Genji and the Perfect Library

“Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book.”― Stéphane Mallarmé

1.

The Tale of Genji felt a million miles away from Taos—and yet, there I was in my writer’s studio, like the young Murasaki Shikibu in the drama, striving to change my life. Become a writer. Express myself—maybe even live on my own terms for the first time in a long while.

This week’s Genji drama episode was such a triumph: seeing her at last begin to write her Tale of Genji. And in almost every scene, she was surrounded by books! Her beloved books. The books that informed her writing, as well as her self-fashioning at court.

All these months of the show— and only now she is tasked to write her story!

I think what is so brilliant about the Taiga drama is the great care and time that has been given to explore the possible influences in the writing of her Tale. Other than her father and the emperor, most of those influences really have been books.

Many were from China: like the Chinese Records of the Grand Historian 史記 and the philosophy of Mencius. Also was the poetry of Tao Yuanming and Bai Juji’s the Song of Everlasting Sorrow 長恨歌—each having its own episode.

And what about all the native texts, like Kagero Diary 蜻蛉日, the Kokinshu, the Tale of Ise ….

2.

It is really fascinating to explore the work and life of a long dead person through an examination of the books they read. Like Columbus or Shakespeare….

And what about Cervantes?

Don Quixote (1605) is sometimes claimed to be the world’s first novel—though really that prize must go to the Tale of Genji (1021).

But just like in the Genji, books loom very large in the Quixote.

Poor Don Quixote, returning after the first sally to his abode of books, has a shock in store. Of course, all homecomings are hard. And this one is no different. Badly beaten, our hero is hauled home by a neighbor. More concerned by his mental state than in his bruises, a priest and a barber are called to the house. Remember back in those days, barbers doubled as surgeons, and so, we have a doctor of the soul (the priest), along with the doctor of the body (the barber-surgeon). Both try desperately to cure the patient— who is, it has to be said, clearly out of his mind from reading too many romances!

What is to be done?

They quickly decide that if they get rid of the cause of our hero's madness (the books), he will be cured. 

This is the famous "inquisition of the books." Out on trial with the priest having final say on the final fate of each volume, books are either saved or cast into the flames. It is very funny! For as books are individually tried and cast judgement upon, those deemed worthy of punishment are "turned over the to the secular arm" (ie, Quixote's niece and the housekeeper, both of whom would like nothing more than to burn them all in a great bonfire). His niece refers to the books as "the heretics."

Books about books about books…

3.

CS Lewis once described the people of the Middle Ages, not as a pack of barbarians, but as a literate people who had simply lost all their books. Likening them to castaways washed ashore with just a few of their greatest volumes, the medievals, he said, set out to rebuild their civilization. Not an easy task to be sure; for not only had they lost most of their library, but what did survive, survived by nothing other than mere chance. This is how it came to pass that while all of Aristotle was lost, parts of Plato’s Timaeus somehow made it. Of all the works by Plato, the Timaeus might be the last one that could have been any use to the people!

Do you remember the days when you’d walk into someone’s home and while they stepped out to make tea or grab something from the other room, you would inspect their library?

I recently read Claire Messud’s wonderful novel, This Strange Eventful History. I was really disappointed it was not short-listed for the Booker Prize since it was one of the most original and spellbinding novels I have read in a very long time.

Based on a 1500-word document written by the author’s grandfather about his life and their family history, Messud wrote a fictionalized account of the story, one in which presumably the emotional truth of her grandfather’s tale is alive in the pages of the novel. It all begins with the patriarch of the family. A pied-noir French man who lives with his wife in colonial Algeria, the story is framed by the grand love of this couple. What is so unique about the novel is that rather than telling it as the drama unfolds during the war and then more significantly when the revolution occurs and the French leave North Africa, their family then scattering to all corners of the world—from Argentina to Australia and then back to France with the son of the couple marrying a Canadian woman who together they settle in the US—instead Messud chooses to focus on times in between, creating these wonderful leaps, where a chapter will abruptly end before the real drama even takes place, picking up the thread later as readers scramble to figure out what must have happened.

I loved the novel, and was thrilled to happen upon a recent podcast with the author hosted by literary consultant and great reader Jaya Bhattacharji Rose’s podcast on the Times of India website. Their conversation was truly delightful—and I was so struck by the way Messud spoke at length about the great books that informed her writing, as well as the volumes of letters she used to construct her novel that family members wrote to each other back in the day. She spoke movingly about the way a person’s spirit was kept alive through the voices contained within those letters.

TV and email are great—and yet something no doubt is being lost—and I wonder without personal libraries and trunks filled with old letters—how future generations will be able to reconstruct we people of today.

Notes:

1. Home from ten-weeks in Taos. I highly recommend the Helene Wurlitzer Residency to all artists. After finishing there, I followed my husband to beautiful Aspen, where he was at a three-week workshop at the Aspen Physics Center. Aspen is such a dream—

2. I am really interested in books like I mentioned about about famous people and their personal libraries.

   If you have any recommendations, I am all ears!! There is Elias Canetti’s novel Auto-da-fé.

3. I was disappointed that, in addition to Messud’s book, My Friends by Hisham Matar did not make the Booker Shortlist. I have not read James, by Percival Everett yet—he is one of my favorite novelists and is a clear favorite of the Booktubers.

   I LOVED LOVED LOVED Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake, which was short-listed for the Booker, beating out the above and also is on the Longlist for the National Book Award, along with Kaveh Akbar’s Maryr, which I also really loved!
   
   Everett and Akbar were on Obama’s 2024 Summer Reads list, along with a novel I adored Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley and a fantastic nonfiction book about Captain Cook (that did not delve into the captain’s reading habits sadly).
   
   I really want to read Headshot (the author did the same Helene Wurlitzer residency a few years earlier). She was longlisted for the Booker and also an Obama pick —anyway, that is what I’ve been reading—how about you?