amp reviews nyc

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An NYRB Classics Original

A humble clerk and his loving wife scrape out a quiet existence on the margins of Tokyo. Resigned, following years of exile and misfortune, to the bitter consequences of having married without their families' consent, and unable to have children of their own, Sosuke and Oyone find the delicate equilibrium of their household upset by a new obligation to meet the educational expenses of Sosuke's brash younger brother. While an unlikely new friendship appears to offer a way out of this bind, it also soon threatens to dredge up a past that could once again force them to flee the capital. Desperate and torn, Sosuke finally resolves to travel to a remote Zen Mountain monastery to see if perhaps there, through meditation, he can find a way out of his predicament.

This moving and deceptively simple story, a melancholy tale shot through with glimmers of joy, beauty, and gentle wit, is an understated masterpiece by one of Japan's greatest writers. At the end of his life, Natsume Soseki declared The Gate, originally published in 1910, to be his favorite among all his novels. This new translation captures the oblique grace of the original while correcting numerous errors and omissions that marred the first English version.

Reviewer: Dew Kuriyama
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A deft description of Buddhist novel
Review: The GateI had heard that Natsume Soseki was familiar with Zen of Buddhism.This novel describes their silent and solitary life of Sosuke and his wife OyoneIn their young days, Sosuke usurped Oyone from his close friend.The scene that Sosuke sits in Zen meditation is inserted in the last of this novel . Zen seems to insist that man is Buddha.And if I say without the fear of misunderstanding, man is the lump of the good.But the novel seems to insist the reverse. In the Jodo-Shinshu sect of Buddhism, man is wicked person.The novel seems to insist such.I introduce such scene.[Seated now face-to-face with the divinatory, it was in all seriousness that she tried to ascertain whether Heaven had decreed that she was to bear a child, and if so, whether the child would survive to maturity.The divinator, who looked no different from other fortune-tellers who peddled their services on the street for a coin or two, lined up his blocks this way and , shuffled his fifty long sticks, keeping count all the while, then finally, after stroking his goatee portentously and pondering for a moment, studied Oyone’s face closely and pronounced with complete equanimity:“ You cannot have any children.”Oyone remained silent as she digested these words, considering them from every possible angel.Then, raising her head again, she replied with another question: “ Why can’t I ?”She had assumed that the man would deliberate again before responding, but without hesitating he looked her straight in the eye and replied unequivocally:“You will recall that you behaved unforgivably toward someone in the past.Your sinful behavior has become a curse that will prevent you from ever bringing a child into this world.”These words were a stab to her heart.All the way home her head drooped limply, and she had barely been able to raise it that night in front of her husband.It was this judgment rendered by the divinatory that Oyone had refrained from divulging.When, on this still night , with the dim glow from the lamp he had placed in the alcove about to dissolve in darkness, Sosuke first heard of this incident from Oyone’s lips, he could not help being perturbed.“ Really―to concoct such an idotic errand when your nerves were so shattered to begin with! What was the point of spending good money to hear that sort of nonsense?”Did you go back again after that? ““ Oh, no, never! It’s too frightening.” ]

Reviewer: L. Young
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: One of the Most Beautiful Books I Have Ever Read
Review: When one reads a Japanese novel one enters a different literary ethos than a Westerner is used to. Stillness and understatement are at its center. So it is with this beautiful novel. This is the story of Sosuke and Oyone, a young married couple who live in relative isolation in the midst of 1900 Tokyo. Why they live in isolation is never explicitly stated, but it is a moral 'crime' for which the reader must fill in the blanks. The seasons change, holidays come and go, Sosuke goes and comes from work, and these quiet events make up the lives of this simple loving couple until a crisis of sorts occurs. Savor the descriptions of nature and everyday life and reside in stillness as the inner life of Sosuke unfolds.

Reviewer: Lee A. Makela
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: No One Knows the Trouble I've Seen
Review: A incredible, sensitively-handled translation of one of Natsume Soseki's lesser known (in the West) Meiji era Japanese novels.This leisurely portrait of an "average" turn-of-the-twentieth married couple highlights both a commonality of experience dealing with changes induced by Japan's increasing openness to the outside world and a sense of the unique identity resident in every human being, no matter the time nor place. While passivity often appears to characterize the reaction when crisis occurs, there exists as well an underlying unwillingness to expose one's inner most feelings which often inhibits a more assertive or meaningful reaction to life's (mostly minor) challenges. Worth reading for its insights into everyday Japanese life and culture during this transition period in modern Japanese history and for its beautifully rendered prose.

Reviewer: dennis potter
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Blush
Review: Beautifully written, exquisite in that particularly Japanese manner, I'm embarrassed to say I can't finish it. It's SO still that it drags like molasses on a winter day. I'm just not up to it, and I love the Japanese aesthetic.

