Word: samurais
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Open Helen DeWitt's debut novel, The Last Samurai, to a random page, and you may think you've stumbled upon some sort of guide to the Tower of Babel. There are bits of Greek and Japanese and Inuit. And, more than once, like weird typographical errors, a list of stops on the London Underground. This is babble with a purpose, though, which is all revealed in the fullness of a very satisfying--not to mention rapturously received--novel about a single mother and her genius...
...ordinary and acceptable in fiction. She knows she risks trying her readers' patience. But, she says, "I had this proselytizing zeal." If she'd had her way with her editor, her book would have been even more multilayered; for instance, she wanted to include photo stills from The Seven Samurai, the Akira Kurosawa film that is integral to her story. "There was also originally something about counting in Arabic," she says, and bursts into peals of laughter. "I feel I exercised such restraint...
...same applies to Tag Tournament. Each of the 30-odd characters has its own martial arts style based on reality, with some admittedly outrageous tweaks. This means you can create everyone's fantasy martial arts movie by staging battles pitting endless combinations of combatants: Sumo vs. (Space) Samurai, Thai Boxing vs. Tae Kwon Do, Kangaroo vs. Bear...
...clouded with suspicion. By September, when he said he would step down the following July, Peruvians were glad to see him getting ready to go. When he planned a private trip to Japan and then decided to stay, Peruvians were surprised that the man who boasted of his "samurai spirit" had given...
Strip away the layers of erudition--not that one would want to--and an elegant structure remains: a book about a boy and his mom; about the search for a father; about trying to find one's way in the world. The Last Samurai is an original work of brilliance about, in part, the limits of brilliance. And in literature as in life, DeWitt understands that what we like most of all is a good yarn...