Dany Laferrière

I am a Japanese Writer
by Dany Laferrière
Douglas & MacIntyre, 2010
Translated by David Homel

Not my first post about Laferrière, but this is the first book I've read by this Haitian-born Montrealler in probably a decade.

On the one hand, the conceit is apparent from the cover. The writer is not Japanese; we are going to encounter in these pages play with or about identity.

Imagine for a moment the title: I am a Canadian Writer. Would it carry the same disquiet? Laferrière is, after all, a Canadian writer.

How about, I am a Quebecois Writer?

From the second to last page:

I certainly don't believe in the peasant, who is often racist, nor in popular culture, which is always reactionary (Mishima is the perfect example of the writer falling into the trap of "pure" identity). But Basho -- Basho amuses me.

An exchange from earlier in the book:

"There is no book -- that's what I've been explaining to everyone."

"That doesn't matter. They're completely obsessed with identity, I'm telling you."

"I don't give a shit about identity."

"So you say, but then you write a book with a title like that. What does it mean?"

"It means I did it to get away from the whole business, to show that borders have disappeared. I was tired of cultural nationalism. Who says I can't be a Japanese writer? No one."

The plot, such as it is, is of a writer (first person) who is writing a book called I am a Japanese Writer. He is a Haitan-born Montrealer. He is living in rented digs in the same district where Laferrière set his first book How to Make Love to a Negro (Without Getting Tired), over two decades ago. There is no book, as the narrator explains above, but there is a book. You are reading it. You have it in your hands.

But let's get back inside its pages. There is no book. There is the narrator trying to explain to everyone that there is no book. The publisher has paid an advance, but there is no book. The Japanese consulate has helped to manufacture a cultural sensation in Tokyo about a black man from Montreal writing a book called I am a Japanese Writer. The narrator likes to read Basho. The only subject he writes about, he says, is himself. But there is no book. Only a writer playing complicated, deceptive games.

Ah, Laferrière. It's nice to be back inside your pages. You are sly and always welcome.

Various reviews of the book on the D&M website.

I like this summation best, from the Telegraph Journal (October 16, 2010):

“[I am a Japanese Writer] is all about place and identity, names and nationality and the paradoxical relationship between rigid lines of nationalism and the fluidity of the individual. Episodic and picaresque, it is a humorous look at identity and nationality, writing and the mind of a writer...This is a deceptively painless read, when really it's a complex, multi-faceted look at race, identity, art and culture.”


http://thenewcanlit.blogspot.com/