Dear readers,
“Never judge a book by its contents,” quipped a wag in a porkpie hat as we both regarded the cover of an aging paperback guide to vitamins, for sale on a Broadway sidewalk. I smiled politely; I found the remark asinine; I resolved to work it into conversation as soon as possible.
The following two finds are books I picked up on the basis of their flap copy — and might not have otherwise. I debated writing about both of them.
—Sadie
“Forbidden Colors,” by Yukio Mishima
Fiction, 1951
“‘Forbidden Colors’ is a moving tale of frustrated love and revenge,” the flap tells readers. “Drawn to homosexuality after a loveless marriage, Yuichi is locked into the powerful grasp of an aging writer who uses him for revenge on the women who have wronged him. Yuichi’s own search for love takes him through the bleak, demoralized streets of postwar Japan, through parks of assignation, gay bars and parties, and into the lives of fallen aristocrats, black marketeers and male prostitutes.”
Before I encountered this 1980 jacket copy (which feels even older), my only knowledge of Mishima came via “Confessions of a Mask,” an undergraduate staging of “Madame de Sade” (the less said the better) and John Nathan’s enjoyable biography. As a result, I was more familiar with Mishima’s life — the turn to ultraright nationalism, the attempted coup and his ensuing death by seppuku — than with his art.
Mishima’s life was indeed baroque (his overprotective grandmother kept him from sunlight; to counteract her coddling, his father made him stand really close to moving trains; he was named “Mr. Dandy” by a men’s magazine). His writing reflects this quality. “Forbidden Colors” is strange and at times florid. The characters’ open misogyny and the author’s fixation with class and tradition jarred liberal readers when the book was translated into English in 1968; others didn’t care for Mishima’s typically frank treatment of sexuality. “A cold, repellent book,” this paper said. Apparently it wasn’t his wife’s favorite, either.
A reader can be forgiven for making deductions. The character Kawada, we are told, is a successful businessman, “and the good fortune he hoped for was to look with contempt at life.” What’s more, “the reason that he was an adherent of the Conservative Party lay in protecting the things that should have been his enemies: the established order and the family system based on heterosexual love.”
I won’t tell you the ending, but perhaps you can guess.
Read if you like: Yasunari Kawabata (he beat out Mishima for the Nobel); “Mishima: A Biography,” by John Nathan; the 1985 Paul Schrader film “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” (score by Philip Glass).
Available from: Any well-stocked library or bookstore — it’s in print.
“Temples of Convenience,” by Lucinda Lambton
Nonfiction, 1978
The jacket copy for this one promises that “all manner of conveniences are included — in addition to the great varieties of lavatory there are urinals, chamber pots and pot cupboards, bourdaloues and commodes. Extraordinary wash basins and baths are also shown.”
Lambton, a photographer, traveled all over Britain to bring us this visual history of the lavatory. (And, yes, a few bathtubs.) Here are treasures from the Roman latrine to the Tudor garderobe to the Victorian water closet to the elegant “compactum.” There’s James II’s red velvet “thunder box.” And who could forget “the Pan,” described by the author as “a repulsive and unsatisfactory arrangement that was to be alternately praised … and abhorred” by 18th-century sanitarians? The urinals — see the particularly majestic Deco “Radio” Adamsez iteration in the gentleman’s cloakroom of the old Derry and Toms building, Kensington — elevate the form to art even before Duchamp. Don’t get me started on the commodes.
There are many things to be said here, about essential humanity united in the basic functions. And you may come away persuaded, as I did, that “The Closet of the Century,” a “finely shaped water closet with a syphonic discharge mechanism,” fully deserved its gold medal at the Manchester Health Exhibition of 1894. My life is richer for the knowledge.
Read if you like: “Clean and Decent: The Fascinating History of the Bathroom and the Water-Closet,” by Lawrence Wright; any of the vintage tub accounts of Instagram; Victoria Magazine.
Available from: NOT the library at the Fashion Institute of Technology, because I have their discard copy.
Why don’t you …
Disgust yourself? Staying on theme, I recommend “The Anatomy of Disgust,” by William Ian Miller, in which the author argues that the emotion of disgust helps us impose a sense of order. Read his introduction here.
Spend time with a frenemy? Lately, I’ve been unable to stop reading a 1973 book called “The Care and Feeding of Friends,” by the actress and writer Ilka Chase. The author’s full commitment to not being likable is almost inspiring. I’m not just talking about the name-dropping, the references to “one’s Staple, the live-in maid” or serving plain sliced turnips (“refreshing and slimming”) to your guests. Take this random aside on doctors’ wives: “When they are nice women they can be very special indeed but one gets the impression that some doctors pluck their helpmeets from broomsticks as they swish by in the darkness.”
Dig it? Nothing repulsive here, just something I enjoy. “Beatnik Buenos Aires,” by Diego Arandojo, is a graphic novel about, yes, bohemians in 1960s Argentina. It’s a moody and evocative tribute that even the non-graphic-novel-lover will appreciate.
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