Truth and illusion I

O - e’s late trilogy comprising Changeling, The Boy with a Melancholy Face

and Farewell to My Books! deals with the universal issues of truth and illusion and the propensity for evil that is inherent in human nature. Although these three novels are late works, O

- e’s fecundity has not deserted him. In

total they amount to 1,336 pages, and their structure and style bear O - e’s

standard hallmarks of density, complexity and repetition supported by a mass of references and interpolations pasted into the narrative. The main intent of the trilogy lies in the core themes that O

- e persistently returns to,

and my discussion will therefore centre on these themes. The trilogy as a whole is entitled ‘Okashi na futarigumi’ su-do kappuru

(sanbusaku) (‘Pseudo-Couples’ Trilogy, 2006) and is representative of one of O

- e’s chief narrative techniques where couples as protagonists complement

each other.1 In these three novels, Cho-ko-Kogito, a novelist, is the narrator, whereas a different secondary character features in each one.2 Kogito is O - e’s persona and central protagonist. He is the linking point to the themes

presented. The term ‘pseudo-couples’ has been acknowledged twice in the texts by

O - e as coming from Fredric Jameson’s review of Somersault dated 20

November 2003 and, earlier still, from Beckett’s The Unnamable.3 Definition of this term is elusive unless discussed in a specific text or context. In Japanese, O

- e has entitled the trilogy Okashi na futarigumi (Strange Couples). The

term okashi na has a wide range of meaning – for example, strange, funny, queer, suspicious, eccentric or grotesque – but does not have the meaning of ‘pseudo’ as fake, false or insincere which it has in English. So ‘Okashi na futarigumi’ is not identical with ‘Pseudo-Couples’; there is a subtle but significant difference. This difference in interpretation may well lie in the difficulties that always exist in translating from one language into another, and we must bear in mind that it is O

- e who is translating from English into

Japanese. The prime reference is in English. In what sense should ‘pseudo’ be understood when attached to ‘couples’? We think of couples as definite relationships – friends, husband and wife, sisters and brothers – yet these

relationships are transitory, being bound by time or circumstance, and limited in the sense that everyone is isolated in their own consciousness. Jameson has defined pseudo-couples in the following way: ‘The multiple

permutations of this relationship end up revealing it as that sad and comic dramatic structure Beckett called the pseudo-couple, a vaudevillesque situation of neurotic dependency in which two differentially maimed and underdeveloped couples provisionally complete each other.’ 4

In these three late novels, the couples by no means fit this definition, which, it must be said, were written by Jameson in relation to O

- e’s earlier

works. In Changeling, Kogito is a famous novelist, and Goro-, his lifelong friend, is equally famous as a film director. The novel shows clearly that they are not ‘underdeveloped subjectivities provisionally completing each other’.5

Neither is psychologically dependent on the other. In The Boy with a Melancholy Face, Kogito’s chief relationship, if it can be said to be that, is with Don Quixote, in the sense that Kogito’s quixotic behaviour and the events that befall him evoke the ghost of his illustrious fictional predecessor. Parallels with Cervantes’ Don Quixote occur and are discussed at regular intervals throughout the narrative, but no second character is presented with such substance as to form ‘a couple’ with Kogito. In Farewell to My Books!, Kogito and his friend Shige are, indeed, a fake couple, in the sense that Shige is secretive, treacherous and manipulative towards his friend. But, while Shige is psychologically dependent on maintaining the friendship, Kogito, on the other hand, does not need Shige nor does their love-hate friendship ‘provisionally complete’ them. The upshot is that the couples in these late novels do not have the same ‘pseudo’ characteristics that Jameson identified in O