I am a Cat
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Monday, 12th April, 2010
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Akaihane, Literature
'I am a Cat', by Soseki Natsume
I’ve really fallen out reading older novels. Lately I’ve been focusing on modern fiction, the likes of Haruki Murakami, Terry Prachett and Clive Barker, so now that I’ve gone back to an older novel, Soseki Natsume’s ‘I am a Cat’ (though not that old, being written only 100 years ago) I’m finding my pacing much slower than normal.
I’m not a fast reader by any stretch of the imagination. Whereas I know people who can speed read and finish 300+ page novels in day, I’ve always enjoyed books at a conversation pace. I like the play the book as if it’s a movie in my mind, listen to the dialogue spoken at the same pace the character would voice it, and stop and mentally paint in intricate detail a piece of scenery or location. So normally, unless I sit and read for several hours each day for days on end, it will tend to take me at least a month to polish off a novel. (But then I rarely read anything shorter than 400 pages.)
… I’m only nearing the half-way point of ‘I am a Cat’, despite having first picked it up over six months ago.
It’s not that it’s particularly difficult; yes, it’s an often tongue-in-cheek commentary on middle-class Japanese society a few decades after the Meji Restoration told from the point of view of a house cat, so it’s not the easiest of things to read, especially for a Westerner. But at the same time, the dialogue isn’t overly hard to understand. And it’s certainly not boring. In fact, it’s very funny, especially for those who are both interested in Japanese culture and in cats. And I’m eternally intrigued by the human characters and their keeping-up-appearances demeanour.
But I’ve had the hardest time getting through it. In fact, I’ve been able to get through a number of other novels in the interim. Even a Murakami novel at its most Kafka-esque I’ve been able to devour in quick succession. My mind keeps drifting away from it to these other novels, simply because I’m looking for something ‘easier’ and less taxing to read. It makes me worry will I take as long to read the other novels of Soseki I keep glancing at? What about the other older novels I have that I want to get through; if I’m having a slow time with this, then that can only bode badly for ‘The Master and Margarita‘. But then maybe after getting through a few older novels, I’ll get into the hang of it again, like back when I was reading numerous of books and plays (dated anywhere between 1400-1950) during my English Literature A-Level.
Or perhaps it will solely be a problem with this novel, what with its structure. Maybe I should be comfortable with my slow progress. Maybe the novel, due to its episodic content, is suited to being read slowly, as if it’s a series of short stories (which I guess, in essence, it is). And perhaps, with how the novel ends (something of which I’ve known since before I picked up a copy), I shouldn’t be in such a rush to the ending …
… but at the same time I don’t want to start another novel until I polish this one off, and my bookshelves, as well as the local library, constantly taunt me with the wealth of books I’ve still to partake in. And maybe it all boils down the need of a bit more focus than modern fiction often requires, and maybe when I’m not having breaks of a couple of weeks between times when I pick up the novel, my progress will speed up.
