(That may be an additional appeal of the gym: in a precarious world, a weight lifter looks exactly like what she is.) This is abundantly illustrated in "An Exotic Marriage," a novella about a woman, San, who begins to fear that her husband's identity is blending with her own. From The Lonesome Bodybuilder. In the collections longest and scariest story, An Exotic Marriage, Motoya, through her narrator, lands a flurry of punches against the oppressive domesticity of marriage. Yukiko Motoya is a writer, playwright, and stage director. As if to prove it, I could hardly recall the men Id been with before. Strangely, too, the men Id been with had all wanted me to grow in them. But something else is at work, too: throughout the collection, and especially in stories like Typhoon, Straw Husband, and The Dogs. Maybe thats why its so easy being with you. At first, The Lonesome Bodybuilder appears most interested in chills and moods; I needed time for its feminism and its political threads to catch the light. Youre talking about him a lot lately., Thats exactly what I told Uwano. . Certainly the style will remind readers of the Japanese authors Banana Yoshimoto and Sayaka Murata, but the stories themselvesand the logic, or lack thereof, within their sentencesare reminiscent, at least to this reader, of Joy Williams and Rivka . 'These arresting, hyper-real stories linger in the imagination . When something akin to freedom is gained, its often vague or ostensible, but the impediments to that freedom are surveyed in great detail. I sat down on the couch and looked at the iPad screen. . Published in English by Soft Skull Press. You should be careful, her neighbor tells her. . Soft Skull Press. He has received fellowships from the Edward Albee Foundation and the Ucross Foundation. I think?. Thats the image I have of marriagethat both me and the other person, as we are now, will disappear before we can do anything about it. April 2021 Micro-Reviews, Amanda Auerbach He pulled the strip of squid from his mouth, and said, Itsbecause youre a housewife, San. Motoya is restless among the halls of convention; she appreciates the classic elements of short stories, but is eager to deface them with a brightly colored Sharpie. What are you doing on there? I peered over his shoulder. The husband-like thingpicked up the cocktail stick and popped a pear segment into themouth, which was positioned perilously close to his jawline. Motoya also discerns the way the pursuit of freedom can be corrupted into cruelty or madness. You cant understand how men dont want to have to think about things when we get home., What is it you want to avoid thinking about that badly?. But it would have been suspicious for me to say no. . Like that actress from the movies., How did he split up with a person like that and end up marrying you?. By the first few sentences, you know you're hearing the voice of a remarkable writer; by the end of [the story] "An Exotic Marriage", you're certain that Yukiko Motoya's shivery, murmuring voice will never completely leave you' Financial Times 'Delightful . Uwano recommended this game, my husband said at last. Margaryta Golovchenko. and other data for a number of reasons, such as keeping FT Sites reliable and secure, For the first time in months, his hand crept into my bed, undermy comforter. If the reader has trouble picturing this, there is a cartoon diagram to assist. Husbands and Wives Magically Morph in a Japanese Story Collection, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/21/books/review/lonesome-bodybuilder-yukiko-motoya.html. My mission is to stay as free and unfettered as possible. Yukiko Motoya so commented on her career and creative process during an interview for Granta. I waited for something else to happen, but that was it. Asa Yoneda. The executive who holds her tongue at the meeting also sees, or dreams that she sees, faces in inanimate objects; she suffers from a condition called pareidolia, in which the mind perceives illusory patterns in random stimuli. Men and women enter into romances with shape-shifters. Youd just gotten braces, and you said the metal hurt and you couldnt eat anything. Motoyas characters tend to be housewives and service workers, and her tales revolve around intimate or faux-intimate relationships. In a brilliant analogy, she compares marriage to a snake ball: There are two snakes, and they each start cannibalizing the other ones tail. I have the feeling I would have met a version of myself I dont know now? Every time I noticed myself acting as though that was who Id been all along, a chill went up my spine, she confesses. Left to their own devices, these characters may have been content with the status quo, but the universe Motoya builds taunts them with their secret motivations until theyre forced to confront them publicly. I saw it on the local news the other day. By the first few sentences of The Lonesome Bodybuilder, you know you're hearing the voice of a remarkable writer; by the end of "An Exotic Marriage," you're certain that Yukiko Motoya's shivery, murmuring voice will never completely leave you." --Financial Times "Motoya [has a] gift for making the ordinary magical." --Jane Ciabattari, BBC Culture How had I ended up married to a completely different species of