Goodreads | The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea

Jessica rated it:

02/26/08

bookshelves: leetle-boys

Read in February, 2008

recommended to Jessica by: jane smiley; tosh, kimley
recommends it for: voyagers willing to brave the risk of seasickness

Argh. Okay, so I've been agonizing since finishing this book about how many stars to grant it. What should the stars mean? Do they stand for how good I think a book is? Or do they signify how much I enjoyed reading it? I think this is a three-point-fiver for me, really. Argh! It's so tough to say....

This book contained a great deal of five-star material. While there were several words and phrases that really jarred, these could have been clunky translation glitches, and in general the langua...more Argh. Okay, so I've been agonizing since finishing this book about how many stars to grant it. What should the stars mean? Do they stand for how good I think a book is? Or do they signify how much I enjoyed reading it? I think this is a three-point-fiver for me, really. Argh! It's so tough to say....

This book contained a great deal of five-star material. While there were several words and phrases that really jarred, these could have been clunky translation glitches, and in general the language and description was incredible. I mean, it was honestly stunning. Reading this book was so visual, even cinematic, and Mishima describes his characters and their post-war Japanese port city so vividly that you really do see it all, you have to, and it's a lovely thing to behold.

The story is about a widow, Fusako; her thirteen-year-old son, Noburo; and a sailor, Ryuji, who begins a love affair with the mother, the consummation of which is observed by the son through a hole in the wall between his and his mother's rooms. Noboru belongs to a scary, nihilistic cult/gang of kids with a charismatic leader and ruthless philosophy. [As an aside, this whole thing with the kids really reminded me of a book I just started once -- it belonged to Emily K -- about some really scary, nihilistic kids in post-WWII Germany; I thought that book was by Christa Wolf, but now I'm not so sure. Extra credit if anyone knows what I'm talking about!] The heart of The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea is the tension between Noboru's adulation of and disappointment in Ryuji.

This book was so beautiful. I mean, I really just don't know how to say that without sounding like a complete tool. The descriptions of the sailor's life at sea and of the mother and the city were just... bleagh. I refuse to use those pukey book review words like "evocative" or whatever, and I won't say some of these passages just made me "ache," because that's gross, no one wants to hear that.... so I'll just keep my opinions about much of this this novel to myself, for all of our sakes.

For me, though -- emphasis on the for me -- I stopped enjoying this book in the last quarter, and while that might've been Mishima's fault (after all, he did have me for the first three quarters, so maybe he did something to lose me), it might also have been more my personal failures as a reader. My problem was that I could see from the beginning where this was all going, but as the event became more obviously imminent I didn't understand what made it inevitable, because the characters just didn't really make sense to me. I didn't understand what the young boys were feeling or why, and I just couldn't relate to it. I just kept thinking, "If I were the sorta guy who'd commit ritual suicide, these characters might really resonate with me; or even if I were more of an expert on Japanese history and culture, I might kind of get what they're on about... but as it is, er, hm.... I really don't."

Now, should an author be able to get any reader to empathize with any character enough to understand his motivations, across boundaries of culture and time and whatever else? Maybe. I'm not sure. Again, I don't know who to blame here, myself for not getting it or Mishima for not making me get it, but the fact that I was totally on board for most of the book but found myself adrift towards the end makes me suspect it might not just be me, but possibly due to problems in the structure of the book. The rhythm there at the end didn't feel quite right to me, in contrast with the beginning and middle, which felt mostly pitch-perfect.

Anyway, though I wasn't as crazy about the latter part of this book as I was about the earlier parts, it's not like it ever got bad. It's a good book.... I should also add that it is also mighty disturbing, because I suppose it'd be irresponsible of me not to say so....less

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Amanda rated it:

04/15/08

bookshelves: fiction, from-the-mouths-of-babes

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in April, 2008

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea follows the adventures of Noburu a 13 year old boy and his crazy gang of schoolmates, "all smallish, delicate boys and excellent students," who try to oppose their relative powerlessness in the world by developing a dark idealistic "philosophy" that glorifies inhumanity and emotional detachment.
We are also told the story of Fusako, Noburu's mother, the widowed proprieter of a successful high-end boutique, and her passiona...more The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea follows the adventures of Noburu a 13 year old boy and his crazy gang of schoolmates, "all smallish, delicate boys and excellent students," who try to oppose their relative powerlessness in the world by developing a dark idealistic "philosophy" that glorifies inhumanity and emotional detachment.
We are also told the story of Fusako, Noburu's mother, the widowed proprieter of a successful high-end boutique, and her passionate affair with Ryuji, a sailor. We watch as their awkward interactions and a meaningless one night stand evolve into a tender relationship and real need for one another.
We witness Noburu's attempt to rectify the wildly confused emotional response he has when Ryuji, who he initially idolizes for his heroic life at sea, devoid of attachment, and his mother embark on a real relationship, with the credo of his "gang", that labels this sort of emotion as unforgiveable weakness.
Ryuji, in turn, represents the forsaking of youthful idealism for adult responsibility and the need for companionship. This makes Ryuji the embodiment of everything that Noburu and his friends aspire to and also everything that they have profound contempt for.
Ryuji seeks a life at sea as a young man because of his contempt for everything on land, and devotes himself to a romantic vision of death and the glory to be found in this isolated life apart. When we meet him he is beginning to realize that this abstract "glory" may not really be out there and that the comfort and stability he finds in his connection to Fusako, might make the prosaic life on land more appealing than the glorified and lonely sailor's life he has created for himself.
Noburu and his gang are digusted by their hero's disloyal decision to "sell out" and betray their dark and angry ideals. It is interesting because I remember that period of youth where purity is tangible and anger and pain and fundamental belief in something feels like the only logical way to account for the inequity in the world. I remember feeling like I would never become a compromised adult (or "father", as Noboru's gang would label this figure) willing to sacrifice my ideals for anemic insignificant comfort and ease. And I also remember realizing that life is really shades of gray and finding myself too old for my black and white ideals and longing for something soft to make this life more bearable and truly worth living.
In our post-Columbine world the violence that Noburu and his friend's embrace is not that surprising. But the tragedy of their vision-- limited by their youth and their strict ideals-- is shockingly real and painstakingly well thought out.

The ideas in this book are very complex, and that complexity can make reading it difficult. (I am sure that some of this could be attributed to the fact that I was reading the book in translation.) Some of the metaphors that Mishima comes up with are incredibly graceful-- when describing the awkwardness of the reunion between Fusako and Ryuji after a long absence at sea, he writes, "Why should things proceed as smoothly as an arm slips into the sleeve of a coat unworn for half a year?". But I found his descriptions of the blossoming love between Fusako and Ryuji to be so clumsy that, given the dark critical tone of the book, I kept doubting their sincerity.

The author's note tells us that, "Yukio Mishima was born into a samurai family and imbued with the code of complete control over mind and body, and loyalty to the emperor-- the same code that produced the austerity and self-sacrifice of Zen....On November 25, 1970... Mishima committed seppuku (ritual suicide) at the age of 45." Coupled with this fact, one wonders if The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea is Mishima's account of his attempt to find meaning and principle in his own life.

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