The Bridegroom Was a Dog

#317
The Bridegroom Was a Dog
Author: Yoko Tawada
Translator: Margaret Mitsutani
Year: 1998/2003
Publisher: Kodansha International
165 pages

I enjoy postmodern fiction, but thought this triptych did not quite work. The eponymous first story begins with great promise and is suitably odd. It supports the themes, woven through all three pieces, of insider versus outsider, ignoring versus permitting oneself to think about unconventional behaviors, and human strangeness versus cultural prescriptions. However, it does not work as a story--despite the dreamlike nature of the narrative, it does not really even follow discernible dream logic. The second piece, "Missing Heels," reads like an early writing workshop piece in that it tries too hard to bring together unrelated symbols (squid, ears) in a story that would have held its own brilliantly with the omission of those elements. I'd have found the piece both odd and poignant without these intrusions; with them, I was impatient. The final story, "The Gotthard Railway," again almost works and gets closer to the emotional tone I think the author is aiming for, but again it is undone by unnecessary random elements.

If I were teaching fiction writing these days, I would assign my students to rewrite these stories so that they worked. They are close enough to that goal to tease, but far enough away to irritate.

Great cover, though.