Nothing Exciting
Maybe before continuing to read this email click on the video above and watch. It’s a little less than four minutes, and you’ll be glad you found the time to take in every second of it.
This book came highly recommended by my friend Joanna Creswell. I often feel a sense of trepidation when thinking about reading such a book, because I can only read it for the first time once. Not to digress, but there are books I haven’t read, yet, and movies I haven’t watched, yet, because I don’t want that moment spoiled. Maybe this strikes you as silly, and in some ways it is. Still, waiting a little bit can be good.
But with this book, I didn’t wait. Once I had finished the previous one, I got started. I loved it immediately. With the following, I don’t think I’m going to spoil anything for you if you plan to read it and haven’t, yet. If you’re really worried, skip to where you see the next picture.
In a nutshell, the book consists five sections, in each of which the main character, a (nameless) Japanese woman in her mid-thirties, deals with a new job. Of her old job we initially only learn that she quit it, to move back in with her parents, the idea probably being that we can make of that what we will. At a jobs center, she tells the person assigned to her that she’d now prefer to have a job that doesn’t expect much from her. In each of the jobs, she lasts as long as the initial trial period, during which she becomes deeply engaged with the task at hand, more deeply in fact that anticipated.
It is the becoming more-deeply-engaged-than-anticipated aspect that has her leave every time (except for the last). The first job, for examle, involves watching surveillance tape of a writer who – wittingly or not – has some unknown precious substance stashed away at his home, possibly in a DVD case. As it turns out, every job involves a larger secret, something the new worker isn’t told. There is a delightful variation in what the secret might be.
I don’t know how Tsumura managed to write the book in such a way that as a reader one immediately roots for the main character. Maybe it’s the fact that we’re all stuck in jobs that involve elements of meaningless nonsense (see David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs. At the very least (maybe if we don’t want to admit as much, or we’re lucky enough for that not being the case), we have experience with such jobs. In any case, the book centers on someone fully endorsing the meaningless, because that way, she can avoid having to deal with a burn out, the thing that drove her from her previous longer employment.
Thus, we follow along as the main character immediately gets more involved than she originally wanted, to the extent that she goes out of her way trying to do a very good job. I found myself envious of her time at the third job. Here, the task at hand was to write copy for the back sides of packets of rice crackers: something engaging, yet somehow a bit weird, that would get customers hooked (that job also comes with a fantastic cantina). The fifth job in a cabin in the middle of the woods (really a large park) sounds pretty good, too.
I have only one major beef with the book. It’s the conclusion. I’m sure it’s the conclusion that had the likes of National Public Radio really love the book. At the end of the fifth job, the main character comes to the realization that going back to her previous career wouldn’t be so bad. After all, the problem wasn’t the exploitative nature of work (my characterization). Instead, it’s what you make of it. Honestly, I wish that hadn’t been the conclusion of the book: hey, capitalism isn’t so bad after all, you just have to have the right attitude, and it’s all good.
Errm, nope, it’s not.
Still, what a delight of a book, with just the right mix of humour, intrigue, a set of incredible characters, and those five imaginary jobs that don’t sound so imaginary after all (just ask David Graeber).
The other day, while it still felt like late Spring, I went out to take some new pictures. Now that it feels like very early Spring I’m glad that I did.
There’s an old church that has been under some form of construction for as long as I’ve lived here. Many of the churches now stand empty. In fact, since I moved here the number of unused churches has increased.
I’ve had this book for a little over a year now. It’s the catalogue of an exhibition of the early works of these four (West) German painters (Richter was born in East Germany and received an art education there but left for the West, to go to school – again – in Düsseldorf). The time period discussed in the book mostly covers the immediate years before I was born plus the years that cover my childhood and very young adolescence. There are a number of reasons why I wanted to read the book: I like some of the art, and I’m interested in the artists dealing with the times and country they were operating in.
But!
Oh my god, what a truly dreadful, dreadful read this is!
One of the reasons that had me sold on buying the book were the interviews the curator did with the artists (well, those who were still alive – Polke died in 2010). The first interview is terrible because Georg Baselitz is just such an insufferable, arrogant windbag. I actually stopped reading it because I couldn’t take it any longer.
The second interview is terrible as well, albeit for different reasons. Here, the interview consists of the curator giving incredibly long-winded explanations, outlining a large number of things most of which would have been better in an essay – before asking a question. And Gerhard Richter than mostly answers with a sentence or two. I can’t tell if he just doesn’t want to talk about his art in the first place or if he’s also irritated by the long-winded “questions”. I haven’t given up, yet, but so far I’ve learned almost nothing about Richter.
This is just so disappointing. At least the reproductions of the art works are nice, and there are plenty of interesting pictures to look at.
Maybe my problem is that I expected too much. After all, here we have some of the most well-known German artists of their generation (all guys): what exactly did I expect from these people?
Anyway, so here then were a book to buy and read and a book not to buy and not to read. Or go ahead, and buy that book about the German painters. But if you do, don’t complain if you think it’s terrible: I told you so.
Stay safe and well, and as always thank you for reading!
– Jörg