n  If life were made up only of important things, it really would be a dangerous house of glass, scarcely to be handled carelessly. But everyday life was exactly like the headlines. And so everybody, knowing the meaninglessness of existence, sets the center of his compass at his own home.n

My experience in japanese literature begins and ends with Haruki Murakami whose literature isn't so much japanese. Or so they say those who know one or two things about the matter. So technically, this is my first.

The allegories in Kobo Abe's story are more or less obvious but that doesn't make them any less impressive or deep. Deep as the sand pit in which the protagonist finds himself with no way to escape. It may be a pit but it's also a home. The home of a widowed woman whose life is dedicated to shovelling sand for the common good of the village. However, they aren't alone down there, for the reader can't help but be down there with them. As the plot develops, a claustrophic feeling takes its toll and by the time the existential thoughts of the hero kick in, the reader is already caught in the narrative's tangle.

Like I said, a few of the allegories may be obvious but, for me, they're what makes this novel great. They make The Woman in the Dunes what it really is in its basis: an existential novel and a commentary on the modern way of life and the social structures that define our lives. In a world where people's lives are spent in a daily working routine that provides us with things that make them a bit more sustainable, Abe's novel is timeless as ever. If I had to choose a part to be my favorite, it would be the metaphor of the spider on the lamp in chapter 27. This is where the novel goes to a whole other level, in my opinion.

The Woman in the Dunes is an important novel of the 20th century which, through its eerie atmosphere and Kafkaesque story, raises a few timeless questions on modern society. I recommend it to pretty much everyone.

n  More than iron doors, more than walls, it is the tiny peephole that really makes the prisoner feel locked in.n

When we mix surrealistic Kafkaesque climate with existential questions about sense of human being then we get something like The woman in the dunes.

Tale about a man obsessed or maybe possessed with sand who during the trip to the sea is trapped in the dunes in a cave inhabited by a lonely woman. Initially desperately tries to escape but the magnetic strength of the woman, her desperate fight with sand makes that what previously seemed to be a trap now becomes a sense of his life. The first what comes to your mind is like: hang on, I know that history. It's like The Trial by Kafka. The same anonymous hero, entangled in an absurd situation, condemned and imprisoned for unspecified faults.

Prose is hallucinatory, atmosphere stifling and nightmarish. This story is captured by the sand. In fact, sand rules everyone and everything, sand never rested. Reading you can almost hear rustle of the sand as if it was pouring from the book.

Bu yorum da diğer yorumlarım ve bundan sonra gireceklerim gibi ağır spoiler içerir.

Kumların Kadını’nı konuşmadan önce biraz geçmişte dolaşalım, toparlarsak bugüne geliriz. Böcekten ve Kobo Abe’nin benzetildiği yerden başlayalım; Kafka’da böcek imgesinin ilk ortaya çıktığı eser Taşrada Düğün Hazırlıkları’dır, “ yatakta yatarken sanırım kocaman bir böceğe, bir geyik böceğine ya da mayıs böceğine dönüşeceğim” Samsa’nın devcileyin bir böcek olarak uyanmasına henüz dört yıl var. Bu böcekleşmenin her kitabına sirayet ettiği yazar ise Dostoyevski’dir, ya yukarıdan bir gözün böcek gibi gördüğü, böcek gibi ezdiği karakterler ya da yeraltı adamının bir türlü olmayı beceremediği böcekleşme isteği.. Gogol’ün Akaki Akakievic’i ise “havada uçan bir sinek kadar “ değersizdir büro çalışanlarının gözünde. Bu böceğin Alman edebiyatında doğum yeri ise Goethe’nin Faust kitabıdır. Burada bir es verip kitaba dönelim.