being from me? San wonders to herself, before her features begin to mutate too. One of the collections most active narrators is the curmudgeonly craftswoman at the center of The Dogs, the penultimate story. A woman trains as a bodybuilder, adding massive ropes of muscle to her back and shoulders, tripling the width of her neckand her husband doesnt notice. At the story's beginning, he seems like a . But after four years, I hadnttried to escape from the soil that was my husband. Motoyas protagonists feel quietly radical in a literary moment that seems particularly interested in unpacking various forms of narcissism. "The Lonesome Bodybuilder", trans. On Deluge by Leila Chatti, Anne Graue Other extraordinary examples from the collection: A girlfriend challenges her boyfriend to a duel and turns into a miniskirt-wearing siren; a husband made of straw harps on his wife to take better care of their BMW. offers FT membership to read for free. The question of why she reassembles him looms large, and implies a sort of complicity in misery, an experience common among Motoyas characters. "You should be careful," her . This is a game where you collect money?. Maybe partly because of the TV feature, the late-afternoon deli counters were thronged with people. So, for example, the husband in 'The Straw Husband', in a relationship otherwise most like any other, is really made of straw ("yes, that straw, stalks of dried rice or wheat, plant matter used as fodder for farm animals, or for bedding -- tied into bundles and rolled into a human shape"), while the narrator of 'The Dogs' describes how: "I didn't like beds, so I slept standing up, leaning against the windowsill" (apparently every night). Her husband, who bears the brunt of these jabs, deserves it all (and more). Motoya wins over her audience by pushing the absurd to extremes. Histeeth must have been in their right place, because they made achamping sound as he chewed. Arent you worried? Each of these titles represents an energizing alternative to the ripped-apart illogic of our contemporary reality. The story seems to hint at the deficiencies that can mark amorous partnerships. Her books have been published or are forthcoming in French, Norwegian, Spanish, and Chinese, . These two stories stand out from the others, which, at times, are held back by traces of redundancy or ideas that are almost excessively legible. They operate, she writes, with a cripplingly limited understanding of what successful story structure is and is not, and what ought to feel satisfying. Their understandingsand ours, though we may try to resistare the products of cultural constructs, not natural laws. Okay, I heard a muffled voice say. I finished towel-dryingmy hair and stepped out onto the balcony to bring in the laundryId hung out that afternoon. I wasexpecting some cutting-edge visual effects, but what I saw wasan image representing what looked like oceans and continents,drawn in simple lines like in old Nintendo games. After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. We used to sing this song all the time. If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for $69 per month. Motoya won the Akutagawa Prize, Japan's most prestigious literary prize, for AN EXOTIC MARRIAGE, the novella contained in THE LONESOME BODYBUILDER; this book offers the exciting opportunity to introduce Motoya to a U.S. audience. $16.95. The course of that career certainly indicates a restless curiosity. Hakone hummed and said nothing. By now, I was like the ghost of a snakethat had already been eaten up by many other snakes, and Id lostmy own body long before getting swallowed up by my husband. Their changing forms force San and her husband to confront the half-truths their marriage is founded on. In 'Typhoon' people take flight with their umbrellas in a great storm -- so many that eventually the narrator finds: "as I scanned the sky, I spotted loads of tiny human figures floating among the dark clouds". The writing itself is to be admired. Characters change . . (He will no doubt be prepared to be swung as hard as it takes to protect your honor.) The husbands are oppressively thoughtless, moody, domineering. Motoya is restless among the halls of convention; she appreciates the classic elements of short stories, but is eager to deface them with a brightly colored . All the while, it seems her husband cant be bothered to noticeshe is an afterthought only, and he appears to be too bored of life to be able to sense the swirling wonder of her story. Bodybuilder is the best example, and in An Exotic Marriage, a familiar notion of couples starting to look alike turns eerie. Some Googling I did found out that this was actually published as a novella . [9] She was nominated a third time for her 2011 novel Nurui doku (Warm Poison), about a woman who has a relationship with a pathological liar claiming to be a former high school classmate. The climate crisis demands a form of literary expression that lifts it out of the realm of intellectual knowing and lodges it deep in readers bodies. In The Straw Husband, the narrators husband is just that, straw, but his composition is less concerning than his inordinate devotion to his car. 2023 Cond Nast. Lingerie? Back to the gym she goes. Remember?. Arent you going to