I Am A Cat

This book, Sōseki Natsume's classic of Japanese literature and hilarious philosophical ramble, is narrated by, yet almost nothing to do with, a cat. I bought it last year in Oxfam literally for the sole reason that the title made me chortle, and read it while on travels in Europe for the last two weeks. It was much more appropriate as a holiday-book than the other which I took along.
   Anyway. The eponymous furry hero has no name, and the novel, having originally been published as a series of ten magazine installments, has little in the way of plot or development. But no matter, as this work is more of a collection of lengthy quirky snapshots than it is an actual story, and at being what it is, it's fantastically entertaining.

   Narrating a rather long novel from a cat's point of view in a way intelligible to human readers would get very boring very soon if it were just a rationalised account of that cat's activity (though his short-lived love-interest with neighbouring Tortoiseshell, his attempts to catch a rat, and his consorts with disreputable cat Rickshaw Blacky alone provide for this aspect of the book), and so craftily Natsume spun together a cast of lovably weird characters who habituate the cat's owner's home, each providing anecdotes, jokes, tales and arguments aplenty. There's Mr Sneaze, who unlovingly and absent-mindedly owns the cat itself; he's a crackpot lazy grump teacher with stomach problems and academic pretensions about western literature. Mrs Sneaze, his condescending critic of a wife, the three young Sneaze children, and the threatening housekeeper O-san all pose further irritations and/or amusements to the cat. Then Sneaze's friends and acquaintances who regularly visit the house are indispensable as aids to the flow of random conversation: the slimy businessman Suzuki; the zen-obsessive thinker Singleman; the happy-go-lucky poet Beauchamp Blowlamp; the sarcastic maybe-lovestruck-but-probably-just-utterly-blasé science student Coldmoon; and of course the unforgettably irreverent fount of blunt interjections and verbose pointless wisecracks, Waverhouse.

   The majority of the book sees the cat sitting in on the conversation of various selections of these other characters, and quietly lending its supercilious feline judgement on them as they speak. Topics range from the cause of selfishness in modern humans to the size of the nose of Mrs Goldfield to prolonged confusion over whom her daughter is actually meant to be getting engaged to; there are lengthy diatribes against snake soup, schoolchildren, baldness, Waverhouse's trolling habits, and Coldmoon's inability to finish an anecdote about the time he wanted to buy a violin. Though wordy and long, all of these are hilarious, and display a deep penetrating insight into changing social philosophies at the time. Natsume was well-learned in ancient Chinese, Japanese and Western philosophy and literature, and at the time of his writing this Japanese culture was embarking on an upheaval of values as it became more open to the alien west, and many of the doubts and concerns and issues swirling the cultural mindset of early 19th century Japan are encapsulated and discussed (light-heartedly but deep-mindedly) by the characters who sit in Sneaze's study within earshot of the wise narrator Cat; and yet it never loses its levity until the end (I won't say why, because the end is sad).

   The tendency of the book to be more about the humans' conversation and attitudes rather than the cat made me think about the interesting link between narration in fiction and explanation in non-fiction. A lot of the time, the cat is just providing an open window onto the page for a splash of social commentary (though sometimes these are delightfully cut short by the cat getting bored and wandering outside). To what extent can a book do that before it ceases to be a novel and becomes a self-responsive dialogue of thought? Obviously a book can express values, but how far can it openly discuss them in character speech before they take the place of underlying prose and become what the book's about? Natsume avoided such a ptifall by lending the conversations over to the cat's inattentiveness or judgemental responses, or simply by the sardonic boredom of Coldmoon, Sneaze or Waverhouse. A minor but interesting point. 

   A final hat-tip to the translators, Aiko Ito and Graeme Wilson, is definitely in order too: English and Japanese are very different languages each with great depths of nuance in formality and tone, but they seem to have been transposed perfectly. Metaphors, similes, idioms and even puns have been carried across into English in a way that reads naturally and makes sense and still carries the humour, and though I can't read the original Japanese to double-check, obviously this must've taken a huge amount of cross-linguo-cultural skill, so, cheers.

   Anyway, this is a great book. Truly a work of a great comical and philosophical mind, and absolutely worth a read if you like funny interesting classics. Or cats.