Kahramanımız Tokyo’da öğretmenlik yapan ve “boş zamanlarında” keşfedilmemiş böcekler üzerine çalışan biridir. Hafta sonu tatilini iziniyle birleştirip yeni türler keşfedeceğini düşündüğü çölümsü bir bölgeye doğru yola çıkar. “Köyünü sev” pankartı dalgalanan bir bölgeye gelir, araştırmalara başlar, geç olur geri dönemez ve köylülerin önerisiyle yalnız bir kadının yaşadığı ve merdivenle inilen kumların ortasında bir evde konaklamayı kabul eder, bir başka deyişle oltaya gelir ve kuyuya “düşer”. Kitabın hemen başlarında kuma dair verilen ansiklopedik bilgide kumun ufalanmış kaya parçaları olduğunu görürüz. Düşüş ve kaya parçasından gelmek istediğim yeri anlamışsınızdır, elbette Camus. Kitap boyunca etkisini hissettiğimiz temel meselelerden biri de Camus, Düşüş ve Sisifos ( Japon mitolojisinde Sai nehri) söylencesi üzerinden varoluşçu felsefe. 2. Savaş sonrası batılı entelektüel dünyaya hakim olan bu kavramın edebiyatdaki güçlü izdüşümlerini batı edebiyatından çok Japon eserlerinde takip etmek de ilginç aslında.

Kitaba adını veren kumların kadını bütün dünyevi ve modernizmin doğurduğu istek ve arzulardan öte, yeme, içme, barınma, aitlik ve bulursa seks düzleminde ömrünü kumların köyü işgal etmemesi üzerine kurmuş, başka da bir tahayyülü olmayan öznelik kategorisinden düşürülmüş bireyi simgelemektedir. Her akşam sisifos azmiyle kumları küremektedir, ertesi akşam kumları küreyeceği bilgisiyle. Bu tekrarlanan rutine ceza gözüyle bakacak okur kendi gündelik rutini ile tekrarladıklarına bakarsa tehlikeli sorgulamalar girebilir aman dikkat diyelim. Kahramanımız bir gecelik sandığı misafirliğin ebediyete yelken açtığını fark ettiğinde her düşürülmüş birey gibi çıkış yolu aramaya başlar, önce kısa bir atar ( vergisini veren, kimlik ve ehliyet kartı olan, düzenli işe giden birinin böyle kolay düşeceğini nasıl düşünürsünüz) ardından plan aşaması gelir. Kuyuda kadın ile geçen bu bölüm kadın erkek ilişkilerine ve cinselliğe dair çok yetkin bir anlatı barındıyor ve eserin ikinci temel ayağını oluşturuyor, hatta kapsadığı alan itibari ve derinliğiyle diğer dertleri yer yer gölgede bırakıyor.

Tokyo’da öğretmenlik yapan, sendika kartı sahibi her birey gibi içine düştüğü bu saçmalık ile hesaplaşır ( ne yani kum küremek için mi yaşıyorsun) ama aslında anlatılan kendi hikayesidir ve bunu hissettikçe öfkesi artar. Nihayetinde sevgili dostlar, son kertede hepimiz varoluşuna anlam katmak için debelenen canlılarız ve bunu kuyuda kum küremek, dağa kaya yuvarlamak, sai nehrinde taş üstüne taş dizmek, goodreads de yorum yazmak gibi bin farkı yolu olsa da birini diğerinden değerli kılan şey durduğumuz noktadır.

Düşme sürer, kum küremeyi reddince kesilen suya dayanamaz ve ilk olarak kadının pozisyonuna yani ilksel insanın ihtiyaç düzeyine düşer, plan ertelenebilir önce suyu içip sevişeyim gerisini sonra düşünürüz noktasına gelir.

Yeni bir plan, kaçış başarılı olur ama ironik bir şekilde kumdan kaçarken kumdan bataklığın içine düşer ( sistem karşıtı alt kültürlerin kaçtıkları sisteme can suyu taşıması misali) Düzene sığınır, köylüler kurtarıcısı olur ve kuyusuna geri döner.

