Scandal by Shusaku Endo

Starting this one soon.......

I'll read this one next then. It's already on my bedside table!

Here I go...starting this tonight!

Introduction:

"This thing called old age is not a beautiful maturity but something loathsome and painful, with lots of ugly aspects to it. If asked why it is loathsome and ugly, I would say that it is because it is a rite of passage, a preparation for going to the next world. A rite of passage involves having to undergo ordeals. That is one of the themes of the novel." - Endo

"The city is like a human body, containing a multitude of different organs to cater for different functions and desires." - Damian Flanagan

Novel is autobiographical per Endo himself

> Quotes I Like:

" As a novelist he could not bring himself to skirt over or ignore any of the components of a human being." - Seguro

"He had the notion that a true religion should be able to respond to the dark melodies, the faulty and hideous sounds that echo from the hearts of men." - Seguro in answer to the question, "Why don't you write stories that are nicer, more beautiful" (as a Christian)

"I feel as though our erotic behaviour expresses our profoundest secrets, the ones we ourselves aren't aware of." - Madame Naruse discussing sex with Seguro

>"Old age was something hidden from view for many years, only showing itself when it was fanned by the winds that blow from the pit of death."

>"This Jesus you believe in.....I wonder if he was murdered because he was too innocent....too pure"

>"I read somewhere that in our youth we live through our bodies; in our prime we live through our intellect; and in our old age we live through our minds as they prepare for the journey to the next life.

> Vocabulary: biophilous/ a love of life and the living world; the affinity of human beings for other life forms

> Interesting Ideas:

>the author's study indicative of a desire to return to the womb
Seguro's novels pair with Endo's....."The Voice of Silence"/"Silence",
>Group of young female artists seeking "beauty in ugliness. an aesthetics of ugliness".....just like Endo's novels

>The psychology of sex "resembles the frame of mind in which one yearns for God.

>I wonder if many journalists feel an inner urge to "shake those who were secure loose from their moorings"....seems a trend in our current affairs

>Shadow self.......not a new concept, but really well written in this story

>Mrs. Naruse's husbands story of the heart, with items in the storage at the bottom coming to life at night

>necrophilous v. biophilous writers

>strong human desire to return to an inanimate state......strongest in masochists.....masochism as a deformation of a natural instinct...interesting

> Review: I think this is a novel that took courage to write. The author, Susaku Endo, offers his own self-exploration up to the reader as a guide to accepting our own humanity, including the darkest aspects of self. His protagonist, Seguro, is an author at the pinnacle of his career, at which moment he is confronted by his own doppelganger, or spirit double. Thus begins a painful exploration of the aspects of self we try to hide from. With references to "The Divine Comedy", Shakespeare's "King Lear" and other works used to emphasize the universality of Endo's beliefs, this book is uncomfortably marvelous to read. Take a deep breath before diving in, because you will be a different person when you emerge at the end!

My review:

While I found this book to be a little lighter than some of Endo's other novels, I enjoyed it immensely. Scandal is a later novel and Endo seems to have moved on from East vs. West panoramas to the conflicts with an individual's psyche--- good vs. evil. He captures the "mostly normal person but with a slight twisted side" very well, though we see later that slight can become significant under the right influences. The feel of the book reminded me of The Picture of Dorian Gray (though I prefer Endo's writing to Wilde's). It was a quick and compelling read that I highly recommend. I wonder if everyone sees a bit of themselves in Endo's dual characterizations? 4.25 stars

One of my favorite passages:
"On these occasions he put on his family-man face, a look different from the one he wore when he was writing. For Suguro, the donning of a different face did not entail artifice of any kind, nor did it connote playacting or hypocrisy."

My review, crossposted from my Club Read and 75 Books threads.

Suguro is an aging, and not too healthy, respectable Christian novelist, the recipient of writing awards, when he is unexpectedly confronted by a young drunk woman who accuses him of hypocrisy for spending time in Tokyo's red light district and engaging in what he would consider to be sinful sexual activities. And thus begins Endō's exploration of the dark side of human nature, of the dark side of his own nature, of the desires we keep hidden inside us.

