Gen'ichirō Takahashi

There are books you love and books that you hate and after a lifetime of avid reading I know a book that I hate in very short order: books I love are a different kettle of fish - usually. Usually, a book that I love will come on me over an initial reading and prompt me to read it again, and it is at that point that I may fall in love. Sometimes that second read confirms what I suspected, sometimes not, but it is a rare book that makes me fall in love within a few pages, or, exceptionally, even a single page. Some of the great book loves of my life have been very slow growers. Not so this one: just a paragraph in and I was head over heels.

So what is it that makes me love a book? You may as well ask me what makes me love certain women: it is beyond exhaustive analysis. The language. The style. The construction. A sense of humour. Looks. Shape. All of these and then there has to be something else, some je ne sais quoi. Some magic chemistry between it and me. I love this book and will always love it. It joins my small list of books I will never lend to anyone.

I have heard this text called experimental and futuristic and post modern and dystopia and consigned to a whole plethora of other genres and sub-genres but it does not fit any. Imagine a text wherein ancient Greek poets and playwrights discourse amongst themselves and with a teacher of poetry, a modern day Japanese teacher of poetry who teaches tiny gangsters and delinquent children. And then imagine that one of the ancient Greeks, Virgil no less, metamorphoses into a refrigerator and visits the poet and you have surely identified the genre that we are operating within - good old surrealism - one of my favourites. That the poet’s name, as given by his girlfriend, and in this world one’s lover names one, is Sayonara, Gangsters only confirms that fact.

That this was Takahashi's first novel is simply stunning - think Confederacy of Dunces, think Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - just stunning. Written beautifully and with a confidence of touch that is rare even in one so talented Sayonara, Gangsters beguiles and intrigues from the opening paragraph. From there on the journey becomes more engrossing and involving with each new scene until finally you are rationing yourself in the false hope that if you go slowly enough you will never have to finish the text.

That this came to me in translation is amazing. My admiration for Michael Emmerich is up there with my admiration for Gilbert Adair’s work in translating Perec’s A Void. I genuinely have no idea how this is done. It is a magical act of creativity and empathy.… (más)