Ve yaklaşırız o çarpıcı sona, böceklerle başlamıştık oradan gidelim. Kuyunun başına gelen görevlilere “ denizi görmek istediği söyler” ve onlarda neden olmasın “ kadını çıkarıp karşılarında sevişirlerse bu isteği kabul edeceklerini " söylerler. Ve böcek araştırmacısı kahramanımız bu teklifi kabul eder, neden olmasın. Düşme böcekleşme ile tamamlanır, neden olmasın o artık bir özne değil, izlenebilen, kontrol edilebilen, vücudu üzerinde karar verilebilen ve insan olmadığı için başka insanların önünde çiftleşebilen bir böceğe dönüşmüştür. Biz edebiyat tarihinde böcekleşen, kendini böcek gibi hisseden, böcek olmak isteyen ya da iktidarın gözünde böcek kadar değeri olmayan bir sürü karakter görmüştük, Kobo Abe ise bizi işin en başına böcekleşmenin hikayesine götürüyor ve bunu mükemmel bir kurgu ile tamamlıyor.

Ve final; 6 aylık kuyu hapsinden sonra kadını hastaneye götürmek için sarkıtılan merdivenin ucunda yalnız görürüz kahramanımızı. İstese kaçabilir, engelleyecek kimse yok etrafında. Aman der, sonra da kaçarım ve kuyusuna döner, aklımızda kitaba, kendimize ve varoluşa dair çetrefilli sorular bırakarak.

Sonuç olarak; ince ve okuması görece kolay, edebi olarak yetkin, derdi ve tasası ile hayata değen, edebi ve felsefi referanslarının hakkını fazlasıyla veren bu başyapıtı gönül rahatlığıyla herkese önerir, şimdi ne okuyayım sorusuyla cebelleşmekten beni kurtaran Japon edebiyatına huzurlarınızda teşekkür ederim.

Is it a story about a man who develops Stockholm syndrome or a man who makes an informed choice?

On teachers:
"Rarely will you meet anyone so jealous as a teacher. Year after year students tumble along like the waters of a river. They flow away, and only the teacher is left behind, like some deeply buried rock at the bottom of the current. Although he may tell others of his hopes, he doesn’t dream of them himself. He thinks of himself as worthless and either falls into masochistic loneliness or, failing that, ultimately becomes suspicious and pious, forever denouncing the eccentricities of others. He longs so much for freedom and action that he can only hate people."

On writers:
"That’s for writers. Saying you want to become a writer is no more than egotism; you want to distinguish between yourself and the puppets by making yourself a puppeteer."

Kobo Abe hem yazdığı karakterleri hem de okuyucusunu aynı çukura hapsetmiş sanırım. Bedenim belki dışarı ama eminim ki zihnimin bir parçası o kumulda eriyip gidecek.

Edit: birkaç yılın ardından Kumların Kadını'nı tekrar okuyunca fark ediyorum ki, asıl bedenimmiş o kumulun içinde eriyip giden. bunu düşünen ben miyim yoksa kum tanelerinin aşındırdığı zihnim mi bana bunu düşündüren ???

ve fark ediyorum ki, tam tamına üç yıl geçmiş bu kitabı elime ilk alışımın üzerinden. demek ki bu kitabı kasımın on beşinde bitirip, on altısında tekrar başlıyorum. bıraktığım yerden. tekrar. başlıyorum. tekrar, tekrar, tekrar dönüyorum. dönüyorum ama yükselerek. yükselerek ve yükselerek dönüyorum. birgün uçacağım, biliyorum.

