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readallthenewberys2013-02-11 09:38 pm
justice_turtle) wrote in readallthenewberys2013-02-11 09:38 pm
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Newbery Medal: The Cat Who Went to Heaven (Elizabeth Coatsworth)
And rather unexpectedly, I actually have a liveblog completed tonight! So here you go.
* Tiny book! I've read it before, so I knew, but TINY BOOK. It's a wonderful change from all these four-hundred-page monoliths.
* Speaking admittedly as a pasty white person, about a book written by another of the same -- I'm nevertheless really impressed by how un-Orientalist this book is, compared to pretty much everything else I've liveblogged on this comm that had (as this does) the slightest possibility of being Orientalist.
* And it moves really fast, without bogging down; excellent use of language, clear and well-chosen. Elizabeth Coatsworth, like many other good writers who do not maunder and babble, was a poet.
* A quick summary of Chapter 1: A very poor Japanese artist's housekeeper brings home from the market, instead of food, a cat. The artist is angry at first, because he considers most cats to be demons, but eventually lets the cat stay because she is very sweet and her white coat with black and yellow spots is a "lucky" color. The housekeeper names her "Good Fortune".
* The art in this edition is also very lovely, with a combination of ink-brush stylized illustrations and soft-pencil realistic drawings. The back of the book says "newly illustrated" by people called Lynd Ward and Jael.
* Chapter 2 summary: The artist begins to grow fond of the cat, though he laughs at the housekeeper's claim that she (the cat) has been praying regularly to the Buddha. But when a priest from the local Buddhist temple arrives and commissions the artist to do a large painting of the death of the Buddha - the pay for which will save the household from starvation - he wonders if the Buddha would listen to a cat's prayers.
* In chapter 3, the artist starts preparing to paint his picture; first he prays before his little statue of the Buddha, then thinks over the Buddha's history. Cue a really well-handled exercise in storytelling via description.
* The first two chapters were simply-told, lots of dialogue and setup with a nice scattering of detail to lay the scene. In this one we change to a formal, rather poetical style; here's a short sample about the cat. "And once more when he went to pray, there was Good Fortune, shining like a narcissus, and gold as a narcissus' heart, and black as a beetle on a narcissus petal"....
* I happen to notice at this point that the housekeeper has no name given and is the only (human) female character in the story - but really, there are barely any characters at all, and the artist has no name given either! Only the cat Good Fortune has a name. And the housekeeper even gets a commentary POV on the story, via the little poems in her voice at the end of each chapter. So it's not a matter of disparity between male and female characters, so much as of overall style.
* I really know so little of Buddhism that I don't know if it's weird / wrong that a Japanese artist is here portrayed as painting "all the Hindu gods of the heavens, and of the trees, and the mountains" (emphasis mine) as attending at the Buddha's deathbed.
* A very important plot-point mentioned near the end of chapter 3 is that when the Buddha died, all the animals of the earth except the cat came to pay homage. The cat refused homage and is therefore barred from... the Buddhist... heaven? I'm guessing this is an awkward attempt at referring to Nirvana without, you know, stopping the story to explain the whole concept of Nirvana which differs so drastically from the Western idea of Paradise.
* The housekeeper notes that Good Fortune is so well-behaved she "doesn't seem like a cat".
* And yet she does act very realistically like a cat, watching the artist paint and so forth - she's just an extremely GOOD cat. ;-)
* These next several chapters cover all the various animals the artist paints visiting the Buddha, with most of them including a story of the Buddha being incarnated as a member of the species, or the species serving / helping the Buddha in some way, or both. Good Fortune gives her approval of the first few animals, but gradually becomes more and more disappointed and... I'm going to say depressed, as the artist keeps not painting a cat. The housekeeper's poems track how sad the cat grows, how she won't eat, etc.
* There's also a funny little interlude in one chapter where the housekeeper makes the artist rest from his painting to visit with a friend and relax; he tells her "You may argue with a stone Jizo by the roadside, but you waste your breath if you argue with a woman!" and gives her a present of money to buy a new dress. Which can be read as a little bit gender-essentialist, but to me at least, it just reads as... giving the lady character some agency in the story, rather than leaving her purely in a servant role throughout?
* Finally, after he has painted all the other animals including even a tiger (portrayed as the least sympathetic of all animals), the artist tells Good Fortune as kindly as he can why he can't put a cat in his painting of the animals who receive the blessing of the Buddha. She cries so pitifully he tells his housekeeper to take her in the kitchen, feed her treats, and not let her see the picture again, but then he starts thinking about how the cat must feel, to be "cursed forever".
* Then: "I cannot be so hard-hearted," he said. "If the priests wish to refuse the picture as inaccurate, let them do so. I can starve." And he paints, at the very end of the procession of animals, a cat.
* He calls to the housekeeper to let Good Fortune come in and look at the painting, which she does, and the little cat is so happy and grateful that she dies of joy.
* One more chapter! The priests are highly offended over the artist's inclusion of a cat in the picture, and "as one can never erase work once done", they take it to be held overnight in the temple and then formally burnt.
