The Lake

Kawabata's The Lake is the last of his works on my reading list.  The italicized text are a couple of passages from the first few pages of the book.

"You have a lovely voice, you know."
"Voice?"
"Yes. It lingers on even after you've stopped speaking. I wish it would go on forever. It feels as though something gentle and delicate were sinking through my inner ear into the core of my brain.  Really, it would make even the most hardened criminal as meek as a lamb."
"Oh? I'm sure it's dreadfully coy and girlish."
"Not coy. It's incredibly sweet. It's got something sad and something tender, and at the same time it's fresh and open. It's different from a singer's voice. Are you in love?"
"No. It would be nice if I were."

"You know it would be almost a crime to feel uncomfortable listening to your voice."
The girl suddenly stopped working.
"When I hear your voice, everything else disappears. I know it sounds a bit farfetched, but a voice can't be chased or caught, can it? I suppose it's like the flow of time or life. No, it needn't be."

Those are touchstones for a certain kind of writing.  They are just beyond the boundaries of good taste, and so represent another kind of marker to signal a necessary turn in the writing process.

While this part of the novel has its interests, unfortunately, from this point forward in the novel, everything turns sour, and quite creepy.  In the same way that I am unable to "forget" that Lolita is a paean to child molestation, whatever else may be layered into it, with The Lake, the glorification of the stalker's thought processes is just too much.  The balance that characterized many of Kawabata's other works is gone, and with it enjoyment yields to ick.  House of the Sleeping Beauties was also undeniably perverted, but its perversions seemed to be necessary aids to posing challenging questions. I didn't see that justification in The Lake at all.

The soundless video below seems to be an apt metaphor for the current state of Kawabataism.  Or to quote Morrissey, "you know who it is, but you don't like what it means."