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Silence Once Begun
From the celebrated author of The Curfew, Jesse Ball’s Silence Once Begun is an astonishing novel of unjust conviction, lost love, and a journalist’s obsession.
Over the course of several months, eight people vanish from their homes in the same Japanese town, a single playing card found on each door. Known as the “Narito Disappearances,� the crime has authorities baffled—until a confession appears on the police’s doorstep, signed by Oda Sotatsu, a thread salesman. Sotatsu is arrested, jailed, and interrogated—but he refuses to speak. Even as his parents, brother, and sister come to visit him, even as his execution looms, and even as a young woman named Jito Joo enters his cell, he maintains his vow of silence. Our narrator, a journalist named Jesse Ball, is grappling with mysteries of his own when he becomes fascinated by the case. Why did Sotatsu confess? Why won’t he speak? Who is Jito Joo? As Ball interviews Sotatsu’s family, friends, and jailers, he uncovers a complex story of heartbreak, deceit, honor, and chance.
Wildly inventive and emotionally powerful, Silence Once Begun is a devastating portrayal of a justice system compromised, and evidence that Jesse Ball is a voraciously gifted novelist working at the height of his powers.
Over the course of several months, eight people vanish from their homes in the same Japanese town, a single playing card found on each door. Known as the “Narito Disappearances,� the crime has authorities baffled—until a confession appears on the police’s doorstep, signed by Oda Sotatsu, a thread salesman. Sotatsu is arrested, jailed, and interrogated—but he refuses to speak. Even as his parents, brother, and sister come to visit him, even as his execution looms, and even as a young woman named Jito Joo enters his cell, he maintains his vow of silence. Our narrator, a journalist named Jesse Ball, is grappling with mysteries of his own when he becomes fascinated by the case. Why did Sotatsu confess? Why won’t he speak? Who is Jito Joo? As Ball interviews Sotatsu’s family, friends, and jailers, he uncovers a complex story of heartbreak, deceit, honor, and chance.
Wildly inventive and emotionally powerful, Silence Once Begun is a devastating portrayal of a justice system compromised, and evidence that Jesse Ball is a voraciously gifted novelist working at the height of his powers.
232 pages, Hardcover
First published January 28, 2014
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4,814 people want to read
About the author
Jesse Ball
32books884followersJesse Ball (1978-) Born in New York. The author of fourteen books, most recently, the novel How To Set a Fire and Why. His prizewinning works of absurdity have been published to acclaim in many parts of the world and translated into more than a dozen languages. The recipient of the Paris Review's Plimpton Prize, as well as fellowships from the NEA, the Heinz foundation, and others, he is on the faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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December 7, 2013
I can honestly say I have never quite read anything like Silence Once Begun. It’s disturbing, lyrical, original, provocative, and experimental in the best of ways. Yet it stands on the shoulders of giants that came before it: Sartre comes to mind, as does Camus.
The premise is instantly (pardon the pun) arresting. A thread salesman named Oda Sotatsu signs a confession for a crime that has baffled the Japanese authorities � eight older individuals disappear without a trace in what becomes known as the Narito Disappearances. Yet once jailed, he utters barely a word�.even though we, the readers, know he is not guilty from the first pages.
A man who refers to himself as the Interviewer � named Jesse Ball � meets with Sotatsu’s parents, brother and sister, jailers, and a woman perceived as a love interest. Written in the conceit of notes drawn from interviews via tape-device, the story takes on an immediacy and fascination � particularly as we realize that the character Jesse Ball is in search of existential answers in his own life.
“One can’t say how one behaved or why, really. Such situations, they are far more complex than any either/or proposition. It is simplistic to produce events in pairs and lean them against each other like cards.� And so it is here. Each person whom Jesse Ball encounters provides a credible part of the puzzle, yet each urges him not to trust anyone else. From one character: “You have to be very careful whom you trust. Everyone has a version, and most of them are wrong.� Who is telling the truth and who is lying � and in the grand scheme of things, does it even matter? As Sotatsu’s brother says about their father: “He said I had a liar’s respect for the truth, which is too much respect.�
The author Jesse Ball (through the character of Jesse Ball) raises the most elemental and universal issues. Among them: it is impossible to see things while we’re still searching; we can only find things by seeing what is there. Reason alone is not the answer; we go to absurd lengths to prove ourselves reasonable.
Interwoven with fables and poetic language (it is no surprise that Jesse Ball has published several works of verse), this story is also grounded strongly in reality. For literary readers, this book is sheer genius and has put Jesse Ball firmly on my radar for his past and future books.
The premise is instantly (pardon the pun) arresting. A thread salesman named Oda Sotatsu signs a confession for a crime that has baffled the Japanese authorities � eight older individuals disappear without a trace in what becomes known as the Narito Disappearances. Yet once jailed, he utters barely a word�.even though we, the readers, know he is not guilty from the first pages.
A man who refers to himself as the Interviewer � named Jesse Ball � meets with Sotatsu’s parents, brother and sister, jailers, and a woman perceived as a love interest. Written in the conceit of notes drawn from interviews via tape-device, the story takes on an immediacy and fascination � particularly as we realize that the character Jesse Ball is in search of existential answers in his own life.
“One can’t say how one behaved or why, really. Such situations, they are far more complex than any either/or proposition. It is simplistic to produce events in pairs and lean them against each other like cards.� And so it is here. Each person whom Jesse Ball encounters provides a credible part of the puzzle, yet each urges him not to trust anyone else. From one character: “You have to be very careful whom you trust. Everyone has a version, and most of them are wrong.� Who is telling the truth and who is lying � and in the grand scheme of things, does it even matter? As Sotatsu’s brother says about their father: “He said I had a liar’s respect for the truth, which is too much respect.�
The author Jesse Ball (through the character of Jesse Ball) raises the most elemental and universal issues. Among them: it is impossible to see things while we’re still searching; we can only find things by seeing what is there. Reason alone is not the answer; we go to absurd lengths to prove ourselves reasonable.
Interwoven with fables and poetic language (it is no surprise that Jesse Ball has published several works of verse), this story is also grounded strongly in reality. For literary readers, this book is sheer genius and has put Jesse Ball firmly on my radar for his past and future books.
September 19, 2019
There was no sound, none at all. There was no possibility of sound. I felt in it the silence that had come over my wife - that very silence which seemed to me then to have ruined my happiness, and which began the long journey that had let me here to Japan to investigate the matter of Oda Sotatsu. I felt it too in his silence.
My 5th Jesse Ball novel, and perhaps my favourite alongside A Cure for Suicide. My conclusion from that novel would stand for this: Another great book from Ball and very distinct from his other works I have read while ultimately forming a coherent ouevre and Ball is emerging as one of several very different but worthy heirs to the greatest writer of the 2nd half of the 20th century, Thomas Bernhard.
Although this is perhaps his least Bernhardian novel instead owing an acknowledged debt to several Japanese authors, a Sebaldian series of photos in the middle of the narrative perhaps more inspired by (). From an interview with the author:
A person signs, or is tricked into signing a confession to an infamous series of abductions, and suspected murders, which they didn’t actually commit: a confession that proves to be so accurate, including admitting to abductions previously unreported to the authorities, that the confession alone is immediately seen as proving their guilt.
Why would they sign such a document? And, when the situation became clear, why would they not point the police towards the person who gave them the confession to sign, someone who must either be or know the true killer, and instead remain silent? A silence, once begun, that they maintains through their trial, one almost certain to end in a capital sentence if convicted, consenting only to deliver a rather obtuse plea, as reported in a widely syndicated newspaper account of the trial:
He does not know about the facts of the indictment, yet he holds to the confession that he signed, as he signed it.
It is a mystery the book doesn't resolve - a blind-spot novel in the terms of javier Cercas - largely as the only person who can tell us is now dead, hanged for the crime he didn't commit. But in interviews, discussions and letters with and from his family, jailers, reporters and those who inveigled him to do what he did, we learn much about the subjectivity and unreliability of memory.
But at its heart this is a novel with a political message - against the tyranny of consensus and the injustice of relying on confessions.
It is at the heart of our human enterprise, that is to say, at the heart of society, to allow consensus a power it ought not to have.
It is primarily through a judgement that favors efficiency over truth that confessions are deemed viable.
4.5 stars - a book and an author that I highly recommend.
My 5th Jesse Ball novel, and perhaps my favourite alongside A Cure for Suicide. My conclusion from that novel would stand for this: Another great book from Ball and very distinct from his other works I have read while ultimately forming a coherent ouevre and Ball is emerging as one of several very different but worthy heirs to the greatest writer of the 2nd half of the 20th century, Thomas Bernhard.
