Hardcover, 256 pages
Published April 15, 2019 by Knopf.
In this “exquisite personal blend of philosophy and engagement, inner quiet and worldly life" (Los Angeles Times), an acclaimed author returns to his longtime home in Japan after his father-in-law’s sudden death and picks up the steadying patterns of his everyday rites, reminding us to take nothing for granted.
In a country whose calendar is marked with occasions honoring the dead, Pico Iyer comes to reflect on changelessness in ways that anyone can relate to: parents age, children scatter, and Iyer and his wife turn to whatever can sustain them as everything falls away. As the maple leaves begin to turn and the heat begins to soften, Iyer shows us a Japan we have seldom seen before, where the transparent and the mysterious are held in a delicate balance.
I don't know if it's because I'm getting older, but Pico Iyer's thoughtful prose on the full spectrum of life, creativity, the seasons, Japan, Zen, and Table Tennis, resonates deeply with me.
I look forward to returning to this unusual mix of memoir and philosophy.
Pico Iyer's "Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells" is a nice meditation on the idea of death and dying as we grow older and how Japanese culture thinks of these transitions. Mediation is the best word to describe the book, as many other reviews have done. It meanders quietly, its ideas and thoughts interweaving together. I feel that very few authors could have pulled off this type of book. It is clear that the idea for the book came up spontaneously and I do feel at times that the various strands of the book fit together but not as well as they could. I can see that all the ideas are of a theme but it lacks deeper narrative coherence. But perhaps that was not the point of the book in the first place. Since I read "The Lady and and the Monk", I have wondered about what happened …
Pico Iyer's "Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells" is a nice meditation on the idea of death and dying as we grow older and how Japanese culture thinks of these transitions. Mediation is the best word to describe the book, as many other reviews have done. It meanders quietly, its ideas and thoughts interweaving together. I feel that very few authors could have pulled off this type of book. It is clear that the idea for the book came up spontaneously and I do feel at times that the various strands of the book fit together but not as well as they could. I can see that all the ideas are of a theme but it lacks deeper narrative coherence. But perhaps that was not the point of the book in the first place. Since I read "The Lady and and the Monk", I have wondered about what happened next? I think most people who read that book wondered about his relationship with the Lady but also about how Iyer changed through his encounter with Kyoto. Glancing over his biography, once can see that he never really left Japan and he ended up together with the woman in "The Lady and the Monk." Autumn Light helps fill in the details of his life and I appreciate getting to meet him and his family again. One doesn't need to have read the first book in order to appreciate this one. However, it is interesting to see how the author has changed and how he has grown into his life in Japan. Recommended.
Note - I read this book a number of months ago and do not have a copy in front of me to refer to. I will update this review when I can review the text more closely.
I absolutely loved this book. And I think I read it at the right time (not to mention the right age), shortly after seeing Yasujirō Ozu's Tokyo Story.
He explicitly mentions this scene at the end of the film, which is one that I genuinely will never forget:
“Life is disappointing, isn’t it?” says a young girl who’s just lost her mother, near the movie’s end. Her sister-in-law, only slightly older but a widow already, breaks into a radiant smile. “Yes,” she says, in the voice of classical Japan. “It is.”
If you're interested in Japan, and (ideally, like me) getting on a bit, I highly recommend this quite beautiful rumination on Japan, aging and death.
Halfway through the book, Iyer recounts his awe at hearing a friend’s perceptions about Japan. “I’d never see that in a million years”, he confesses to his friend--who bemusedly reminds Iyer that those are Iyer’s own words, from the book he wrote after first moving to Japan decades ago. That, to me, sums up the killer flaw in the book: Iyer can no longer recreate the Beginner’s Mind necessary to connect with a reader.
His words are lovely. The mood of the book is lightly haunting, melancholy, appropriate for its subject matter: reflections on our middle age and mortality, particularly how we’re affected by the deaths of those in our lives. But it’s also much more, or seems to be, except I couldn’t really grasp it: twenty years in Japan have changed Iyer’s perspective, and his cultural references and assumptions make little sense to this western reader. Peoples’ attitudes, their …
Halfway through the book, Iyer recounts his awe at hearing a friend’s perceptions about Japan. “I’d never see that in a million years”, he confesses to his friend--who bemusedly reminds Iyer that those are Iyer’s own words, from the book he wrote after first moving to Japan decades ago. That, to me, sums up the killer flaw in the book: Iyer can no longer recreate the Beginner’s Mind necessary to connect with a reader.
His words are lovely. The mood of the book is lightly haunting, melancholy, appropriate for its subject matter: reflections on our middle age and mortality, particularly how we’re affected by the deaths of those in our lives. But it’s also much more, or seems to be, except I couldn’t really grasp it: twenty years in Japan have changed Iyer’s perspective, and his cultural references and assumptions make little sense to this western reader. Peoples’ attitudes, their rituals, interests, I just couldn’t grok.
There’s one more thing that infused the book, and I’m not sure if it’s deliberate or if Iyer is even aware of it: loneliness. I could not find any trace of human connection throughout the entire book: not in the shallow appearances-focused lives of those around him; not in his family or friends; not even in his perplexing relationship with his wife. There’s no... heart? Two weeks after finishing, I’m still not sure what it was that I found missing. I just found it all so sad.
But then again maybe it’s me and I’m just missing something important.