Reviewer: Christopher O'Riley
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Darknesse visible
Review: Middle-aged married couple, Sosuke and Oyone, live a quiet, mostly solitary life, getting by on Sosuke's civil servant salary. They live literally under a cliff in a home they rent from their well-to-do neighbor.The Gate is the third installment, published in 1910, in what is considered Natsume Soseki's first latter-day trilogy, this one revolving on the stages of maturity and one's evolving relationship with family and society, of novels originally serialized in the Asahi Shimbun.Each of Soseki's novels inspire me not only for their insight, their descriptive brilliance, their painterly sense of scale and composition, but for their unique formal innovations. The Gate presents us with the couple's resigned, socially retreating and at times dangerously unhealthy existence, and while it's tempting to say this is a novel wherein nothing happens, the suspense and depth here is a matter of retrospective revelation: why are they childless? why have they relinquished their ties with society and family? These are revealed only rarely and late in the novel, giving it the redolence of a suspense wrought in recollection.Soseki was himself a sickly sort for most of his short life, and he was in the midst of one of his more debilitating and painful bouts of intestinal distress which caused his death a mere three years hence. He didn't even have the strength to title this book; his publisher took The Gate from a fortuitously placed book nearby, Nietsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra. The title is apt, however, resonating as the entrance of the Zen retreat Sosuke goes to seeking solace and perhaps enlightenment in the alarming arrival of his estranged college friend, Yasui, at the home of the next-door landlord's home. The Gate is then perhaps an entrance into meditation, memory, regret, resignation.

Reviewer: premodernist
Rating: 1.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Wonderful novel, read twice before. Thought I’d read again in Kindle app. Do NOT buy this version. Every. Single. Word. Is. Underlined. Tried on two devices. Disgraceful.

Reviewer: sol
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: este libro se dice que es el favorito de soseki. aun no lo leo pero llego en perfectas condiciones. tengo muchas ganas de leerlo.

Reviewer: S. T. Munro
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: A reader from a Western culture cannot approach this novel in the same way one would a novel published in the West.Japanese themselves see Soseki as one of their greatest authors; certainly the one best able to convey late 19th, early 20th century Japanese sensibilities. If you want to better understand how and why Japan is different from North America or Europe, even though superficially it might seem similar, then this is a must-read book.Please give it time, your patience with what may seem a slow-moving story, and you will be amply rewarded. It can become one of those stories you enjoy returning to many times, even when you "know the story".

Reviewer: The Phantom Agent
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: A quiet tale of the understated love between a civil servant lacking in ambition and his 'passive' wife may seem like small beer in the big scale of events. You could dismiss this novel as a quaint story of domesticity with a charm like that of a period drama and not much more. But you would be wrong. Within the prosaic framework of a kitchen sink drama can be found the deepest questioning of the human condition. To someone brought up with a western imagination it would be easy to identify the behaviour of Sosuke, the novel's protagonist, as stoic resolution. A man who simply accepts the hand he has been dealt with in life and who recognises the futility in trying to alter his circumstances. But there is a darker side to his situation. His love for Oyone has been tainted and compromised by the betrayal of his best friend and the 'theft' of his wife.Thus Sosuke And Oyone come to see all their misfortunes, including the loss of their children, as the penalty for their forbidden love. In a moment of crisis, Sosuke goes through the 'Gate' to seek a spiritual enlightenment but discovers that he is not suited to the cloistered world of the monks. He does not reject religion, nor does he find himself lacking the will to follow the buddhist path, but he simply finds it less preferable to the life he has with Oyone despite the 'quiet desperation' in which they live their lives. Sosuke has achieved a form of serenity all the more potent because he fails to consciously recognise it. It is a serenity tinged with melancholy and imperfections but filled with love. While a bridge provides access to what would otherwise not be accessible, a gate is both an entrance to a new world and a barrier. Sosuke is able to cross the barrier but choses to return to the world he knows and loves. The path to enlightenment offered by religion consists not only in hardships but in sacrifices. Sosuke already experiences hardships in his everyday life but he is not prepared to sacrifice the love he has for Oyone. The path to enlightenment, it seems, can be a selfish one, while the path of love can be one of sacrifice and selflessness.

Reviewer: Paula Mc
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Natsume Soseki passed away in December 1916 and his books are still making an impact now.'The Gate' tells the story of Sosuke and Oyone, a middle aged couple who unfortunately have been ex-communicated due to their relationship (Oyone was married previously). The story explores Sosuke and Oyone relationship, a relationship which initially began in passion but as the years have went by has became something more, something they both cherish very much in a quiet but loving manner. Everything changes when Sosuke's younger Koroku moves in with Sosuke and Oyone, they are faced with another face from their past, Koroku does not respect Sosuke because of the life he left behind to be with Oyone.'The Gate' is about love, family, religion and finding your place in the world, Sosuke feels he has lost his place in the world and tries to change it.'The Gate' is truly a beautiful book, Natsume Soseki's description of Japanese life is written beautifully, and his descriptions of their surroundings are breathtaking.A lovely book that makes you thinks.