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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The more Tanizaki the better., July 30, 2004
This review is from: The Gourmet Club: A Sextet (Paperback)
Okay, overall, I think that the stories in the vintage collection Seven Japanese Tales (as opposed to the Norwegian Tales that he was known to write in his spare time) are better than those presented here, but that's not to say that this does not well deserve to be read. Let's see...'The Children,' about three friends of sorts (plus the sister of one, which adds an interesting quasi-incestuous frisson) who play games which gradually become more and more sadomasochistic and protosexual. Less refined than his later work on the masochistic theme, perhaps, but quite good nonetheless. 'The Secret,' on the other hand, is pretty awful; by far the worst thing here. The protagonist is rather obviously modeled after Des Esseintes from Huysmans' A Rebours, but if this is an attempt at mimicking French fin-de-siecle decadence, it's a failed one (as opposed to 'The Tattooer' in 7JT--that's a good one). I suppose the crossdressing element may have seemed slightly shocking it its day, but I just found the whole thing banal and utterly predictable. 'The Two Acolytes' is an odd, uncharacteristic story with magical elements. According to the introduction, it may be valid to read it as a parable for the Tanizaki's choice between secular and religious life; in any case, it's not a masterpiece, but not bad either, and it gives us a glimpse of a hitherto unseen facet of his art. 'The Gourmet Club' is one of the weirder things to come from Tanizaki's pen, as a group of sybaritic gourmets go to ever more drastic and eventualy surreal steps to satisfy their increasingly jaded palets. Very sensual, albeit sometimes unpleasantly so. Not wholly enjoyable, but certainly impressive. In 'Mr Bluemond,' we see Tanizakian sexual obsession taken to the extreme, as a young actress's meets a man fixated on his wife. It's reasonably entertaining, even if you can see the ending--at least in general terms--coming from miles away. Said ending does seem sort of gratuitously grotesque, but far be it from me to criticize. (who, me?) Finally, 'Manganese Dioxide Dreams' is the most typically Tanizakian (I'm trying very hard to coin this word, obviously) but also surely the best thing here. It was written at the height of his power; in the narrator, we clearly see shades of 'Diary of a Mad Old Man,' a bit younger. If I have a criticism, it's that it's not a novel; I sort of feel like it more just *stopped* than really ended. In any case, some good, some bad, blah blah, whatever, it's Tanizaki, when he's good, he's very good indeed, what more do you need to know? Until recently, for some reason this book didn't seem to be listed on amazon. Now that it is, what exactly are you waiting for?
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Overdue short stories in English from a Japanese master, August 25, 2002
The Gourmet Club: A Sextet offers the English-reading world six stories by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, one of the twentieth-century's outstanding Japanese, indeed world, novelists. The stories that comprise this collection span the author's long literary career: Two stories ("The Children" and "The Secret") date from 1911, the year after Tanizaki's literary debut. The final story, "Manganese Dioxide Dreams" (1955) gives tantalizing autobiographical glimpses of the artist as an old man, written ten years before his death in 1965. Filmmaker Kurosawa once wrote, "To be an artist means never to avert your eyes." In that spirit, we enter Tanizaki's world and share bizarre imaginings: Plagued by insomnia, indigestion, and an irregular heartbeat, the narrator of "Manganese Dioxide Dreams," for example, sees a fecal clump floating in this Western-style toilet as the actress Simone Signoret's face. This powerful literary imagination--floored and flat-out--often with an erotic twist, is a signature of Tanizaki's work. Importantly, and what elevates his fiction above sensationalism, Tanizaki never loses control, always deftly drawing the reader into larger meditations on human passion and obsession. "Mr. Bluemond" is a riveting tale about Nakada, a movie director whose young actress-wife, Yurako, is the star of his films. At a bar one night, Nakada meets an unnamed "Mr. Bluemond" (a probable wordplay on the legendary Bluebeard), a fan of the celluloid version of his wife, Yurako. But as Nakada learns, the fan's obsession with Yurako is from the realm of hyper-imagination. In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis used a wondrous analogy with gluttony to illustrate such a voyeuristic sexual appetite run amok: Would people pay to see a turkey drumstick on stage? In its shocker finale, this story argues a similar, comic reductio ad absurdum effect. But not before giving us an astonishing, richly imagined narrative sweep that deconstructs the celluloid Yurako (Mr. Bluemond's obsession partly feeds on film frames snipped from copies of Nakada's films later respliced by bribed