangerous Place" by Jacqueline Winspear ......*****

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

"Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters at the End" by Atul Gawande ***