Pico Iyer on Kurosawa & Japan, Harriet Tubman Madame $20, Mario Bellatin and his publisher, Orson Welles new release: last 2015 links

• Harriet Tubman wins informal poll to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. Doesn't seem like the US government is involved in any way so too earlier to tell if this will actually result in Tubman making the bill. Still, with all the odd pressures from online petitions and the like, it may actually turn into something.
• Pico Iyer wrote a really moving piece about Akira Kurosawa's film, Ikiru, but that's really just the starting point. The piece is part of the series that NYRB is doing about life-changing films and Iyer explores his relationship with Japan by viewing the film and then his relationship with the film via his life in Japan. It's a gorgeous movie, one of Kurosawa's best, but also a really lovely piece about what it means to really live.
• The New Yorker looks at Mexican writer Mario Bellatin's war with his publisher and how the publishing world in Mexico operates on a totally different kind of scale. Bellatin, some might remember, was on our list for our 2015 but had to cancel last minute because he couldn't get a visa to enter Canada. His book Beauty Salon is one of my favorite reads of the last several years.
• Criterion Collection will be releasing Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight, one of his most under-appreciated (and often not widely seen) films, one of the films Welles himself called his favorite. The film is a dark Shakespearean romp though in classic Welles style that challenges, entertains and makes one laugh.

Writers wanted, Isaab Babel's new translation, Roxane Gay talks to Ta-Nehisi Coates, Pico Iyer on Las Vegas and Pyongyang: Cultural Digest, Monday August 17

• Writers wanted: where writers are finding agents and where writers are getting published.
• Excellent article on the "Brutal Lyricism of Isaac Babel." A new translation of the 1926 Red Cavalry. "Describing the absurdities and calamities of war, Babel undermines any version of Russian history that would have us think unswervingly nobel."
• Part of their interesting talks series, Barnes and Noble hosts a conversation between Ta-Nehisi Coates and Roxane Gay.
• Pico Iyer sets his razor-sharp intelligence on considering the differences and similarities between Las Vegas and Pyongyang, both being cities of "a mid-20th century spirit that saw what power and profit could be found in constructing mass fantasies..."

The Gate by Natsume Soseki

This book has been one of the highlights of this holiday break. There is so much in it to talk about that I want to write a 4000 word post on it. Fortunately for my readers, I won't.

Suffice it to say that from Pico Iyer's introduction which praises Soseki's sparing use of plot points but ample use of details of early Meiji life in early 20th century Japan, I was off, revelling in the story and thrilled about reading the novel.

As Iyer suggests, not much happens that can be considered engaging: a man grown old before his time reflects back on his early life, his marriage and love for his wife, and is able to avoid conflict for much of his time on Earth, finally escaping into a Buddhist temple to try and find meaning and peace for his uneventful yet highly problematic life.

The book contains some of the most fascinating passages on meditation I've ever read, as well as a sweet love story that if not passionate in its waning years is the kind of love story that most people yearn for. But there are also lovely passages about Tokyo ("he walked on, puffing out cigarette smoke the autumn sunlight, the urge in him to wander afar, to someplace where he could etch vividly on his mind the sensation that the very essence of Tokyo was to be found here in this spot, then take it home as a souvenir of this day, his Sunday, before he lay down to sleep."), about Kyoto, about nature, about Oyone, his wife, and, of course, about his burgeoning interest in Zen Buddhism as the novel ends.

The bits about Tokyo made me miss that city. Though the book was written in the very early years of the 1900s, long before Tokyo was firebombed and largely destroyed by the Americans in WWII, there is something of the beauty and spirit of Tokyo still there today, 100 years later. Though I didn't live there long, I find Tokyo to be one of the most fascinating cities in the world: densely crowded but surprisingly quiet and bucolic, incredibly wealthy but terribly middle class, groomed, trimmed and controlling of nature within an inch of its life but surprisingly green with abundant trees, flowers, and green spaces.

And this book has whetted my appetite for more Soseki, an author who has influenced several generations of Japanese writers and continues to loom large on the Japanese psyche. Imagine a Canadian writer on our money (Margaret Atwood on the $20 bill? Hugh MacLennan on the $10?)...

Natsume Soseki on the back of the 1000 yen note