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The Last Samurai References and Annotations Thread: Week 1
Today begins our six-week read of The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt.
I’ll have some initial thoughts later in the week, but I thought I’d try something new that we didn’t do with the Your Face Tomorrow group read. Assuming at least some of you participate, each week I’ll post an open thread where you can dump any references you catch in TLS or annotations you’d like to add to the text. (And those of you who have already begun reading can probably tell this will be a text heavy with connections to other texts.)
So if you want to participate, just write in the text you’re quoting, the page number, and your gloss in the comments to this post. The idea will be to build up a base of information that everyone can draw from as we read through this book as a group.
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- Annotations Ezra Klein writes: Compared to this, electronic text is a GPS system. You tell it where you want to go, it finds the route. The...
- Demon Theory week This week at the LBC is Demon Theory week. And remember that the week following that will be for discussing Wizard of the Crow. As...
- Busy Week Pretty busy this week. Hopefully more tomorrow. Take this time to read all the posts of mine you’ve ignored. ...
- Fall Read: The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt So what is The Last Samurai and why did I choose it? . . . continue reading, and add your comments...
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Recommended Books DeLillo's major work before White Noise is probably his most underrated novel. Its all right here--the politics of paranoia, terrorism, the unnamable--set in an evocative, timeless Greece.
The most bizarre Abe novel I've yet read, which is indeed saying something. About a subclass of Japanese men who go around wearing boxes from the waist up (and then use them as domiciles in the evening), the book is also an experiment in perspective shifts, a highly unstable, metafictional first-person narrative, and an exploration of voyeurism, consumerism, and aberrant sexuality.
Charting the path to three gunshots--the one that killed filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, the one that disabled his Islamic extremist assassin, Mohammed Bouyeri, and the one that led to Vincent Van Gogh’s one hundred years earlier--Olsen tells three separate stories that resonate with one another on numerous levels: the logic of extremism, the role of the dissident in Dutch society, the limits of tolerance, the purpose of the artist, the feeling of the most important five minutes of your life. Read my interview with the author.
Creatively structured, well-executed epic novel of rural South Africa from 1950 - 2000. Takes on a lot and lives up to it magnificently. Highly recommended.
A book that's an interview about the book you're supposedly holding in your hands. Creative, potent, and full of life. Just what metafiction should be. Read my post on it.
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Naked Singularity Big Read Schedule
The Names by Don DeLillo (1982)
The Box Man by Kobo Abe (1973, English 1974)
Head in Flames by Lance Olsen (2009)
Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk (2006, English 2010)
The Weather Fifteen Years Ago by Wolf Haas (2006, English 2009)
p. 25: “I tried to cheer myself up. I thought: I am in Britain! I can go to a film and catch an ad for Carling Black Label!”
There are tons of Carling Black Label ads on YouTube, including these two from the mid-80s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY9GBl7UmVs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCemJAd3KZA (NSFW?)
The second of these, as mentioned on p. 33 (“stonewashed Levi’s ad parodied in classic ad for Carling Black Label”) is a parody of this Levi’s ad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u06rDf-kUt0
Also p. 25: Tennessee Fried Chicken, etc.
This is for real: http://www.satanslaundromat.com/sl/archives/000452.html
(Note that while many of these photos are from the UK, just as many are in the US!)
And now something I’d like to get an annotation for, if anyone has any information: p. 32, “the translators have translated the Japanese into Penguin.”
I speculated that Penguin Japanese (or Penguin AnyLanguage) is a sort of joke term for clunky translation by comparison with Pidgin (a simplified language that emerges when speakers of different languages come into contact). I can’t find any references online to anyone besides DeWitt using this term, but it turns out to be surprisingly hard to search for (lots of results for Penguin editions of translated works, etc). Is this something she made up, or is it used among translators/linguists/foreign film buffs?
I’m reading the ARC from uncorrected proofs. Thought I’d share that the working title of the book as given in the proofs is “The Seventh Samurai.”
If anyone needs help with the references to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, let me know.
Thanks for posting those links, Lisa! I had completely forgot that Levi’s ad until I followed through.