(no subject)

[seabookmonger.livejournal.com]

Japanese author Reiko Matsuura is traveling across the U.S. right now, reading from her 1993 novel, The Apprenticeship of Big Toe P , which was just translated into English. It's always a pleasure to meet the authors the Japan Foundation brings to the U.S. They're always prize winners, often edgy in both style and topic, and often female. If you're lucky enough to have the chance, go and hear what they have to say. If you can't meet them, meet them through their writing.

You may have heard that this is a novel about a woman who grows a penis out of her big toe. That's accurate, but it's just the jumping off point as I think this novel is about the desire for love and for connection. Matsuura has said (and I paraphrase a translation) that what happens in the heart during the sexual act has not been depicted in the many male/phallocentric depictions of sex in literature. And in literature, the act is often not depicted, but alluded to. And she wonders about what writers are not saying. What is being concealed in the core of sex? She has written about the interior and exterior aspects of sexual acts between a variety of men and women in this book but, as you come to understand, the penis is the least of it, though people are pretty focused on it. As you can imagine.