Customer Reviews

Sayonara, Gangsters

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"...stop being able to make accurate judgments, you know."

Extremely strange, yet approachable novel about a poetry teacher who constantly frets over his lack of purpose in an insane world where everyone finds out when they're going to die and cats have favorite authors. It seems to be an anology for both modern writing and living in a police state. Like Kurt Vonnegut, Takahashi buries what may be a very personal story beneath lots of fantastic, "out there" elements. I enjoyed it, although this is definitely a "cult" book, and I don't see it appealing to mass audiences. Still, I'd love to see more works from the author get translated into English.

a collection of absurdist sketches and/or short meditations with almost no plot, few characters save the narrator, and endless references to milestones in literary history shouldn't really amount to an amazing novel. and yet genichiro does it, and effortlessly (aided no doubt by the excellent translation by michael emmerich; i am familiar with some of the original and translating this book is no easy feat). a super fast and intensely thought provoking read, crystal clear in its reserved ambiguity.

just read it.

i read this book last weekend, in one sitting. once you start, you won't want to put it down. and once you do put it down, it will stay with you for a long time, different parts echoing in your head. it's an incredibly funny book, but funny with pathos, threaded with an immense sadness. it's also incredibly timely, and very politically oriented in a wacky, all-over-the-place kind of a way. as jonathan safran foer says in his blurb on the back, it's a book that can't really be described. you just have to read it. i promise you won't regret it.

I have never read anything like this book, and I doubt I'll ever have a chance to read anything like it again---at least not until I go back and reread it. And I know I will. Many, many times.

Certain sections and scenes, especially in the second part, and the quirky/sad/hilarious/devastating language in which this book is written keep echoing through my head, so that I actually feel like carrying this book around with me to take out for a moment on the subway or in the elevator on my way up to the office. I want to have it on hand when I need it.

This is the kind of book I NEEDED right now. The whole thing with the "gangsters" and the speech by the President of the United States at the beginning and the feeling of despair at being unable to make things happen resonate with what we are going through right now in the US in a way that is absolutely eery and astonishing, considering that the book was first published in Japan in 1982.

I heard Takahashi read in March. I went on a whim because I saw the event listed in The Village Voice. And even though I couldn't understand his Japanese and had no idea WHAT he was saying until the translator, Michael Emmerich, read his English version (which is incredible!), I still GOT something out of the Japanese-language part of the program. I got the sense that THIS GUY IS THE REAL THING. His voice was tingling with energy. I don't know why it took so long for this book to be translated (maybe the right translator just never came along until now? I certainly have never read any translation like this), but I know that I want to read more. Right now this book is the only one available; fortunately, it's the sort of "novel" that will be completely new next time. If you still haven't had the fantastic, heart-wrenching, hilarious experience of reading it, order it. Right now. I promise you, it's just what you need.

If you were a friend of mine, I'd give you a copy of Sayonara, Gangsters. That's how good this book is.

To sum up the postmodern novel "Sayonara, Gangsters", all you need is one word: weird. Take a moment to think about all that is considered normal convention for novel writing, and you will have a good idea what this book is not.

First off, the author creates a weird world in which things that are impossible are not even looked at twice by characters. The world is a bizarre mix of science-fiction and someone's diary entries. Added to that, the weird items and people, (a classroom with a desert in it, a sixth floor with a river through it, etc), and you have a mind-warping book indeed.

Secondly, the layout breaks every convention I have known about in a novel. Sometimes, you will get a few lines on a page, and that is it. You also get some pictures, a bit of manga, a section that changes tenses, changes in font and typeface, a loss of paragraphs and so on. Not only that, the language is used in some very bizarre ways.

"Sayonara, Gangsters" is a book that will change with whoever reads it. The symbolism is heavy, and the meanings are not always apparent. The characters very rarely explain the symbolic meaning of things, except with Virgil the Fridge. Other elements may even just be there to shock you out of your mindset. One way or the other, the book is not as meaningless as has been claimed.

Finally, the humour in the book is enough to elicit a quiet snicker, but not the side-ripping laughter that one may hope for. Takahashi has an unusual knack for drawing the humorous out of the completely weird.

At the end of the book, I was left wondering if Genichiro Takahashi was a novelist genius or just a certified lunatic who just happened to find a wordprocessor. I am still not sure which, but I enjoyed the book. I am not sure I want to read it again, but the experience was worth a couple of hours. Tread with caution on this one, unless you are looking for something really out in the left field.

