Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Barry Yourgrau @ Kinokuniya


Tonight I had the chance to see Barry Yourgrau, author of the dreamlike short story collections A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane and Wearing Dad's Head, speak at the Kinokuniya bookstore in Bryant Park. Kinokuniya is a Japanese interest shop with thousands and thousands of imported DVDs, CDs, Manga, English and Japanese books, Japanese language magazines, and a nice little cafe and tea bar. So you might ask yourself why was the South African-born, NYC dwelling Yourgrau speaking here?

Well, for the last few years, Yourgrau has been writing what the Japanese call keitai novels. These are essentially short, short stories, flash fiction if you will, that are read on cellphones. Combine your iPhone with the new Amazon reader-thingy, and you know, much cooler Japanese technology and you should get the idea. Yourgrau explained that in Japan the youth culture accesses their internet almost exclusively through their cellphones. In Japan, most teenagers don't have their own bedrooms, or their own personal computers, so cellphones are their key to the web. During a visit to Tokyo, Yourgrau noticed this trend and came up with a new pitch for his publishers; because he was already known for writing short pieces, and because his books did reasonably well in Japan, he decided to write short stories specifically for the Japanese cellphone market. Little did he know this was already a burgeoning trend.

Yourgrau's particular keitai is rare in that it was written in English, only to be translated and sold in Japanese. The original keitai are not yet available in English, however several revised stories have been released as a part of a series of children's books. Yourgrau's particular blend of dark comedy and surrealism works hand in hand with the themes his translator suggested would be popular in Japan, shame and humiliation. Yourgrau spoke about the unusual process writing for a foreign audience demanded, and how he tried to stay connected by following Japanese trends online. He wrote things such as manga, the subway, and Japanese society's fixation on all things "cute." What resulted are 70+ wonderful, episodic, and easy to digest pieces. In a story about "trendy" teenage depression (a real phenomenon), a boy's parents become so sick of their son's laziness and failure that they begin to imagine a different life for him. By the time the boy gets into real trouble, his parents have forgotten that their imaginary son is just that, and the real one is locked away in his room. Yourgrau's twisted little tales are always easy to read, but infinitely more enjoyable when the author has the chance to read them to you. He reads with the delivery of a delightful, hammish actor, and his voice inflections bring the keitai to a new level. I hope that the next incarnation for the English language edition will be a Yourgrau-read podcast.

Check out Barry's blog, Brain Flakes. And if you haven't already, read A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane (Note the Ad Rock quote on the cover...And yes, that is the reason I bought this book back in 2000.)

See you in a week or two with some new book reviews....hopefully.

3 comments:

Robert A Vollrath said...

Nice blog. I'll try to get back here sometime.

Nafe said...

I just read the entry. I later went to look at Ad Rock's quote. I thought it was going to be something like, "I Can't Stop Y'All, a Tick Tock Y'All And If You Think That You're Slick You'll Catch A Brick Y'All!"

keep up the great work!

.sam. said...

This cover art looks so familiar to me. This book may have been reviewed in Details or something I read several months ago.

Thanks for sharing this experience, for taking yourself to this place to be entertained and enlightened and feel new. That's why you're in New York.