Arrival at Gotsubo (ReejecttIIon -- A Number 2)
[The following is an excerpt from an extended book review of Lester Goran’s book “Bing Crosby’s Last Song.” The book review is written more like a creative essay / short story than a book review. The review is part of the book "ReejecttIIon - A number 2" and can be purchased on Amazon.com].
A novel about a bunch of ordinary never-do-wellers, scratching around, getting more wrong than right. Many of the scenes take place in bars with characters telling each other stories that expand the universe of the novel.
If I were to write something like this, it would take place in Nagasaki, at Gotsubo. Samantha the English teacher would be trying to teach the owner, Kentaro, Spanish, and people would be telling stories about Sam-the-boxer, how he broke Gavin’s jaw while he was still a learner for reasons that may or may not have had to do with his philandering lifestyle. How Sam eventually lost half of his brain in a surfing accident in California, and how all this came up about a year or two after most people moved away from Nagasaki and then one person returned.
It would go something like that.
But I would never write something like that. Lester Goran always thought there was something sacred about these happenings, the interconnectedness of people and the stories told from person to person. He also believed in universes populated by pubs and bars.
I’ve had alcoholics in my family. I find such places shallow haunts -- as unsacred as Gloria Scone and her New Age religious nonsense. Bars and pubs are for people without imagination. I’m not sure that people actually care about the other people they drink with. They might. There might be sacred happenings in between sips of white wine.
There is a small bar area at Gotsubo, right in front of the booths, where parties of five or more usually sit and wile away their time with talk. The talk is in Japanese, and is of no concern to Lester.
But as soon as he meets Kentaro, the owner/ bartender, it’s like I’ve become a ghost to them. Kentaro and Lester talk on and on into the hours, free cups of sake and shochu for all of Lester’s stories, and though Lester is the one talking most of the time, he finally finds me and tells me, “I can hear him perfectly. Why don’t you speak like that? I can barely hear a word you’re saying. With him everything comes out loud and clear. He could have been Irish!”
“Tell me a story,” he says. “Tell me something that happened at this bar.”
I suppose there are a few. The time I took my brother here. The time, right after I first got here, when one of the new guys was trying to decide whether to stay or whether to leave the country.
“There was this time, I met the ghost of my dead writing teacher…”
But I can tell I’m boring him because he naturally starts to talk to Kentaro again.
A novel about a bunch of ordinary never-do-wellers, scratching around, getting more wrong than right. Many of the scenes take place in bars with characters telling each other stories that expand the universe of the novel.
If I were to write something like this, it would take place in Nagasaki, at Gotsubo. Samantha the English teacher would be trying to teach the owner, Kentaro, Spanish, and people would be telling stories about Sam-the-boxer, how he broke Gavin’s jaw while he was still a learner for reasons that may or may not have had to do with his philandering lifestyle. How Sam eventually lost half of his brain in a surfing accident in California, and how all this came up about a year or two after most people moved away from Nagasaki and then one person returned.
It would go something like that.
But I would never write something like that. Lester Goran always thought there was something sacred about these happenings, the interconnectedness of people and the stories told from person to person. He also believed in universes populated by pubs and bars.
I’ve had alcoholics in my family. I find such places shallow haunts -- as unsacred as Gloria Scone and her New Age religious nonsense. Bars and pubs are for people without imagination. I’m not sure that people actually care about the other people they drink with. They might. There might be sacred happenings in between sips of white wine.
There is a small bar area at Gotsubo, right in front of the booths, where parties of five or more usually sit and wile away their time with talk. The talk is in Japanese, and is of no concern to Lester.
But as soon as he meets Kentaro, the owner/ bartender, it’s like I’ve become a ghost to them. Kentaro and Lester talk on and on into the hours, free cups of sake and shochu for all of Lester’s stories, and though Lester is the one talking most of the time, he finally finds me and tells me, “I can hear him perfectly. Why don’t you speak like that? I can barely hear a word you’re saying. With him everything comes out loud and clear. He could have been Irish!”
“Tell me a story,” he says. “Tell me something that happened at this bar.”
I suppose there are a few. The time I took my brother here. The time, right after I first got here, when one of the new guys was trying to decide whether to stay or whether to leave the country.
“There was this time, I met the ghost of my dead writing teacher…”
But I can tell I’m boring him because he naturally starts to talk to Kentaro again.
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