Domu: A Child's Dream, Katsuhiro Otomo (365 Books, Day 69)

From the author of Akira.

Thrud bought this recently because it came recommended to her as good horror manga, but I'd call it science fiction, and indeed it won the Japan Science Fiction Grand Prix. It's familiar subject material-- a densely crowded urban housing complex becomes a battleground between two psychics, one a deeply senile old man who has regressed to mental childhood and kills randomly, and the other an eight-year-old girl who's trying to stop him-- but it's so well done, and uses so few of the tropes of psychic-battle manga or this plot in general, that it feels, and is, completely original. There are cops, looking in the wrong direction or in the right direction but at the wrong time; there are the people who live in the complex, whose weaknesses are grist for the combat and whose ordinary lives go on around it; there is the endless sense of how little privacy there is in this kind of public housing, where one of the things the police find most inexplicable is the ability of various people to move for more than a hundred feet without there being a witness. (Literally. They express confusion and fear at the thought that someone could climb a flight of stairs in this building without it being seen, and they're right.)

Honestly, in tone this reminds me profoundly of J.G. Ballard. It's in the sort of urban landscape he made his own, and it shares his pragmatic and cynical coldness. The questions the manga is pondering are those of moral responsibility: the old man is out of his mind when he does horrible things, and the child who does horrible things to stop him is a child and cannot be expected to understand the consequences, but can be expected to remember, later, what she did and can do. I don't think I've ever seen a manga wondering before whether growing up can or should absolve a person of the crimes of childhood-- I mean where childhood is seen as a state in which, through ignorance, any child can and probably will do things an adult would consider terrible. Usually people think of childhood pretty much the other way around, but honestly one of the major moral differences between the psychics in this book is that she can grow up, and he cannot.

An odd, taut, carefully brutal little masterpiece.

Domu: A Child's Dream, Katsuhiro Otomo (365 Books, Day 69)

From the author of Akira.

Thrud bought this recently because it came recommended to her as good horror manga, but I'd call it science fiction, and indeed it won the Japan Science Fiction Grand Prix. It's familiar subject material-- a densely crowded urban housing complex becomes a battleground between two psychics, one a deeply senile old man who has regressed to mental childhood and kills randomly, and the other an eight-year-old girl who's trying to stop him-- but it's so well done, and uses so few of the tropes of psychic-battle manga or this plot in general, that it feels, and is, completely original. There are cops, looking in the wrong direction or in the right direction but at the wrong time; there are the people who live in the complex, whose weaknesses are grist for the combat and whose ordinary lives go on around it; there is the endless sense of how little privacy there is in this kind of public housing, where one of the things the police find most inexplicable is the ability of various people to move for more than a hundred feet without there being a witness. (Literally. They express confusion and fear at the thought that someone could climb a flight of stairs in this building without it being seen, and they're right.)

Honestly, in tone this reminds me profoundly of J.G. Ballard. It's in the sort of urban landscape he made his own, and it shares his pragmatic and cynical coldness. The questions the manga is pondering are those of moral responsibility: the old man is out of his mind when he does horrible things, and the child who does horrible things to stop him is a child and cannot be expected to understand the consequences, but can be expected to remember, later, what she did and can do. I don't think I've ever seen a manga wondering before whether growing up can or should absolve a person of the crimes of childhood-- I mean where childhood is seen as a state in which, through ignorance, any child can and probably will do things an adult would consider terrible. Usually people think of childhood pretty much the other way around, but honestly one of the major moral differences between the psychics in this book is that she can grow up, and he cannot.

An odd, taut, carefully brutal little masterpiece.

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The School Among the Ruins, Adrienne Rich (365 Books, Day 70)

I felt like more Adrienne Rich after seeing her again in the anthology I read the other day.

These poems were written between 2000 and 2004, which is important, because they are world-historical poems, they are trying to convey a sense of the time and the politics of it and the way the poet relates to the politics. This is a form of poetry that is very hit-or-miss for me, and a fair quantity of this book is miss, though the title poem is perfectly devastating and every so often she'll come out with a few lines that ring like a struck bell:

If some long unborn friend
looks at photos in pity,
we say, sure we were happy,
but it was not in the wind

which matches very well what I remember of those years living in this country, yes. In general, though, I think this is a book for people who already know the poet better than I do, because if one already knows the poet then her relation to the world-historical is something that sheds new light on the world-historical, whereas if one does not, one finds oneself trying to use the world-historical to shed light on the poet, and there isn't enough here for that, it doesn't work. Possibly she is one of those poets who ought to be read chronologically, or possibly this is simply not a collection I like, though I tend to like her stuff very much when I have met it elsewhere. Or maybe it is that I am sick right now and inclined not to like things. I don't know. Well-crafted, well-thought, if this is your genre of poetry this is the sort of thing you will like, and the title poem did make the book worth reading.

I should go hunt up some Carolyn Kizer.

The School Among the Ruins, Adrienne Rich (365 Books, Day 70)

I felt like more Adrienne Rich after seeing her again in the anthology I read the other day.

These poems were written between 2000 and 2004, which is important, because they are world-historical poems, they are trying to convey a sense of the time and the politics of it and the way the poet relates to the politics. This is a form of poetry that is very hit-or-miss for me, and a fair quantity of this book is miss, though the title poem is perfectly devastating and every so often she'll come out with a few lines that ring like a struck bell:

If some long unborn friend
looks at photos in pity,
we say, sure we were happy,
but it was not in the wind

which matches very well what I remember of those years living in this country, yes. In general, though, I think this is a book for people who already know the poet better than I do, because if one already knows the poet then her relation to the world-historical is something that sheds new light on the world-historical, whereas if one does not, one finds oneself trying to use the world-historical to shed light on the poet, and there isn't enough here for that, it doesn't work. Possibly she is one of those poets who ought to be read chronologically, or possibly this is simply not a collection I like, though I tend to like her stuff very much when I have met it elsewhere. Or maybe it is that I am sick right now and inclined not to like things. I don't know. Well-crafted, well-thought, if this is your genre of poetry this is the sort of thing you will like, and the title poem did make the book worth reading.

I should go hunt up some Carolyn Kizer.

You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are comments over there.