Quill & Quire
Last year, Dany Laferrière won the prestigious Prix Médicis for his 14th novel, L’énigme du retour. This year sees the English-language publication of his 13th, the playful, perplexingly self-referential I Am a Japanese Writer.
The nameless narrator of Laferrière’s novel lives a modest, solitary existence, keeping human contact to a minimum so that he can devote his time to prodigious bouts of reading in the bathtub. Like Laferrière himself, the narrator is a writer and Haitian émigré who lives in Montreal and conceives of a novel entitled I Am a Japanese Writer. The title of the narrator’s novel, which he adopts as a personal descriptor, is based on little more than a perusal of Japanese cultural clichés in women’s magazines, and an obsessive interest in the works of 17th-century Japanese poet Basho. Despite these tenuous credentials, and the fact that the novel has not been written, the narrator is catapulted to international fame when he publicly declares that he is a Japanese writer, achieving cult status in Japan and spawning several imitators, including a Japanese officer who states, “I am a Korean soldier.”
I Am a Japanese Writer’s narrative self-awareness is its greatest strength and its ultimate undoing. Literary, cultural, and political references abound. The narrator’s focus shifts numerous times within the span of a few sentences, showcasing Laferrière’s virtuosic ability to draw connections between seemingly disparate phenomena with intelligence and wit. His penchant for pithy, wide-ranging cultural commentary is entertaining, particularly in the novel’s early sections.
However, the book relies on the cleverness of tangential associations at the expense of plot and character. Everything in the novel is constructed around a postmodern conceit that, as the novel’s blocked narrator attests, does not make for an engaging story. Despite Laferrière’s considerable gifts, this lack of narrative drive will leave many readers dissatisfied.
Review
"Vonnegut once called him the 'fastest titler in America,' yet
Dany Laferriere is even more than that. Funny, direct and true,
Laferriere is among the most living of this continent's living writers." (Shiela Heti, author of "Ticknor" 20100719)
"It's a wonderful, existential conceit: The book we're reading is being written as we read it." (
Globe & Mail Top 100 for 2010 20101127)
"Recommended for fans of absurdist literature like that written by Kurt Vonnegut and Harold Pinter." (
Library Journal 20110715)
"
I Am a Japanese Writer's narrative self-awareness is its greatest strength...[
Laferriere's] penchant for pithy, wide-ranging cultural commentary is entertaining, particularly in the novel's early sections." (
Quill & Quire 20100901)
"[
I Am a Japanese Writer] is all about place and identity, names and nationality and the paradoxical relationship between rigid lines of nationalism and the fluidity of the individual. Episodic and picaresque, it is a humorous look at identity and nationality, writing and the mind of a writer...This is a deceptively painless read, when really it's a complex, multi-faceted look at race, identity, art and culture." (
Telegraph Journal 20101016)
"
I Am a Japanese Writer sees
Laferriere challenge his readers in a way that can best be described as part Kafkaesque nightmare and Woody Allen acid test...The novel has a strong odour of nationalistic pride...relentlessly pushing the boundaries of unwarranted celebrity and manufactured cult phenomena to unimaginable and absurd degrees of sarcasm." (
Toronto Quarterly 20101102)
"In his unique fashion,
Laferriere captures the spirit of our culture, where cultural boundaries are erased and the real and the unreal intimately coexist." (
National Post 20101105)
"Fans of international literature will find much that is familiar in
I Am a Japanese Writer. The book bears a kinship, in terms of design, to European novels like Italo Calvino's
If On a Winter's Night a Traveller. In tone,
Laferriere employs a poetic sensibility achieved through brief, elliptical chapters." (
Montreal Review of Books 20101112)
"
Laferriere...writes movingly and cleverly about race, nationality, and, ultimately, the multiple conflicting ways we form our identities. His prose, in this case ably translated by his longtime translator
David Homel, is deadpan and devious." (Hal Niedzvieck
this magazine 20110620)
"A quirky yet unique read of celebrity and wishes gone wrong,
I am a Japanese Writer is a choice pick for literary fiction collections, highly recommended." (
The Midwest Book Review 20110701)
