Category Archives: Readalong

Literature and War Readalong May Wrap up: The Sea and Poison

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Shusaku Endo’s novel The Sea and Poison proved to be a challenging read which is also reflected in the fact that some reviews will still be posted. I will of course link to them once they are done. For the time being you can always read Novroz’ review which complements my own very well.

For the time being thanks a lot for those who already participated. I know that the idea of reading about vivisection held some readers back but it isn’t a graphic book at all. Nevertheless it is a depressing book that seems to center on two major themes, one of which hospitals and their staff, the other war crimes.

What depressed me was the description of the hospital and the doctors. My late mother spent more time in hospitals than outside, so I have had my fair share of contact with doctors and most of them were not like Suguro but rather like Toda or Hashimoto. Doctors in hospitals that is. I’d like to emphasize this. Doctors who stay in hospitals after having been interns follow another agenda. A hospital in many cases isn’t much different from a Corporate Company. It’s all about results and money and hierarchy. What I didn’t know at the time of my reading is the fact that Endo suffered all his life. He was very ill, had tuberculosis and some of the treatments described in the novel in great detail were treatments he had to undergo regularly. For anyone interested in this background here is an interesting analysis.

Thanks to Kevin who did some research and added them in his comments, it became clear that the book was based on facts and that there had indeed been American POW on whom they performed vivisections. Here is the link he added to the comments section.

This leads us to the biggest problem of this book, as Kevin and Anna (Diary of an Eccentric) pointed out and which was probably the base for my doubting the incident. Why did Endo chose to describe the vivisection as if it had been performed under anesthesia when it is apparently well-known, that like in Germany, the vivisections were performed without the prisoners being anesthetized? I have no answer to this question and don’t want to start speculating.

Does anyone have an idea?

Shusaku Endo: The Sea and Poison aka Umi to dokuyaku (1958) Literature and War Readalong May

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Against the backdrop of World War II, Japanese writer Endo ( Scandal ) explores the nature of morality. In this novel, originally published in Japan in 1958, the author examines the inner lives of three characters in the central drama, a grisly vivisection of an American prisoner of war, in an attempt to understand what conscience, or lack of conscience, allowed them to participate in such an atrocity.

The Sea and Poison is the first novel in this readalong that truly upset me. It’s an excellent book but so depressing and bleak, it reminded me of Kafka’s In the Penal Colony which was so far one of the most disturbing books I have ever read. I was afraid that the part on the vivisection might be too graphic but Endo is far to subtle a writer to be too explicit. The horror lies somewhere else.

The Sea and Poison is divided in three parts plus a prologue. Each part is told from another point of view, part 2 from different points of view. It is set during WWII in a hospital outside of the city of Fukuoka. Before we even hear about the planned vivisection on American prisoners of war we get to see the doctors at work. What we see is highly depressing. They do not seem guided by the love of their fellow human beings but purely because they are careerists and love power. Seldom have I read such an utterly negative depiction of doctors. This is best shown in the way they treat poor patients. They are unfriendly and heartless, whether they die or not, it doesn’t matter. It seems as if they did try to excuse this with the war as Suguro thinks:

No doubt it was a time when everybody was on the way out. If a man didn’t breathe his last in the hospital, he might well die that night in an air raid.

The central story is the vivisection which isn’t described in great detail. What is at the core is the study of the people who take part in it. “The old man”, chief surgeon Dr. Hashimoto and Dr. Asai are in charge. Dr. Toda and Dr. Suguro, two young interns, will assist, and two nurses will help as well. We do not hear much about Hashimoto’s motivations or only what Toda explains to Suguro:

“Doctors aren’t saints. They want to be successful. They want to become full professors. And when they want to try out new techniques, they don’t limit their experiments to monkeys and dogs. Suguro, this is the world and you ought to take a closer look at it. “

However we get to know Toda, the nurse and Suguro’s motivations and their stories. What is important is to underline that they could have refused. All three of them were asked whether they were willing to particpate and none of them refused.

