Scan barcode
A review by thearbiter89
Autumn Light: Japan's Season of Fire and Farewells by Pico Iyer
4.0
I read this with no expectations and was surprised to find a strangely moving and eloquent set of reflections on senescence and death, which, in Japan, finds expression in the fire-hued season of autumn.
I had not read Pico Iyer before and had the impression that he was one of those travel writers that like to pronounce declarative things about places they've only been to a couple of times, but in this book, he displays a gift for conveying his thoughts without overwrought exposition.
Instead, the thematic marrow of this book finds expression through his deft depictions of events in his shared life - the main framing device of the death and funeral of his wife's father, the post-widowhood mental decline her mother, of the slowly dwindling numbers at his local ping-pong club.
These anecdotes do not purport to tell you anything specific about how the Japanese deal with such things - but they do tell you of how people around Iyer - who all happen, by circumstance, to be Japanese - deal with it: with an equanimity borne out of a culturally-transmitted understanding of ephemerality through the passage of seasons. There is, in this sense, not the presumption of knowledge that is being declared, but a tentative offering of a slice of human experience, rendered as a small meditation for the reader to take what they may.
I give this: 4 out of 5 ping pong matches
I had not read Pico Iyer before and had the impression that he was one of those travel writers that like to pronounce declarative things about places they've only been to a couple of times, but in this book, he displays a gift for conveying his thoughts without overwrought exposition.
Instead, the thematic marrow of this book finds expression through his deft depictions of events in his shared life - the main framing device of the death and funeral of his wife's father, the post-widowhood mental decline her mother, of the slowly dwindling numbers at his local ping-pong club.
These anecdotes do not purport to tell you anything specific about how the Japanese deal with such things - but they do tell you of how people around Iyer - who all happen, by circumstance, to be Japanese - deal with it: with an equanimity borne out of a culturally-transmitted understanding of ephemerality through the passage of seasons. There is, in this sense, not the presumption of knowledge that is being declared, but a tentative offering of a slice of human experience, rendered as a small meditation for the reader to take what they may.
I give this: 4 out of 5 ping pong matches