Although this is perhaps his least Bernhardian novel instead owing an acknowledged debt to several Japanese authors, a Sebaldian series of photos in the middle of the narrative perhaps more inspired by (). From an interview with the author:
I don’t really think Silence Once Begun takes place in Japan so much as it takes place in this imaginary Japan, the one I’ve found in those novels—in Shusaku Endo’s books or Kobo Abe’sAt the time of writing the novel Ball gave classes in lucid dreaming and lying, which perhaps speaks to the implied mixture of fact and fiction, and lack of resolution in this work, although Ball argues the opposite in another interview around this novel
I try to be clear and honest. If one is clear and honest, and only that, mystery leads on to further mystery, bleakness to further bleakness, occasionally mitigated with slight pulses of joy or satisfaction. The world is not necessarily miserable, but it surely will be. We have only the light of our little candles. I could not untangle all the riddles and remain honest. The world is in actuality tangled & tangled, tangled, tangled.At the heart of Silence Once Begun is a mystery that the author (fictional? but also called Ball) investigates.
A person signs, or is tricked into signing a confession to an infamous series of abductions, and suspected murders, which they didn’t actually commit: a confession that proves to be so accurate, including admitting to abductions previously unreported to the authorities, that the confession alone is immediately seen as proving their guilt.
Why would they sign such a document? And, when the situation became clear, why would they not point the police towards the person who gave them the confession to sign, someone who must either be or know the true killer, and instead remain silent? A silence, once begun, that they maintains through their trial, one almost certain to end in a capital sentence if convicted, consenting only to deliver a rather obtuse plea, as reported in a widely syndicated newspaper account of the trial:
He does not know about the facts of the indictment, yet he holds to the confession that he signed, as he signed it.
It is a mystery the book doesn't resolve - a blind-spot novel in the terms of javier Cercas - largely as the only person who can tell us is now dead, hanged for the crime he didn't commit. But in interviews, discussions and letters with and from his family, jailers, reporters and those who inveigled him to do what he did, we learn much about the subjectivity and unreliability of memory.
But at its heart this is a novel with a political message - against the tyranny of consensus and the injustice of relying on confessions.
It is at the heart of our human enterprise, that is to say, at the heart of society, to allow consensus a power it ought not to have.
It is primarily through a judgement that favors efficiency over truth that confessions are deemed viable.
4.5 stars - a book and an author that I highly recommend.
February 20, 2015
Did you like Serial? Did you wish it was written by Haruki Murakami? Then this is the book for you.
It’s a straightforward journalistic accounting of a made-up strange missing persons case/trial in Japan � and Ball pulls off the actually-very-difficult trick of making all of this seem real and dare-I-say ‘flat�, as though it was proper journalism instead of fiction. As such, the piece is short and fast and might leave you feeling a little “oh, is that all?� by the end � but if you take it for what it is, you’ll enjoy it.
More at RB:
It’s a straightforward journalistic accounting of a made-up strange missing persons case/trial in Japan � and Ball pulls off the actually-very-difficult trick of making all of this seem real and dare-I-say ‘flat�, as though it was proper journalism instead of fiction. As such, the piece is short and fast and might leave you feeling a little “oh, is that all?� by the end � but if you take it for what it is, you’ll enjoy it.
More at RB:
March 22, 2016
Jesse Ball's Silence Once Begun is a stylish tribute to post-war Japanese literature - the book is dedicated to Kōbō Abe and Shūsaku Endō - which is both well-written and engaging, but ultimately fails victim to its own tricks.
The author introduces his book as "a work of fiction partially based on fact", which is narrated in the first person by a character also named Jesse Ball. Ball describes how he has led a happy and fulfilled life which ended suddenly and unexpectedly, when his partner simply stopped talking to him. He does not understand why - she simply fell silent, as if she had nothing more to say to him. His life was finished, but to begin anew he had to first understand what had happened; he travels to find another situation like his, an incident where someone simply stopped speaking. This eventually leads him to Japan and a man named Oda Sotatsu, and the Narito Disappearances.
Beginning in June 1977, eight people - roughly two per month - disappeared from small villages near the city of Sakai in Osaka Prefecture. All have been between 50 and 70 years of age, and lived alone. There were no signs of struggle at the scene, and no witnesses; no fingerprints were found. All that connected the disappeared was a single playing card stuck to the doors of their homes. At the time, Oda Sotatsu was 29 years old and worked as a thread salesman in his uncle's company; a quiet man, who lived alone and kept to himself. Yet Sotatsu fell in with a man named Sato Kakuzo and a girl named Jito Joo, with whom he wagered: whoever would lose a card game would sign a confession, which the winner would then deliver to the police. Sotatu loses the game and signs the document, which turns out to be admission to responsibility for the disappearances in the Narito region. Sotatsu is jailed, but falls silent and refuses to speak during interrogation or at the trial, even to his family; he does not appeal the sentence and is executed for a crime which he did not commit.
Why did Sotatsu sign the confession? Why did he not speak to defend himself and explain the situation in face of certain death? The narrator attempts to understand Sotatsu and his story by conducting extensive interviews with those who knew Sotatsu, including his family and the police, and his search for Jito Joo and Sato Kakuzo. The book is a record of these conversations, largely transcribed from tape, but some recollected from the narrator's memory - complete with notes, photos and other sources.
His task is not easy, as people whom he interviews have conflicting views and memories of Sotatsu: his brother, Jiro, is sympathetic and his brother's most staunch supporter, while Sotatsu's father takes his confession for truth and expels him from the family. They not only openly contradict one another, but warn to not trust the other side; their testimonies are also removed further away from the reader, as the tapes were often faulty or tampered with, or the interviewees would not speak on record and the narrator had to resort to memories of the conversation; sometimes he had no access to a person or a recording at all, and had to depend on a edited transcript. The result is compelling - in classic 鲹ōDz fashion the reader has to pick the truths from the lies along with the narrator, a task which might not prove entirely possible.
I've read the entire first half of the book in one sitting, yet as I progressed it slowly started to lose the strong grip it initially had on me. The first is the gradual loss of mystery surrounding Sotatsu - we know from the beginning that he is innocent of the crime he is ultimately executed for, which drastically lowers the suspense - I think it would be much better if Sotatsu's involvement in the disappearances remained unclear. Sotatu's second mystery - silence - is also similarly lost, as he does speak a few times, breaking the spell. With these two elements gone all we have left to focus is the ultimate question - why did Sotatsu sign the confession, and why did he not defend himself against the charges? Why did he allow himself to be executed for a crime he did not commit?
This question is answered, though not to my satisfaction - in fact, this is the only part of the book which would benefit from being more ambiguous. But Jesse Ball created an explanation and reasoning for the whole book, which I think might be its biggest downfall. I discuss it in the spoiler section below:
Silence Once Begun is an exercise in concepts - it's full of them, some more interesting than others. It doesn't have much more than that - it's a little over 200 page long, with most pages consisting of transcription with lots of empty white space, and several photographs towards the end. This is not to say that novels which began as an exercise in a concept are bad - I've read somewhere that Agatha Christie wrote because she wanted to see if the can pull of the central idea, and it's one of the best mysteries of the 20th century. But Christie has an actual, compelling story behind her concept, which Silence Once Begun doesn't; ultimately there is little which would make me remember it in years to come, except as an interesting collection of literary devices contained in a single volume, almost as if it was written solely to present them. It's a good read - but could have been so much more than that.
The author introduces his book as "a work of fiction partially based on fact", which is narrated in the first person by a character also named Jesse Ball. Ball describes how he has led a happy and fulfilled life which ended suddenly and unexpectedly, when his partner simply stopped talking to him. He does not understand why - she simply fell silent, as if she had nothing more to say to him. His life was finished, but to begin anew he had to first understand what had happened; he travels to find another situation like his, an incident where someone simply stopped speaking. This eventually leads him to Japan and a man named Oda Sotatsu, and the Narito Disappearances.
Beginning in June 1977, eight people - roughly two per month - disappeared from small villages near the city of Sakai in Osaka Prefecture. All have been between 50 and 70 years of age, and lived alone. There were no signs of struggle at the scene, and no witnesses; no fingerprints were found. All that connected the disappeared was a single playing card stuck to the doors of their homes. At the time, Oda Sotatsu was 29 years old and worked as a thread salesman in his uncle's company; a quiet man, who lived alone and kept to himself. Yet Sotatsu fell in with a man named Sato Kakuzo and a girl named Jito Joo, with whom he wagered: whoever would lose a card game would sign a confession, which the winner would then deliver to the police. Sotatu loses the game and signs the document, which turns out to be admission to responsibility for the disappearances in the Narito region. Sotatsu is jailed, but falls silent and refuses to speak during interrogation or at the trial, even to his family; he does not appeal the sentence and is executed for a crime which he did not commit.
