Wine and...Books: BREASTS AND EGGS (2019) by Mieko Kawakami

Today we finally drop the episode covering the winner of our first Substack subscriber poll!

BREASTS AND EGGS is the first novel from award-winning Japanese author Mieko Kawakami to be translated into English (though her other novels have all been translated in the few years since!)

Kawakami is a failed J-Pop singer (she released 2 albums during a J-Pop decline) who discovered she loved writing the lyrics more than the music. She turned this into poetry and prose on a blog during the heyday of blogging and drew in 200,000+ reader PER DAY for her writing.

THE WINES:
Dallas' Pairing:
Domaine Ciringa “Fosilni Breg” Sauvignon Blanc, Slovenia

Dave's Pairing:
2022 Nonesuch Mencia, Silvaspoon Vineyard, Alta Mesa, California

Chapters

• 2:49 Background of the Novel
• 7:51 Dallas' Wine Pairing
• 11:13 Dave's Wine Pairing
• 22:39 Background of the Author
• 31:53 So What Did We Think About the Book?
• 52:36 Our Favorite and Least Favorite Elements
• 58:42 Wrap Up!

Transcript

0:00

You don't want to talk about the method of storytelling? No, no. Why? What are we doing this for then? The method of storytelling in this specifically is not really important. Of course it's a book. How is it not important? No, not important. He's Dave and I'm Dallas and we have opinions on just about everything. Sometimes they're on point and sometimes they go down better with a glass of wine. Join us. This is the Wine and Podcast. Out of curiosity, did you do this as an audio book as often your penchant? No. Ponchon? Whatever, however you pronounce it. I know. I was going say, was like, as an audio book, I feel like this book would fall very flat. That's crazy because most I mean to be fair many books do fall so flat as audiobooks they really really do but the style of this one it's so it has a And you know, it's got a rhythm Yeah, that is its own but it's a very It's rare for the author to know and of course is a translated work. So there are you know And there were two translators one for I believe part one and one for part two, right? And a lot of people critiqued one of the translators versus the other right in that and I think I'm If I got it correctly, I think I actually prefer the one everyone critiques which is part two, which is the one definitely read a little more For lack of better term interesting. I suppose a little more. Okay. Okay interesting. Okay. Okay. Well, we'll get to it. We'll get to it. So yeah Welcome back everyone to wine and the podcast where we pair wine with entertainment dilute ourselves into thinking you want to hear what we have to say about different pieces of pop culture and art but know for a fact that you need to hear what we have to say about wine because who knows anything about wine. We sure don't. That's not true. We actually totally do and we can help you find the perfect pairing for whatever it is you're planning to read, watch or listen to. Before we get started, please make sure to hit that follow button and subscribe. really helps this podcast grow and reach new listeners. Also, please leave a rating and or review that also helps us grow and reach new listeners may leave a five star review. So you know, only do it if you love us and want to live star review. And if you don't send us a pivish email to wine, the letter n is Nancy pod wine and pod at gmail.com. can also find us on sub stack wine and dot sub stack.com where you'll be the first to know when new episodes drop. Get in depth show notes, sometimes uncut. versions of these episodes, bonus pairings, articles, chats, pairing directories, wineann.substack.com. Be a cool kid, drink the wine, cool aid. Join us on Substack. All right, so speaking of Substack, today we cover the first result of one of our Substack subscriber polls where we asked our followers to pick the next novel we would cover and that became Much To Dallas' Chagrin. Breasts and Eggs by Japanese author Mieko Kawakami, the first novel of hers to be translated into English. In Japan, the novel is titled Anatsu Monogatari or Summer Stories. It was a rewrite and expansion of a previous novella titled Chichi Toran or Breasts and Eggs featuring the same characters, but then the novel included a second section taking place a decade later. The novella has never been translated into English, so when they translated the full novel, they decided to return to the novella's title, aka Chichitoran or Breasts and Eggs in English. The novel could easily be called feminist, and I believe the author calls it that. Though it's not feminist in stereotypical ways, It's very honest about the female POV in regards to kids and childbirth, men and sex, professional lives, and what few opportunities there are for women still, especially in Japan, and cultural mores regarding women in marriage and procreation. It contains a definite philosophical streak while showcasing characters that are empathetic, that each represent distinctly different worldviews and personalities. So let's talk a little bit about the book itself. The novel follows our narrator, Natsume Natsuko, a name that is seemingly a wordplay of some sort, but I could not entirely understand what the wordplay was. Though every single character, when she says her name, they're like, that's a clever pen name. And she's like, no, no, no, that's my real name. And they're like, what, seriously? And she's like, uh-huh. And so the only