have any? the husband-like thing said. The stories are funny and creepy; they have a campfire vibe, a brush of the moonless night. For instance, in Fitting Room, a boutique employee, faced with a customer who wont leave the changing room, remembers that the fitting rooms were moveable, on wheels. Motoya wastes no time: the employee wheels the fitting room and customer out of the shop. The collection's longest story, "An Exotic Marriage," centers on a woman who notices that her husband's eyes and mouth are sliding around on his face. Hakone quenched her thirst with cold roasted green tea from the vending machine. You don't always know what you're getting into when you pick up a book. "Why I Can No Longer Look at a Picnic Blanket Without Laughing", trans. Asa Yoneda. Our Final Words: A Review of Eternal Sentences by Michael McGriff, Katherine M. Hedeen On The Water Statues by Fleur Jaeggy, Peter Campion Q&A, which is presented as the deathbed ravings of a beauty columnist, is a meta delirium of tips, callbacks to previous stories, and rage. (I want you to come out of that fitting room with a smile on your face! the attendant chirps, noting the slurping, roiling kind of sound emanating from behind the curtain.) But she doesnt want the menshe wants the muscles. Although the stories are often funny, theyre not sarcastic or ironic, and Motoyas not really kidding. We use What if thereends up being more of the bad? Exploring the struggle against alienation isnt new ground to tread in literature. Excitement becomes execution. When I sat down next to him, the husband-like thing pickedup the TV remote and started flipping through channels. Motoya sets a scene involving several hundred couples engaged in a melee defying all imagining by inventorying the screams, the clash of weapons, men begging for their lives from lovers who seemed beyond language, belated confessions of love The story concludes in a tragedy, but its later reversed by a single line in a different story. From Apocalypse to Apocalypso: On An Ecotopian Lexicon, Ryan Lackey You can have two slices of my steak if you give me some ofyour eel.. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Poems That Linger: Peter Campions One Summer Evening at the Falls, Johannes Gransson Tortured partnerships are a favorite target for the award-winning Japanese novelist and playwright, whose work has been published in English in literary magazines such as Granta, Tender, and Catapult. Yukiko Motoya was born in Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan in 1979. . To Motoya, complacency is not only a violation of selfhood but also of fiction. The Lonesome Bodybuilder (published as Picnic in the Storm in the UK ) collects eleven stories -- though one, the Akutagawa Prize-winning novella, 'An Exotic Marriage', is considerably longer than the rest, taking up more than a third of the book by itself. His face was barely maintaining a form that could even berecognized as human. By Yukiko Motoya. Do you think hes still getting them? So, for example, in the (US-)title story the narrator is inspired to take up bodybuilding, sculpting her body through intense exercise, after catching a boxing match her husband was watching on TV. The collection is more hits than misses, but a few stories, like Paprika Jiro and Typhoon, skew too quirky and become trivial, though theyre buoyant with fancy. The answers to questions like that, for example. Sign up for our mailing list to get the latest updates on happenings at Maudlin House, and product discounts! He seemed not to realize that anything was amiss, and simplylooked at me with his terrifyingly wide-set eyes, and said, Are they all gone?. Motoya wards off fatigue by peppering this buffet of patriarchal cruelty with humorsurprising enough and sharp enough to elicit as many belly laughs as grimaces while reading. The collections longest story, An Exotic Marriage, is more of a novella, and explores physical transformation as a metaphor for the shifting of identities in a relationship. Her coach's admiration for bodybuilders suggests the reason she was drawn to it, even if she wasn't initially aware of it: 2019-2021 the complete review Facial features intermittently disassemble, prompting Sans panic. When I served him the peeled pear segments on a plate, thehusband-like creature excitedly reached for a cocktail stick. Even as The Lonesome Bodybuilder approaches its conclusion, new and winding pathways unfurl. Coins.. I was folding laundry on the living room floor. The other stories are trim and propulsive, itching to move forward, using their surreal elements to interrogate assumptions about intimacy and the complacency of partnership. Her stories are about relationships between men and womenseemingly familiar territory, but made strange by the intrusion of surreal elements. My body was startingto coil, and I tried to stop thinking by closing my eyes even more tightly. [20] Writing for The New York Times, Weike Wang praised Motoya's stories, noting that Motoya "wins over her audience by pushing the absurd to extremes". New Worlds Forever Measured by the Old: On Burning Province by Michael Prior, Katherine M. Hedeen [3][4] She founded her own theater company, called Gekidan Motoyo Yukiko (Motoya Yukiko Theater Company), in 2000, and began writing and staging her own plays. And in The Dogs, the protagonist gains a sort of freedom, but this sunders threads both social and psychic; something ambiguously terrible rises in their place. The wife tries her best to boost his ego, fails, then decides to take up bodybuilding. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. Characters change; literally, their facial features move, morph, disappear. Any changes made can be done at any time and will become effective at the end of the trial period, allowing you to retain full access for 4 weeks, even if you downgrade or cancel. At their very heart, however, are everyday struggles that are not only typical in contemporary Japanese society, but identifiable around the world" -. Simply log into Settings & Account and select "Cancel" on the right-hand side. On Stardust Media by Christina Pugh, Jehanne Dubrow I shivered, then looked up and saw there was an AC ventembedded in the ceiling right above my head. Japanese novelist, playwright, and theatre director, "Yukiko Motoya takes a satirical look at the 'Super No-Flat', "Yusho Takiguchi, Yukiko Motoya share Akutagawa Prize while Bumpei Aoyama wins Naoki Prize", " ", "From violence to vulnerability, Yukiko Motaya enchants with 'The Lonesome Bodybuilder', "Yukiko Motoya's Surreal World of Alienated Characters", "Husbands and Wives Magically Morph in a Japanese Story Collection", "The Lonesome Bodybuilder: Stories by Yukiko Motoya tales of the unexpected", "Presenter Interview: The Playwright's Center of Minneapolis", "53rd Kishida Kunio Drama Award goes to Ryuta Horai and Yukiko Motoya in a double awarding", "Why I Can No Longer Look at a Picnic Blanket Without Laughing", "The Reason I Carry Biscuits to Offer to Young Boys", "Alexandra Kleeman recommends "The Lonesome Bodybuilder" by Yukiko Motoya", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yukiko_Motoya&oldid=1122580502, Short description is different from Wikidata, Pages using embedded infobox templates with the title parameter, Articles containing Japanese-language text, Articles with Japanese-language sources (ja), Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, 2006 10th Tsuruya Nanboku Drama Award, Best Play category. The ride can be anxious but never dull. In the novella-length "An Exotic Marriage," San is concerned about her husband's increasing lassitude about work, and her perception that his facial . As a leashed man miserably admits, just before being yanked to mortal combat, This is all because of the desires of men like us. Such a desire, for a more exciting lover, has exciting effects: the women demand duels, then take their husbands and boyfriends down by the river to kill them. He is villainous without even the dignity of intention. The mass movement of a migrating flock of . Yeah. My husband nodded while sucking on a strip of dried squid. The stories consider how it feels to take other people into account, to be forever calibrating your own words and actions in relation to those nearby. Motoya's stories tend to include a few odd details and features -- often contrasting with the seeming . Uwano again? I carefully took a piece of each and placedthem on top of Hakones rice. She becomes the bulge in the curtain, the shadow on the other side of the glassthe strange one. the Akutagawa Prize, for An Exotic Marriage in 2016. Maybe I dont really know, myself. [4] That same year she visited the United States as part of a Japan Foundation-sponsored exchange program for playwrights. My husband looked up from the iPad for the first time in awhile, and what I saw nearly made me shriek and run from theroom. Tomokos animosity toward her straw husband is as brief as it is startling. by Yukiko Motoya ; translated by . How She Learned to Love Herself in 2014; and Japan's most prestigious literary prize, the Akutagawa Prize, for An Exotic Marriage in 2016. She endures this at first but later partakes in it, finding herself pulled into her husbands orbithis daily consumption of variety shows and deep-fried food. [5] It became the title story of a 2003 collection published by Kodansha. 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Complacency is not only a violation of selfhood but also of fiction features begin to mutate too ] same... The struggle against alienation isnt new ground to tread in literature of our contemporary reality over audience! Tea from the movies., How did he split up with a person like that end. & Account and select `` Cancel '' on the couch and looked at the iPad screen he no... Brush of the glassthe strange one story seems to hint at the deficiencies that can amorous. Pear segment into themouth, which was positioned perilously close to his jawline more tightly eyes even more tightly Collection... A novella of cultural constructs, not natural laws, not natural laws being you! Alternative to the ripped-apart illogic of our contemporary reality year she visited the United States as part a. The center of the glassthe strange one conclusion, new and winding pathways unfurl even berecognized as human eat.... Housewives and service workers, and stage director careful, her neighbor tells her Collection https... & quot ; you should be careful, her neighbor tells her protagonists feel quietly radical in literary.