Why did Sotatsu sign the confession? Why did he not speak to defend himself and explain the situation in face of certain death? The narrator attempts to understand Sotatsu and his story by conducting extensive interviews with those who knew Sotatsu, including his family and the police, and his search for Jito Joo and Sato Kakuzo. The book is a record of these conversations, largely transcribed from tape, but some recollected from the narrator's memory - complete with notes, photos and other sources.
His task is not easy, as people whom he interviews have conflicting views and memories of Sotatsu: his brother, Jiro, is sympathetic and his brother's most staunch supporter, while Sotatsu's father takes his confession for truth and expels him from the family. They not only openly contradict one another, but warn to not trust the other side; their testimonies are also removed further away from the reader, as the tapes were often faulty or tampered with, or the interviewees would not speak on record and the narrator had to resort to memories of the conversation; sometimes he had no access to a person or a recording at all, and had to depend on a edited transcript. The result is compelling - in classic 鲹ōDz fashion the reader has to pick the truths from the lies along with the narrator, a task which might not prove entirely possible.
I've read the entire first half of the book in one sitting, yet as I progressed it slowly started to lose the strong grip it initially had on me. The first is the gradual loss of mystery surrounding Sotatsu - we know from the beginning that he is innocent of the crime he is ultimately executed for, which drastically lowers the suspense - I think it would be much better if Sotatsu's involvement in the disappearances remained unclear. Sotatu's second mystery - silence - is also similarly lost, as he does speak a few times, breaking the spell. With these two elements gone all we have left to focus is the ultimate question - why did Sotatsu sign the confession, and why did he not defend himself against the charges? Why did he allow himself to be executed for a crime he did not commit?
This question is answered, though not to my satisfaction - in fact, this is the only part of the book which would benefit from being more ambiguous. But Jesse Ball created an explanation and reasoning for the whole book, which I think might be its biggest downfall. I discuss it in the spoiler section below:
Silence Once Begun is an exercise in concepts - it's full of them, some more interesting than others. It doesn't have much more than that - it's a little over 200 page long, with most pages consisting of transcription with lots of empty white space, and several photographs towards the end. This is not to say that novels which began as an exercise in a concept are bad - I've read somewhere that Agatha Christie wrote because she wanted to see if the can pull of the central idea, and it's one of the best mysteries of the 20th century. But Christie has an actual, compelling story behind her concept, which Silence Once Begun doesn't; ultimately there is little which would make me remember it in years to come, except as an interesting collection of literary devices contained in a single volume, almost as if it was written solely to present them. It's a good read - but could have been so much more than that.
November 26, 2024
While this reminded me superficially of Kōbō Abe's novel The Ruined Map (and actually Ball dedicates the book in part to 'K. Abe'), it is a much different book than Abe's dark narratorial descent into interiority. I like how Ball has arranged the book; it makes it easy to put down and pick up without losing the thread, while maintaining narrative interest throughout. The one weakness for me was rooted in the statements toward the end by Sato Kakuzo, parts of which seemed rather farfetched. The book is clearly fiction but by making it seem at least partly true—a note at the beginning states 'the following work of fiction is partially based on fact'—it accentuates some of the more improbable later elements of the story, especially in contrast to what came before. Other than that, I thought it was a good novel that makes its points about society rather elegantly. (3.5, rounded up)
February 8, 2020
Could do better.
It is almost tempting to stop my review there � and (in keeping with the book) keep silent on my further thoughts.
The fourth Jesse Ball I have read in a week after having long been interested in his back catalogue (based on reading his two most recent novels: something that seems appropriate as Ball (who seems to enjoy creating a level of mystique around his writing process) claims to write his books in a matter of days having pondered and meditated on them for a period.
This is easily the weakest of his books I have read � and one which even though I read in a day completely bored me.
I just think the structure of the novel does not work � for a book around silence it simply says both far too much and far too little.
I found the repeated interviews, testimonies, letters etc. rather banal and of little interest � the Rashomon device was I thought predictable and clumsily handled (different family members have different recollections of their shared history and different perspectives on their relationships � who knew).
I have seen some reviews that seem to think simply calling a character the same name as the author (and possible with the same back story) adds a whole layer of post modernity/auto fiction � it really does not.
Ball’s normal books are set in a kind of parallel world (or worlds), and although Ball has talked a good story in interviews about how this is set in an imagined Japan, the only oddities in the text � e.g. the interviewer speaking to people who cannot speak the same language � came across more as errors than intriguing anomalies. Contrast that to say the parallel New York in “The Way Through Doors�.
And the absurdity of his earlier novels (“The Way Through Doors�, “Samedi the Deafness�) or the fable like worlds which define his more recent novels “The Divers Game�, “Census�, is very absent until the end section and even there replaced with a rather tedious re-statement of Situationist theory.
Has done better.
It is almost tempting to stop my review there � and (in keeping with the book) keep silent on my further thoughts.
The fourth Jesse Ball I have read in a week after having long been interested in his back catalogue (based on reading his two most recent novels: something that seems appropriate as Ball (who seems to enjoy creating a level of mystique around his writing process) claims to write his books in a matter of days having pondered and meditated on them for a period.
This is easily the weakest of his books I have read � and one which even though I read in a day completely bored me.
I just think the structure of the novel does not work � for a book around silence it simply says both far too much and far too little.
I found the repeated interviews, testimonies, letters etc. rather banal and of little interest � the Rashomon device was I thought predictable and clumsily handled (different family members have different recollections of their shared history and different perspectives on their relationships � who knew).
I have seen some reviews that seem to think simply calling a character the same name as the author (and possible with the same back story) adds a whole layer of post modernity/auto fiction � it really does not.
Ball’s normal books are set in a kind of parallel world (or worlds), and although Ball has talked a good story in interviews about how this is set in an imagined Japan, the only oddities in the text � e.g. the interviewer speaking to people who cannot speak the same language � came across more as errors than intriguing anomalies. Contrast that to say the parallel New York in “The Way Through Doors�.
And the absurdity of his earlier novels (“The Way Through Doors�, “Samedi the Deafness�) or the fable like worlds which define his more recent novels “The Divers Game�, “Census�, is very absent until the end section and even there replaced with a rather tedious re-statement of Situationist theory.
Has done better.
December 20, 2019
An intriguing short novel on the impact of a crime
is only at the surface a crime novel, wherein the culprit is a young man who remains silent about the crimes he committed according to a confession he signed. uses interviews, scraps of information, courtroom proceedings, photographs and interrogation transcripts to tell the story of the Narito disappearances and dragged me into the narrative effectively.
The writer of the confession, Oda Sotatsu, a man described as ”someone who seemed to be only what he did: a quiet rhythm of work and sleep� is visited by his family, who then tell recollections of these visits to the narrator. I liked how clearly the voices of the mother, brother, sister and father of the Onda family painted their characters, and how the interviews show the fickleness of memory, different for each person. Also the brutality of prison life is eluded to, with beatings and starvation framed as “a form of communication� by the wardens of Sotatsu and the isolation the Oda family falls into due to the trial of their eldest son. Important to know in the context of the book is that in the Japanese justice system (sometimes forced) confessions play a very important role and that there is a very, very high conviction rate in general.
In the end I found the story to become a bit vague and lyrical in the section of Joo, while the philosophical end from Kazuo’s point of view felt to easy. Yet I must say I am impressed by Jesse Ball his writing and look forward to reading more of his books.
3,5 stars rounded up.
is only at the surface a crime novel, wherein the culprit is a young man who remains silent about the crimes he committed according to a confession he signed. uses interviews, scraps of information, courtroom proceedings, photographs and interrogation transcripts to tell the story of the Narito disappearances and dragged me into the narrative effectively.
The writer of the confession, Oda Sotatsu, a man described as ”someone who seemed to be only what he did: a quiet rhythm of work and sleep� is visited by his family, who then tell recollections of these visits to the narrator. I liked how clearly the voices of the mother, brother, sister and father of the Onda family painted their characters, and how the interviews show the fickleness of memory, different for each person. Also the brutality of prison life is eluded to, with beatings and starvation framed as “a form of communication� by the wardens of Sotatsu and the isolation the Oda family falls into due to the trial of their eldest son. Important to know in the context of the book is that in the Japanese justice system (sometimes forced) confessions play a very important role and that there is a very, very high conviction rate in general.
