April 21
"Authors mature towards death."
This line in a manuscript that arrived earlier today gives me goose bumps. Armed with rough but new sensibilities, spirited young authors grow up by going out there and challenging the world time and time again with their writings, then coming up with their masterpieces as semi-mature, mid-career artists, and finally ripen as aged and experienced writers. The typical "growth curve" of authors is indeed quite simple, and looks much like that of wine or salmon. However, the great veterans that I admire don't lose their desire to write even in their 70s and 80s, and frantically keep on writing - in fact struggling - while strongly aware of the little time they have left. They do mature, and they do it in the face of death. They mature just as much as a newborn that gains weight gram by gram, day by day. The above quote, by the way is from novelist Ogawa Kunio, who passed away on April 8th at the age of 80. I encountered his work through the writings of the great Hasegawa Ikuo.
April 28
Dinner with a veteran writer.
That writer once praised a young author’s novel we published in "Shincho", whereupon I explained that "it was hard work returning it several times for revision." That comment obviously incurred my friend’s displeasure. I guess I said that somewhat triumphantly and while flaring my nostrils, just as if boasting that "it was ME who had him rewrite his text!" My roughness must have been intolerable for the veteran I was talking to.
Reading an author’s draft with a pencil in one hand, and returning the checked and corrected text to the writer is of course the basic job of an editor. However, the editor shouldn't forget that he is dealing with something just as fresh and unstable as a newborn, and that the response he flings back at it from his position of the only person in the world who ever gets to see it is essentially a massive, sometimes violent "power".
When asking an author for revision of a text, the editor is the one to account for the suggested changes, including the possibility of attacking that vulnerable newborn with one’s own personal views that might even be missing the point altogether. So it is the job of the editor to listen to that "initial cry" of a draft, and tell the author where he or she should make adjustments to the melody. It is true that, in such situations it happens that the editor’s comments unleash in the writer a miraculous creativity. Today I don't incur my friend’s anger, and the evening proceeds harmoniously.
May 2-5
I'm in Shanghai. It’s in fact my first visit to China. Architect Rem Koolhaas wrote in his book "Delirious New York" that ”Manhattan has consistently inspired in its beholders ecstasy about architecture.” Looking at the highrise buildings in Shanghai that are seemingly mushrooming totally unrelated to such aspects as functionality, history, or even architects' desires, I ask myself what kind of "ecstasy about architecture" could be at work here… If Amsterdam once crossed the ocean and became New Amsterdam (as New York was once called), what’s piercing the sky here would have to be called New Shanghai. Thoughts like that crossed my mind while unpacking my luggage at my friend’s very New Shanghai-esque place on the 31st floor of an apartment building. On the following day we leave Shanghai by car, and drive about two hours to the West Lake in Hangzhou. I can't say that I didn't expect or at least hope to experience some romantic kind of picture book scenery, but what I see through the smoky mist above the lake is a highrise silhouette that looks just as if assembled with the help of computer graphics. Not that it isn't a nice sightseeing trip though…
