4. Animal Logic and Compulsive Drive
Koshikawa: In Amnesiascope you wrote a sentence like this, "I've thrust myself forward not out of faith or even will but the sort of primal force of habit that moves an animal to the place that nature commands it, to graze or mate or die"--page 151. When I read this passage, I remembered another novel by a Japanese woman writer named Amy Yamada. The novel is titled "Animal Logic," and is set in New York City. It has what is called a "lecherous" female protagonist named Jasmine. Though she has many sexual encounters with American men--black and white--she doesn't seems to be a "loose" woman. In fact, she is a vigorous, strong woman. Though she is not aware of this fact, she has an uncontrollable virus inside her body. That creature helps her survive the wild jungle called New York City through its power, wisdom, and "animal logic."
Erickson: I understand what you are saying about that character, and it is very similar to this sentence. In this context, he is talking about writing. He is talking about being a writer. That is the same kind of compulsive drive. In that way, writing is pretty sexual. It's the same kind of compulsive drive that transcends faith or will, that is not an expression of transcendence. It is an expression of compulsion.
Koshikawa: Both books deal with such compulsive drive of the main characters, and they are similar fable-like novels in the sense that they give the reader some humanistic or anti-humanistic advice for getting by in this chaotic world. Well, this isn't a question, but a comment on your book as well as Amy Yamada's.
Erickson: It sounds like a good book. Has it been published in English?
Koshikawa: It has been published here recently. I doubt there is an English version out yet. But sometime later maybe they will publish an English version. Apparently Amy Yamada plans to have it translated into English. The title seems American.
Erickson: Just the title. And that name rings a bell, too. That name sounds familiar to me.
Koshikawa: One more thing I found interesting in Amnesiascope is that there is a new aspect of yours as a novelist which has never appeared before. You may be aware of this radical comic aspect of your writing, but I'll just pick up one example from the novel. The narrator of this novel desperately calls up many different women at one time and has sexual relations with them one after another, but paradoxically this only deepens the desolation of his soul, and his mind goes more out of control. This scene is very sad, and very funny at the same time.
Erickson: That's good.
Koshikawa: I think this is new in your fiction. You are a serious writer, not humorous or comic in your writing, but in this particular scene you are extremely funny.
Erickson: I was saying just a little while ago that there was not much about my work that is calculated. But it was certainly intended that this book would be funny, because I felt like the confessional aspect of the book would be too difficult for the reader to accept if there were not some corresponding humor to it. If you found the scene both funny and sad, that's good, because that's what I would have hoped.
Koshikawa: I hope to see more humor of this sort in future novels.... Could you explain the title of this novel, "Amnesiascope"? Why did the narrator's girlfriend try to build "the Memoryscope"? Was it because she believed that to remember the past would cure her soul? And why did the narrator try to build "the Amnesiascope" in order to forget the past to cure his soul? In my interpretation, the novel itself provided a kind of cure for you when you were writing it.
Erickson: The novel itself becomes a kind of amnesiascope. The title "Amnesiascope" obviously refers, as you say, to "the Memoryscope" that she was building. And because the book had--I thought--a kaleidoscopic quality, amnesiascope is sort of a play upon kaleidoscope. It's very fragmented, a lot of different colors and shapes. And finally, it was a takeoff on cinemascope. At one point the narrator even says on page 124, "Under a moon the color of flesh, that shines behind the smoke and a cloud that appears about to explode, L.A. surrounds me in amnesiascope." So, it's a play upon cinemascope, the wide-screen movies, the panoramic spectacular visions in films. Instead of cinemascope, he sees Los Angeles in amnesiascope. So, it's a way of seeing things.
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Edited by Syuichi OTOMORI