Suguro is the only one with a conscience, still he accepts because the proposal comes at a moment of utter disillusionment. He has lost a patient and has seen how “The Old Man” lied about a patient he lost. He sees how many people are killed in air raids, how hopeless it is to help. When he is asked he doesn’t really say yes but he can’t refuse. Only at the last moment does he back off and doesn’t want to touch the patient.

The nurse has a complicated and sad life story. It seems as if there is nothing in this world for her anymore after her personal tragedy. It looks as if she was thinking “If I am miserable, why shouldn’t the others be?”

And Toda? Toda is a being without any feelings. Since his early childhood he is aware that he doesn’t care about other people, that he cannot connect. He has no empathy, no compassion. Occasionally he wonders if there is something wrong with him but at the end of the day he thinks that most people are like him.

I would like to ask you. Aren’t you too, deep down, unmoved by the death and sufferings of others? Aren’t we brothers under the skin perhaps? Haven’t you, too, lived your life up to now without excessive self-recrimination and shame? And then someday doesn’t there stir in you, too, the thought that you are a bit strange?

The questions the novel poses are manyfold and extremely interesting. One could ask whether those who do not directly kill the prisoners are as guilty as those who kill them. Is Suguro who can’t say no and watches but doesn’t touch the patient less guilty than the chief surgeon who performs the surgery?

And what about the chief surgeon? He is a man who is responsible for the death of many people. He performs a surgery and it goes wrong. He makes mistakes, people die. Is he less guilty of those deaths than of those of the American prisoners?

The type of questions this novel poses are the same that were asked in Germany after the war as well. Were those who watched and let things happen less guilty than those who took an active part? This made me think of Macbeth. Who is guiltier? Macbeth who did the killing or Lady Macbeth who had the idea?

I know it is said that this novel explores individual responsibility in wartime. I’m sure that is an important topic but I think two other things were far more important. I think this book criticises doctors and health care professionals in general, showing them as too keen on success and power, as heartless and inhuman. And it also wants to illustrate that people are selfish and mean.

I cannot say I “liked” this book but I did find it extremely thought-provoking, the writing is captivating and the character studies interesting.

I’m really looking forward to read what you thought of it.

Please read also what others wrote:

Anna (Diary of an Eccentric)

Danielle (A Work in Progress)

Gary (The Parrish Lantern)

Mytwostotinki

Novroz (Polychrome Interest)

*****

The Sea and Poison was the fifth book in the Literature and War Readalong. The next one will be Primo Levi’s If This is a Man aka Se questo è un uomo. Discussion starts on Friday June 24, 2011 .


Literature and War Readalong May 27 2011: The Sea and Poison by Shusaku Endo

Posted in Books, Fiction, Japan, Literature, Movies based on books, Novel, Readalong by

Shusaku Endo’s The Sea and Poison is the first WWII novel of the Literature and War Readalong. The first time I read about this book was on Parrish’s blog (here is his review). Its topic is very unpleasant. Endo focuses on the theme of morality, exploring it through the central story of the vivisection of an American prisoner of war by three Japanese surgeons.
I just discovered that there is a movie based on the book that can be watched on YouTube. I did attach the first part as a teaser.

Although it might be an unpleasant topic I’m looking forward to read my first Endo. Since it is a very short book, only 160 pages, I hope some of you will be in the mood to read along but I would understand if the topic isn’t to everybody’s liking.

Should someone want to watch the movie instead and review it, that would be great as well and I would link the review.

Literature and War Readalong April Wrap up: The Winter of the World

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As usual this is the time to thank those who read along and/or showed an interest in this monthly activity.

From the comments I can deduce that we all thought pretty much the same about this book. It was a mixed bag or, to quote litlove, “a curate’s egg”. True. There was much to like in this novel but also many things that didn’t work. The descriptions of the battle scenes were graphic but well-rendered, the close look at facial wounds and the reconstruction that followed were detailed. We get a feeling for how harrowing these were but also a lot of admiration for those who tried to help, the nurses and doctors alike.

