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Diary of a Short-Sighted Adolescent
by Mircea Eliade
Translated from the Romanian by Christopher Moncrieff & Christopher Bartholomew

Resurrection of an Author

Mayonnaise will be read by two different groups: One those who've heard about or read Richard Brautigan before and others who'll be introduced to him first time in impressionistic and quirky episodic chapters, idiosyncratic to his own novels. The novel is unique in form and special in making unusual connection between events, places and people, particularly associated with American history or even a cultural wave, to Richard Brautigan in one or other way. "Expressing a human need, I always wanted to write a book that ended with the word Mayonnaise."—these are the words of Richard Brautigan's striking novel Trout Fishing in America and the novel bears the same desired word as its title: Mayonnaise. 

Richard Brautigan was born in Tacoma in 1935, and the way¹ it is ushered in by the narrator, his alter-ego, Gabriel Rivages, who himself is struggling to write², makes precedent for the style the story takes in the halo of Brautigan's biography, figuratively the plot of the novel. After the narrator grasps the recipe of the perfect mayonnaise, he starts to put together jigsaw pieces of Brautigan's life and of those around him; also are interspersed objective chapters that are targeted to some historical facts and figures, and cultural wave of 1950s and 60s, when beatniks and hippies challenged the norms. All these add dimensions to the novel—as if Brautigan wrote it in his own style—at the same time stopping it from becoming an altogether biographical novel. The novel shifts between Rivages voice as a third and first person narrator, all looking into the life and times of Brautigan and himself, who share the almost same problematic childhood experience and elements that form and shape their characters as a writer.

1.       In any case, for me, Tacoma is above all the birthplace of Brautigan, a lifeboat in The Gold Rush, and my son's laughter as The Little Tramp eats his shoe.

2.       When everyone is afraid of ending up unemployed, I don't care, because if I no longer have, I'll write… When the days are too long, the wounds are fresh, when there's no hope, I write. The rest of the time, I ask myself what the hell I could write.

Destined to become a writer, Brautigan showed signs of his love for writing through poems in his early days, only that he lived as a destitute, unsatisfied with home, where and how he was; this forced him to flee and try his luck in San Francisco, where he would find his first wife Virginia and his life as a postmodern and beatnik writer, with satires up his sleeve, and progress would be heavily influenced or even supported by the cultural movements³ and writers of his generation. The narrator sums up that the unique character and qualities of Brautigan's body of work cannot be put in a few words. Mayonnaise is like a friend talking to you, written in a casual way, and those of us who haven't read Trout Fishing in America, will definitely be enticed by the candour here and can relate to the frankness and atmosphere referred.

3.       Brautigan joins the Diggers first and foremost for their publishing house… Brautigan can print his writings for free. He walks throughout Frisco giving away or selling his poems on street corners. He joins in the never-ending party like all the others. Between Vietnam War, race riots, and women's rights, he finds his place among the West-coast crazies… When he writes about a fishing trip or bus a bus ride, Brautigan, in his style, taps the same veins as Bakunin or Blanqui. Neither god nor master!

There runs a parallel story of Gabriel Rivages, the same narrator from the Hungary-Hollywood Express (First part of the Trilogy), saved from his depression and suicidal thoughts⁵ by Camus' philosophy of life, who lives on his oddities and therefore there are seemingly digressive pieces of information (On Chaplin, Nabokov…) and chapters (Gadget, Qwerty,…): brooding over his own background, fondness for Brautigan's work and his influence, hitting upon myths, hunting optimism and celebrating the fate of things to make a sense of connection⁴. But, it is understandable that Rivages is a character, who's struggling with his own demon and partly reflects the turmoil Brautigan himself handled in his life. Besides, style cannot be claimed as a flaw in the story, judging its impression may be a different thing. The snippets taken from the life and tragic death of Brautigan transport us to the time when he was in the height of his success and final days marked with downfall and rough moods. Also apparent is the father-child relation and grave impact a question of origin can inflict upon an individual.

4.       In 1957, the Russians launch their first Sputnik. That same year, "The Return of the Rivers" becomes the first Brautigan poem to ever see print.

5.       I'm driving myself crazy… It's all there in the single question: is life worth or not worth the punishment of its experiences?... How many of us have the courage to master the final step?