In the end I found the story to become a bit vague and lyrical in the section of Joo, while the philosophical end from Kazuo’s point of view felt to easy. Yet I must say I am impressed by Jesse Ball his writing and look forward to reading more of his books.
3,5 stars rounded up.
June 8, 2014
This book wasn't exactly a case of style over substance, but it came dangerously close. The substance is a legal case of late 1970s Japan involving a man who offers a signed confession (and his complete silence) to a number of disappearances. The author as the interviewer follows the case through all those involved directly and indirectly with the suspect down to its inevitably tragic conclusion. The book is stylized as a series of interviews, along with photos and letters, and as such was a very quick read, although at times somewhat too metaphorical for my fairly linear brain. Or was it irony of it all more so than metaphor. The main thing that didn't work for me here was the explanation behind the confession, the logic of the mastermind seemed extremely flawed and as a result it fails to strike a chord with a reader just as it did in the story. The sacrifice to prove a point in so clumsy a manner just seems too idealistic, naïve, extremist, insane. The writing was very good and the plot and its construction showed originality (although it reminds me of something that I infuriatingly enough can't quite place), but as far as reading enjoyment goes, it didn't really sing for me.
January 30, 2019
I was moved by this writing. Each character has the chance to shape their narrative of the past in a way that is both meaningful and beautiful. The subject of this story isn't really the primary mystery of Sotatsu's silence, and it's not the Narito Disappearances, either; instead, this novel makes use of a framework of investigative journalism/police procedural as a way to explore what makes for a meaningful life.
As each character is given the opportunity to share his or her view of reality, what makes for "a meaningful life" is distilled in their testimony into the briefest of time periods. Life's meaning doesn't come from long years but rather from intensity and purposefulness and attention, of a kind that can be sustained only for a very brief time, after which each character lives for the memory of that time. Sotatsu's mother derives her meaning from very vivid and loving memories of her sons as young children. Jito Joo experiences or creates the memory of a perfect, fleeting love. Kakuzo creates what is for him the perfect expression of political protest--whatever else he does with his life is not important to him.
At the center of all these stories is Satsuo, whose silence and sacrifice also seem to give his life a sense of vivid perfection, of moments passing that are deeply significant, moment by moment. His death isn't meaningless so much as it is a rescue from a meaningless life. This idea of a meaningful death, or of death as a praiseworthy sacrifice, isn't uniquely Japanese (e.g. Achilles) but it feels very much a part of the mythology and of traditional Japanese values, and in this way I feel Jesse Ball was respectful of the culture where he chose to place his novel.
As each character is given the opportunity to share his or her view of reality, what makes for "a meaningful life" is distilled in their testimony into the briefest of time periods. Life's meaning doesn't come from long years but rather from intensity and purposefulness and attention, of a kind that can be sustained only for a very brief time, after which each character lives for the memory of that time. Sotatsu's mother derives her meaning from very vivid and loving memories of her sons as young children. Jito Joo experiences or creates the memory of a perfect, fleeting love. Kakuzo creates what is for him the perfect expression of political protest--whatever else he does with his life is not important to him.
At the center of all these stories is Satsuo, whose silence and sacrifice also seem to give his life a sense of vivid perfection, of moments passing that are deeply significant, moment by moment. His death isn't meaningless so much as it is a rescue from a meaningless life. This idea of a meaningful death, or of death as a praiseworthy sacrifice, isn't uniquely Japanese (e.g. Achilles) but it feels very much a part of the mythology and of traditional Japanese values, and in this way I feel Jesse Ball was respectful of the culture where he chose to place his novel.
February 8, 2020
In this novel, a journalist called Jesse Ball experiences difficulties in his marriage when his wife refuses to speak to him. He decides to investigate the case of Oda Sotatsu in Japan, a man who refused to speak when arrested and then put on trial.
Oda Sotatsu is unhappy with his life. When he meets Sato Kakuzo and Jito Joo in a bar, he is fairly easily persuaded into a wager which he loses and therefore has to sign a confession which is delivered to the police. That confession is to the Narrito Disappearances, a series of seeming abductions and potential murders that has been headline news.
Of course, Sotatsu is arrested. But he chooses not to speak. He continues to remain silent all through his trial.
The book largely takes the form of a series of interviews in which Ball, the journalist, talks to Sotatsu’s parents, sister and brother and, eventually, Kakuzo and Joo. Along the way, he also interviews a prison guard. All of these witnesses tell different stories and insist that theirs is the true version of events. In the end, we discover the motivation behind the original bet, but we are left with no explanation of Sotatsu’s silence.
Before launching into the novel, I found myself investigating the dedication. “For K. Abe and S. Endo�. This refers to two Japanese authors. Kobo Abe was a playwright, musician, photographer and inventor and is often compared to Franz Kafka for his surreal, often nightmarish explorations of individuals in society (source: Wikipedia). Shusaku Endo was a Japanese author best known for his novel “Silence� about a 17th century Jesuit missionary in Japan with a major theme being the silence of God.
It is certainly true that Sotatsu’s experience as an individual at the mercy of society has Kafkaesque qualities that leave the reader wondering why he doesn’t choose to speak out. Instead of speaking, he chooses a silence that, once begun, is maintained to its logical conclusion: if you confess to a crime and refuse to defend yourself, there is only one outcome. And the reader is left wondering about Sotatsu’s silence in the same way that Endo’s protagonist wonders why God refuses to speak (although Ball’s novel is far from religious).
In the end, we learn something of the motivation for the wager, hinted at by this cryptic quote that will make more sense when you read the book:
It is at the heart of our human enterprise, that is to say, at the heart of society, to allow consensus a power it ought not to have.
But we learn nothing about Sotatsu’s refusal to speak. Which is strangely satisfying.
I am working my way through Ball’s novels and he is rapidly becoming a new favourite. But this is not one of his most compelling books. It lacks the playfulness of his earlier works but also doesn’t have the maturity of his later works (which is where I started) with their almost dystopian worlds, or, at least, worlds in which something has shifted sideways to allow Ball to give us a “slantwise� view that only he seems to be able to do. But this is still a very interesting book to read.
3.5 stars rounded down.
Oda Sotatsu is unhappy with his life. When he meets Sato Kakuzo and Jito Joo in a bar, he is fairly easily persuaded into a wager which he loses and therefore has to sign a confession which is delivered to the police. That confession is to the Narrito Disappearances, a series of seeming abductions and potential murders that has been headline news.
Of course, Sotatsu is arrested. But he chooses not to speak. He continues to remain silent all through his trial.
The book largely takes the form of a series of interviews in which Ball, the journalist, talks to Sotatsu’s parents, sister and brother and, eventually, Kakuzo and Joo. Along the way, he also interviews a prison guard. All of these witnesses tell different stories and insist that theirs is the true version of events. In the end, we discover the motivation behind the original bet, but we are left with no explanation of Sotatsu’s silence.
Before launching into the novel, I found myself investigating the dedication. “For K. Abe and S. Endo�. This refers to two Japanese authors. Kobo Abe was a playwright, musician, photographer and inventor and is often compared to Franz Kafka for his surreal, often nightmarish explorations of individuals in society (source: Wikipedia). Shusaku Endo was a Japanese author best known for his novel “Silence� about a 17th century Jesuit missionary in Japan with a major theme being the silence of God.
It is certainly true that Sotatsu’s experience as an individual at the mercy of society has Kafkaesque qualities that leave the reader wondering why he doesn’t choose to speak out. Instead of speaking, he chooses a silence that, once begun, is maintained to its logical conclusion: if you confess to a crime and refuse to defend yourself, there is only one outcome. And the reader is left wondering about Sotatsu’s silence in the same way that Endo’s protagonist wonders why God refuses to speak (although Ball’s novel is far from religious).
In the end, we learn something of the motivation for the wager, hinted at by this cryptic quote that will make more sense when you read the book:
It is at the heart of our human enterprise, that is to say, at the heart of society, to allow consensus a power it ought not to have.
But we learn nothing about Sotatsu’s refusal to speak. Which is strangely satisfying.
I am working my way through Ball’s novels and he is rapidly becoming a new favourite. But this is not one of his most compelling books. It lacks the playfulness of his earlier works but also doesn’t have the maturity of his later works (which is where I started) with their almost dystopian worlds, or, at least, worlds in which something has shifted sideways to allow Ball to give us a “slantwise� view that only he seems to be able to do. But this is still a very interesting book to read.
3.5 stars rounded down.
October 9, 2017
omg....im so tired.
