The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto by Pico Iyer

Pico Iyer chooses his words carefully. He has access to the same English language words we have, but he strings them as pearls creating sophisticated, elegant prose. Owing to his cosmopolitan background, he has a collection of jewels to enhance that pearl-string: words from other languages and accessible jargon from aesthetics and art make his writing as clear as recently Windexed glass. Even his name is elegant and unique. No extra vowels or consonants. No extra syllables.

Along with his high-brow cosmopolitan brilliance though, Iyer reveals himself as a hardcore Bruce Springsteen fan in this book. I felt that needed to be said.

The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto is an exquisite memoir from Iyer's visit to Kyoto, Osaka, and Nagasaki. In Kyoto he befriended a local woman who taught him about Japanese culture and made him aware of Easter, Japanese, and local perspectives and cultures. It's a remarkable and unexpected friendship. Iyer created the setting masterfully:a mysterious Japanese Zen Buddhism world of kimonos, tea ceremonies, monasteries, and the moon. With his descriptive language he introduces the reader to characters he encounters. There are laugh-out-loud moments, and sad, poignant experiences.

The original "The Lady and the Monk" is a folk tale that Iyer tells his Japanese friend in one of those poignant moments. The tale comes back at least twice as a kind of veiled trope. On the surface, this is a masterful piece of literature, but I felt throughout that I was somehow supposed to be reading between the lines for even deeper meaning. I was inspired to read a little about Iyer's life, and this small bit of knowledge gained two-thirds through the book enhanced my enjoyment of it. I wish I could read the book again for the very first time so that I could re-enter that curious world again as a gaijin (foreigner).

The Great Railway Bazaar

Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar. Mariner, 1975.

“Speed puts some people to sleep; others it makes breathless. It doesn’t enliven conversation. I missed the slower trains with the lounge cars and the rackety wheels.” (p. 291)

Paul Theroux wrote those lines on the Hikari Super Express to Kyoto, Japan, towards the end of his four months on the rails in Europe and Asia. At this point, the reader is beginning to notice that

Theroux is travel-weary. Four months is a long time to be on a train, and that he had to arrange each leg of the journey as he arrived at each new destination have made the trip an adventure. He chats with people on the train, at the stations, and in the places he visits. The variety of people and places is truly a ‘bazaar,’ (a Railway bazaar), and this reader feels as if she’s simultaneously taken the trip with Theroux and time-traveled 40 years back in time. The journey is described in detail in The Great Railway Bazaar from 1975.

The quote above caught my eye and caused me to reflect on some train trips I’ve taken. Madrid to Granada, Spain: similar to Theroux’s descriptions in that the changing views out the window (weather, local clothing, city vs. country) contrast the train’s interior situations (characters, conversations, behavior, ambient light). My exterior view changed from urban to rural (with windmills and olive trees), and the scruffy interior of the train was populated by an assortment of travelers. There was a movie to entertain us (Theroux didn’t have movies!), and a dining car from which my companion brought me a surprisingly delicious ham sandwich. Most of Theroux’s rides were more colorful and exotic than this, but my experience helped me understand him. Towards the end of his adventure when he had become weary, he described the Japanese Super Express which blasted through dull suburbs populated by silent passengers. This train reminded me of the German bullet train on which I traveled from Cologne to Berlin, Germany, also through blah suburbs with travelers and commuters wrapped-up in their own work or reading. It was cool to speed through the country on such a fast train, but the ride did not supply much in the way of travel adventure. The Spain train had character.

In Spain, the train approaches the plain.

Theroux had ample time to come up with astute observations during his four-month trek. I copied six pages of interesting sentences that might be quotable in future train-themed essays. He’s quotable even when he gets cranky on the Trans-Siberian Express and has to walk through below-freezing temperatures in-between cars in order to get to the dining car three cars away. He has bad dreams and feels guilty about leaving his family so long: “Once I had thought of a train window as allowing me freedom to gape at the world; now it seemed and imprisoning thing and at times took on the opacity of a cell wall,” (p. 323).

On the last page he reveals what he has learned from the trip: “…the difference between travel writing and fiction is the difference between recording what the eye sees and discovering what the imagination knows,” (p. 342). I thought that sentence was particularly interesting because Theroux writes both travel and fiction, and I wonder how he thinks differently when creating each.

I would not have been disappointed by his ending if he had left it at that, but the crafty Theroux then worked in the book’s first sentence as its last, about how he “seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it.” That’s true for me, too, and I would add that I have never heard a train song and not wished I was on it (with the possible exception of the Grateful Dead’s).