movie projectionists), that invokes Platonic shadow vis a vis true essence, and that makes Nakada realize, despite his intimate relations with Yurako, Mr. Bluemond's assertion that he knows Yurako better might be true. The title piece in this collection, "The Gourmet Club," considers decadence of yet another appetite. Count G. presides over a club of five independently wealthy men who pass their days gambling between outings for their next novel food experience. Sadly, these "foodies" have devoured the known culinary delights of Tokyo and those in many outlying regions too. In his personal life, Tanizaki reputedly was a gourmet and sometime gourmand. Thus, folding food into literature, Tanizaki brings to the story of Count G.'s fortuitous discovery of a Chinese "gourmet club" even more advanced (and decadent) than his own, an earned wisdom: Food obsession taken too far consumes the obsessed well before the appetite to consume quits. The balance of the collection includes "The Young Children," a startling, but familiar picture of sadomasochistic games among the young (yes, children do play those games of bondage and misplaced trust); "The Secret," in which a jaded man retreats from his world of routine into a neglected Tokyo neighborhood where he experiments with cross-dressing; and "The Two Acolytes," an account of two teenage youths in medieval times, separated from parents at birth, raised in a mountain monastery, who differ about following Amida Buddha's spiritual path to the Pure Land once the desire to know about women wakes in each. The Gourmet Club: A Sextet adds to the body of Tanizaki's work available in English--up-to-now, almost exclusively novels. It's high-energy writing in the short-story form that this reviewer obsessively finished at one sitting.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Six courses of Tanizaki, January 13, 2010
This review is from: The Gourmet Club: A Sextet (Paperback)
The world of Tanizaki Junichiro is a disturbing place. The author of such classics of Japanese literature as Seven Japanese Tales, Naomi: A Novel (which created the idea of the "modern girl" in Japan) and The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi and Arrowroot, Tanizaki explores the extremes of fetishism and body horror, of the dark corners of everyone's minds where in fantasy things are carried too far and the most despicable of pleasures are satisfied. At the same time, Tanizaki is the absolute master of the tease. More than any other author I know of, Tanizaki can bring you to the very edge of desire, then suddenly back away leaving you feeling deliciously frustrated. As sexual as his work is in nature, there is almost no actual sex in his stories. Tanizaki will have his female character naked and bound, helpless on the floor of an abandoned warehouse to which she is kidnapped, and when the protagonist slowly approaches the woman, and every dark impulse in your psyche is screaming out "rape her! rape her!" the male attacker will instead produce a clump of overripe strawberries that he suddenly squishes over the woman's face. His work leaves you lying exposed, ashamed of your own dark impulses and frustrated at the lack of climax. They are, in short, exquisite. This collection, "The Gourmet Club," brings together six of Tanizaki's tales (a sextet no less!), spanning his lengthy career from 1911 ("The Children," "The Secret"), only a year after he made his literary debut, all the way to 1955 ("Manganese Dioxide Dreams") which was published ten years before his death. The style ranges between the stories, with some, like "The Two Acolytes" being an uncharacteristic Buddhist morality play to others like the titular "The Gourmet Club" which satisfies all appetites. All of the tales here have their own particular flavor of obsession. "The Children" focuses on four children and the games they play when no adults are looking. "Mr. Bluemond" talks of living in the public eye, when a director is forced to confront his actress wife's most devoted fan, and wonders just how much of her he has sold. "The Secret" is about the love of the taboo, and how the thrill disappears when secrets are revealed. "The Gourmet Club" is a classic tale of one of my favorite deadly sins, and how the lust for flavors can be every bit as overwhelming as the lust for flesh. With each story, Tanizaki strings you along, dangling pieces in front of you and then pulling them away. I was surprised at the ending of every story, as Tanizaki never serves exactly what he appears to offer on the menu. Special note must be paid to translators Anthony Chambers and Paul McCarthy. They each took turns translating the stories, and they were smooth enough that I can not tell the difference between them. All of the stories are pure Tanizaki. Chambers is a translator I am familiar with, having translated "The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi and Arrowroot" as well as doing a beautiful job with the almost-untranslatable Tales of Moonlight and Rain. Paul McCarthy was new to me however, and I was impressed with his work.
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