2:30 am review below...
This is a book that is simultaneously an "investigation" and a book of delusions ( like my mind right now)
Once again, Jesse Ball has made is near impossible to tell you what this book is about.
I guess you could say that this is a book that is a psychological study of how people lie. How lies are easily formed to the point where they can become truth to both the speaker and audience. The line between lie and truth is very small and easily mutable. A lie can become the truth. A truth becomes a lie. Within a truth there can be 1000 lies. You get the picture.
From the get go we are told that part of the story is based on fact and part on fiction and that right there is the giveaway. Since we are never told what's fact and what's not, the reader starts to question everything and everyone in an attempt to solve the "mystery". Characters tell you to not trust other characters. Their view points sometimes clash with others, often their views on what has happened is influenced by their emotional reaction to the person in question. It's an explosion of lies and even the narrator becomes doubtful to the reader.
So what can I tell you about this book? Nothing much. Just that Ball's opening line of how the story is both based on facts and fiction is completely true. It rings true in 2 aspects. The first being that Ball was going through some personal difficulties when he wrote this novel which he reflects in the journalist. The second being that while the facts of this particular case are near impossible to unfold, the information that gets revealed about the Japanese justice system is true.
The judicial system in Japan is heavily based on confession over evidence. Think about it. In fact, most cases in Japan are only taken in court if the prosecution is confident he/she will win the case. Takashi Takano, one of Japan's prominent defense attorney describes the job of a D.A to be one of the toughest in Japan. In 25 years of working, he has only exonerated 5 of his clients. This statistic is actually seen as very successful because of how hard it is to get the sentence of "guilty" off once it's been placed. (source"
Now think about the premise of this novel again. A man gets accused of a crime. During his trial, everyone just wants him to speak. He chooses silence.
I've talked about silence in previous reviews but in this one I make the claim that silence can be both damning and freeing. How? Well, you'd have to read the book!
I'm not sure if I'm getting my point across but Ball just makes it impossible for me to write a cohesive review. Only 2 authors in my life have been able to do that.
Oh well.
2:30 am review below...
This is a book that is simultaneously an "investigation" and a book of delusions (
Once again, Jesse Ball has made is near impossible to tell you what this book is about.
I guess you could say that this is a book that is a psychological study of how people lie. How lies are easily formed to the point where they can become truth to both the speaker and audience. The line between lie and truth is very small and easily mutable. A lie can become the truth. A truth becomes a lie. Within a truth there can be 1000 lies. You get the picture.
From the get go we are told that part of the story is based on fact and part on fiction and that right there is the giveaway. Since we are never told what's fact and what's not, the reader starts to question everything and everyone in an attempt to solve the "mystery". Characters tell you to not trust other characters. Their view points sometimes clash with others, often their views on what has happened is influenced by their emotional reaction to the person in question. It's an explosion of lies and even the narrator becomes doubtful to the reader.
So what can I tell you about this book? Nothing much. Just that Ball's opening line of how the story is both based on facts and fiction is completely true. It rings true in 2 aspects. The first being that Ball was going through some personal difficulties when he wrote this novel which he reflects in the journalist. The second being that while the facts of this particular case are near impossible to unfold, the information that gets revealed about the Japanese justice system is true.
The judicial system in Japan is heavily based on confession over evidence. Think about it. In fact, most cases in Japan are only taken in court if the prosecution is confident he/she will win the case. Takashi Takano, one of Japan's prominent defense attorney describes the job of a D.A to be one of the toughest in Japan. In 25 years of working, he has only exonerated 5 of his clients. This statistic is actually seen as very successful because of how hard it is to get the sentence of "guilty" off once it's been placed. (source"
Now think about the premise of this novel again. A man gets accused of a crime. During his trial, everyone just wants him to speak. He chooses silence.
I've talked about silence in previous reviews but in this one I make the claim that silence can be both damning and freeing. How? Well, you'd have to read the book!
I'm not sure if I'm getting my point across but Ball just makes it impossible for me to write a cohesive review. Only 2 authors in my life have been able to do that.
Oh well.
January 30, 2015
Way too cool for me. A lot of stylish tricks and metaphor and meta-meta-ness that left me rather cold. While there is some accomplished writing, the highfalutin philosophy seemed a bit too ostentatiously displayed, in a book has no real characters or setting but seems designed as a showcase for ideas and self-conscious artistry. I'm perfectly willing to accept that this just went over my head, and I did appreciate the shout outs to Kafka, who I haven't read since adolescence but did love, but this was not my cup of tea.
February 17, 2018
All bets are off. Off as in out of kilter. As the result of a bet, Soatsu Oda signs a bizarre confession, admitting to a series of puzzling disappearances that have the local police baffled. That being the premise of this hallucinatory novel, Jesse Ball then casts himself as an interrogator, interviewing everyone either related to Oda or to his fate, providing an intricate Roshomon tapestry that like, most knotty problems, only becomes harder and harder to unravel the closer you seem to be coming to a solution. This book is wholly original in style and content, and while I don't usually like books written in transcript or letters, I found this one to be strangely hypnotic and compulsively readable.
December 29, 2014
Stylistically brilliant and elegantly austere, but substantively weak, gimmicky and contrived. It has been compared to Kafka, Camus and Murakami (who have all succeeded where this has failed). A two star read for me, but with a third star for the quite beautiful, accomplished prose. This is my second book by Ball and, for me, both are like gorgeous gifts bedecked with the most elegant, tasteful paper and ribbons, wrapped by a master. However, when you carefully remove the paper, lift the shiny lid and push aside the shimmering tissue paper, you are faintly disappointed to discover nothing but a pair of slipper socks. Not that there is anything wrong with the socks...but, you get what I mean.
Ball writes like a master and he has the seeds of some very interesting ideas, but he hasn't really delivered on them yet. I'm hoping he will eventually put everything together in a future book.
Ball writes like a master and he has the seeds of some very interesting ideas, but he hasn't really delivered on them yet. I'm hoping he will eventually put everything together in a future book.
January 31, 2016
A 4.5. The lengths we go to prove ourselves reasonable, at least in modern times. That is the theme of this novel, a collage of interviews, documents, testimony, transcripts, trial coverage, photographs, and the editor’s notes. There’s something hypnotic about Ball’s flat prose and the way he lays out the pieces that make up the story. It is in some ways a for today, and superior, I think, to the original (which I just read). The only thing a bit pat about the novel is its Rashomon aspect, but the way Ball handles it is excellent.
April 3, 2014
Again, I seem to be at odds with many readers on this site, finding a popular book to be unpopular with me. It didn't start out this way. I found the summary of this book interesting, with it promising me a story filled with mystery and intrigue. But what this book delivered was a concept story gliding over the surface of something important, offering the reader a book with little depth, and with no heart or soul. In other words, this was an intellectual exercise in writing which left me cold. None of the characters even remotely touched me enough for me to care about their lives or their fate. These disappointments were followed by several others.
From the beginning, the reader knows that the man accused of the disappearances of eight people is innocent of the crimes and merely confessed to them because he lost a wager. There goes a major portion of the mystery straight off the bat. It would have been a different, but more suspenseful, story had the reader not known for certain of his innocence until later. Plus, in the summary, it is implied that the accused remains silent throughout his arrest and subsequent questioning and incarceration, which is what drew me in initially, wondering what could cause a man to remain completely silent, especially if he was innocent. But this was not to be. The accused does speak a few times, diluting the effect of his self-enforced silence. So all that I had left to hang onto in the intrigue department was the why of the accused refusing to speak up in his defense, and for me to learn the details concerning the crimes, specifically, did they even occur? And what was the purpose of the man confessing if they hadn't?
But I soon learned that this story was one of duplicity where the reader should forget about learning the truth of what happened as each person interviewed had a different version of the truth to tell that changed not only from person to person, but with each person over time. The only person who might have known the truth didn't speak up to inform the reader. And the discourses at the end of the book became overblown explanations and justifications for a very simple thing that lost its impact due to heavy handedness. Though the reason behind the ruse was intriguing. That's the best thing I can say about this book, however misguided the architect of the ruse was in assuming an injustice would serve to prevent further injustices. Though the message of the ends justifying the means, using a scapegoat with nothing to lose and nothing to gain, is not new territory.
So, I can't really recommend this book. The idea for the story and the reason behind it were admirable, but it's execution, no pun intended, was not carried out in a way I admired.