At first Suguro's discomfort at the idea that he has a double who is mocking and embarrassing him seems real to the reader. Ahead of a reporter who is trying to gain fame by exposing the famous author, Suguro ventures into some of the haunts of the woman who supposedly painted a portrait of him, trying to discover who the imposter is. As he does so, the novel exposes some of the constraints of his marriage and some of his uncomfortably sexual feelings about a teenage girl who comes to clean his office and a widowed nursing volunteer who confronts him about the restraint he exhibits in his novels when it comes to sex and the messier parts of human feelings. Specifically, this nursing volunteer describes the pleasures of sado-masochism. Suguro is both horrified and intrigued.

Throughout the novel, Suguro has dreams, and engages in conversation with people in the writing world, and in this other world, as well as specialists in both western psychology and Buddhist beliefs. The reader comes to see that Suguro (aka Endō?) is exploring his own psyche as much as he is trying to solve the mystery of the imposter. I found this complex book fascinating, but I'm sure I would have gotten even more out of this book if I had been able to read more consistently; because I've been so busy lately, I read it a little bit at a time and I think it lost some of its power because of this.

My review of Scandal:

At age 65 a Japanese novelist known for his rigid Christian values must confront the fact that even he has a dark inner self. Suguro is at a reception following an award ceremony in his honor when a strange woman confronts him. She accuses him of hypocrisy, saying she knows him to be a frequent visitor to peep shows and other sex businesses. Suguro is stunned, assuming she has confused him with someone else. But an ambitious and unprincipled reporter has heard the exchange and is now out to prove that Suguro isn't the faithful husband he claims to be.

Suguro's attempt to clear his name brings him into contact with a side of life--and a side of himself--he did not suspect existed. He explores such phenomena as masochism, sadism, schizophrenia, racial memory, reincarnation, out of body experiences, and astral projection. But the mystery of his red light district impostor, or double, or alternate self, only deepens.

That we all carry within us a secret, evil inner self is the inevitable conclusion of Scandal. In some people this dark side is self-destructive. In others it is sadistic, seeking to destroy that which is most beautiful and which we love the most. Endo's view is rather harshly puritanical, as he appears to equate sexual desire--indeed any form of sensuality--with this dark and evil corner of the human heart. It is also enigmatic that Endo, whose Catholicism dominates much of his writing, steers away from a spiritual interpretation of evil in favor of Freudian language.

Overall I found that Scandal offers only superficial answers to some profound questions. Much of it reads like a catalog of pop psychology ideas and paranormal phenomena. The most convincing part of the novel is the way in which age and failing health have caused Suguro to become introspective, to lose his self-confidence, and to begin to question the assumptions that have shaped his life. I would chiefly recommend this book to those who are already familiar with Endo and want to see a different facet of his writing.

Scandal by Shusaku Endo
Finished 12/24/12

One of the most gripping books I have read in a long time. Scandal follows the moral and psychological unraveling of an elderly Catholic novelist (read: thinly veiled autobiography) who gets dragged through his dark side. The people who help him do so, such as Naruse, are some of the most repulsive characters I've ever read of. The beauty in this ugliness is not the harmony of the protagonist's well-plotted novels, but the fascination with death and destruction that one character, the psychologist Tomo, says is in all of us. Sugurodoes his best to ignore all of this, cocooning himself in the world of faith he has created in his literature.

The strange this for me about this book is that it is barely Christian. Yes, I see the same theme of ethical dualism vs. nondualism; but despite being a Catholic novelist, Suguro barely speaks or thinks of Jesus. I felt a real spiritual emptiness under the rapid thrill of this novel. Definitely not what I am used to in Endo, and not his most thoughtful work even if his most riveting. But also, not a suitable Christmas Eve read. :P