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LUCIEN LETTERS
Dear Lucien,
Somebody gave me a copy of 'Across the Nightingale Floor' by Lian Hearn, the first book in the 'Tales of the Otori' trilogy. While ordinarily I wouldn't be that interested to read an epic about shogunate Japan written by a Westerner, I took exception to this one. It's definitely not as brief and stirring as Yasunari Kawabata's works, nor as abstruse as Yukio Mishima's, but trust me, this one has it's charm...
And yes, it's about the ultimate anti-hero, Lord Otori Shigeru.*smiling*
Not that I'm going to give the plot away. *laughing* I don't intend to write you a synopsis. Just try and square away a copy at WH Smiths or Borders. It'll certainly be diverting enough while passing the hours on a train.
I often wondered why I seem to have a greater affinity for 'anti-hero' types rather than dashing Galahads. The perfect hero strikes me as wooden. Having too much 'character' that he ends up being too difficult to relate to. Anti-heroes have a past they're not proud of, secrets they'd rather keep buried, but are nonetheless willing to atone for them. They will almost never reach salvation, but they spend the rest of their lives seeking it nonetheless. Writers make it seem almost imperative that anti-heroes should succumb to death when they're just on the verge of redeeming their lives. Of course, death is supposed to be their redemption. It isn't that surprising that I prefer Tolkien's Boromir to his Aragorn, Bernieres' Mandras to his Captain Corelli, Ayn Rand's Gail Wynand to her Howard Roark....
And it's not because I have a Messianic complex either, as I'm sure you're about to say. Maybe I'm just more comfortable with imperfection than I am with perfection? Typical human rationalizing, I suppose.
Fide.
Angel Fidelis
Posted by Angel Fidelis at October 15, 2002 08:02 PM