Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life **1/2

By Wendy Mass.
Published 2006 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.
Hachette Book Group.
1st Paperback edition 2008.

I put the website address of the publisher just for fun.  Don't know if it will really work.  I think I tried to put a link in previously in other entries and it didn't work.  I guess we'll find out.

Again, it's almost unfair to use the same rating system for kid books that I use for adults.  Becasue this is a much better book than most for young adults.  But as said before, young adult books rarely have the same profundity or nuance as adult books.  Neither do they have the same content as an adult book.  They just can't go there.  The last young adult book that I gave 3 or more stars was Alexie Sherman's  Part Time Indian (Not complete title)  That was aimed at high school kids and  had content that would not be appropriate for junior high kids - Sex , drugs domestic violence etc.  Sherman is also first and foremost, a novelist for adults.

So anyway, this book is about Jeremy Fink and his best friend Lizzy and their adventures over one summer.  The adventures start with Jeremy receiving a package in the mail.  It was from Jeremy's father who had passed away ten years previously.  It was sent by someone who was charged with the responsabilty of sending the box to Jeremy on his 23th birthday.  When it was opened, they found a wooden box with the keys missing.  Engraved on the box was the mesage that says the meaning of life is within.  But there are no keys, so Jeremy and Lizzy go searching for the keys and in one of their attempts, they run a foul of the law and end up having to serve community service.  An old rich man, who started his life as a pawnbroker, gave them jobs returning items to people that had pawned them long ago.  Jeremy and Lizzy meet these people, and each one of them sits down with them and discusses their own philosophy, or what life means to them.

I really liked how the novel is structured. Each visit is an opportunity to hear a different opinion of the meaning of life.  And the author gives the reader, and Jeremy, different types of philosphy.  Three to be exact.  One religious, one more new agey or spiritual and one more scientific.  It was very engrossing reading, though I wonder how my students from a low income community dealt with all those heady ideas.  They don't have a whole lot of experience with existentialism, or perhaps they do, seeing how difficult their lives are, but they haven't had these ideas articulated before.

And the characters are realistic and likeable.  Both have had tragedies in their lives which they are trying to cope with and the emotions seem real.  And there was some humor in the story as well as between stories.  The kids do, on some level, really behave like kids.

I was disappointed in the ending.  Without spoiling it, I'll just say that it seemed forced or too contrived (in fact part of the narrative is this contrivation).

Okay, here's a trailer for the book, just to give you a better idea of what it's about.  I know - Trailers for books!?!?!!?

Suna no onna / The Woman in the Dunes ***

Directed by Hiroshi Teshigara.
Screen play and novel written by Kobo Abe.
Released 1964.
With Eiji Okada, Kyoko Kishida, Hioko Ito, Koji Mitsui, Sen Yano and Ginzo Sekiguchi.
Shot in Black and White.  Seen on DVD.

Having read the book, a comparison is inevitable.  Seeing as the screenwriter and the novelist are one and the same, it's not surprising that the film follows the book pretty rigorously.  It does dispense with much of the inner thoughts and musings of the lead character which is the novel's opportunity to wax philosophical, but otherwise it is a faithful reproduction of the novel.

The director of the film does add a visual style to the book.  While the novel does a good job of painting a picture of the settings, this director adds some interesting visuals.  Some objective close ups of the sand that has graphic elements as well as showing the different characters of how sand looks and flows.  The setting is very claustrophobic as is appropriate, and the shack is shown in as an integral part of the characters.  The characters are shot through windows, between posts etc.  It demonstrates the importance of their home, which is a major theme of the film.  (Discussed in detail in the review of the book). The woman stays where she is because it's her home, and her life and self are intertwined with this structure.  To the man, I think it seems more menacing.

So perhaps its time for a short summary, which has been done once already in my review of the book. An amateur entomologist goes to the sea to look for a rare insect.  He is invited and more importantly convinced to stay over the night by the villagers.  He is then led to a hole in the dunes, and thinking that this residence, inhabited by the woman of  the title,  is temporarily, he happily and gratefully climbs into the hole in the dunes.  He later finds he is trapped in this hole in the dunes by the village, who expect him to move, carry and shovel the endless sand that persecutes him and tortures him with it's constant presence.

The movie is more erotocized than the book. The book had some erotic moments, but the film accents these moments more forcefully.  In one scene when they first make love, they are covered in sand (which is always the case) and it made me wonder just how comfortable that love making was.  Wasn't there any chafing with all that sand?

Here is that scene.


