I say 'we' but I don't. I don't watch horror movies and I certainly don't pay the production costs. I usually don't read horror or crime or true crime or thriller novels either. (I wish I could say I don't judge people who do these things, I don't like to lie. So I'll keep quiet.) Intentional and 'intimate' violence revolts me, real or fake. By intimate, I mean in a person's physical space; not guns etc. I am desensitised to that - Hollywood cheers as I stand in line to watch an action movie.
Just hearing or reading a description of violence makes me dizzy and pale. Sometimes I can feel pain in the same place - I'm imagining a rugby injury I saw once, where the player's fibula broke, the bottom half slicing the skin. My left leg pounds and the blood rushes from my cheeks. (Doing a final edit and again - except this time my throat tastes like bile.) Yep. I am going to need a first aider home to treat any accident-prone children (all children are accident-prone; I'll just train them to do it themselves). I'll cower in the corner, hands over ears, thanks.
Sometimes, they slip such violence into literature. Usually authors choose to represent more serious trauma with silence (see previous post on Toni Morrison - but only when you're done here). I think this a good idea. And not because it has a purpose. Nope. In this context, I won't argue whether shock or absence conveys trauma better. Just keep it to yourself. Bury it. Shoot it into the solar system in a space rocket (everyone's doing it these days - including a company whose rocket failed to launch three times before it did. When do I get to say I told you so?).
Murakami does it in both Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, in prolonged scenes of excruciating violence. (How does the human mind imagine this stuff?! My own mind revolts when I try. I don't try often, don't worry, but sometimes people make me want to be able to. Instead I read.) The violence isn't gratuitous though, so I can sit through it for the literature.
Then there's Michel Houellebecq. Atomised is a mosaic of violence and porn that would be considered good literature by a psychopath with mother issues. There is no distinguishable plot, except for the happenings that lead to violence and porn. He is meant to be A Grand Author, by said psychopaths, so I persevered. Actually, no, I can't even justify it. I protest the dogearing of pages, bending of spines or *cringe* writing and highlighting in books; another type of violence. But I would happily pulp my copy myself, except I don't like to touch it.
Recalculating route. Spoiler alert!
People die. In every story. There are eleven. By story three, you expect it, beginning each new paragraph tentatively. The author doesn't describe the actual murder, and hides other relevant details, but reveals enough to make me dizzy and pale. Or maybe this is how I see the stories after reading The Story that inspired this post. No, I really don't think so, but maybe.
Tools of torture. There is a whole story devoted to these tools, which are in a dedicated museum. (A museum?!) The guide says they collect implements that have been used. Yep. How do you verify that? Andthemindisoffandawayflyingoutfrontfollowedby... Implied violence does not reassure me of my own immortality, Mr Freud and Ms Ogawa. (I don't need to be reassured, right?) They convince me that I am a cuckoo in a cuckoo's nest; that I am a normal person in a herd of psychopaths. I ask again - how do you imagine these things? Ms Ogawa has a ball with these implements, so perhaps we should ask her.
Don't get me wrong - the violence is not gratuitous and the stories are good (even though they are character sketches more than stories). I wouldn't quite compare her with Murakami and definitely not Borges (but still indifferent to Poe). Further than that, I can't comment. This cuckoo spends too much time cowering at the beginning of each paragraph, sentence, word...
So why (oh why) am I reading this book? Why did my brain salivate? While some people get their kicks from violent movies, I get mine from dark and tragic literature, a taste I don't satisfy often, for the same reason we only drink coffee before 17.00. That's what I thought I was downloading: dark and tragic. A lesson in reading the blurb - and downloading a sample. On the upside, if there was someone I wanted to hurt in my mind's eye, they are very very dead. Very.
Read the book for us and let this cuckoo know what it's like. It's time for you to do some work around here, you!
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