I've wanted to do this for a while now at Vox but have never got around to it. Now that we can make many specific worlds for random purposes here, I figured it was about time to put my idea into fruition.
So here we are. I like to read. I'm sure many of you also enjoy reading. Right now I am in the point in the Reading Cycle where I've decided I don't spend enough time reading for pleasure. Thus, I read on my bus rides to and from school and also before classes begin. This has allowed me to burn through a few books in the past few months.
It was a while ago that a light bulb went off in my head. "Hey," this bulb said, even though as an inanimate object it had no possible way of speaking. "People who like reading also like getting recommendations! Spread the word!" And here I am, spreading the word.
I have a nice backlog of books I plan on posting about, along with whatever I read in the future. None of these posts shall be long; I want to get in and out quickly with a bite-size chunk of opinion. If there is anything my vast experience with posting crap on the Internet has taught me, it's the longer and more in-depth I make things, the more compelled I am to keep topping myself (moreso in length than quality), and subsequently, the less inclined I am to keep writing as the gap between posts grows ever larger.
I believe this is known as Lazy Bum Syndrome.
Anyway, this introduction is already growing into Too Long Territory. I'll just cut if off here and jump in to the first book - enjoy...
Boogiepop and Others by Kouhei Kadono
Boogiepop Phantom is pretty awesome. Even when it's unclear just what the hell is going on, this fact is indisputable unless you are some sort of child-murdering cannibal Communist. But because the anime doesn't give much more than vague hints about the backstory, I took a genuine interest in actually knowing what the hell led up to everything. I'm kind of picky about that sort of thing.
Boogiepop and Others fills that gap nicely; it should, considering Boogiepop Phantom continues immediately after the former story's conclusion. Kouhei Kadono's novel tells the story of disappearances of several female students at Shinyo Academy. The police and school faculty, being the wonderful guardians they are, suspect the missing girls are nothing but runaways. However, several students take a genuine interest in the events - some suspect it is the work of Boogiepop, a figure of urban legend in the area, while other students slowly uncover something more sinister at work.
If you've seen Boogiepop Phantom, then the storytelling method should be familiar. There are five chapters in the novel, each telling a part of the story from a different student's point of view. Some students give their insight on events that happen later in the story, while others only have knowledge of the tale's beginnings. Most of the story's major players are seen only through the eyes of these characters, with the notable exception of Saotome Masami. Several points in the story are seen multiple times through the fresh eyes of different characters. This often gives completely different meanings to these plot points than they have when the reader first witnesses them.
I like the way the story unfolds. It could easily come off as an artificial way of building suspense by referring vaguely to future or past events without actually showing them, but it succeeds in constructing the story the way it would be told by a bunch of high schoolers. All they have to offer is their view of events, no matter how insignificant they are. Everyone has something to add, but nobody has the whole truth. The reader has to piece the rumor and hearsay into a coherent narrative just like any of the students would.
Overall, I enjoy the story, which is why the novel's major fault frustrates the shit out of me. Well, actually, I shouldn't say it's the novel's major fault, because I can't be sure of that. I can't read Japanese, and I don't pretend to know how. For all I know, Kouhei Kadono could be the William Faulkner of Japan; I'll give him the benefit of doubt and assume he's at least a better writer than I am.
This forces me to assume the novel's translator, Andrew Cunningham, is a big ball of poop. The reviews of Boogiepop and Others I've read have mainly featured the writers shamelessly orgasming all over the translation because it keeps the Japanese name order and honorifics intact. That is fine. I just wish the translation had also kept the basics of English intact.
I'm not going to sit here on my lazy, complaining ass and act as if translation work is easy. It's not. If I translated this novel, the only thing on each page would be big, bold letters reading, "WHAT THE FUCK DOES THIS SAY." However, once all the hard work translating everything into English was finished, would it have been too much trouble to make sure the English was actually decent? Really, would it?
I am not exaggerating when I say I could have written this in high school - not the story but the sentence structure, sloppy grammar, and overuse of punctuation marks. Reading this novel was like a painful, Vietnam-esque flashback to my high school English courses. "Oh God, I'm surrounded by run-on sentences! The repetition of form burns like napalm!" I'm definitely far from the elitist assholes who demand every other word should send them scrambling to the dictionary, where they could then whack one off while searching for the definition of "bedizen." But I really shouldn't be stopping every other sentence to wonder who murdered the editor before the novel shipped.
It's not even a case of just emulating the way teenagers communicate with each other. A writer can do this without butchering the English language. Hell, one only needs to look at Haruki Murakami's cadre of wonderful translators to know it's more than possible to write believable teenage characters and not have them destroy all that is dear to the reader. They're not perfect, of course, but Murakami translations are light years ahead of this.
Boogiepop and Others is a worthy read despite this. The relationship between Saotome and the Manticore is especially good. It is depicted as something twisted and normal at the same time; the scene where they eat together at a popular hangout and drink out of the same smoothie like lovesick teenagers is so creepy and effective I had to put down the book for a few minutes afterward. Be prepared to put up with highly unpolished writing on the side.
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That's it for my first addition to the library. I swear to God these won't be as long in the future.
