Argobot

The Idle Book Club 23: Silence

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The Idle Book Club 23:

The Idle Book Club 23


Silence
Shusako Endo's Silence is a classic of modern Japanese literature, a reflection on faith and humanity that is sweeping and ambitious as well as intensely personal. Inspired to read it after watching Martin Scorsese's recent film adaptation, Sarah and Chris do their best to reckon with this complex novel.

 

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Cmon, no English wikipedia page about anything Japanese is complete without a pronunciation guide.

 

Final Fantasy X-2 (ファイナルファンタジーX-2 Fainaru Fantajī Ten Tsū)

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Excited to read this one - I've just ordered my copy. 

 

Here's a thing: this may be the first book featured on Idle Book Club so far for which there seems to be no Kindle/ebook edition, even though there's a movie tie-in paperback version...

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Reading this book was a weird experience. Endō's prose feels so sparse and yet I had a hard time putting this down.  I'm interested to hear what people make of the last diary section, because it struck me as odd compared to what came before it.

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On 2/3/2017 at 11:22 AM, marginalgloss said:

Excited to read this one - I've just ordered my copy. 

 

Here's a thing: this may be the first book featured on Idle Book Club so far for which there seems to be no Kindle/ebook edition, even though there's a movie tie-in paperback version...

Evidence of Things Unseen didn't have a Kindle version.

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On 2/4/2017 at 5:58 PM, Mike Danger said:

Reading this book was a weird experience. Endō's prose feels so sparse and yet I had a hard time putting this down.  I'm interested to hear what people make of the last diary section, because it struck me as odd compared to what came before it.

 

I had the exact opposite reaction to this book. Not because I thought it was bad, but because I happened to watch the movie first and the book and the movie are exactly the same. It made the book slow going for me because I already knew what was going to happen and what everyone's reaction to events would be. As always, seeing the movie first was a horrible mistake.

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Haven't read this book yet, but RE watching movie adaptations before books: I find this actually works for me if I haven't seen the movie in a long time. Like, I read LOTR a few years ago after not having seen the movies since they were new-ish, and remembering the movie let me more easily picture and follow what was going on, but I didn't remember enough to actually know what was going to happen outside of Major plot events. I did the same thing recently with Pride and Prejudice; I had seen the BBC/AE miniseries when I was in 11th grade, which let me put pictures and voices to the cast, but I didn't remember anything that happened. It's an interesting way to read a book, I find. 

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Yeah, I agree that sometimes having a visual can help with your understanding of a book, especially with the examples you cited. Like I said on the Wuthering Heights cast, books written before the ascension of film have a much less literal prose, which can sometimes be confusing to modern readers who are more accustomed to visual storytelling. The BBC Pride and Prejudice series definitely helped me visualize scenes that the novel doesn't make super clear. Silence, however, was written in the 60s, so it comes from a film era. There's nothing in the book that the movie makes clearer, because the two are essentially identical. Not only is the plot the same, but the dialogue and internal narration is also directly lifted from the book. It's actually incredible how similar they are; I can't remember the last time a modern book was adapted into a film where nothing was changed. My problem was that it felt like I was rewatching the movie while reading the book.

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12 hours ago, Argobot said:

 

I happened to watch the movie first and the book and the movie are exactly the same.

I had what I consider to be the absolutely optimal experience reading and watching these. I read the book for our book club, but didn't manage to finish it before our scheduled go-watch-the-movie get-together. I had stopped almost exactly before the climactic moment of decision; and then got to see that entire build-up on screen, too. I had a palpable sensation of "this has all been building up to this moment, and I really do not know what's about to happen." It was great.

 

I also really appreciated the film's length and deliberate pace. I don't have a lot of time for theatre-going these days, and when I do I usually feel like the film is disappointingly frenetic and rushed. A lot of my peers complained that the film was long; but I though it was precisely as long as it should be.

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On the off-chance that there's someone from Japan in here, I would absolutely *love* to hear your perspective on this book, especially if you read it in Japanese.

