Elegant and inspired: just the thing to read along with Basho and other pilgrims into Japan’s back country.
A meditative travelogue through a part of Japan few outsiders ever see.
“We carry our lives on our backs and traverse the spine of the world, no humans for miles, no routes down, just forward or back, the beast below always shifting, always ready to heave us off.” So writes Mod, a resident of Japan, in this narrative of meandering on long solo walks through the quiet woods of the country’s Kii Peninsula. Bordered by some of Japan’s largest cities, the lightly populated region is “one of the rainiest places in the earth’s subtropical region,” wetter than even the Amazon, as attested to by Mod’s lovely if somber black-and-white photographs, studies in mist and fog. The people Mod encounters in the rugged mountains in the time of Covid-19 are resigned to the injustice of the world and the rough wisdom of nature. Says one woman of the virus and its effects, “the world all goin’ sideways…and don’t know if it can right itself.” Others, men mostly, are quick to offer booze, seemingly looking for an excuse to get blotto, an invitation to which Mod, a nondrinker, politely declines in fluent Japanese. Everyone, though, is kindly disposed if sometimes gruff, living examples of the Japanese concept of “yoyū,” “a word that somehow means: the excess provided when surrounded by a generous abundance.” Much of Mod’s battery of facts comes from what he calls the “John Effect,” honoring a friend who is deeply learned in the history and culture of every corner of Japan, including “these recondite hinterlands.” He addresses his narrative to another friend from long ago, living somewhere in an America that Mod barely recognizes (“How can you say that a country ‘loves’ you without providing health care?”), but his account reaches far beyond private reminiscence to become an exemplary travel narrative, instructive and entertaining.
Elegant and inspired: just the thing to read along with Basho and other pilgrims into Japan’s back country.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593732540
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: today
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
An exquisitely original celebration of American Blackness.
A potent series of “notes” paints a multidimensional picture of Blackness in America.
Throughout the book, which mixes memoir, history, literary theory, and art, Sharpe—the chair of Black studies at York University in Toronto and author of the acclaimed book In the Wake: On Blackness and Being—writes about everything from her family history to the everyday trauma of American racism. Although most of the notes feature the author’s original writing, she also includes materials like photographs, copies of letters she received, responses to a Twitter-based crowdsourcing request, and definitions of terms collected from colleagues and friends (“preliminary entries toward a dictionary of untranslatable blackness”). These diverse pieces coalesce into a multifaceted examination of the ways in which the White gaze distorts Blackness and perpetuates racist violence. Sharpe’s critique is not limited to White individuals, however. She includes, for example, a disappointing encounter with a fellow Black female scholar as well as critical analysis of Barack Obama’s choice to sing “Amazing Grace” at the funeral of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was killed in a hate crime at the Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. With distinct lyricism and a firm but tender tone, Sharpe executes every element of this book flawlessly. Most impressive is the collagelike structure, which seamlessly moves among an extraordinary variety of forms and topics. For example, a photograph of the author’s mother in a Halloween costume transitions easily into an introduction to Roland Barthes’ work Camera Lucida, which then connects just as smoothly to a memory of watching a White visitor struggle with the reality presented by the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. “Something about this encounter, something about seeing her struggle…feels appropriate to the weight of this history,” writes the author. It is a testament to Sharpe’s artistry that this incredibly complex text flows so naturally.
An exquisitely original celebration of American Blackness.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780374604486
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
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