* As we might predict from the book's title, a miracle happens overnight: the little painted cat disappears from the end of the procession, and instead is pictured standing right next to the dying Buddha, receiving his especial blessing. And even though it's so totally predictable, it's really... sad-happy-beautiful? Very touching, very sniffle-making. Elizabeth Coatsworth is an amazing writer. :-)
* Tiny book! I've read it before, so I knew, but TINY BOOK. It's a wonderful change from all these four-hundred-page monoliths.
* Speaking admittedly as a pasty white person, about a book written by another of the same -- I'm nevertheless really impressed by how un-Orientalist this book is, compared to pretty much everything else I've liveblogged on this comm that had (as this does) the slightest possibility of being Orientalist.
* And it moves really fast, without bogging down; excellent use of language, clear and well-chosen. Elizabeth Coatsworth, like many other good writers who do not maunder and babble, was a poet.
* A quick summary of Chapter 1: A very poor Japanese artist's housekeeper brings home from the market, instead of food, a cat. The artist is angry at first, because he considers most cats to be demons, but eventually lets the cat stay because she is very sweet and her white coat with black and yellow spots is a "lucky" color. The housekeeper names her "Good Fortune".
* The art in this edition is also very lovely, with a combination of ink-brush stylized illustrations and soft-pencil realistic drawings. The back of the book says "newly illustrated" by people called Lynd Ward and Jael.
* Chapter 2 summary: The artist begins to grow fond of the cat, though he laughs at the housekeeper's claim that she (the cat) has been praying regularly to the Buddha. But when a priest from the local Buddhist temple arrives and commissions the artist to do a large painting of the death of the Buddha - the pay for which will save the household from starvation - he wonders if the Buddha would listen to a cat's prayers.
* In chapter 3, the artist starts preparing to paint his picture; first he prays before his little statue of the Buddha, then thinks over the Buddha's history. Cue a really well-handled exercise in storytelling via description.
* The first two chapters were simply-told, lots of dialogue and setup with a nice scattering of detail to lay the scene. In this one we change to a formal, rather poetical style; here's a short sample about the cat. "And once more when he went to pray, there was Good Fortune, shining like a narcissus, and gold as a narcissus' heart, and black as a beetle on a narcissus petal"....
* I happen to notice at this point that the housekeeper has no name given and is the only (human) female character in the story - but really, there are barely any characters at all, and the artist has no name given either! Only the cat Good Fortune has a name. And the housekeeper even gets a commentary POV on the story, via the little poems in her voice at the end of each chapter. So it's not a matter of disparity between male and female characters, so much as of overall style.
* I really know so little of Buddhism that I don't know if it's weird / wrong that a Japanese artist is here portrayed as painting "all the Hindu gods of the heavens, and of the trees, and the mountains" (emphasis mine) as attending at the Buddha's deathbed.
* A very important plot-point mentioned near the end of chapter 3 is that when the Buddha died, all the animals of the earth except the cat came to pay homage. The cat refused homage and is therefore barred from... the Buddhist... heaven? I'm guessing this is an awkward attempt at referring to Nirvana without, you know, stopping the story to explain the whole concept of Nirvana which differs so drastically from the Western idea of Paradise.
* The housekeeper notes that Good Fortune is so well-behaved she "doesn't seem like a cat".
* And yet she does act very realistically like a cat, watching the artist paint and so forth - she's just an extremely GOOD cat. ;-)
* These next several chapters cover all the various animals the artist paints visiting the Buddha, with most of them including a story of the Buddha being incarnated as a member of the species, or the species serving / helping the Buddha in some way, or both. Good Fortune gives her approval of the first few animals, but gradually becomes more and more disappointed and... I'm going to say depressed, as the artist keeps not painting a cat. The housekeeper's poems track how sad the cat grows, how she won't eat, etc.
* There's also a funny little interlude in one chapter where the housekeeper makes the artist rest from his painting to visit with a friend and relax; he tells her "You may argue with a stone Jizo by the roadside, but you waste your breath if you argue with a woman!" and gives her a present of money to buy a new dress. Which can be read as a little bit gender-essentialist, but to me at least, it just reads as... giving the lady character some agency in the story, rather than leaving her purely in a servant role throughout?
* Finally, after he has painted all the other animals including even a tiger (portrayed as the least sympathetic of all animals), the artist tells Good Fortune as kindly as he can why he can't put a cat in his painting of the animals who receive the blessing of the Buddha. She cries so pitifully he tells his housekeeper to take her in the kitchen, feed her treats, and not let her see the picture again, but then he starts thinking about how the cat must feel, to be "cursed forever".
* Then: "I cannot be so hard-hearted," he said. "If the priests wish to refuse the picture as inaccurate, let them do so. I can starve." And he paints, at the very end of the procession of animals, a cat.
* He calls to the housekeeper to let Good Fortune come in and look at the painting, which she does, and the little cat is so happy and grateful that she dies of joy.
* One more chapter! The priests are highly offended over the artist's inclusion of a cat in the picture, and "as one can never erase work once done", they take it to be held overnight in the temple and then formally burnt.
* As we might predict from the book's title, a miracle happens overnight: the little painted cat disappears from the end of the procession, and instead is pictured standing right next to the dying Buddha, receiving his especial blessing. And even though it's so totally predictable, it's really... sad-happy-beautiful? Very touching, very sniffle-making. Elizabeth Coatsworth is an amazing writer. :-)
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I KNOW IT IS SUCH A GOOD BOOK.