You Are Not A Gadget

This book, a manifesto from veritable guru Jaron Lanier, was one of the most thought-provoking and relevant things I've read in years. I acquired it out of sheer curiosity a few months ago and read it during the quiet lapses while I've been travelling across western Europe for the last two weeks.
   Content-wise, there's not much I'll say about it because there would be far too much to say beyond a rough overview of the topic and points. Jaron Lanier has been one of the most influential people in Silicon Valley for decades, primarily researching into virtual reality and human relationships with digital systems, and as such he has a huge amount of very worthwhile things to say about those relationships. Basically, in the last decade or so, the trends of technology and the internet have started taking that relationship down a road that he's uncomfortable with, and this book is his cry to call attention before it's too late for us to steer our increasingly-internet-dependent societies in a better direction.
   The problems he sees are many and varied and extraordinarily well-articulated, and if you're interested in the internet and its effect on people and potential dangers or hopes for change then I can only point you to his book and exhort you to read it. Seriously, he knows his stuff and presses some challenging but difficult to contend conclusions. At the core of Jaron's argument is that digital systems innovated this century, especially in spheres such as social networks, crowd cooperatives, and cloud-sourcing media, dehumanise their users and devalue their content. This is largely to do with confusions about what constitutes personhood and identity; the difference between an individual and a profile or between information and knowledge; the problem of anonymity in usership lending no obligations to respectful behaviour; the problem of monopolisation in distributors of creative services; and many others.
   Like I said, the book touches on dozens of deep intriguing problems centred around our ties to the digital world - I'm barely scratching the surface. Each topic is very in-depth and poses further questions to the reader, and since this blog is supposedly about my thoughts in reaction to a book rather than just a plain book review, I may as well go over some of my main thoughts, though in keeping with what I've been saying I'll try to focus on my responses instead of summarising his arguments that I responded to. The chapter on creative media struck me; it's currently very difficult for independent entertainment producers to make money through their work. Outside of a handful of unrepresentatively lucky examples, mainstream success requires huge corporate backing investment, cloud streaming services give a pittance to the artists, physical sales are tough as digital availability is so easy (either pirated or by download from giant firms big enough to subsidise them), and even being paid for "real" things like live performances is hard to come by without an strong artist profile, which one can't really get without being able to succeed in visibility, which given the other factors, a lot can't. My response? I've stopped downloading music (my iPod's full enough anyway that I can survive off newly-bought CD's or the occasional gig), and started feeling guilty about certain dependencies. Ah well. What else did I have an interesting reaction to? Seemed like at least once every two pages I pulled a face in confused mindblown suspicion as I wrestled with obscure phrases ("Bachelardian neoteny" was my favourite of these) or compellingly weird points (he argues towards the end, in a spur of slightly-irrelevant genius, that if octupuses had childhoods they'd be the dominant species, which was delightful I thought), but most of the book is so far wound into a particular topic that unscrewing one's train of thought from what it was at time of reading without having to reread is proving difficult. It didn't help that we were travelling through Europe while I was reading this, so there were distractions aplenty - in fact the day I finished it, we went to a giant beergarden in Munich and made friends with a Texan socialist over several litres of German lager so tasty that the prospect of leaving for France the next day made us teary. Anyway, I digress.
   This is a great book. Be warned: though his writing style is comfortable enough, once he's introduced a particular term for a concept up for discussion he will casually reuse it and mash it together with existing or priorly-invented terms to aid the flow of his argument and somewhat confuse the less involved reader. It's quite intellectually strenuous, many of his chapters delving not only into relatively advanced computer science but also psychology and philosophy of mind. A bit of a challenge to read, and challenging ideas-wise too, but if mankind's relationship with the increasingly-independent internet interests you, look no further.

Unreached

This book, another from the helpful and prolific Tim Chester, is an excellent compilation of practical insights into planting and growing church communities in deprived working-class parts of the United Kingdom. I got the book in response to a UCCF mission trip to Grimsby last year, where several of us students stayed with a local church in the East Marsh area and helped run missional outreach events, youth clubs and community development programmes in the midst of what is a thoroughly impoverished town. We've revisited Grimsby as a team a few times since, and the most recent visit prompted me to consider possibilities for my future involvement with church plants, given the immense need of deprived areas. So to a book I turned, seeking not direction but guidance.

   The book's a product of Reaching the Unreached, a working group of christians involved in mission to Britain's poor, with anecdotes and advice distilled into a rough guide on how to do church in working-class communities. It skips the "why" other than a short but hard-hittingly truthful indictment of current church culture being predominantly, arguably damagingly, middle-class. So then we go straight into the "how" of engaging with and properly integrating with different class cultures in deprived areas, and finding within them new workable methods of gospel witness, in word and in deed, for both evangelism and discipleship. There's a consistent emphasis on social action's importance in terms of showing Christlike love by meeting needs, but more fundamental is the emphasis on the gospel message of humanity's need for repentance and salvation by the grace of Jesus Christ. I summarise here, of course - the book goes into many applications of how these messages can be put across effectively therein - but I would do no justice in attempting to list key points or topics, hence my vagueness in discussing the content. The book's theological aspects are well-grounded, the pointers on working-class mission are from reliable long-term experienced workers, the cultural examinations are empirical and reasonable. The only gripe I might have with it is that the model of "working-class culture" related to is somewhat stereotyped; but generalisations of subjects are helpful to make if you're giving generalised advice, and besides it comes with plenty of caveats as to use individual judgement in dealing with specific groups, areas, minorities, persons, etc.

   Basically the advice is trustworthy and good, and if you're seriously considering getting (or already are) involved with church activity in working-class or deprived areas, this would be a great source of both encouragement and aided understanding. And if you're not (non-christian readers, you're off the hook for this bit), why not? There's huge need in Britain's poorer parts, and if God would give his Son to die for a sinner like you or me, what right would we have to deny the Word from other humans in an attempt for us to cling onto several middle-class comforts? Thinking about this has struck me harder than the book itself - the book's more of just a guide than a direction, as I said. The direction is a calling to do what's right, and bringing betterment to areas which are materially deprived and worse, spiritually dry, seems like an important choice.