DISCOVERIES

DOCTOR GLAS

By Hjalmar Soderberg,

Translated from the Swedish

by Paul Britten Austin

Anchor Books: 150 pp., $12 paper

Some readers complain that the fiction of the last few dec-ades has been lacking in meaning and morality. The ques-tion of whether important litera-ture should offer us a mirror or a roadmap for our lives depends on both the author and the times. Some people think they have useful advice to pass along. Others are more comfortable writing what they know. (I used to think this was gender related--men wrote road maps, women wrote mirrors--but there are too many exceptions to make a rule.) In fiction however, with rare exceptions, the novels with the greatest shelf-life (generations of shelf-life) force us to ask moral questions and usually provide the answers (upside-down, in the back, like crossword puzzles).

“Doctor Glas,” first published in 1905, was Swedish author Hjalmar Soderberg’s most popular novel. It is written in the form of a journal (but this device disappears into the story almost immediately), written by a small-town doctor in his 30s. In the journal, Doctor Glas works through several moral dilemmas: Questions of euthanasia, suicide, abortion and finally, murder, enter into his internal debates. At the heart of these questions is the value of life; what makes one life more valuable than another? “What I set down on these pages isn’t a confession,” he insists. “What a profession! How can it have come about that, out of all possible trades, I should have chosen the one which suits me least? A doctor must be one of two things: either a philanthropist, or else avid for honours. True, I once thought I was both.”

Dr. Glas values prestige and reputation and clear-headedness. He despises sloppy sentiment. He has never been in love. He prizes beauty above all things, though he has never had a relationship with a woman. He is a fan of the knight in shining armor, true love, over what he sees in real life: love in all its baser forms. For a doctor, he is not very physical, has a quick distaste for sex and reproduction: “Why must the life of our species be preserved and our longing stilled by means of an organ we use several times a day as a drain for impurities?” he asks himself.

Life presents him with a cause, a chance to act on his philosophies and he takes it. The victim is an ugly vicar who imposes his affections on his own beautiful wife, who has appealed to Dr. Glas for help. “Look at your world from your own point of view, not from some point in space,” he advises the reader. Written in a world before the two world wars, the novel has an icy wind in it, a sense of weeding the world so that only the strongest and loveliest can live. Soderberg offers both a moral and a roadmap. These days, that’s a fairly distasteful combination.

*

GOODBYE TSUGUMI

By Banana Yoshimoto

Translated from the Japanese

by Michael Emmerich

Grove: 186 pp., $22

I’ve read Banana Yoshimoto over the years, I must confess, for purely cultural reasons. I have hoped that her fiction could teach me something about the younger generation in Japan, where she is overwhelmingly popular, and about Japanese society in general. In the end, I think it is probably Yoshimoto I learn the most about. Her style is firmly planted in her own consciousness; resolutely unique. It is a colloquial style, usually written in an unabashed first person that moves so slowly through the world, training the reader to speak the childlike language of her main characters, that it is impossible not to become acutely aware of the power of perception over reality.

In “Goodbye Tsugumi,” Maria Shirahawa is a young woman from a seaside town in rural Japan. Her closest friend in the world is Tsugumi, the beautiful but terminally ill daughter of the local inn owners. Both Maria and her mother work in the inn until they move to Tokyo, where Maria will go to college and her mother will join Maria’s father, who has been commuting between the city and the seaside for many years.

Every so often, Maria exclaims that the world seems slightly out of whack, and it is as though Yoshimoto has shaken the snow globe that houses the novel to create a temporary storm. “Every so often I’ll have one of those really bizarre nights. Nights when space itself seems to have shifted a little out of line, and I feel I’m on the verge of seeing everything all at once.” In fact, underneath the novel’s calm exterior (it is really an agonizing slowness) is a kind of hysteria that keeps one reading.

Something’s got to give. Yoshimoto’s great talent lies in keeping this tension alive for an entire novel. A reader forgets that nothing ever actually happened, and is happily ready to pick up the next one, none the wiser. Yoshimoto doesn’t pretend to give her readers advice about the world other than, perhaps: Watch out, because things can get really weird out there.