رواية مرهقة للنفس، مليئة باللحظات القلقة التي تحبس الأنفاس ، رواية تجسد العامل النفسي بأكثر صوره قلقاً وسوداوية، تجعل القارئ مشاركاً للبطل في مأواه الضيق، الضيق جداً، إنها رواية ونوع أدبي ربما أسميه أدب الاحتجاز في الأماكن المغلقة، حيث تجري الأحداث في مكان واحد، كما في بعض الأفلام بالضبط، حيث يحتجز البطل في مكان مغلق ولا يستطيع الخروج ويحاول الهرب، هذه هي ثيمة الرواية ، ولكنها أكثر من ذلك بكثير، هنا الرمال، فلسفة الرمال، الهشاشة في عالم يسوده ايقاع بطئ من حياة أصبحت واقعاً، حياة سخيفة بكل معنى الكلمة، فضاء هش، رمال تسقط كل حين، محاصر بالعدم والعبث واللاشيء، فوضى دائمة، وكأنه سيزيف الذي يحمل الصخرة تلو الصخرة ، استهلاك للقدرات بلا فائدة، حبس مجنون، مغارة من الهواء الرطب، رمال، بيت على شكل قفص، تتساءل في بداية الرواية ما الذي يحدث ..
لكنك تلاحظ بعد حين أن الكتاب يكتب نوعاً ما قصة الحياة، قصة عبثية، حيث البطل يحارب الرمال، يحارب الهشاشة، يحارب زمناً خاصاً به، زمن لا ينمتي إلى أحد سواه وسوى ضحية وجدت المكان قبل ولوجه، ولكنها أكثر قناعة، أكثر، راحة أكثر تفهماً وقدرة على الاندماج ..

مساحة ضيقة وشخص ضائع، يخرج في أحد الايام ليقع في مصيدة مرعبة، مصيدة تأخذ على عاتقها تعذيبك، طردك من جنة الأرض، إلى محيط آخر من المحاولات والجنون والغضب ..

الرواية شهية القراءة رغم قلقها النفسي المتزايد حتى نهاية الرواية، قصة صراع من نوع مختلف، قصة في القاع، قصة زمن يجري بإيقاع الرمل وإيقاع واقع يجد نفسه فيه مليئاً بالغضب والمقت والسؤال عن المعنى الأخلاقي لأن تحبس من دون ذنب، شهوة تجرك وأخرى توقع، تقدم تنازلاً، تلو الآخر، ولكن تظل تفشل، يفشل هو، وأنت في قلقك تتابع الأحداث، تلومه، تصفه بالغباء ربما، تشفق عليه، تود أن تساعده، هو غريب وربما نحن غرباء، يجسد لك صراع الإنسان في هذه الحياة، وخاصة في هذا الزمن المر، الذي أصبح الإنسان محبوس الحضارة والأشياء، محبوس المكان والواقع مهما كان ضئيلاً ومراً وهشاً كالرمال ..


مرة أخرى يثبت لي الأدب الياباني بتنوعه وقوة شخصيته ومكانته القوية ضمن الأدب العالمي .. رواية تستحق القراءة لمن كان قلب على تحمل القلق واللحظات العصيبة والألم النفسي والتوق إلى قليل من الغموض وسباحة في عالم رملي لا يقوى سوى على طمر الأشياء..

Since I started reading both more avidly and more widely several years ago, I've spent more time analyzing different genres, different kinds of authors, and different kinds of literature. In Jane Smiley's 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, she makes a number of observations about how classic French novels differ from classic British novels, and how American novelists differ from either. I'm not well read enough in French and British literature to judge the validity of her points, other than to notice that yes, Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas do have a tone that is noticeably different from, say, Charles Dickens and George Eliot.

All of which brings me to Japanese literature. Which I haven't read nearly enough of since taking a couple of courses in medieval Japanese literature as an undergrad. So far I have read several books by Haruki Murakami, Battle Royale, and now, The Woman in the Dunes. I've got several more in my queue.

Haruki Murakami, Kobo Abe, and Koushun Takami are very different authors (just as Charles Dickens and George Eliot are very different authors), but Japanese novels all have a very different feel from Western novels. That is not to say they are particularly hard to understand or that they don't have the same elements of English-language novels: plot, characters, theme, storytelling, etc. But Japanese literature seems to focus very much on the moment, and an individual's experience of it. Long, descriptive passages about mundane details in the character's environment, or his mental ruminations, often wandering off onto bizarre sidetracks, almost as if the author is trying to describe how a person's thoughts actually work (like, when you're focusing on the matter at hand, but somehow your mind makes a subconscious leap onto a completely unrelated topic).

