“A Tale for the Time Being” by Ruth Ozeki - Book Review

I’m overcoming a reading slump in which I read four books in a row with a heavy focus on the abuses of the Patriarchy:

The Promise by David Galgut features two men denying a woman’s dying wish to give the family house to another woman, depriving a woman of color what is supposedly due to her, based on the foggy memory of a deeply traumatized child, who later outlives her family, meekly and honorably, long enough to fulfil The Promise.

The Vegetarian by Han Kang has a woman decide to become a vegetarian, to communicate her decision to her husband and family in no more than a few words, and then to suffer horrific abuse from her husband, father, and brother in law as a result.

Trust by Hernan Diaz has a prominent banker go to great lengths to erase the brilliance of his wife who made him the most powerful man in the world, in something that was effortless play for her - obviously - because the goings on of men are silly for advanced women amirite?

And Milkman by Anna Burns was the worst of them all, with an extremely unreliable sister of traitors acting highly suspicious in her town, traipsing through a war zone while performatively reading, and when the head of the resistance army talks to her to try to figure her out, my god, what a MeToo moment that was, of readers unquestioning in their sympathizing for a woman who was controlled and coerced by a powerful man abusing his status. What he did to control and abuse her? We don’t know. Who questions the narrator’s utterly suspicious behaviour? Her oldest friend in the book, the person who knows her better than any of us do.

Ok I get it. Men bad! If you want to win an award as a writer, it’s helpful to write about bad men. I’m reminded of American Fiction, where a brilliant black author has to Gangsta Cosplay in order to sell books, while his more subtle work is completely ignored. If an author wants to be read, they need to follow the scent of modern day bloodlusting outrage, but it’s starting to feel as trite as Michael Bay movies. Complexity and nuance are too mentally taxing, and doesn’t fulfil our endless need for justice. It’s starting to remind me of Medieval Knights’ relentless pursuit of honour.

Personally, I’m just so utterly bored of the Postmodern blaming of men and power. The trend or complaining about Patriarchy seems like the acceptable cousin of Anti-Semitism, of a paranoia and blame of some higher powers that are corrupting and destroying civilization and profiteering from it. The ominous “they” are the old men in their…I dunno board rooms, with tented fingers and twirled moustaches and shriveled dicks. It’s not cool to subscribe to anti-Semitism anymore as a means of blaming others for our problems, and so hating the Patriarchy is the new a la mode copium.

As a man who’s neither powerful nor rich, but a tall and beautiful Adonis in a deeply fulfilling relationship, I’m not interested in this language game catered to the chronically embittered. But this isn’t about me, of course, as I also know women read more than men, and so I’m not the target audience. Books are written to be sold, and authors need to eat.

So, I was very happy to dig into Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being, which didn’t focus on the behaviour of shitty men. Well, not as prominently, at least. Ozeki had a few pages dedicated to some soldiers who gloried on the gory details of their war crimes in China, but that was through the perspective of a historical figure in the book, and so wasn’t as central a theme. But the hat-tip was noticed.

My first emotion after that of relief for not being yet again reminded that all men are gross, was emptiness. A void. What I feel now after having just finished this book is low and empty. I don’t feel a sense of joy for having finished it. There’s no exhilarating rush like I had with The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, or a deep sense of the sublime as I did when I finished Orbital. I mourn the loss of these characters who I’ve grown to care for: Nao, Jiko, and Oliver.

I have a soft spot for Japanese fiction. I devoured a few Murakamis. I lived in Tokyo for five years, in Kichijoji, the best part of Tokyo, the most desirable part to live in for 11 years, up until the year I left, in which it was dethroned by fucking Ebisu. Yuck.

My first visit to Japan I went to Akihabara and my ex wife got sick and stayed in the motel while I went off and explored the town and toys, old game shops, and had ramen, and visited my first few multistoried sex-shops. I was impressed by genres of porn I didn’t know existed.

Kichijoji was idyllic, and I still remember my time in Tokyo as mild hedonic bliss. Nao didn’t share the same experience I had, of course, and I know my experience in Tokyo was exceptional, as I lived there as a rich and famous Gaijin blogger, and wasn’t subjected to the tortures others endure to live there. My dream state as a permanent tourist remains untarnished, and I still impose it on any harkening to the names of the parts of town I frequented.