Equally well done was everything that was tied to the grave/burial of the unknown warrior or soldier. (I don’t know if anyone was thinking of this book when watching the Royal Wedding that took place in Westminster Abbey were the soldier is buried).

What we all had our problems with was the story itself. At the center of this novel is a passionate love story that leaves behind considerations of friendship and decency. If you were among the readers who have difficulties to imagine such a strong passionate love at first sight story, the novel was pretty much doomed. But also if you could accept this as a premise, like I could, you had to be able to “feel” this passion. While I got a feeling for Alex, Clare left me completely unfazed. She is a great nurse and, in this function, an admirable character but the abuse story and her feelings for Alex weren’t well rendered. At one moment I was suspecting Carol Ann Lee to want to tell us that Clare acted the way she did, because she had been abused, that ultimately she was devoid of real feelings. That’s a type of explanation I do not like at all.

I also think, as did the others, that some episodes and narrative devices should have been left out.

I still have a few novels of WWI on my TBR pile but I’m glad that we move on anyway.

Looking back, the novel of the four I liked the most was Jennifer Johnston’s How Many Miles to Babylon. However if I had to recommend one to someone who has no idea about WWI, I think I would recommend Strange Meeting.

Which was your favourite? Which one would you recommend?

Carol Ann Lee: The Winter of the World (2007) Literature and War Readalong April

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Journalist Alex Dyer made his name covering the bloody horrors of the European trenches. Yet even after the Great War is over, he cannot shake the guilt he feels for not serving on the front lines like his dearest childhood friend, Ted Eden. Worse still, Alex cannot put to rest the emotions that gnaw at him from the inside: his feelings for Clare, Ted’s wife—a woman they both have loved more than life itself. 

Carol Ann Lee’s The Winter of the World is the last novel on WWI in this read along. For the next one we will be moving on to WWII.

This wasn’t the easiest review to write as I am in two minds about this novel. There are parts in it that are so haunting and powerful but then again there were others were I was just rolling my eyes thinking “get on with it”.  Still it would be unfair to write a totally negative review because the good parts are among the best on WWI I’ve ever read.

Alex and Ted are childhood friends. They are close and attached to each other until the day Ted introduces Alex to his soon-to-be wife Clare. Very unfortunately this is a love at first sight moment for Alex and Clare. They try to fight it but, as we will see soon enough, the more the story advances, the less likely it is that they will succeed.

The marriage takes place just when the war breaks out. Ted will enlist, Alex will participate as a war correspondent and Clare will be one of the nurses in France.

The novel moves back and forth between Alex’s and Clare’s point of view. Alex sees a lot of atrocities and the descriptions are very graphic and extremely impressive without falling into the trap of being too clichéd. But since Alex isn’t fighting, it stays an outsider’s perspective. Clare’s point of view was captivating for totally different reasons. As a war nurse she has to deal with indescribable wounds and suffering. The abundance of facial wounds seems to be a trait of WWI and these parts reminded me of one of the best WWI movies I have ever seen, La chambre des officiers aka The officer’s chamber based on the eponymous novel by Marc Dugain. We seem to get an insider’s view of this truly harrowing aspect of the “Great war”. I can hardly imagine what it must have been like to have been the victim of this kind of facial mutilation and to be rejected by those you loved and who once loved you. The reactions of the relatives and fiancées were often brutal. Through Clare’s eyes we also get an equally close look at what mustard gas did to those who became its victims and how they suffocated or drowned slowly.

The only men more popular than I was were the ones in wheelchairs, or those with empty sleeves pinned against their chest. Everyone wanted to talk to them, to do something for them. Children presented them with flags and in the railway stations they got free tea or coffee. It was different for the ones whose faces had been destroyed. People averted their eyes quickly, the blood flooding their skin. No one wanted to make eye contact with a disfigured soldier; they were modern-day lepers.