And that is how The Woman in the Dunes reads. The story is of a Japanese schoolteacher and amateur entomologist who takes a little weekend trip to the beach. He happens upon a small, very poor village that is being overwhelmed by the encroaching sands on all sides. Needing a place to stay for the night, the villagers offer to put him up in the home of one of the locals, who turns out to be a widow living alone. Her house is at the bottom of a sandpit and the only way in or out is by rope ladder. Our unfortunate schoolteacher doesn't think anything is odd or sinister about this until he has lowered himself into the trap.

The rest of the book is really more about Niki Jumpei's thoughts and experiences, and of course, sand. Sand is everywhere. Kobo Abe describes it - its porosity, its viscosity, its physical qualities, its omnipresence - the way gothic authors describe the brooding atmosphere and the dark manor. By the end of the book you're feeling sand crawling up all your crevices, rubbing your skin raw, getting in your hair, and threatening to bury you.

Jumpei's relationship with the widow, who is never named, is turbulent, sexual, ambiguous, and disturbing. She was the bait for the trap, and she is by turns apologetic, vulnerable, pathetic, and callous. One gets the impression she is the way Kobo Abe, as a Japanese man of a certain age, may see all women, as these opaque, unrelatable beings as prone to break into sudden charming laughter and offer you a massage as to turn out to be dangerous fairy tale creatures luring you into hell. Certainly our protagonist, Jumpei, never quite relates to the widow as a fellow human being, but he seems to be completely disconnected from people in general. The world he's been abducted from really wasn't much better than the world he is now trapped in, where he must forever shovel sand to keep it from burying the widow's hovel. This metaphor seemed one of the more obvious ones in the novel, but I'm sure there were many others I missed, and like the other Japanese novels I've read, I have the feeling that much imagery and symbolism is lost in translation.

I can't really say how I felt about this book, other than that it was an interesting reading experience and the story is definitely haunting and weird and memorable, like a slightly surreal movie. I definitely recommend it for anyone who is interested in sampling Japanese literature.

Oh, but speaking of surreal: come on, all your Goodreaders who labeled this "magical realism"! Kobo Abe is not Haruki Murakami. There are no talking cats or parallel worlds in this book. Okay, yes, parts of it are a little... strange, but there is nothing that is, strictly speaking, fantastical about it. It's not "magical realism" just because it's written in Spanish or Japanese, folks!

Visceral, claustrophobic, poetic. And not for me.
- Anakin Skywalker a.k.a. Darth Vader

General and themes
I didn’t understand. But life isn’t something one can understand, I suppose.

The Woman in the Dunes brings us the mysterious tale of a man looking for insects but ending up in a seaside village of houses nestled in honeycomb like pits of sand. One of the creatures he plans to discover in the dunes is a beetle that is known to lures it victims into desserts to feast of their flesh when they die: likewise our narrator is ensnared and forced to live with an unnamed woman. Even when he first thinks It was still too soon to be frightened, as a reader you are soon made clear all is not well. This is further compounded by the fact the book starts in chapter one with saying that our main character is already missing for seven years.

Sand is an almost alive element in this book, ever present, ever moving and ever accumulating and trying to undo the human impact on the dunes. As is perspiration, the author brought the surroundings and the discomfort associated with it most vividly, if sometimes a bit repetitively, to life.

Theme wise there is a lot being covered in this short novel. There are some parts in the book that really reflect on the feebleness of social constructs versus power abuse, how quickly "civilized" behaviour can collapse (even though our main character paid all his taxes and is in all the registers of the government he catches himself thinking: Defeat begins with the fear that one has lost.). This is quite like Franz Kafka in terms of alienation, and the individual versus an unnamed and unseen collective/society. Also the sense of weirdness, the world being "off" from normal, reminded me of Haruki Murakami

We also have the lure of a simpler and uncomplicated life, not unlike the life our ancestors had 500 years ago. But overall I think the novel is about the human mind struggling for release versus insurmountable and impersonal obstacles. I at least read the book most as an allegory on growing up and accepting societal demands of you. A second plausible interpretation might be that it is a parable on mental illness developing and how the main character loses touch with normal society along the way.

