Lost in Snow Country

Since this was my first winter with snow (which I actually love in small doses), a friend recommended the novel Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata. Apparently he was the first Japanese author to win a Nobel Prize for literature. I finally got my hands on a copy, so here are my thoughts:

In middle school, I felt it was time to broaden my literary horizons. So I moved from Black Beauty to Shakespeare. Specifically, The Tempest. I barely understood the plot, let alone the nuances and background stories (although I had better luck with Dickens).

That's pretty much how I feel about Kawabata. I sense a greatness throbbing beneath the plot, a genius at work in the world of words, but I'm missing it. I feel I must read it again... but that I must read other Japanese authors first so I'm better able to approach Kawabata. While reading, I am missing the cultural background, the assumptions and perspectives, and even the language of the original.

One thing I observed: The story is told in a series of snapshot moments. Spanning years, only a few days are spoken of. The passage of time is jerky, like the train that runs through the center of the novel: rushing recklessly forward, then screeching to a halt at a small rural station.

But the conversations are most elusive. I could blame the translator, but I suspect that the original is full of puns / plays on words / nuanced meaning. Having lived in Japan, I know how very sensitive Japanese culture is to words - it's all about the way you phrase something, the tone used. So the conversations in the novel leave me frustrated, almost as though they remained in Japanese... dense and impenetrable.

I have thoughts on certain devices used in the novel, but it's like a child commenting on adult lives. Sometimes insightful, but mostly ignorant. Still, I've been a master of words for such a long time, it was disorienting to feel lost. But it made me remember what used to drive me forward. It's good to be reminded of how much we don't know, to remember the thrill of discovery and the passions of youth that have mellowed with time and experience.