Page 6 - Boca ViewPointe - November '22

Page 6, Viewpointe November 2022
Book Review

East is East and West is West She tends to present a favorable account of the men in
her stories. One boyfriend is described as “gentle spirit
Rebecca Miller. Total, Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus, and good upbringing,” another as “a tranquil and noble
and Giroux, 2022. soul.” What I mean is that Banana’s sense and substance
Banana Yoshimoto. Dead-End Memories, Stories, trans. from reflects a viewpoint based on the importance of tradition,
the Japanese by Asa Yoneda. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2022. and Confucian propriety, though her stories also project
feminist goals and rebellion. She respects the elderly and
By Dr. Ronald J. Meyers the past and her stories mediate the reconciliation between
the values of the past the exigencies of the present. Finally,
The modern short Ms. Yoshimoto steps out of character and reveals herself
story has the character of as author in “Tomo-chan’s Happiness,” in which Tomo-
meditation, a reflection Chan’s unrequited love for Misawa-san similarly confirms
on life, derived from the the Buddhist view of enlightened acceptance and peace.
author’s experiences and Ms. Miller’s stories, on the other hand, are quite
imagination, but often diverse in a wide spectrum of venues from urban to rural,
offers confirmation or a 19th century novels characteristic of the time. Poe also a refurbished farmhouse on the Hudson to the night scene
projection of an alternative introduced the subject matter of extreme fantasy wedded in Dublin, and stop offs in Berlin, L.A., Paris, Kansas
reality. It is the most recent to psychology and its greatest earlier practitioners like City, and Martha’ Vineyard. Ms. Miller has a fine eye
of literary forms, credited the Frenchman De Maupassant and Russian Chekhov for detail, but to be honest, sometimes not bound by Ms.
to Edgar Allan Poe who rendered it a popular commercial enterprise. In the Yoshimoto’s same respect for tradition. Ms. Miller writes
sought to create a reading experience which could be twentieth century, James Joyce, who at one time had from a radical feminist perspective. Her seven stories
completed in one sitting, in contrast to the typical longish flirted with becoming a priest, introduced a religious render acute situations with sexual ambivalence looming
connotation of epiphany, a revelation, alluding to the large. Her most typical characters are writers suffering
presentation, showing forth of the infant Jesus. from writer’s block and disillusioned and delusional
Community Channel the Japanese author Banana Yoshimoto in Dead-End psychotic women like the writer in “I Want You to know,”
The American author Rebecca Miller in Total and
driven to insanity, the nanny in “Mrs. Covet,” driven by
Have You Seen It? Memories have presented their meditations that reflect loneliness to kidnap her charge, and other dissatisfied
and unfulfilled women.
on the human condition typically from the female
The Boca Pointe Community information perspective. The meditation has to do with whether one You will not find men of “gentle spirit and good
channel is currently broadcast on Comcast channel imagines meandering through life and relationships upbringing,” or ones with “tranquil and noble souls.”
63 and soon will be transitioning to channel 1075. rather than navigating them. From Jane Austen and There are few to any happy couples. The diverse men
Please check both channels on your TV to see onwards, women writers have focused their writing on in “Vapors”, Hal, Elliot, Carlos, Larry, Joseph, Etienne
which channel hosts our community information. relationships. And so do Ms. Miller and Ms. Yoshimoto. who have disappointed or failed Justine in one way or
If you are unable to view either channel, please call Both are accomplished authors of reputation with resumes another; she a man eater and man hater, finds her comfort
our office (561) 395-7551. Tune in for community of novels and short story collections, and Ms. Miller a in attending to her son Frances. The pharmaceutical
updates, BPCA/committee meeting dates and noted film director as well. They both render the hurdles representative cheats on her husband Chad on their
current events.  that confront women, but differently which reflects anniversary before they split, and she relishes the
their different eastern versus western sensibilities. One freedom of covering her own “Receipts.” Ciaran Fox,
might connect Ms. Yoshimoto’s sensibility to Japan and the Irish writer in “She Came to Me,” has a meaningless
Buddhist faith and Ms. Miller’s to anarchy, or search for sexual encounter with a Cincinnati pet store employee
religious validation. on holiday.
In Ms. Yoshimoto’s “House of Ghosts,” Seecan and In her title story, “Total,” a satire bordering on
Iwakura are brought together with their shared ambivalence dystopia where the characters have assumed the shape of
about continuing to sustain their family businesses; both and morphed into their phones; this is a familiar caricature
are involved in the restaurant trade, she with a restaurant of Martians from the nineteen fifties who were depicted
and he with a bakery, and they help each other navigate bearing antennae. An amusing social commentary
this emotional and psychological tortuous path. When following the example of her father, the noted playwright
she moves to his dilapidated, condemned house, they are Arthur Miller.
confronted by an elderly couple, ghosts who once lived in NB I might recount a conversation that I enjoyed with
this home, who instruct them not with fear but comfort and Arthur Miller some four decades ago while sitting in a
hope about the prospect of growing old together. restaurant; both unaccompanied, I waiting for the start
In “Mama,” Matsuoka, an editor working with of a play across the street. I initiated the conversation,
authors, encounters an unfortunate turn of events in her “Might you be?” To which he, jocularly, “I might be.”
bureaucratic office environment. Eating lunch in the “Might you mind if I join you?” I proffered hesitantly.
workers’ cafeteria, she is the victim of a disgruntled Pointing to a vacant chair at his table, he said, “Sure.”
employee who has poisoned the curry dish with a For the next thirty or so minutes, we had a lovely
concoction containing flu medicine which causes her conversation about theater and other things. I remember
to be hospitalized. This experience allows her to reflect that he was unsympathetic at the rage for auteur self-
on the positives and negatives in her life; her boyfriend centered playwrights (and wanted to hear my point of
who comes to console her while she is recovering. Her view) he being very much a social activist playwright.
unsteadiness after the experience causes her to drop and But actually we mostly shared conversation about our
break expensive china in her client’s home. She recalls daughters (no mention of our wives!). Though he was
her youth with her loving father and an unreliable mother born as the same year as my mother, he was the father
who was unable to deal with raising her after the sudden of a teenage daughter, same age as my Orna, of whom
demise of her father. But her grandparents stepped up we were both proud dads; and he recounted with that she
and provided a warm home for her. The story is about had just been to Israel, as my daughter. And so we talked
acknowledging the role of fate in all of our lives and about our shared connection through our then teen-age
moving on to enlightenment, or acceptance. daughters, an epiphany that occurred to me when I was
Describing her patriarchal society, Ms. Yoshimoto reading Ms. Miller’s work which renewed that delightful
through her heroines uncovers many ills associated with and not so dead-end memory.
the abuses of that society. She writes of raped and jilted
women, unfaithful boyfriends and husbands, neglected Dr. Ronald J. Meyers, a resident of La Paz, is an
Dr. Lebrun Nestor Dr. Siperstein-Paul
Cornell University Yale University and abused children, but not solely in condemnation. Emeritus Professor of English. rmeyers@esu.edu. 
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