thing I know is that Natsu means summer because the title in Japanese of this book, as mentioned before, is Natsu Manogatari, which is summer stories. So Natsu means summer. Natsu-mei, mei means eye, like an eyeball. And then ko, natsu-ko, natsu-mei, natsu-ko, ko means child. So the only thing I can think of is this novel is called Breasts and Eggs, right? So part one, they're only called part one and part two in the novel themselves, but part one could really be the breast part, because it's all about breast implants and that these things resolve around a decision to get or not to get breast implants. And the second section is all is has a lot to do with childbirth and deciding to have a child. And an eye is kind of like a breast areola. They often call that like the eye type of a thing. And then, of course, child. So it's almost like Natsume Natsuko is like those are the two parts of this novel. And that then becomes summer, summer, I summer summer child. But then again, why every character, everyone in Japan seems to think this is very clever wordplay. And I'm like, ooh, something is missing in translation here that is not coming through. for whatever reason, our narrator has a very wordplayish name, Natsume Natsuko. So part one takes place during a night, a day and a night again, when the narrator's sister and niece visit. The niece, Midoriko, is not speaking to her mother, Makiko. Or by extension, our protagonist, who is her aunt, even though the mother Makiko says she's still talking to her friends, teachers, etc. Just no one in the family. However, the niece Midoriko is willing to write communications on pieces of paper. We soon find out the Makiko, who works as a quote unquote hostess, which is Japanese parlance for kind of escort, is thinking of getting breast implants. And so the events and conversations of this first part revolve mostly around this, revealing the history of the sisters and interspersed with diary entries of the teenage niece, remarking on how upset and disgusted she is by puberty and her mother's obsession with her own body. We then move on to part two, which takes place 10 years later, Natsuko's first novel and Natsuko, the narrator, is also a struggling author, a wannabe author. In part one, she has not really become an author yet. By part two, which is 10 years later, her first novel has been finished, published, and has been proven to be a success. She now makes a living as a writer in various capacities, but struggles to complete her second novel. She then becomes obsessed with the possibility of having a child of her own via sperm donation, a wildly unpopular and unsupported act for single women in Japan. For the most part, sperm donation is only available to married couples. as part of like treatment to have a child if you're having like infertility issues, then this can be a way to still have a child, but it is not available to single parents, especially not single women. So, all right. Before we go any further into this novel, I think that gives us a nice little... intros to what this novel is about and what the flavor of it is probably going to be. We're to get a little more into the author and her history to writing this novel and then our thoughts on the novel itself. these days, we like to say the lines upfront when we can. So Dallas, what did you pair with Breasts and Eggs and why? And I know you have some strong feelings you're going to share about this book. So I'm interested to hear what kind of line you paired with it. I think this novel has some very beautiful strong strokes, but also some things that I on a second read may I may feel better about. But anyway, in terms of the wine, This was a difficult one for me. Generally when I'm pairing wines, I like to descriptors, two or three primary descriptors that I then use as a basis for the wine. And layered was one that came to mind reading this. Lots of different layers in this book. She does a great job of weaving these tales and these stories and these women together. There's great introspection in the novel, great emotional depth. And there's also some... There's a thing I find often in feminist writing where the writing feels a little more grounded. earthy. And for me, of course, that's a minerality. So I wanted something that was that had a sort of really acute minerality that was sort of layered and something you kind of had to sit with. So for me, in general, that's going to that could be a lot of things. But and also the the floral aspect, because this is a very floral novel to me in many ways. So floral, minerality, and layers, to me that just screams Sauv Blanc. Slovenia has some really interesting Sauvs. And this one in particular, which is called Domain Criniga, sorry, Domain Tsaringa Sauv Blanc. is a 2020 You can find you can honestly pick this bottle up for anywhere from 18 to 30 bucks, depending on the vintage. It is I think it complements this novel really well, because as you're reading this, and like I said, I may end up reading this a second time, given this a second read. This wine really does open up and it kind of satisfies everything you need for reading. You know, often I like to curate when I'm reading something long form, start with a white or move into a rosé or an orange. in with the red or reverse that depending on my mood. But for this one, I think this domain syringa, it's called the fossilini brag. And I'm sure I'm mispronouncing that. Sob