College dropout, former student activist, veteran of the Japanese penal experience (one year in prison for aforementioned activism), one-time porn director, and poet, Genichiro Takahashi is the enfant terrible of Japanese letters. His Sayonara Gangsters is a wild, hysterical, and tender tale that almost defies description. The "action" takes place somewhere and sometime in the future in which people have no names. For lovers this presents a problem: what to call one another. The two main characters of Sayonara Gangsters decide upon Nakajima Miyuki Song Book for the woman, and Sayonara, Gangsters for the man and narrator, who is a teacher at a poetry school. Their milk-and-vodka loving cat is named Henry IV.
The first part of the novel is about Sayonara, Gangsters's former lover and their daughter, who is called both Caraway and Green Pinky. At a point in which the novel appears to be settling into something a reader might vaguely recognize as "normal" - couple have child, are happy, begin to build a life - they receive a postcard from City Hall informing them of the impending death of their daughter. Sayonara, Gangster then describes his daughter's trip to the approved cemetery and burial therein - while Green Pinky talks to him throughout.
In the second section, Sayonara, Gangster talks about his "job" at the poetry school, admitting that he has essentially no idea what he is doing. That, moreover, if there were some secret to writing poems - what the students expect to be taught - he wouldn't tell anyone but would rather write poems and become a Nobel laureate. The final part of the novel revolves around three yakuza who enroll in the poetry school - and then are shot and killed by the police. As weird as it sounds, the scene is simultaneously funny and stunning and vivid. As is the entire work. Michael Emmerich's translation is lively and captures the maniacal and protean talents of Sayonara, Gangsters author Genichiro Takahashi. This book cannot be recommended highly enough. Read it!

Yes, it is difficult to describe just 'what' this book actually is. I'm still not sure, having read it and re-read it gleefully, often accompanied with tons of caffeine, 8 times now (as of last week). I often describe the talent of Takahashi, one of the most brilliant writers in Japan today- when asked by friends what he's all about- with, "Imagine William S. Burroughs' style, but with 100 times more talent than Burroughs himself ever possessed." This book is not for the weak of imagination, nor for those who find there to be nothing new in Postmodernism, nor also is it for those who expect a work of art to be 'about' something or to 'mean' something (What is the meaning of meaning? Heidegger challenges us to answer). I must say strongly that if you greatly like the recent works of Haruki Murakami (which I more or less despise), than you will not like Takahashi's writing. Similarly, if you thought Joyce and Burroughs were meaningless, you likewise will probably think the same of Takahashi. Though I will say that his first novel, "Over the Rainbow" is even more over the top brilliant and manic than this one...I can only say that anything by Takahashi is like a trip into the wild blue yonder, you don't know what you're getting into until you're already too far gone into his bizarre dreamscape to realize that somethin' strange is goin' down...

I have a love-hate relationship with postmodern fiction, so if you're the type that only loves or only hates the genre, you'll likely rate this book a 5 or 1, respectively. Of course, there is no identifiable plot, so stop right now if you require your books to have a plot. For me, the style maintains its freshness for the first 75 pages or so, after which it gets tired. If I told you that there are certain parts of the book written from the perspective of a refrigerator or a race horse, you might be intrigued. I was. But after pages and pages of it, the humor never quite achieving true funniness or quirkiness but almost getting there, again, the intrigue tires.

Having said that, a number of the anecdotes are very enjoyable and the writing is mostly excellent. If you feel like everything you've read recently is the same as everything else, you might enjoy this as a taste of something different. If you feel that everything you've read recently is deliberately trying to be different from everything else, you will very likely not enjoy this.

Somewhere in the middle third of this book the pieces began to come together. Amazingly, by the end, Takahashi had managed to keep the plot threads in line and actually tied up some of them.

That said, there remain more than a few ideas that are given wing, but come to absolutely no resolution leaving one with the sense an earlier reviewer noted of the work being "cutesy". Takahashi thows in a few to many off-beat thoughts that go no where because they are truly irrelevant to the story.

There is much beauty in the writing (or, perhaps, translation). The scenes of intimacy and death are all finely wrought and emotionally engaging.

Remaing after the tale are several genuinely intriguing thoughts. If there were no names, would we still name? Is communication poetry? These thoughts rattle around afterwards. Unfortunately,in what is perhaps characteristic of so much gonzo/avant garde/contemporary fiction, while Takehashi is good at raising the idea he sees no need to provide much in the way of direction let alone answers.

Gen'ichiro Takahashi was born in 1951. A radical student activist, he dropped out of Yokohama National University in 1969 and worked as a manual laborer throughout the 1970s. In 1982 he won the Gunzo Literary Award for First Novels for his Sayonara Gyangu Tachi (Good-bye Gangsters). Of course, he is adored by Foer. I see many similarites between the two: they both rely to heavily on cute tricks. Foer is dependent upon Ukrainian pigeon English while Takahashi is dependent up cutesy renaming and naive dialoge.
The novel is interesting though and a very fast read. Takahashi plays with time and space, creating a non-linear meandering sequence of events that seem loosely connected, disorienting the readers sense of space and time. The events seem to have no meaning, nor do anyone's social roles function. We have a poetry teacher that claims to not know much about poetry nor how it is written (a nod to Sontag?) Overall, worth a read, but it's reputation exceeds it's content.