In one pretty surrealistic scene, the villagers gather around the hole and he is told he can have a short leave for a short walk, if he will have sex with the woman in front of them.  Why they want this is pretty unclear, what's the point of this public humiliation?  It doesn't go with my theory that the endless sand and entrapment is a symbol of modern working mankind daily drudgery and its struggle with the monotonous work a day life they lead.  Mankind is held to this slavery with the promises of home family and a few material trinkets.  So why this public humiliation?  Clearly the villagers are morally bankrupt as is demonstrated by their capturing of  the innocent entomologist.  Does it represent the authorities and their dominance over the everyday person and the willingness of the authorities to humiliate  people to keep them in line.  It's an idea.

In this scene, the man decides it's worth it just so he casn get out of the hole even for a brief moment and struggles with the woman and tries to even assault/rape her.  His efforts are rebuffed and during this struggle, the villagers are watching with all sorts of weird masks and there is a drumming soundtrack, like the beating of a heart.

Ther is some more interesting imagery at the opening and closing sequences.  Bits and scraps of official Japanese documents are shown on collage form and make for some very pretty imagery.  The idea is that the man who has been entrapped eventually becomes an official missing person, hence the use of official documents for the collages.

Also the soundtrack was interesting.  It was very experimental  and modern.  It reminded me of early King Crimson with acoustic instruments att heir most dissonant moments. I want to say that it was like John Cage, but I don't know his material enough, I can only say that it was definitely experimental.  It was spooky and droning at times, and then sudden and noisy at other times.

Overall a very interesting film experience.

Here's another clip.


And here's a trailer.

The Woman in the Dunes ***1/2

By Kobo Abe.
Published 1964 by Alfred A. Knopf.
264(est) pages

This is a book with a big idea.  It's full of metaphors and symbolism.  It about philosophy as opposed to the minutiae of a day.  The narrative could never happen in real life, so everything has to be thought of as an allegory, to understand the book properly.  If your looking for realism, one needs to look elsewhere.

So the story goes that a man, an everyman - a teacher, decides to take a retreat to pursue his favorite amateur hobby - entomology.  He hopes to find a rare insect so that it can be named after him in the field guides and be immortalized  in the world of entomology.  This insect lives in the sand, so off to the dunes he goes.  Meanwhile he has left no clue of his whereabouts back at home so as to not be bothered on the trip, or to escape or whatever reason.

The villagers of  the sand dunes invite him to stay over night and he sleeps in the home of a  woman who lives in a hole in the sand. So he climbs down, never to climb up again.  The villagers have imprisoned him, so that the young woman, a widow, would have help in her chores and so that she might have a family.  The man of course is outraged and tries to escape, but he can't.

There are many, many themes in the book to discuss, but it has been about a month since I read it and details are shaky, though I will try to tackle a few of the ideas.

The first symbol or theme is the sand.  The book starts out with a discussion of the properties of sand - how it's like water because it flows, but then it's a solid.  It marvels at the physics of the material.  Then, the sand becomes a trap for the man.  It is everywhere.  The characters are continuously covered in sand and protecting their food, possessions and selves from the sand.  It reminded me of a car ride coming home after a day at the beach.  One can never make that sand go away.  And it's always flowing into the widow's and man's living place.  They are constantly working to clean out the sand.  In fact their role in the community is to clear out and gather the sand.  (The villagers sell it in the black market - it's illegal because it doesn't have the proper composition to use for building materials).  This is a signal to how morally bankrupt the village is, as if keeping an innocent man prisoner, wasn't enough to signify that.

To me, this imprisonment is a symbol of how society tries to suppress man's free-will for the sake of the society.  When asked why the woman stayed in such a horrible situation, she replies (the gist anyway, I don't remember the exact words) that this is home and one stays where the home is.  Man(kind) is made to work in mind numbing and physically exhausting work, seemingly never ending and inconsequential as the couple's job of removing sand.  Wht is it that enslaves man to this lifestyle?  Home, family and the few trinkets that they can buy with the money.  The woman says herself that she is saving for a mirror or a radio.  These material items is what keeps her working harder.

Eventually after several attempts to escape, one of them particularly humiliating, the man resigns to his situation.  Now the people in the book club thought this was  positive ending, showing that man (kind) can tolerate and survive anything.  I beg to differ.  I think it is a demonstration on how easy it is for man (kind) to lose their free will and independent spirit.  How easy it is to conform to society with out thinking for one's self.  When the woman become pregnant, and is taken away because the baby's and mother's life are in jeopardy, he has a chance to escape.  The ladder has been left in the hole.  He chooses not to.  Perhaps he feels a responsibility to his home and family.  One might say that is a good thing, but one must remember, he was innocently ensnared into this trap and gradually had the will sucked right out of him.  Coincidentally, the radio arrives here at the conclusion of the book.