 

My biggest lamentation with respect to my reading of this book is that I can only read it in English from my western, Christian perspective. I can't imagine what it must be like for a Buddhist Japanese person to read, and knowing that that was the actual target audience blows my mind.

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I remember reading Silence the summer before college.  I had just read a short story collection by Haruki Murakami from my sister's bookshelf.  I think she'd taken it from my dad's bookshelf.  Books tended to trickle their way from my dad to my sister to me.  I believe Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman was on the trickle down fast path since we all read it within a few weeks of each other.  But I remember having a hunger to read Japanese fiction after reading those stories.  I guess I believed that everyone who is Japanese would write like Murakami?

 

Anyway, I remember looking through my Dad's bookshelf for the next book to read and settling on Silence.  I was more than a little surprised.  It was about as far from H. Murakami as you could get.  But I still really liked the book.  I remember it being a bit somber and the prose style (which switched from epistolary to third person as I recall) was kind of sparse.  I think it's pretty close to my preferred prose style to this day.  Plus, as a semi-closeted atheist in Oklahoma I remember feeling like the book made me understanding faith a bit more.  It's hard to see someone give up something so important to their identity. 

 

I later read Deep River by Endo which I liked even more.  I have a suspicion that I liked not because it was better, but because I was a bit more mature when I read it.  I hope people give Endo a chance, though.  I kind of want to return to Silence and may take this as an excuse.  I bet I'll get more out of it now than I did as an 18 year old.

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I should make clear that I think Silence is a great book and I'm really happy I read it. I just wish I'd read it before the movie, haha.

 

I'm trying to think of other literature that deals with religion in such an introspective way that still leaves room for someone to retain their faith. As a lapsed Catholic, this book really speaks to the struggles I faced when I ultimately decided to move away from religion, and honestly makes me feel a little nostalgic for it. The closest literary example I can think of is The Grand Inquisitor from Brothers Karamazov, but I'm sure there are many, many others.

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1 hour ago, Argobot said:

I should make clear that I think Silence is a great book and I'm really happy I read it. I just wish I'd read it before the movie, haha.

 

I'm trying to think of other literature that deals with religion in such an introspective way that still leaves room for someone to retain their faith. As a lapsed Catholic, this book really speaks to the struggles I faced when I ultimately decided to move away from religion, and honestly makes me feel a little nostalgic for it. The closest literary example I can think of is The Grand Inquisitor from Brothers Karamazov, but I'm sure there are many, many others.

 

The only other novel I can think of like that is Snow by Orhan Pamuk.  It's about a Turkish poet trying to reconcile his western values with islam.  Probably Pamuk's best book.

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On 2/6/2017 at 1:40 PM, Argobot said:

 

I had the exact opposite reaction to this book. Not because I thought it was bad, but because I happened to watch the movie first and the book and the movie are exactly the same. It made the book slow going for me because I already knew what was going to happen and what everyone's reaction to events would be. As always, seeing the movie first was a horrible mistake.

 

Man, now I really want to see this movie because there were certain sequences where I was thinking "this must be cut in the movie, there's no way you could film this and make it understandable" (mostly anything where Rodrigues was on his own for a really long time).

 

Edit: Aaaaand it's gone from the movie theater near me. :(

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I absolutely loved the description of Dejima in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet By David Mitchell and was hoping to get similar Westerner in strange historical Japan vibe out of this book. I quickly realized that this expectation was foolish considering the nationality and the background of the author, and that what I was actually reading was a novel about a strange westerner in historical Japan. This revelation (which should have been obvious) was interesting, but the book itself was less so. The constant drawing of parallels between the story of Silence and the life of Christ – I think Rodrigues was reminded three separate times in 30 or so pages of the soldier who offered some vinegar to Christ on the cross – quickly become tiresome for me as a person who despite being an atheist has been surrounded by Christian imagery my whole life. I also wish Kichijiro – who had travel great distances to move the plot forward, since he was seemingly the only person able to do so – had felt a bit more like an actual person and less like a stereotypical Judas/weakling character of Christian teachings.