Interpretation is often not easy: some of the chapters were quite vague in my opinion, chapter 20 with the spiritual rape musings was rather off putting for instance, and chapter 24 is also jumbled, no idea where the main character went, despite all of the descriptions Kōbō Abe gives us. The reflections on teaching sometimes woven in the main storyline felt a bit weird as well, and the whole recurring Mobius man and one way ticket discourse left me a bit baffled.

Our narrator
Suddenly a sorrow the colour of dawn welled up in him.

For someone whisked away, locked up and submitted to a kind of Sisyphus torture, Niki Jumpei is still quite unsympathetic.
He goes about nearly assaulting a woman, messing up her orderly life, hurting a dog and some kids, burning a moth with a cigarette, trying to escape on his own and thinking of a radio to send back as compensation to the one he leaves behind.
When his companion says “Why should we worry what happens to other people?”, he is shocked, but in all fairness, how does Jumpei care for others?
There is even a public sex for freedom scheme at the end that definitely made me feel the main character had fell to an animalistic level.

I feel that the book might work better as a movie, as it is so dependent on atmosphere and how it not really succeeded for me to bring alive the inner world of the characters.
I will add the 1964 film to my watchlist, and want to close of with an insightful quote from a review of this novel by my favourite author David Mitchell:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/200...
Sand is the prison: literally, symbolically; and not just for the man. We, too, are down in this burning sandpit. We, too, must spend a lifetime doing a job as meaningless (to the universe at large, if not to ourselves) as shovelling never-ending deposits of sand into buckets, getting nothing for our pains but the barest essentials. As we read about the man’s predicament, existentially speaking, we are reading about our own.

Hem konusu, hem işleyiş biçimi, hem de karakterlerin özgünlüğünden ve inandırıcılığından dolayı çok çok başarılı bir roman. Ve kendisini birçok farklı okumaya açacak bir roman gibi duruyor. Aynı zamanda kendinize dönmenizi sağlayacak bir roman. Bir de bu K. , Joseph tarzı izole kafkaesk bireyler üzerine tekrar düşünmeyi sağlayabilir. Kafkaesk olup sürükleyici olmayı başaran nadide bir kitap aynı zamanda....

May be three and half stars.

This is a strange Japanese novel. It is something surreal.

The Premise and the Story line: A man is taken a prisoner by a village which is near the sea front. He is lowered down a sand pit where lives a young widow. Here he is made to help out the woman in shoveling out the advance of sand. As the house (sandpit) is in the border of the town and one among many such sand pit homes, the duty of the house members is to block the advance of sand dunes. Or else the whole village will be buried under the sand. So the villagers take care of them by providing food and drink and other needs. But they have to do continuous shoveling. The man obviously wants an escape from such a slave-like situation.

Such a simple story line and I feel it could have been done excellently done in a short story or a novella. The novel is bit too lengthy and the reader feels suffocated inside the sandpit. That may be the intention of the author. He wanted the reader to feel the clustrophobic feelings of the people caught in the sandpit. If that was his aim he had succeeded.

But over the period of time (after some chapters) it feels repetitive. Is it a symbolism for the routine works of our everyday existence? I am not sure. If so, it is a great symbolism. About everyday labour he writes: "Work seems something fundamental for man, something which enables him to endure the endless flight of time....The only way to go beyond work is through work. It is not that work itself is valuable; we surmount work by work. The real value of work lies in the strength of self denial." Kill the self and work mechanically to kill the time. A powerful message stated very powerfully in words and through the images (shoveling sand).

Then there is the theme of looking everything as a whole. The moment we see only the particular details we may miss out something. But how do we look at life as a whole? We may never get a chance to look at our life whole. But let us not worry about tiny details and lose our peace of mind. Instead continue to live it with possible pleasant shades that are found in it in spite of the routine nature associated with it. Is this the meaning? It is also perceivable.

Then, there seemed to be some more themes (symbolism). They are intersperse with some vague meditations on life, death, sex, etc. I thought these were never part of the story but acted as page fillers. Or if they had any significance they were lost on me.

