Through the Arc of the Rain Forest
Karen Tei Yamashita's debut novel uses outrageous characters such as a Japanese man, a three-armed CEO, and a Brazilian peasant to satirize the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and the absurdities of global capital.
Work Information
A work of invention and satire that radically reframes the future of the rainforest.
The novel tells a story of desire and development around the Amazon forest with a mix of humor and unease. It rewrites a real environmental crisis through imaginative leaps.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Coffee House Pr
- Published
- 1990-09-01
- Pages
- 192 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 13.72 x 1.27 x 21.59 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780918273826
- ISBN-10
- 091827382X
- Price
- 1198 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Science/Earth Sciences/Ecology
Through the Arc of the Rain Forest is a burlesque of comic-strip adventures and apocalyptic portents that stretches familiar truths to their logical extreme in a future world that is just recognizable enough to be frightening. In the Author's Note," Karen Tei Yamashita writes that her book is like a Brazilian soap opera called a novela: "the novela's story is completely changeable according to the whims of the public psyche and approval, although most likely, the unhappy find happiness; the bad are punished; true love reigns; a popular actor is saved from death ... an idyll striking innocence, boundless nostalgia and terrible ruthlessness." The stage is a vast, mysterious field of impenetrable plastic in the Brazilian rain forest set against a backdrop of rampant environmental destruction, commercialization, poverty, and religious rapture. Through the Arc of the Rainforest is narrated by a small satellite hovering permanently around the head of an innocent character named Kazumasa. Through no fault of his own, Kazumasa seems to draw strange and significant people into his orbit and to find himself at the center of cataclysmic events that involve carrier pigeons, religious pilgrims, industrial espionage, magic feathers, big money, miracles, epidemics, true love, and the virtual end of the world. This book is simultaneously entertaining and depressing, with all the rollicking pessimism you'd expect of a good soap opera or a good political satire."- Kirsten Backstrom, 500 Great Books by Women
Karen Tei Yamashita is the author of Brazil-Maru, Tropic of Orange, Circle K Cycles, I Hotel , and Anime Wong , all published by Coffee House Press. I Hotel was selected as a finalist for the National Book Award and awarded the California Book Award, the American Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association Award, and the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award. She has been a US Artists Ford Foundation Fellow and is currently Professor of Literature and Creative Writing and the co-holder of the University of California Presidential Chair for Feminist & Critical Race & Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Reviews
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A very enjoyable read. This book reminds me of those strange and meandering novels (like Tom Robbins) except with an environmental bent, but not with the heavy-laden activist tone of early Carl Hiaasen. It is a great book with several interweaving plots and quite a bit of magical realism. Some parts of it are laugh out loud funny. Yamashita is an interesting writer; while one of the protagonists is Japanese (and this takes place in the Japanese expatriate community in Brazil), this is not necessarily an Asian-American book. I have heard however her say in interviews that she completely identifies herself as an Asian-American author - I wonder if that is pointing to the new globalism/cosmopolitan trend we're seeing nowadays. It's a fun read regardless of your political or racial proclivities so I would pick it up if you're a fan of Robbins, Pynchon, maybe even David Foster Wallace (lite) and others. It explores interesting ideas in science, religion, and throws in some corporate irresponsibility for good measure. Overall a very memorable book and one of my new favorites.
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A beautiful book
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Very experimental but doesn't always land.
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Was suggested this novel by my friend who read it as part of a seminar on formal narrative strategies pushing boundaries. This book is from the perspective of a floating ball. It's about the environment and finding purpose. It is a very imaginative and enjoyable critique.
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This novel is a hoot. Yamashita's free-wheeling black comedy satirizes most aspects of post-modern life: media, fads, environment, corporations, televangelists. It's all there in this "Russian novel on crack."