10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Method and Madness, July 20, 2005
This review is from: The Method Actors: A Novel (Paperback)
Forget "Lost in Translation" and it's apathetic prettiness, forget the endless NYTimes "Japan-is-so-hip-right-now" lifestyle spreads, forget the tired "mystery of the east" tripe that is still getting trotted out in personal travelogues. "The Method Actors" is the first writing I have read that deals with modern Japan in a way that is compelling, brave and aesthetically challenging.
Family, sex, hallucinogenic drugs, war crimes, a missing sibling, "The Method Actors" sets itself an ambitious goal - to tell the humanly detailed stories of individual foreigners in modern Japan, but to also dig below this into the history of this country, and the history of how foreigners have entered the culture. This is Shuker's first novel. It is long and it requires a similar commitment to that of David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest". But, like this novel, this commitment pays off dramatically, in terms of narrative voice, style, and prose dazzlement. I would recommend it not just to anyone who has traveled to or lived in Japan (though for these people the book will be particularly impressive), but to anyone who is interested in getting a deeper understanding of the complexity and moral relativism of Japan's post-WW2 history, and contemporary culture.
This novel is important, but it is also hugely entertaining. Ezra Pound said "a great poet is everywhere present, and nowhere visible as a distinct excitement". Toward the end of this novel, the energy - and I think of this in terms of kinetics, as the friction, conflict, sex, heat, movement of the prose - is ratcheted up. You can literally feel the writer change gears. This energy is creative excitement - the writer's and the reader's - and it is everywhere present.
And this is where my understanding of Pound's quote comes in. Even though the accuracy of Shuker's Tokyo speaks of his clearly personal involvement in the story, as the artist he is nowhere present. To a necessary degree, he has effaced himself. The feat that marks Shuker as someone to watch, is that of projecting his own understanding into this variety of voices, into characters across time, gender, race and culture. Shuker's perspective seems to be that the individual's importance is swallowed up in wider and stronger forces of nation, war, power and history. The quality of empathy, the retaining and championing of the details of the individual - love, memory, belief, habit, inflections of speech - is what makes "The Method Actors" so important.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
intricate, September 4, 2005
This review is from: The Method Actors: A Novel (Paperback)
Japan's relationship with the 'outside' has historically been complex at all levels: political, military, social, individual. This is no less true when the outsiders are inside, living and experiencing the culture and the distorted sense of reality that develops as a consequence. The knotty complexities are experienced intensely at an individual level by foreigners in Japan. 'The Method Actors', in depth and beautiful detail, authentically describes this in ways that i would never have thought could be articulated.
Modern Japan is reflected and refracted through the characters with amazing scope, delving back to the early days of the period of isolation, and forward into an ever present now that is life in Tokyo. Elements of the plot are paralleled with The Twelfth Night: a sister and missing brother in a strange land where illusion, delusion and (self) deception are everywhere; comically and tragically. One of many strands of interwoven narrative centering around gaijin in Japan, each with intricate resonances about family, academia, history and revisionism, interpretation of self and circumstance.
It is a great read. If you've lived in Tokyo you will recognise the people, and you will recognise their reactions and experiences as your own; and even if you haven't you will find plenty to keep you interested.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great read!, August 11, 2005
This review is from: The Method Actors: A Novel (Paperback)
I was once a "gaijin" in the Japanese community not so long ago, and this book has brought back a flood of memories.
The book itself was written with a verbose style that I wholly enjoyed.
It will forever sit on my shelf, and whenever I feel like bringing back some fond or detestable memories of Japan I shall refer to this book.
Thank you Mr. Shuker.
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