Finally: As I said earlier, if Kobo Abe had written it down like a short story its effect would have been greater.

با خواندنِ این داستان اولین چیزی که به ذهنم رسید زندگی کنونی ما ایرانیان بود... اون دهکده رو ایرانِ عزیزم دیدم... و انسان هایِ گرفتار در گودال های شنی رو دختران و پسران سرزمین پاک ایران زمین دیدم... ایرانیانی که هر روزشان مثلِ دیروز است... گرفتار در تکرار و تکرار... همه افسرده و پرخاشگر... با این تفاوت که یکی بیشتر پول دارد و دیگری کمتر... با این تفاوت که اون مرد شکم دَل به واسطۀ طمع به درونِ چاله رفت... ما به بهانۀ چه رفتیم؟ چه به روزِ سرزمینِ ما آوردن؟ آیا ما همان مردم همیشه ��اد در زمانِ بهرام گور و انوشیروان بزرگ هستیم؟ آیا ما همان ایرانیانی هستیم که بزرگترین مورخان جهان هم نتوانستن تعداد دقیق فستیوال ها و جشن هایِ ملی مارو اعلام کنن... همان جشن هایی که تعداد آن رو بیشتر از سوراخ های غربال یا اَلَک میدونستن... افسوس و صد افسوس

دوستان گرامی استفاده از شن روان واقعاً برای عنوان کتاب هنرمندانه بود... چراکه روان بودنِ شن بهتر میتونه این زندگی و تلاش رو نشون بده... حال اگر شن روان نبود و ثابت بود ... باز هم عنوانِ مناسبی میشد؟ بی شک جواب، نه... هستش

پیروز باشید و ایرانی

The Woman in the Dunes is a racy existential thriller. The author lures you in with the first few chapters in which a young entomologist, who is collecting insects in a village by the beach, misses the last bus. The villagers agree to put him up for the night with a widow who lives in a hut located inside a hole. The young man is struck by the strangeness of the village in which all the houses have been built inside large holes. The unsuspecting young man climbs down into the hole using a rope ladder. Little does he know what is in store for him. It is like a perfect plot for a noir thriller. Great remote beach village setting. Hostile villagers. A young man and a mysterious widow forced to spend a night together in a hut in a hole. The possibilities seemed endless.

While the novel is suspenseful and intriguing, you realize very soon that the whole situation that the young man finds himself in, is a metaphor for the human condition. There aren't going to be any great revelations, erotic sex scenes or pulsating action from Kobo Abe. The man and his female companion spend a lot of time clearing the sand that threatens their lives in every way. The sand that is constantly threatening to envelop their bodies and their dwelling, also helps them etch out a living.

The book is about the sheer stupidity of human existence. Man's inability to escape from the prison that society traps him in, and in fact thriving in and adjusting to it after a while. The final lines of the novel are a testament to this unique human attribute. Elmore Leonard's Gold Coast, told with a lot of humor and swag, was also about the same human attribute.

The book does contain an interesting passage about the bureaucratization and boredom of the sexual act:

Order has come about, and the power to control sex and brute force lies within man's grasp, in place of Nature's. Thus, sexual intercourse is like a commutation ticket: it has to be punched every time you use it. Of course, you must check to see that the ticket is genuine. But this checking is terribly onerous; it corresponds precisely to the complications of order. All kinds of certificates—contracts, licenses, I.D.cards, permits, certificates of title, authorizations, registrations, carrying permits, certificates of membership, letters of recommendation, notes, leases, temporary permits, agreements, income declarations, receipts, even certificates of ancestry… every conceivable type of paper must be mobilized into action. Thanks to such checks, sex is completely buried under a mantle of certifications… like a basket worm. It would be all right, I suppose, if this were satisfying. But even so, would that be the end of certificates?

When I was done reading the novel, I felt like I could write a racier and more entertaining novel using the same plot with some of the same themes. Don't get me wrong. It is a unique book and I am not the most objective critic. I am sure my enjoyment of the novel was affected by the fact that I am an entertainment craving American crime fiction addicted pervert.