To sum up, Mayonnaise is an accolade to the sensational poet and novelist Richard Brautigan and reveres his style and influence on the generations of writers. In this blend of facts and fable, fate and coincidents, reaching close to his space and time, we end up developing love for Brautigan, and despite the swirls of uncanny accounts, this experimental novel produces delight and smile on our faces above all else; after all, life of a writer always seems stranger than a fiction!

Author: Éric Plamondon

Translator: Dimitri Nasrallah

Publisher: Vehicule Press/Esplanade Fiction

Page Count: 188pp

Price: $16.95

Author Photo Credit: Le Quartanier/ Kelly Jacob

Review Copy Courtesy: Vehicule Press/Esplanade Fiction

French Is a Magic Language

The narrator Francis is preoccupied with French language and someone using an English substitute for a word bothers him, and he claims English is Not a Magic Language. A reader on demand, Francis' life is based on simplicity but also on dreams^1,2 and characters of his imagination.

1.       My dream froze on one final image: the woman was in the prow of the sailboat that was rounding the headland of the Île d'Oléron, heading for the Gulf and old Europe.

2.       When life creates problems, I sometimes indulge in dreams.

One evening an unknown woman calls Francis for a reading appointment at her apartment. But the mysterious absence of the woman troubles him and draws his curiosity. His brother Jack is a novelist and working on a French American historical novel, something he wanted to be like an epic, but owing to his old age and reclusive nature, and also a failing memory, his brother the narrator Francis and little sister are helping him with his maneuver.

Francis' listener includes a convalescing young girl Limoilou, a sick child and a girl in coma at the hospital. He cares how his reading influences the listeners and changes them. So, he is very selective about what he reads to his clients. He is particularly sensitive to what he reads to Limoilou who has a troublesome past. Jack gives Francis a journal written by explorers Lewis and Clark, resource he himself used for his novel, and Francis reads the journal to Limoilou for her great interest and enthusiasm. Being deeply inspired by French historical³ and cultural value in America, narrator often draws from his childhood with references from music, sports and books, and recalls how he developed fondness for reading.

3.       As for me, I was thrilled to note that the explorers' route is sprinkled with French names. Names of villages, forts, waterways, hills—but also travellers, guides, adventurers, fur traders. Their names are Loisel, Dorion, Laliberté, Lepage… Their names sounded familiar and I uttered them with particular respect because they had been forgotten by history.

The story alternates between Francis' search for the absent woman, his dreams and childhood memories, love for his sister, brother, Limoilou and Marine and his reading sessions. The fondness for French occupation in America, the journal of explorers Lewis and Clark, his dreamy withdrawal to popular figures from players to writers, impressions of his father, and all the things shaping him suggests that the narrator lives in simplicity however also in unreality, he is someone found in transition . He tries to motivate himself and keep his inspiration intact, and is cautious to make himself and people around him happy. One theme of the book may be social and historical awakening in a person just like in Francis who is struggling to live in peace and dignity. A French American consciousness permeates the novel, and the story of formation of Canadian nationality is in subtlety. History, adventure, love, celebration of reading and the essence of simplicity imbues English is Not a Magic language. The story establishes a New Life.

Author: Jacques Poulin

Translator: Sheila Fischman

Publisher: Vehicule Press/Esplanade Books

Page Count: 140pp

Price: $17.95

Photo Credit: http://www.nuitblanche.com/actualites/le-livre-des-memoires/attachment/jacques-poulin/

Review Copy Courtesy: Vehicule Press

The Difficulty of Self

In the middle of the Night a professor emeritus calls an associate professor of psychology to help him out with engagement in a hunt for finding a seven-year-old boy left by his parents on the side of a road in the mountains to discipline him, only soon to find him disappear from the place. The local authority has set up an incident center to find the child and have included members from different backgrounds, including psychologists.¹ While the search continues, with often fruitless meetings and progresses, the old professor Momose settles in an inn and dwells upon the causes for the lost boy. After formally attending the search Ishida meets Momose at the inn, and there along with Momose's pupil Okubo they discuss or project the psychology of the child A trying to pinpoint what exactly the boy might have felt at the time of being left by the family car.

