Review: The Sound of Waves

The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have only read one other book by Mishima--The phenomenal, "The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea"--and I have to say, this book is a far cry from the brilliance of that novel. I say that only because of the characters presented here, with many of them, while affecting the plot in some way, don't feel all that important in the big scheme of things. For example, the protagonist's brother goes on a trip at one point in the novel and the overall impact of it has nothing to do with the rest of the book other than the fact that he got to see what the world was like outside of their puny fishing village. Yes, it speaks volumes to the setting Mishima strove so hard to set, but character-wise, it kind of falls flat.

That said, the story that lives in this small book (It's under 200 pages), is quaint enough to give it a read. The conflict never feels all that great, and like the small size of the book, the problems also seem quite small and minimalistic (I'm interested to see how they actually made five different films about this book). Overall, it's a fine read, but I wouldn't recommend it it everyone. If you're interested in Mishima, I suggest reading the aforementioned, "The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea". There's some heavy stuff in there. Looking forward to reading his Sea of Fertility tetralogy.

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Opinion: "Mortal Kombat" Has Done More for Video Games Than "Street Fighter" Ever Did

(Image taken from: Complex-Mag.com)

Here's a piece I wrote up on Street Fighter vs. Mortal Kombat in terms of cultural impact. You can find it on this link.

Review: Giovanni's Room

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Being that I've never read "gay lit" before, I'm not really sure if this is a great introduction to the genre, since I'm almost certain that most modern gay lit isn't like "Giovanni's Room". And why should it be, since this is gay lit written by the magnificent, James Baldwin? Unlike most gay lit--which I'm just guessing, so please don't scorn my ignorance if I'm wrong--this is the story of a man who wishes he wasn't gay, and it details the suffering he goes through loving a man when he knows (or at least, feels), that he shouldn't. It's "Brokeback Mountain" about fifty or so years earlier. And at that, all I can think is, wow, the balls on James Baldwin (The double entendre is, of course, intentional). To write a story like this, which, in a nutshell, is about an American man who falls in love with an Italian man in Paris, as his second novel (in the 50s, no less!) is astonishing. He probably almost sabotaged his entire career writing a book like this, and it's all the more impressive to see just how open and revelatory it is. Baldwin put his soul on the page, and you can see it in every last word. It's even more impressive that he was a black man writing about white men. The scope of this small book is massive, just massive!

Baldwin is a master at characters, so you get a true sense of what all of them are feeling, and why. Giovanni's room itself is actually a metaphor for homosexuality, and the protagonist, David, can't stand being inside it, even though it represents safety and even love for him. Being inside it is the only true time David is happy, and it represents so much in so little that it's a wonderful analogy for being an outsider, even when you're inside somewhere.

That said, while the book is masterful throughout, I kind of didn't like all the descriptions of Paris. I felt the central story was interesting enough and I didn't really need a sight-seeing tour. Even so, the book still stands up as one of the most ambitious novels of the post-modernist age. I've now read both Baldwin's first and second novel, and I hope to read the rest of his fiction in the coming months. This is a masterful, masterful book, that you should definitely read if you're curious about it.

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