From the beginning, the reader knows that the man accused of the disappearances of eight people is innocent of the crimes and merely confessed to them because he lost a wager. There goes a major portion of the mystery straight off the bat. It would have been a different, but more suspenseful, story had the reader not known for certain of his innocence until later. Plus, in the summary, it is implied that the accused remains silent throughout his arrest and subsequent questioning and incarceration, which is what drew me in initially, wondering what could cause a man to remain completely silent, especially if he was innocent. But this was not to be. The accused does speak a few times, diluting the effect of his self-enforced silence. So all that I had left to hang onto in the intrigue department was the why of the accused refusing to speak up in his defense, and for me to learn the details concerning the crimes, specifically, did they even occur? And what was the purpose of the man confessing if they hadn't?
But I soon learned that this story was one of duplicity where the reader should forget about learning the truth of what happened as each person interviewed had a different version of the truth to tell that changed not only from person to person, but with each person over time. The only person who might have known the truth didn't speak up to inform the reader. And the discourses at the end of the book became overblown explanations and justifications for a very simple thing that lost its impact due to heavy handedness. Though the reason behind the ruse was intriguing. That's the best thing I can say about this book, however misguided the architect of the ruse was in assuming an injustice would serve to prevent further injustices. Though the message of the ends justifying the means, using a scapegoat with nothing to lose and nothing to gain, is not new territory.
So, I can't really recommend this book. The idea for the story and the reason behind it were admirable, but it's execution, no pun intended, was not carried out in a way I admired.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 4, 2020
You have to be careful whom you trust. Everyone has a version and most of them are wrong. In fact...they are all wrong....You need to understand...the world is made up almost entirely of sentimental fools and brutes. p209
So what to believe?
If the above advice is to be trusted, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to predict the outcome when the two types clash. Is Oda Sotatsu a sentimental fool or a martyr to a greater cause? He certainly is no brute, to be accused of such a methodical crime. And are those who are interviewed for their version even capable of telling the truth?
We were in love with the mechanism we were using to repel the dank pressure of conformity. p221
This is documentary fiction at its most enigmatic extreme. A few clicks on the machine take the interested reader to what is possibly the original of the picture presented on the front page. At first glance it looks like a meditation chamber with its buddha. In fact it is the killing suite for those sentenced to death by the Japanese court.
For a certain type of reader, the challenge with good documentary fiction is to distinguish the truth from the fiction. Buttressed with official looking documents and testimonies, the interviews clarify only the dissension in the family and the delusions of the witnesses. JB inserts a curve ball in the story by inserting himself in the centre of the action, despite his peripheral status and years after the main event.
In searching for a way out of my troubles, I had found my way into the troubles of others. p174
Maybe it worked for him. It did seem like his obsession with Oda left no room for his original question. What would cause someone to go silent? It's most likely that for every instance there is a singular complex reason. It is also most likely that we can never know more than a few details and its up to us to make a meaningful picture. This book may be a bit too clever for me with its classical allusions, but I still want to know about JBs wife.
March 22, 2016
beautiful, clear, worried book. A man, Sotatsu, signs a confession to a crime he didn't commit and stops talking to anyone, including the judge at his trial, policemen, jailers, and ends up executed for something he didn't do. Some time later the narrator (who has the same name as the writer) follows up on the case, interviewing the main protagonists, the family and friends of the executed man, and his enemies too. The book mainly consists of these interviews, trial proceedings, phone calls, letters written and received; these, along with photographs, make it read like a non fiction book, except at the end we learn why the narrator is so obsessed with the case, and more about Sotatsu's limited love life, and a kind of poetry bursts through the flat prose (and has a bigger impact due to that flatness), and makes the whole sing and wrench at your heart.
June 6, 2018
Восени 1977-го Оді Сотацу було двадцять дев’ят� років, він вів невиразне життя, працював в компанії, що торгувала нитками, жив сам, був на доброму рахунку у сусідів. Одного разу він випивав в барі з двома друзями - Сато Какузо та Джитою Джу. Вони грали в карти і заклалися, що той, хто програє, зізнається у злочині, якого не скоював. В цей час в околицях відбувались дивні зникнення - літні люди пропадали, а на порогах їхніх осель знаходили гральну карту. Сотацу програв, та підписав зізнання у зникненнях. Джу анонімно надіслала листа з зізнанням до поліції. Сотацу заарештували, визнали винним і стратили. Майже весь час з моменту арешту він провів у мовчанці, чим бентежив всіх причетних.
Багато років потому, з протилежного боку Тихого океану, Джес Болл (не плутати з автором) теж стикається з загадковою мовчанкою. Його дружина припиняє розмовляти і родина руйнується. Болл намагається врятувати ситуацію, досліджуючи подібні випадки, і натрапляє на історію Оди Сотацу. Він вирушає до Японії, щоб ретельно вивчити випадок Сотацу, і книга - результат цієї подорожі. Це важко назвати повноцінним розслідуванням, книга складається з серій інтерв'ю очевидців: родичів Сотацу, тюремних наглядачів, журналістів, нарешті Какузо та Джу. До цього додаються записи допитів, газетні вирізки та фото. Автор коментує лише обставини розмов та отримання інших матеріалів, ніяких висновків з них не робить. Майже всі опитані суперечать один одному.
Важко не помітити, що книга - оммаж японській літературі. Крім місця дії про це каже присвята Кобо Абе та Сюсаку Ендо (останній автор роману “Мовчання�, пару років тому його екранізував Скорсезе) та оповідь в стилі “Брами Расьомон�, коли ті самі події по-різному розповідаються героями. Втім, абсурдний судовий процес перш за все асоціюється з “Процесом� та “Стороннім�, але на відміну від героїв цих романів, Сотацу не жертва обставин або ірраціональних імпульсів. Він чинить все свідомо, його мовчання вочевидь щось промовляє, а опитані Боллом люди, разом з читачами, знаходяться в ситуації науковців з фільму “Прибуття�.
Треба визнати, таке аскетично подане поєднання свідомо скоєного абсурду з загальною невизначеністю лякає більше за Кафку з Камю. Я нарешті зрозумів, що таке непозбутна бентега, бо відчував її декілька днів після читання. Джес Болл , що його книги скоріше набір інструментів для подолання життєвих травм, ніж готовий рецепт. Така патетичність дивно не схожа на його авторский стиль, але немає підстав йому не вірити.
P.S. Лист Джити Джу з книги найдивніший любовний текст, якій мені доводилось читати.
Багато років потому, з протилежного боку Тихого океану, Джес Болл (не плутати з автором) теж стикається з загадковою мовчанкою. Його дружина припиняє розмовляти і родина руйнується. Болл намагається врятувати ситуацію, досліджуючи подібні випадки, і натрапляє на історію Оди Сотацу. Він вирушає до Японії, щоб ретельно вивчити випадок Сотацу, і книга - результат цієї подорожі. Це важко назвати повноцінним розслідуванням, книга складається з серій інтерв'ю очевидців: родичів Сотацу, тюремних наглядачів, журналістів, нарешті Какузо та Джу. До цього додаються записи допитів, газетні вирізки та фото. Автор коментує лише обставини розмов та отримання інших матеріалів, ніяких висновків з них не робить. Майже всі опитані суперечать один одному.
Важко не помітити, що книга - оммаж японській літературі. Крім місця дії про це каже присвята Кобо Абе та Сюсаку Ендо (останній автор роману “Мовчання�, пару років тому його екранізував Скорсезе) та оповідь в стилі “Брами Расьомон�, коли ті самі події по-різному розповідаються героями. Втім, абсурдний судовий процес перш за все асоціюється з “Процесом� та “Стороннім�, але на відміну від героїв цих романів, Сотацу не жертва обставин або ірраціональних імпульсів. Він чинить все свідомо, його мовчання вочевидь щось промовляє, а опитані Боллом люди, разом з читачами, знаходяться в ситуації науковців з фільму “Прибуття�.
Треба визнати, таке аскетично подане поєднання свідомо скоєного абсурду з загальною невизначеністю лякає більше за Кафку з Камю. Я нарешті зрозумів, що таке непозбутна бентега, бо відчував її декілька днів після читання. Джес Болл , що його книги скоріше набір інструментів для подолання життєвих травм, ніж готовий рецепт. Така патетичність дивно не схожа на його авторский стиль, але немає підстав йому не вірити.
P.S. Лист Джити Джу з книги найдивніший любовний текст, якій мені доводилось читати.
June 10, 2016
Silence and Mystery
This may be the strangest novel I have ever read, fascinating, inventive, but almost impossible to review. Visually, it is an airy book, with lots of white space and much of the text over at the right of the page like a film script, but it seems awfully weighty when you are done. There are numerous photographs, of houses, fields, even a roller coaster, but they are all of deliberately poor quality and of no apparent relevance, so they obscure the story rather than illuminating it. Although written in English by an American author, the language is curiously stilted and mechanical, as though it were an awkward translation from some foreign tongue. But the odder it got, the more intriguing it became.
