{"id":2684,"date":"2026-01-10T22:50:50","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T22:50:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/?p=2684"},"modified":"2026-01-10T22:50:50","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T22:50:50","slug":"on-yasunari-kawabatas-the-lake-and-the-pleasures-of-old-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/2026\/01\/10\/on-yasunari-kawabatas-the-lake-and-the-pleasures-of-old-books\/","title":{"rendered":"On Yasunari Kawabata\u2019s \u201cThe Lake\u201d and the Pleasures of \u201cOld\u201d Books:"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

So one of the downsides of our irritating Consumer Culture is that we\u2019re programmed to be always looking for the next New Thing\u2014be 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 \u201cvoraciously\u201d (though I don\u2019t eat the pages) I\u2019m often less-than-impressed with the results: I read 24 books in the last year and would count maybe 4-5 as \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cexcellent,\u201d with the other 20 being so-so or disappointing. (Case in point:\u00a0Andrew Ross Sorkin\u2019s\u00a01929<\/em>\u00a0(2025). It\u2019s okay and interesting, but that\u2019s about it.) After finishing a recent read\u2014Simon Winchester\u2019s\u00a0The Breath of the Gods<\/em>\u2014I 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\u2019s novel\u00a0The Lake<\/em>, originally published 1954. (American first edition published 1974, 52 years ago!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s nothing less than an eerie, exquisite masterpiece. First novel I\u2019d read in several months. There\u2019s a timeless weirdness to it. And a bit of synchronicity: At times it feels like a reimagined\u00a0Lolita<\/em>\u00a0(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\u2019m 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\u2019s what the best books do.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So one of the downsides of our irritating Consumer Culture is that we\u2019re programmed to be always looking for the next New Thing\u2014be it car, refrigerator, book, movie, or significant other. It can lead to a niggling feeling that our … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[223,7,224,222,34,225,38,220,221],"tags":[227,55,85,95,226,193],"class_list":["post-2684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-andrew-ross-sorkins-1929","category-books","category-consumer-culture","category-simon-winchesters-the-breath-of-the-gods","category-vladimir-nabokov","category-vladimir-nabokovs-lolita","category-writing","category-yasunari-kawabata","category-yasunari-kawabatas-the-lake","tag-andrew-ross-sorkins-1929","tag-book-reviewing","tag-fiction-writing","tag-good-fiction","tag-simon-winchesters-the-breath-of-the-gods","tag-vladimir-nabokovs-lolita"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2684"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2686,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2684\/revisions\/2686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/williamjcobb.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}