I finished the weekend by finishing what I’ve been reading this past week: Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. I picked it up in the charity shop when the Almedia production with Paul Mescal was announced in the hope of rereading it before seeing it but due to the high demand I never managed to get tickets. Either way, it is a really good play and a fun read.
I’ve read it before, I’ve seen several productions of it but this was definitely my best experience with it so far. It’s such a well-crafted play, very atmospheric in its scene directions and with an incredible use of light and colour. There are different hues of blue, strong primary colours and the softer pastels that Blanche hides behind, further emphasised by her name meaning ‘white’, as there is so much colour around her that she is never quite part of.
The story itself is tragically moving. Blanche’s slow downfall and the realisation of what has happened to her is expertly revealed bit by bit. She is deluded but also highly relatable and you cannot help but pity her.
Stanley’s horrible character is oozing off the page from the very beginning. Can you not picture this man in front of you? Is he not revolting? He actually reminded me of one of the customers I had in the coffee shop where I used to work and who, in my head, I always thought “Oh. here’s Stanley Kowalski again”.
I have held a position as a reader at a theatre for the last few years and as part of that I have read so many unsolicited play submissions of varying quality that it was such a relief to read a play that is really good, where everything has been carefully considered (including the stage craft). As such, I would really recommend it not only as a stage production but also to read.
Such a gorgeous day today! Did some reading on a bench, had a coffee in the sun, made scones and so on. That’s however not what this post was supposed to be about so let’s get on with what it is actually about, my latest read: Olga by Bernhard Schlink.
In hindsight, I think that one of the main reasons for why I picked this up is the cover’s similarity to the film poster for Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Ameliebut I think that’s where the similarities end, although both Olga and Amelie contain long-lost letters that are rediscovered. In Amelie, it’s the fabricated love letters from Madame Wallace’s unfaithful husband and in Olga it is the letters sent between Olga and her lover Herbert as he sets off for a polar expedition to Nordaustlandet, from which he never returns. Lost husbands, abandoned wives.
Olga is a piece of historical fiction, set at the turn of the 20th Century and tells the story of Olga, an orphan raised by her grandmother in a Prussian village. She is clever and studious and makes friends with Herbert, the the neighbouring aristocrat son. They develop a strong bond that is challenged by his status and the world around them. He is allowed to follow his passions and explore the world while Olga is at home, travelling the world through her books and awaiting Herbert’s return with unwavering loyalty. Well-written and, at times, engaging, Olga didn’t wow me so I won’t do a full review but instead I’ve compiled a little list of things I liked/didn’t like about it.
Thinks I liked👍: • the first few chapters that outline the story of Olga growing up and how she first met Herbert were quite sweet and I also liked the contrast that is created between them • the use of Herbert’s recklessness and willingness to conquer at any cost as a symbol for how the widespread rise in German Nationalism at the turn of the 19th Century led to atrocities such as the genocide of the Herero as well as the two world wars • Olga’s dislike of things that she considers “too grand” as a critique of empire but that can also be applied to current events
Things I didn’t like 👎: • the “she’s not like other girls”-characterisation of Olga which then muddles out into what attempts to paint her as a stoic but which makes her feel passive and stupidly loyal • how the reader is never given the turn of events in Olga’s life from her direct perspective (even if one does get to read her letters, they reveal few personal insights and mainly focus on her love for Herbert) • how the whole novel felt a lot like exposition through mentioning major historical and personal events in passing but never going into them in any greater detail/emotion
Yoko Tawada is an exophonic writer, meaning that she writes in a language that is not her ‘mother tongue’. Many famous writers were exophonic, such as Vladimir Nabokov, Milan Kundera, Jack Kerouac and Joseph Conrad, to name a few. Exophony as a phenomenon is related to migration in general and the mixture of languages has its obvious explanations with the movement of people but there can also be heavier, political reasons for a switch in language as a result of experiences of exile or colonial attitudes. For example, Nabokov initially wrote fiction in Russian but began writing in English after he came to the US as a he opposed the Soviet government and was exiled as a result. Kundera originally wrote in Czech but, again, due to political involvement and critique of Soviet rule, his books were banned and he fled to Paris to be able to continue his authorship. In Paris, he started writing mainly in French and was later stripped of his Czech citizenship. Kerouac was French-Canadian and did not learn English until he was six. He always felt like an outsider, being Francophone in the US, but still wrote his most famous work, On the Road (1959) in English.
Despite its sometimes heavy underlying reasons, exophonic writing is often very creative in its linguistic attitudes, one theory being that it allows authors to view language from the outside and approach it a from a different perspective. Both Kerouac and Nabokov are very sound-based in their writing and Conrad is suggested to have brought a “non-English sensibility into English literature”.
This creative attitude towards language is a central aspect of Yoko Tawada’s writing. Born and raised in Japan as a native Japanese speaker, she learnt German as an adult and now writes fiction in both languages. Scattered all Over the Earth, for example, is originally written in Japanese while her 2016 novel Memoirs of a Polar Bear was first written in German. Her fluid attitude towards language is explored throughout her work, for example in the short story collection Where Europe Begins (1991), which deals partly with her arrival to not only a new continent but also to a new language, and Portrait of a Tongue (2013), which centres on how the language of a German woman living in the US has been affected by English. Similarly, Scattered all Over the Earth, is a novel about language.
Narrated by a handful of individuals, it tells the story of Hiruko, a Japanese exchange student in Scandinavia who cannot return to Japan as the country has inexplicably disappeared, probably due to climate change. With the loss of homeland comes the loss of language; no one around her can speak Japanese. It is as if Japan has never existed as Hiruko is the only one who seems to have any relationship or recollection of it. This is emphasised by Tawada in that neither the word “Japan” or “Japanese” is mentioned throughout the novel. Together with the Danish linguistics student, Knut, and aided by her own invented language (‘Panska’, pan-Scandinavian, a mixture of Scandinavian languages that can be understood by most Danish/Swedish/Norwegian speakers), she sets of throughout Europe to find someone else who can also speak Japanese. On their way they meet a plethora of different people, with different linguistic identities and native languages. while the idea of Japanese language and culture lies hidden within stereotypes and ironic misconceptions.
I particularly enjoyed the countless reflections on language and its function scattered all over the novel, but I also really appreciated how the novel is filled with humour. Often ironic in its descriptions and reasoning, it is a stimulating read for anyone interested in how the languages you speak shape identity. As an ‘exophone’ myself, I could relate to the hybridity of the languages and identities explored as well as to its concluding message that a mother tongue might not be so important after all but that what happens in the merging of different languages and cultures is much more meaningful.
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