OK, is there a story? Yes, but a strange one. In the late seventies, an undistinguished Japanese worker named Oda Sotatsu, losing a barroom bet with two friends, signs his name to a document which they then deliver to the police. It turns out to be a confession to the disappearance of eleven old people in the Narito region, and Sotatsu is arrested. But as he refuses to speak during interrogation, at his trial, or to appeal his sentence, he is condemned to death and hanged. Three decades later, an American journalist named Jesse Ball (yes), whose marriage is breaking up owing to his wife's sudden refusal to speak, becomes interested in the case of Sotatsu's silence and goes to Japan to interview the surviving witnesses.
What follows, organized with nerdish care, is a series of interviews, tape transcripts, newspaper reports, personal observations, and supporting documents. Over half the book reconstructs Sotatsu's life from the moment of his arrest to his execution, as told by a court reporter, a prison guard, and Sotatsu's father, mother, brother, and sister, most of whom impugn the reliability of any of the others. Ball is meticulous in noting the exact conditions of each interview, but he also gives his own estimates of the reliability of each informant. Curiously enough, once one has got used to the almost mechanistic organization, a lot of human detail begins to emerge, gathering between the lines and shimmering in the white spaces.
In the last fifty pages, the texture changes twice more, as Ball locates the two people to whom Sotatsu lost that initial wager. One was a girl named Jito Joo who became his most frequent visitor in prison. Her written statement takes on a lyrical tone that is new to the novel, reading at times more like poetry than fact. With the last contributor, Joo's boyfriend at the time, Sato Kazuko, the tone changes again. He is a former political radical, inspired by the Situationist movement in France. I found his philosophies pretty tough going—but then I saw that the article on the Situationists in Wikipedia has almost identical language, again as if translated from another tongue.
Although the novel ends in opaque style, the obvious mysteries do get cleared up, especially concerning the crimes for which Sotatsu was wrongfully hanged. The mystery of Sotatsu's continued silence is not so clear, and if Jesse Ball comes to a better understanding of his ex-wife, he keeps it to himself. Indeed he only elucidates one mystery to expose other ones: the mysteries of identity, of ambiguity, of failures of communication, of how little we know of others around us. For the answers to those, ask the silence�
This may be the strangest novel I have ever read, fascinating, inventive, but almost impossible to review. Visually, it is an airy book, with lots of white space and much of the text over at the right of the page like a film script, but it seems awfully weighty when you are done. There are numerous photographs, of houses, fields, even a roller coaster, but they are all of deliberately poor quality and of no apparent relevance, so they obscure the story rather than illuminating it. Although written in English by an American author, the language is curiously stilted and mechanical, as though it were an awkward translation from some foreign tongue. But the odder it got, the more intriguing it became.
OK, is there a story? Yes, but a strange one. In the late seventies, an undistinguished Japanese worker named Oda Sotatsu, losing a barroom bet with two friends, signs his name to a document which they then deliver to the police. It turns out to be a confession to the disappearance of eleven old people in the Narito region, and Sotatsu is arrested. But as he refuses to speak during interrogation, at his trial, or to appeal his sentence, he is condemned to death and hanged. Three decades later, an American journalist named Jesse Ball (yes), whose marriage is breaking up owing to his wife's sudden refusal to speak, becomes interested in the case of Sotatsu's silence and goes to Japan to interview the surviving witnesses.
What follows, organized with nerdish care, is a series of interviews, tape transcripts, newspaper reports, personal observations, and supporting documents. Over half the book reconstructs Sotatsu's life from the moment of his arrest to his execution, as told by a court reporter, a prison guard, and Sotatsu's father, mother, brother, and sister, most of whom impugn the reliability of any of the others. Ball is meticulous in noting the exact conditions of each interview, but he also gives his own estimates of the reliability of each informant. Curiously enough, once one has got used to the almost mechanistic organization, a lot of human detail begins to emerge, gathering between the lines and shimmering in the white spaces.
In the last fifty pages, the texture changes twice more, as Ball locates the two people to whom Sotatsu lost that initial wager. One was a girl named Jito Joo who became his most frequent visitor in prison. Her written statement takes on a lyrical tone that is new to the novel, reading at times more like poetry than fact. With the last contributor, Joo's boyfriend at the time, Sato Kazuko, the tone changes again. He is a former political radical, inspired by the Situationist movement in France. I found his philosophies pretty tough going—but then I saw that the article on the Situationists in Wikipedia has almost identical language, again as if translated from another tongue.
Although the novel ends in opaque style, the obvious mysteries do get cleared up, especially concerning the crimes for which Sotatsu was wrongfully hanged. The mystery of Sotatsu's continued silence is not so clear, and if Jesse Ball comes to a better understanding of his ex-wife, he keeps it to himself. Indeed he only elucidates one mystery to expose other ones: the mysteries of identity, of ambiguity, of failures of communication, of how little we know of others around us. For the answers to those, ask the silence�
July 25, 2014
There is no denying that Jesse Ball can turn a beautiful phrase, but his layers of metafictional gamesmanship got on my nerves fairly quickly. I felt that I was supposed to feel dazzled, mind blown, like some bong-fueled undergrad discovering Borges or Gass. Silence Once Begun is a smart book, but it would have been better if it didn't seem to try so hard. I took a long break from it because I noticed that I had started to dread picking it up again. I will be the first to admit that I may not have been in the right frame of mind to deal with this novel when I checked it out from the library after reading a very generous review in The New Yorker by James Wood. When I finished Silence Once Begun today, I read the last 120 pages or so in a single uninterrupted session. I wasn't able to do that, for whatever reason, when I started reading it. Maybe it's the kind of book that is best read in a surgery waiting room, which is where I read a big swath of it today. It's a short book, just over a couple hundred pages, with lots of white space and photos, so I probably could have read the whole thing in the hospital if I hadn't gotten sucked into a real-life conversation with a woman whose husband was shot point blank in the face during an attempted robbery.
And then there is the novel's title. As a poetry professor once told a pretentious college freshman (OK, me), "silence" is one of those words that screams LOOK HOW LITERARY. Yes, the word itself, so round and sibilant, is impossibly beautiful, and that is why upspeaking MFA candidates everywhere adore it. Instant poetry. As a concept, I think, we probably need to leave it alone for a while. We should STFU.
And then there is the novel's title. As a poetry professor once told a pretentious college freshman (OK, me), "silence" is one of those words that screams LOOK HOW LITERARY. Yes, the word itself, so round and sibilant, is impossibly beautiful, and that is why upspeaking MFA candidates everywhere adore it. Instant poetry. As a concept, I think, we probably need to leave it alone for a while. We should STFU.
October 7, 2020
I'm feeling a little tongue-tied by SOB. I didn't love it (I'm not sure it's possible to "love" a Jesse Ball book) but I respected it. I liked the structure and I liked the ending but it's (necessary) coldness made it difficult to engage with in a way that would help produce a lengthy or worthy review. Ball has an eye and a style that recalls Kafka in that the novelistic merits are secondary to the message but that doesn't diminish the book
That's about all I've got - recommended, as all of Ball is
That's about all I've got - recommended, as all of Ball is
March 20, 2019
Goodness me. Simultaneously a study of psychology, literature, lies and most other things; in a style that is completely overt, and subtle, and brilliant. The right honorable Bram Presser insisted I read this and I'm so very, very glad I did (though I was warned of the Jesse Ball rabbit hole that I am now most definitely sending myself down).
June 18, 2024
Este libro rebusca dentro, ¿estos personajes eran unos chiflados o unos idealistas?, ¿un desencadenante de actos heroicos o sólo una cadena de manipulación?
Me gustó muchísimo, el formato periodístico, los aportes extras, la carta de Jito Joo (muy nipona), el desenlace.
Creo que los arquetipos japoneses están muy bien construidos y desarrollados.
Para leer sin parar.
Me gustó muchísimo, el formato periodístico, los aportes extras, la carta de Jito Joo (muy nipona), el desenlace.
Creo que los arquetipos japoneses están muy bien construidos y desarrollados.
Para leer sin parar.
January 29, 2014
Reviewed it for Time Out NY:
September 13, 2018
Jewel of a book
September 28, 2024
Jesse Ball no defrauda nunca.
July 24, 2016
In one basic sense, magic is the creation of a feat that can’t logically be explained. Jesse Ball’s Silence Once Begun � simple, spare, and narratively familiar, yet profound, poetic and singularly original � is magic.