While the war moves on – not stopping at Christmas, as was expected – the love affair develops as well. Clare and Alex meet secretly but are finally driven apart by conflicting emotions and wishes. Alex feels he needs to tell Ted everything, while Clare wants to protect him and keep the affair secret.

Through Alex’ voice we hear what it must have been like to cover this war as a correspondent. The journalists were not allowed to tell the truth. The numbers of casualties were not mentioned nor were the biggest defeats spoken of. While Clare’s parts rather focus on individuals, Alex’ parts illustrate the enormity of the losses. He evokes the incredible amount of wounded, disfigured and killed soldiers. At moments I had the feeling of seeing all these dead men standing in one huge row before my inner eye. When we visit those cemeteries we get a feeling for those massive losses.

He imagined a thin line linking the cemeteries along the old Western Front, from the smallest graveyards hidden away within woods to those huge, silent cities on the plains where the most ferocious battles had been fought. Some bore the names given to them by the soldiers themselves – Owl Trench, Caterpillar Valley, Crucifix Corner – while others were named after the battalion who had buried their own men there. He imagined how tha line would look from the air; so thick in parts that it resembled a child’s scribble, for they were everywhere these Gardens of Stone.

The novel slowly moves towards the culminating point which is the burial of the “unknown warrior”. The name is chose deliberately as “warrior” sounded more inclusive than “soldier”. The grave which is really located in Westminster Abbey was meant to commemorate all the dead fighters of this war, not only the infantry men. The burial is one of the best and most powerful parts in this novel.

Despite all these impressive elements, I had my problems, as I said. The biggest part of the story is told by Alex. He tells Lombardi, a guy he meets in Flanders after the war, why he is so tormented, why he cannot get over the war. I didn’t get this narrative device at all.  I would have preferred a more straightforward story, not this artificial telling of what happened to someone who has nothing to do with it. This was a common technique in 19th century novels but I think it doesn’t add anything to a modern novel at all. The next biggest negative aspect was the coincidence. I found it highly unlikely that Alex would meet Ted at the end. The third thing that I didn’t think well-done is the love-triangle. I think it was unnecessary that Alex and Clare had an affair. The descriptions of Alex’ feelings worked very well for me but not those of Clare. And the guilt-theme was just an element too much. Last but not least I missed Ted’s point of view.

I have a lot of questions at the end of this novel and would be curious to know what others thought.

Was this really the tone of a WWI novel? Especially the love-affair seemed very WWII to me but maybe that impression stems from the similarity to Pearl Harbor.

What about the facial wounds, does anyone know whether this was a consequence of the trenches? In The officer’s chambers, the young officer loses half of his face on the battle field, but I have really never heard so much about this type of injury from any other war.

Why do you think Carol Ann Lee left out Ted’s point of view? I think she might have risked to fall into the trap of cliché but I am not sure that’s why she chose to leave it out.

I’m really curious to read your thoughts.

Here are other reviews

Anna (Diary of an Eccentric)

Danielle (A Work in Progress)

*******

The Winter of the World was the fourth book in the Literature and War Readalong. The next one will be Shusaku Endo’s The Sea and Poison aka Umi to dokuyaku. Discussion starts on Friday May 27, 2011 .

Literature and War Readalong April 29 2011: The Winter of the World by Carol Ann Lee

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Carol Ann Lee’s novel The Winter of the World that has the same title as a collection of WWI poems, is the last novel in the readalong to be dedicated to WWI. I discovered the novel on Danielle’s blog and thought it would be a good addition to the 11 I had already chosen.

Carol Ann Lee has written mostly nonfiction books before. The Winter of the World is her second novel. This is what can be found on her amazon page.

