Stories
Book Choice for Sept. 2021: Convenience Store Woman by S. Murata.
There is something so poisonous about self-help. Maybe I’ve over-indulged in it lately, thinking that it is easier to put into my tired brain than fiction is…but I am paying the price in self-doubt (which weighs quite heavy on the shoulders). Basically, I thought I would read some items of the self-help/improvement genre in order to hear things that I already know, but to really hammer them home and convince myself I should make the effort. But what did I really gain from reading, and re-reading that book Rest this year? I suppose I acknowledged the workings of my subconscious mind in a blog post, which were things I hadn’t really told anyone before, but otherwise? My takeaway was that I should exercise? There are probably many more lyrical books extolling the benefits of what will always be for me, psyching myself up for taking head-clearing walks and stretching. This might be all I can do, or imagine doing at the present.
(I am having regrets: I think I might have “gained more” on a spiritual level if I had put the same amount of effort into reading Alex’s Pang’s other book [which really sounds like the popularization of a PhD thesis : “Empire and the Sun, Victorian Solar Eclipse Expeditions]; definitely not as saleable as Rest but seemingly 1,000 times more soulful).
There are two things: I have realized that self-help books just make (anxious?) people feel more that they aren’t doing enough and will never integrate enough ‘right practices’ into their lives. Self-help books really flesh-out levels of perfection that you will never reach, but now, in possession of ALL the details about what a truly community-minded nature-worshipping triathalon surfer would do, you can only see what you don’t do (and will probably never do). Are self-help books just physical embodiments of the Fantasy Self (which is a super helpful concept by the way); should they rather be called self-flagellation books?
(I know that some of this is a product of my current mindset. I’m stressed ok!?)
So, trying to bring the ranting down a notch, I will just say that writing this out has made me more aware of what I do need. And those are stories. I need escapism. It’s not a bad thing, now. I have read a quote from a scientist wherein he states proudly that he gave up reading novels while he was doing his PhD, and only read non-fiction science related books. He thinks that helped his work. Maybe it did. I feel like it might have made Jack also a dull boy, but who am I to judge, I am doing the exact same thing. I’ve cut out all the juice, the verve, except for The Moor’s Tale, which was a book that kind of snuck in by surprise this year and I still managed to turn it into something rather didactic. It’s also not a very juicy book. Ugh. Oh my god—
I need what they call women’s literature.
I need feelings, experiences, at the end of the world. Because it feels like we are there.
And there, gentle readers, you have it. The story of how I ended my year.
I read Convenience Store Woman by S. Murata, it’s a tiny book, only 3 hours long on audible, and I heard it in tiny chunks, because that is all I could take in. I have discovered that I am terrible at listening to fiction. I have discussed this problem with my cousin who clearly is an auditory learner, and who drives 2 hours a day for work, she told me that after she discovered audiobooks she has never looked back and “could read a book a week” this way. Wow. I can barely follow a fictional story auditorily from sentence to sentence, but I am a very fast reader of physical books (not a popular thing to voice, many people who read a lot and whom you expect to be fast often say they are slow readers, but I can go very fast, and retain it; it’s my superpower). My cousin and I have decided that people are either one way or the other (and that maaaaaybe geniuses can be both).
Well, I loved Convenience Store Woman. I had a lot of thoughts while reading it, not least because I had heard its narrator described as an “everywoman”; but really, she is not. She has some mild form of a not-able-to-understand-social-cues disorder (I am sure I ought to rephrase that), its not JUST that she is skeptical of society’s norms to the point where she cannot follow them. She cannot follow them, first of all, and this is used to show how silly, and how learned, many of our norms are. But a lot of things are phrased as if she can’t understand why she should do this or that. And that is fine, I am not saying she is deficient in any way, it’s one of those cases where her simple style of life might seem cleverer than a lot of what we put ourselves through trying to be “normal” and reach a satisfactory “lifestyle.”
I really, really enjoyed it, even the creepy male character who was a parody of a parody and never stopped spouting the same garbage. Of course he was hollow and the epitome of lazy, empty writing—his ideas are lazy and empty and, if you are a woman and you haven’t been outright told by some lazy thinker that your expiry date is near, then you can disregard him and say its bad representation of men in the book or something. But of course, if you are a woman, someone has told you the exact same type of nonsense as he comes out with before, overtly, to your face.
The main interesting thing about this book for me was that the narrator finds a place for herself in a capitalist hellscape that is so dystopian that this book could have never been part of my 10th grade reading. I don’t know why, but at the height of peace and prosperity in Canada circa 1999 all 16 year olds were subjected to a curriculum of EXCLUSIVELY dystopian novels. Oh my god, let’s see if I can remember: The Handmaid’s Tale, 1984, Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, possibly Slaughterhouse Five, possibly Brave New World (but I don’t think anyone concentrated on that one because it’s a bit boring) there were others, I think one about the nuclear bomb…My group concentrated on 1984, I remember dressing up as the main girl in blue overalls with a red scarf around my waist—the things you remember ehhhh. Anyway, I believe this course of learning was to make us “critical thinkers” (and to make sure we never got interested in Communism). It was pretty dramatic however, end of the world stuff, war; the things that would naturally capture the attention of 16 year olds living in one of the most stable places on earth.
The point I am trying to make, however, is that they are never going to teach Convenience Store Woman (even though there isn’t a whiff of sex in it). Not only because I am sure that, after the 9/11 shock, and a general dumbing-down and upping of the feel-good quality of education, they don’t teach a whole year of dystopias anymore (because this would be too scary in a time that is much more informed about the calamities happening around the world daily and global warming), but also because CSW is too bleak. It’s not about dramatically resisting the dystopia as individuals whose spirits cannot be beaten. It’s about learning to function in the dystopia, and the sickest thing is that you cheer for the narrator when she finds her way to a place in the dystopia that makes her content. You are like, “Go Girl, You Work How You Want In This Dystopia! Live On Your Own Terms!” (in this dystopia).
She didn’t need to subjugate her hopes and dreams (we were big on hopes and dreams in the 90s) to the will of the Convenience Store. She never had any.
And the reader hopes, that they could ever be so happy. Today.