Quick story overview: a writer, dealing with a break-up he can’t understand, is drawn to investigate an unusual and mostly-forgotten crime that occurred 30 years ago in a remote town in Japan. The crime: eight completely unconnected people disappeared over a span of several months, completely baffling the authorities until an unassuming thread salesman, Oda Sotatsu, sends a written confession to the police. Sotatsu is promptly arrested and never says a word � about the crime, about the confession, about himself, about anything. For a very specific, personal reason, an aspect of the case compels the writer (or “the Interviewer� as he refers to himself) � named, like the author, Jesse Ball � to seek out the truth of Sotatsu’s confession. Jesse Ball (the author) tells the story largely through the transcripts of interviews conducted by Jesse Ball (the Interviewer) with the people seemingly closest to Sotatsu.
Story-wise, that’s it.
Ball (the Interviewer) informs us from the start that Sotatsu didn’t commit the crimes he confessed to, thus Silence Once Begun’s mystery is why he confessed. Through the Interviewer’s transcripts with those he can get to agree to speak with him � members of Sotatsu’s family and some non-family members connected with the case � we get conflicting reports of Sotatsu the man and competing theories of why he confessed.
It’s difficult for me to accurately describe the cumulative effect these conflicting accounts have in building a clearer and ever-more-focused picture of Sotatsu and the events surrounding his confession, the trial and its aftermath. The interview subjects all have ego at stake and personal scores to settle with “the official history� of Sotatsu’s actions. Within these countervailing individual testimonies, the truth is revealed.
And truth (or “truth�) is what Silence Once Begun is about. Or more specifically, how many different “truths� comprise a fact. The “truth� of our limited vantage. The “truth� that we believe. The “truth� we construct because we want it.* The “truth� we convince ourselves of because we need it. Ball (the author) shows how an utterly subjective truth can be in conflict with someone else’s subjective truth and both be “true�, yet neither factual**�
…I’ll stop here and apologize: I’ve failed the material here, making it seem ponderous and pedantic where it’s incisive and poetic. It’s weighty stuff presented in a beautiful, deceptively straight-forward manner. When the “why� of Sotatsu’s confession is revealed, it’s horrifying in a deeply human way. While Ball (the author) lands a direct gut-punch with the reveal, the impact is completely earned � in fact, it feels almost inevitable.
Critics possessing literary insight more finely honed and specialized than mine can analyze and parse what Jesse Ball has done here � the how he did it. It would be edifying, but not necessarily enriching for me. I’m content to remain delighted by the magic of Silence Once Begun.
*While reflecting on this book, I was incongruously reminded of the wisdom of George Costanza � that it’s not a lie if you believe it
**After completing this book, I looked into Jesse Ball and found two insightful biographical nuggets: 1) he got his start writing poetry, and 2) he, for a time, taught classes on lying
Quick story overview: a writer, dealing with a break-up he can’t understand, is drawn to investigate an unusual and mostly-forgotten crime that occurred 30 years ago in a remote town in Japan. The crime: eight completely unconnected people disappeared over a span of several months, completely baffling the authorities until an unassuming thread salesman, Oda Sotatsu, sends a written confession to the police. Sotatsu is promptly arrested and never says a word � about the crime, about the confession, about himself, about anything. For a very specific, personal reason, an aspect of the case compels the writer (or “the Interviewer� as he refers to himself) � named, like the author, Jesse Ball � to seek out the truth of Sotatsu’s confession. Jesse Ball (the author) tells the story largely through the transcripts of interviews conducted by Jesse Ball (the Interviewer) with the people seemingly closest to Sotatsu.
Story-wise, that’s it.
Ball (the Interviewer) informs us from the start that Sotatsu didn’t commit the crimes he confessed to, thus Silence Once Begun’s mystery is why he confessed. Through the Interviewer’s transcripts with those he can get to agree to speak with him � members of Sotatsu’s family and some non-family members connected with the case � we get conflicting reports of Sotatsu the man and competing theories of why he confessed.
It’s difficult for me to accurately describe the cumulative effect these conflicting accounts have in building a clearer and ever-more-focused picture of Sotatsu and the events surrounding his confession, the trial and its aftermath. The interview subjects all have ego at stake and personal scores to settle with “the official history� of Sotatsu’s actions. Within these countervailing individual testimonies, the truth is revealed.
And truth (or “truth�) is what Silence Once Begun is about. Or more specifically, how many different “truths� comprise a fact. The “truth� of our limited vantage. The “truth� that we believe. The “truth� we construct because we want it.* The “truth� we convince ourselves of because we need it. Ball (the author) shows how an utterly subjective truth can be in conflict with someone else’s subjective truth and both be “true�, yet neither factual**�
…I’ll stop here and apologize: I’ve failed the material here, making it seem ponderous and pedantic where it’s incisive and poetic. It’s weighty stuff presented in a beautiful, deceptively straight-forward manner. When the “why� of Sotatsu’s confession is revealed, it’s horrifying in a deeply human way. While Ball (the author) lands a direct gut-punch with the reveal, the impact is completely earned � in fact, it feels almost inevitable.
Critics possessing literary insight more finely honed and specialized than mine can analyze and parse what Jesse Ball has done here � the how he did it. It would be edifying, but not necessarily enriching for me. I’m content to remain delighted by the magic of Silence Once Begun.
*While reflecting on this book, I was incongruously reminded of the wisdom of George Costanza � that it’s not a lie if you believe it
**After completing this book, I looked into Jesse Ball and found two insightful biographical nuggets: 1) he got his start writing poetry, and 2) he, for a time, taught classes on lying
January 12, 2015
4,5 Stars. This is a totally unique way of literature being a brutal force, leaving you breathless, yet satisfied. This was so compelling! The mystery which sunk in slowly, reminded me of Mr Peanut, New york trilogy and the movie Old Boy. The form (meta + uberreal) reminded me of House of leaves and Nightfilm- although it's hard to really compare it with anything. It stands alone. Oh, I was so intrigued! And the plot didn't disappoint. The language ranged between the dry, official tone of an interview and weird, intriguing but beautiful poetry.
"Each person chooses his life from all the roles in all the theaters. We are a prisoner and his love. For I am sometimes one and sometimes the other. You are one and then the other. We are diving in the thin and wild air, as if the spring has just begun. We are diving but we are composing the water beneath us with our dreams, and what I see gives me hope. I will return to you, my dear, and I will return to you and return to you and return to you. You will be mine and no one else’s, and I will be the same. I will turn my face away, and look at you when I am elsewhere. I will look only at you."
"Each person chooses his life from all the roles in all the theaters. We are a prisoner and his love. For I am sometimes one and sometimes the other. You are one and then the other. We are diving in the thin and wild air, as if the spring has just begun. We are diving but we are composing the water beneath us with our dreams, and what I see gives me hope. I will return to you, my dear, and I will return to you and return to you and return to you. You will be mine and no one else’s, and I will be the same. I will turn my face away, and look at you when I am elsewhere. I will look only at you."
April 17, 2014
Part Rashomon, part The Stranger, part Brief Interviews with Hideous Men - Jesse Ball takes on the provocative nature of silence in this fascinating and deceptively straightforward novel.
Seeking some form of explanation for the sudden disconnection from the woman he loves, our narrator travels to Japan to investigate the similar lapse into silence of a man arrested for a crime he confessed to but did not commit. Interviews commence in which the journalistic styling combines with the Japanese cultural propensity for understatement to produce a work propelled solely by the reader's hunger for more information, more answers; some fully-realized truth - developing in its wake a clever and hauntingly surrealistic projection of the narrator's own dilemma. You may add to these artistic Easter eggs Ball's mastery of deflection. I did not see where this was leading until the moment he got there - and considering my somewhat practiced eye, that counts as quite the accomplishment.
Silence Once Begun is a quick read, and a worthy one.
Seeking some form of explanation for the sudden disconnection from the woman he loves, our narrator travels to Japan to investigate the similar lapse into silence of a man arrested for a crime he confessed to but did not commit. Interviews commence in which the journalistic styling combines with the Japanese cultural propensity for understatement to produce a work propelled solely by the reader's hunger for more information, more answers; some fully-realized truth - developing in its wake a clever and hauntingly surrealistic projection of the narrator's own dilemma. You may add to these artistic Easter eggs Ball's mastery of deflection. I did not see where this was leading until the moment he got there - and considering my somewhat practiced eye, that counts as quite the accomplishment.
Silence Once Begun is a quick read, and a worthy one.
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