Carol has written two novels: ‘Come Back To Me’ which is semi-autobiographical, and ‘The Winter of the World’ – about the Unknown Warrior – which received rave reviews when it was published in France last year. Le Monde ended their review: ‘Finally, here is a writer who understands the subtleties of the soul.’ The book was nominated for two major awards in France, but has yet to find a UK publisher (one commented that it was a beautiful story and compared her writing to Ian McEwan, but said it was simply ‘too patriotic’) although it has been published in America by Harper Collins.

Sounds intriguing. The French title is La rafale des tambours.

Among her nonfiction books are One of our Own: The Life and Death of Myra Hindley, Anne Frank’s Story, The Hidden Life of Otto Frank and Witness: The Story of David Smith Chief Prosecution Witness in the Moors Murders Case.

Should you want to read along you might want to get started a little earlier as the novel has a bit over 300 pages, however the discussion will start late in the month, on Friday 29.

Literature and War Readalong March Wrap up: The Return of the Soldier

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For one reason or the other I had a feeling I knew exactly what this novel was going to be about but I was very wrong. I think that with the exception of Danielle who read The Return of the Soldier for the second time we were all more or less surprised by the book.

When you expect to read a novel about a shell-shocked soldier you don’t necessarily expect to see Freudian theories at work and much less you expect this book to be about a choice, a decision that will change all the lives involved considerably.

What did strike me most in this readalong are the differences between the reviews that have been written which underlines what I wrote in my post where I said this book could be read in many different ways. While I concentrated on summarizing the plot and comparing the symbolical meaning of the three women, trying to link them to Freudian theories, Bookaroundthecorner and Danielle focused on a core theme of the book which is the choice. In her post Bookaroundthecorner points out the following:

The ending is what we call in French a “choix cornélien”, a “Cornelian choice”. The term comes from the French playwright Corneille (17th C). In his plays, the characters must always make a choice between passion and duty, between happiness and what is right. Here, Margaret and Jenny face a Cornelian choice: to cure or not to cure Chris. To cure him is to allow him to be a soldier and be sent to the trenches again, to lead him to a highly probable death.

Anna (Diary of an Eccentric) pointed out that what she liked the most about the book was the fact how it didn’t just give easy answers but encouraged you to think about the characters and their motivations. She also mentioned how life changing the death of Chris’ father was, a fact I must have overlooked completely. Anna also wrote that she felt we never really get to know Kitty and Margaret due to the first person narrative and that she would have liked to hear more about Chris, about what happened to him in the trenches. Although I did appreciate the book’s subtle use of war scenes through the means of Jenny’s nightmares, I expected it to be more from Chris’ point of view as well.

Danielle made an interesting comparison to Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Much like the letter that was shoved under the carpet rather than just under the door in Tess of the D’Urbervilles, letters that should have found their recipient but did not meant an entirely different ending for the two lovers until this unusual meeting.

Danielle also mentions that in the introduction West was quoted saying that a novel should have no empty sentences. This struck me as well, when I read it and I think I can agree with Danielle on the fact that this novel really is a fine example of this.

In all the posts and discussions, the treatment of the classes was mentioned. Apart from Kevin, no one really felt like understanding Kitty. I must admit, I felt an intense dislike and think the others shared this more or less. Of course, Kevin is right in pointing out that she is a product of her upbringing and the society she lives in.

What struck me as very interesting is that Kevin perceived the book as non-feminist. I think I disagree but understand very well how one could come to this conclusion. I believe she deliberately created a weak and vain character like Kitty to criticize the passivity of certain women, especially those who had everything, money, looks, status.

I found the treatment of the war very interesting although it was extremely toned down or rather, because it was so toned down and blended into the story. As a final word I’d like to quote Verlyn Klinkenborg.

It is certainly necessary to read The Return of the Soldier as a way of analyzing the experience of war from the civilian side. But it is also imperative to read this novel as West’s means of analyzing the experience of being female. At the age of twenty-four, West is holding up disparate versions of a woman’s experience and waiting to see which one crashes to the floor. (From the Introduction to The Modern Library Edition, p.xx )

I don’t know if you have noticed the different book covers. I think this is the one I like the most.