1.       Momose: 'They bring in psychologists even when it is ineffectual, probably so they can demonstrate that they've put together a group of experts.'

The weather, terrain and the thicket makes the search difficult. The members of the search team make speculation where the boy might have headed or what might have happened to him. Ishida has no chance of interviewing the family, whose little ignorance of leaving the boy behind as a punishment led to his disappearance. Soon after another Child Psychologist Agawa joins the Momose's evening meeting, and now they muse over the subjects like animalistic virtue of leaving offspring on their own, fighting for survival and resistance that the boy might have posed to be found as a defiance. While the search team grows and keeps its searches alive the psychologists speculate like detectives but also wander off to subjects of historical tales and fairytale narratives of children being left or killed, Japanese upbringing, a Christian priest's visit to Japanese land, and Japanese introversive and unblemished culture².

2.       Momose: 'What goes on inside people, inside a family, within society, even the inner workings of a nation, they are all peculiar things that are difficult to understand, and always bound to be controversial and unexpected.'

After the child is found out, everything becomes normal like before, the family, the police and media, everyone goes quiet, but Ishida, drawing memories from his childhood, still cannot forget the impression of the boy being left alone.

Based upon a real such event, the novella largely deals not with the rescue mission but weaves the cultural making of the understanding of identity and intellectual inefficiency to practically deal with alienation brooding in the society. We take so much time to understand others but do we really understand ourselves? Backlight is a novella on what is lost and what is found while growing up.

Author: Kanji Hanawa

Translator: Richard Nathan

Publisher: Red Circle

Page Count: 66p

Price: $9.50

We Always Remain Human

In a futuristic world¹, the couple Hayato and Yutori faces the problem of infertility. But owing to the dystopian set up when even UN issues The World Population Explosion Declaration, treating infertility is almost impossible. In fact there are black markets for treatment and possibility of immigration, however consequences are bad if attempts are discovered by authorities except for bearing via natural pregnancy.

1.       Under the current law, the birth of a child born out of wedlock wasn't recognized, and in the event of a mother becoming pregnant with such a child, abortion was mandatory; should such a child be born nonetheless, the authorities were obliged to carry to carry out euthanasia.

In this short crafty prose, time shifts between past and present, but not in ordinary way. In one version amidst couple's ceaseless effort for fertility, Yutori gets pregnant by someone else than Hayato, and by law he must give in to divorce. Hayato, for healing his emotional loss or even for handling other human complexes, asks for a Stand-in Companion²—a humanoid duplicate of Yutori—with authorities. This new partner, with manipulated memory, can live with Hayato for ten years… Yutori, the Stand-in Companion, is convinced that the infertility problem is with her. Hayato, tries to find happiness by inflicting silent disgrace to Yutori, but finding meaning with meaninglessness tires him, until he finds renewed love again. In another version of the story, it's Hayato who makes someone else pregnant, confirming his fertility, and here comes, Hayato, the Stand-in Companion with his side of the story.

2.       The rental period granted for a Stand-in Companion was limited to ten years without the possibility of extension. Strictly speaking, the stand-in program was put in place to promote the independence of people who have lost their beloved in an unexpected event, so there was no room for flexibility regarding the rental period.

The ideas, such as humanoid's rights to request another Stand-in Companion in case the mortal partner is dead and Stand-ins having all the rights equal to human, makes us suspect, with all the interplay with juxtaposed contrary versions and character's psyche that for the purpose of emotional healing a duplicate might live with duplicate in the near future, and even after mortal end humans will live until they find mental and emotional peace.

As can be inferred from the novella, the basic complexes and characters of human beings will find ties with AIs and humanoids, establishing emotional significance being the top value in the futuristic world. When memory and personality can be manipulated, new human side will come to light. The futuristic art will be the art of handling emotional intelligence of people. New realities of the future world might be even absurd than we can imagine. The thought of new ethics and morals set in the future world dominated by technology is as intriguing as this novella with tightly packed surprises. One of the Red Circle Minis, Stand-in Companion is a meditative exploration on human love and relation set in the future world.

Author: Kazufumi Shiraishi

Translator: Raj Mahtani

Publisher: Red Circle

Page Count: 58p

Price: $9