So one of the downsides of our irritating Consumer Culture is that we’re programmed to be always looking for the next New Thing—be it car, refrigerator, book, movie, or significant other. It can lead to a niggling feeling that our lives are disposable, cheap, and tawdry. And while I read “voraciously” (though I don’t eat the pages) I’m often less-than-impressed with the results: I read 24 books in the last year and would count maybe 4-5 as “good” or “excellent,” with the other 20 being so-so or disappointing. (Case in point: Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 1929 (2025). It’s okay and interesting, but that’s about it.) After finishing a recent read—Simon Winchester’s The Breath of the Gods—I cast about for a new read. Nothing new grabbed me. So I poked around my library and found a First Edition (American) of Yasunari Kawabata’s novel The Lake, originally published 1954. (American first edition published 1974, 52 years ago!)
It’s nothing less than an eerie, exquisite masterpiece. First novel I’d read in several months. There’s a timeless weirdness to it. And a bit of synchronicity: At times it feels like a reimagined Lolita (1954), with less sex and more pathology. Both novels have a lyrical quality that elevates them over the ordinary best-seller with which we often clog our brains. (I’m looking at you, Dan Brown.) The final scene unfolds at a Firefly Festival in Japan, where they release captured fireflies from a tower in park, with a lake below. The festival-goers paddle rowboats onto the lake to catch the fireflies as they float from the sky. I want to live in that festival. That’s what the best books do.