 

Despite sounding pretty negative, I found the silence of God an interesting subject and the last part of the book was actually quite good. I just wish the novel had started shortly before Rodrigues' capture and focused more on his life after becoming an apostate, since I didn't find the first part of the book very interesting both in terms of plot or the philosophical/religious content.

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4 hours ago, Nappi said:

The constant drawing of parallels between the story of Silence and the life of Christ [...] quickly become tiresome for me

 

It is tiresome, and no mistake. Rodrigues' willingness and desire to compare himself to Christ is his downfall. It is only when he stops considering himself above even the appearance of apostasy that he is able to help end any suffering.

 

The reference to the vinegar is particularly interesting to me because my impression--though I need to go back and check this--was that he was drawing contradictory comparisons to that particular event. It seemed a particular example of Rodrigues' cognitive dissonance that he would see Christ-parallels in himself no matter what was actually happening.

 

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I also wish Kichijiro – who had travel great distances to move the plot forward, since he was seemingly the only person able to do so – had felt a bit more like an actual person and less like a stereotypical Judas/weakling character of Christian teachings.

 

Oh, man--I couldn't disagree more about Kichijiro. Rodrigues thinks of him like Judas, because Rodrigues thinks of himself as Christ; but where Judas betrayed Christ and then hanged himself, Kichijiro repeatedly betrays Rodrigues (and the others) and reliably repents and begs for forgiveness. Rodrigues--and the audience--understandably interpret this as disingenuous; but the whole point of the story is that Rodrigues is no better than Kichijiro. Kichijiro betrayed others to save himself from harm; but Rodrigues betrayed others to save his own self-image.

 

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3 hours ago, anderbubble said:

It is tiresome, and no mistake. Rodrigues' willingness and desire to compare himself to Christ is his downfall. It is only when he stops considering himself above even the appearance of apostasy that he is able to help end any suffering.

 

The reference to the vinegar is particularly interesting to me because my impression--though I need to go back and check this--was that he was drawing contradictory comparisons to that particular event. It seemed a particular example of Rodrigues' cognitive dissonance that he would see Christ-parallels in himself no matter what was actually happening.

 

Interesting point. While I realized that Rodrigues was continuously drawing parallels between his experiences and those of Christ, I assumed that some of the references were for the benefit of the Japanese readers who may not be as closely familiar with the crucifixion of Jesus and the details surrounding it (I have no idea if this is true, by the way).

 

3 hours ago, anderbubble said:

Oh, man--I couldn't disagree more about Kichijiro. Rodrigues thinks of him like Judas, because Rodrigues thinks of himself as Christ; but where Judas betrayed Christ and then hanged himself, Kichijiro repeatedly betrays Rodrigues (and the others) and reliably repents and begs for forgiveness. Rodrigues--and the audience--understandably interpret this as disingenuous; but the whole point of the story is that Rodrigues is no better than Kichijiro. Kichijiro betrayed others to save himself from harm; but Rodrigues betrayed others to save his own self-image.

 

I appreciated the ending where Rodrigues finally "got" Kichijiro, and consequently many other things. I just wish this point could have been reached with a character that felt less like a caricature. I'm not extremely eager to see the film, but I'm somewhat curious about how he is represented in the movie, because, in my head, he ended up becoming almost Gollum-esque.

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The film is worth seeing. It's both accurate to the book and still manages to have a slightly different perspective.

 

But I'm obviously way into Silence, so I might have a biased opinion. :)

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Sorry to be this guy: In the description, is "Shusaku's Endo" a mistake or a reference to something in the episode? I don't listen until I've read the book and this is bugging my inveterate proofreader brain, haha.

 

Or was Chris waiting for someone to notice a la Slyboots??

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On 2.2.2017 at 9:22 PM, Chris said:

Nice work on the proper accent characters.

 

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10 minutes ago, mondryle said:

Sorry to be this guy: In the description, is "Shusaku's Endo" a mistake or a reference to something in the episode? I don't listen until I've read the book and this is bugging my inveterate proofreader brain, haha.

 

Or was Chris waiting for someone to notice a la Slyboots??

I'm just dumb! Fixed!

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