It took years and years for someone (Verso Books) to publish a story collection written by Japanese icon actress-turned-writer Izumi Suzuki. This would be her first book translated into English, and Suzuki has been dead for more than 30 years.
If you keep that fact in mind along with the chronological environment she wrote her sci-fi, feministic, space bound stories in – you would understand this (translation and publishing) should have been done a long time ago. However, if you mistakenly tuck into her stories as something contemporary (and that would be the fair mistake I made, because they are incredibly timely), you might come to the wrong conclusions.
- That her work is not original – I had Matthew Baker on my mind, thinking that he did this whole drop you into the middle of fantasy stuff much better. (He did, but he wasn’t copied).
- That the stories are just following the main trends in literature – feminism, end of the world as we know it, technological influence – that have been floating around long enough for everyone to pick them up and use them. (But she wrote decades ago).
- That her story Terminal Boredom, featuring TV crazy population planning to install devices into their brain to get drugged by entertainment to eternal bliss – was definitely, oh so surely inspired by Infinite Jest. I mean look at the titles! (But. Izumi Suzuki killed herself in 1986. Infinite Jest was published in 1996. I wonder… if David Foster Wallace knew japanese?)
See – perspective is everything. With all of the above in mind, I now find her stories progressive, authentic and futuristic. ‘Women and Women’ talks about the idea of female world domination (hello Naomi Alderman), ‘That Old Seaside Club’ is a take on psychotherapy/hypnotic sleep, ‘Forgotten’ has some serious Madame Bovary flashbacks for me – not ONLY because it has an Emma in it!.. The ideas are great. What I didn’t like was execution. Although the stories get progressively better – was that intended? – I think the first one should have been edited about a hundred times more, and the last one is still lacking. Short story is a brutal literary form – it does not allow for slow pace, accidental characters, lack of purpose and everlasting ambiguity.
That I cannot blame on time.
Thank you @versobooks for giving me a copy to review. Out on 20 April 2021.