And even though I’m Canadian by birth, I couldn’t really connect with Ruth’s experience of Canada at all. Her story just seemed a relentless sad storm of troubles I had difficulty empathizing with, and I know my empathy was blocked for her because she didn’t offer anything to make me like her in the first place. That’s the problem I’m facing with demands for empathy lately; hold space for me while I offer you nothing in return, because you should. Emotional labour is demanded and nothing is returned. I got nothing in return from Ruth, and found myself rushing through her complaints. She didn’t feel at home in the woods, couldn’t get into a flow with her writing, didn’t like everyone knowing her business, fell thoughtlessly into a saviour role, was traumatized by her mother’s dementia and death, and - really - was neither attentive nor kind to Oliver, who added so much value to the story with light and ease, so much great information outside of Ruth’s existential heaving whinge. He was a lovely man, and after spending a few months of fiction without them in my life, he was so very welcome, and I will miss men like him in my current trend of reading Literary Fiction.

My favorite part of the book was Nao’s summer at the temple, where she learned about Zazen. I practiced Zazen for a few years, and read a lot about Zen and other forms of Buddhism before I realized I got a bit too deep into it at the expense of other important aspects of my wellbeing, like diet and exercise and, embarrassingly, employment. I benefitted greatly from my time with Zen, even to this day, and I very much appreciate any evangelism of its benefits. I loved Jiko talking a bit about Nonduality and One Taste and Impermanence, and felt disappointed in Nao not writing Jiko’s story as promised, as I wanted more of Jiko, and more words explaining how she came to integrate with her wisdom. Knowing ideas in theory is different than applying them in our daily lives, which leads to my deeper issue with the story, and with fiction as a whole.

Here’s something I haven’t fully understood yet, so I’d appreciate your help in working through this. It’s about stories of the Wisdom of the Aged. I’m disappointed that Jiko was the only character to seemingly integrate with a sense of grace and ease. Why is it that wisdom is reserved only for the elders who are one foot in the grave? The lessons of the elders seem to be useless to people who aren’t close to death. “Ah! Grandma is so wise! I’m gonna continue suffering ungracefully though!” Can fiction not show us people in the primes of their lives living well? Must everybody be a mess? What good is wisdom if it only comes with decrepitude?

It seems like Nao learns a bit by the end of the book but by god that’s so rushed and glossed over, like the happily ever afters of all romance. Romcoms show us people struggling to have a happy relationship with each other, and end as soon as the union is mutually agreed upon; here, we see people struggling to come to have a healthy relationship with themselves, and the Epilogue begins as soon as we get there.

I’m starting to think that we mythologize the aged, that we don’t deeply connect with them, and we fetishize their wisdom as part of our process of infantilizing them. Ah! Grandma has gone through a lot in her life; she has seen many things, gone through hell and back, and for it all, she is very wise. She has completed her Campbellian Hero’s Journey, and has returned to us, in the prime of our lives, to offer us her wisdom…which we’ll ignore anyways. Wisdom is something only old people can have, along with head pats and pureed food.

My original griping about constantly reading about shitty men extends beyond my own male fragility, as it extends here to wisdom, where I think the way we speak of old people and wisdom has a darkness baked into it. Wisdom being the exclusive to the aged tells us that we’re going to continue to fuck everything up, until we’re too enfeebled and marginalized to cause any more damage. Please, let there be some author that doesn’t surrender to a Hobbesian cynicism. We don’t need to witness the endless suffering of all characters. I’m starting to feel the ick for fiction’s emotional torture porn the way people feel ick at seeing Influencers in the wild doing dances in crowds.

Please show us the world we would want to live in. Please stop headlining your dystopian visions. Please model characters for us that are accessible. We don’t need to shave our heads and fuck off to the forest to handle life with grace. If fiction is to hold a mirror up to world, why does it only focus on depicting people who handle conflicts poorly?

I read A Tale for the Time Being at the same time as I was reading Humankind by Rutger Bregman. What a thrilling beacon of joy that book was! Bregman shows us how humanity isn’t as cruel as the most famous writers have suggested. Lord of the Flies was written by an alcoholic and an abusive school teacher. In real life, when boys are stranded on an island, they don’t murder each other; they cooperate beautifully and form lifelong friendships. The Stanford Prison Experiment, and Stanley Milgram’s work, and the Bystander Effect are all gross fabrications that support misanthropy.

The world is a lot kinder than our most famous words show us. And just as Kindness isn’t a rare exception from the overwhelming rule of barbaric humans, so too is Wisdom not solely available to those with a few licks of the candle left to them. It’s something that many, rather than a few people incorporate into their lives, and for those of us that are lacking it in some areas, it’s something we can all train and develop in our lives, just as we develop our health, our careers, and our skills.

To all of our most esteemed, most awarded, most famous, and most miserable authors, please do better. You have the power to show us how we can be. You’re not holding a mirror to the world when you just focus on the worst parts of it. You’re showing us your filters of what you believe to be most salient, based on your obsessions with your traumas, you egomaniacs you.

And a part of me worries that, perhaps, this is what we’re limited to in writing. Those who can positively affect the world do; those who can’t, write.

Blog Post Title Two

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

Blog Post Title Three

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.