blanch 2020, I think is great on its own and complimented this book really well. So yeah. What you got? All right. So yeah, I have I agree with you on the layered thing. I found this book. to be I went with the red wine. Because for me, this had a certain heaviness to it. And it's a lot about I wanted something that had like a decent freshness, a decent acidity, like you said, minerality as well. And the florals and whatnot, like there's something lighter and buoyant. I think the pro style here is light on its feet. It's not super heavy. It's not. And even though it's for we mentioned florals, it's not really flowery either. Right, right. It's very To the point and straightforward. Now, this is, course, a translated work. So some of this you've got to we have to see through the eyes of a translation where this might be more poetic in its original language, possibly certain things of wordplay, even just like the character's name. I'm like that doesn't no one really explains it well. It's sort of like something is lost in translation. They say it's a wordplay. And then you're like, no one ever stops to explain why it's wordplay. which I really would have appreciated in the translated version because I'm like, guys, you kept it a Japanese name. Like we don't speak. Why is this word play? God damn it. And there's a moment in the book where they kind of sort of explained it and it did not make sense or didn't make word play sound. They're like, yeah, it's this and that. And I'm like, that's not how is that work? I don't get it. So but at the same time, I do notice that her style of writing, especially in this novel, at least, it's trying to keep things simple and to the point, like you're getting to the heart of things over, like you're just hearing these characters' thoughts and voices and POVs in very direct ways. so there was something about the wine that I wanted to pair this with where I'm like, okay, first off, being a feminist novel, like I wanted to find a wine that was, I wanted to find a female winemaker that was, like our protagonist in this novel, like someone who is finding their way in the world, and in this case, the world of wine in her own way, following her own passions, which are not always the same as the rest of the wine world. And doing so. Like the narrator of this book is she's wrapped up in her own concerns and, you know, she's disgusted with herself. more so than anyone else in the world. So it's like you're finding your way with yourself where it's like, you are who you are, you accept it, you embrace it, but you also aren't always thrilled with that. And so you are struggling with those inner feelings while finding your way. And even when you find your way like she's she's a successful she's now a working author by the second half of this novel, but there's still a part of her where she's like, but I can still like the second novel isn't working. I can't find my way even now. I don't know how to get to the next stage. So it's always the inevitable struggle and you are always you. Your life is always just life and it always comes with its struggles and its pitfalls and whatnot. So I wanted to find a wine for me, a red wine that still had some decent acidity and minerality, but had a freshness to it, but had a certain heaviness because this novel was not just light on its feet. It is, it's still heavy. And so I needed something that walked both those lines. So I chose a wine called the winery is none such and I got a California men Thea from a silver spoon vineyard from Alta Mesa Sacramento County. None such winery is Caitlin Quinn. She was raised in San Luis Obispo wine country. She's made wine for over a decade in California and abroad. She worked for Quinta Cruz when she got to work where she got to work with Spanish and Portuguese varieties and loved the range of styles there. She currently works for Arno Roberts and started None Such on the side in 2017 as a side project just for herself and to explore her own passions and her own style of wine. So she named it None Such as a playful way of saying that she wanted to show distinctive vineyards that speak to her. There's nothing else like them, right? Which is the meaning of the term None Such. She only makes five barrels of each wine currently. She does a more Vedra, a Sarah, a Gamay and a minty. So Ron Silva of the, and this is Silva. So Ron Silva of Silva spoons. that's S I L V a, not silver. You said it while you said it like that. was like, I've never heard the accent in his voice before. Okay. Right. It is, it is literally Silva spoons vineyard. He's been championing Iberian varieties for decades with 21 varieties planted, including the very first known planting of menthea in California. So it's just one acre was planted in 2014 with clones originating from Bierzo, Spain. The vineyard is located north of Lodi and south of Sacramento in the Alta Mesa AVA, which of course means high table because its hills rise higher than the flat areas around Lodi. Soils here are alluvial clay, gravel deposits left by the consums in American rivers. It is one of the warmest appellations in Lodi, making for more robust color and structure in the wine. And yeah, this menthea, it's dark, but not rough. It's really interesting. The winemaker herself describes, she says that this wine has quote unquote, soft acidity and silky tannins. Now, soft acidity, I'd never heard that term before. That was a very poetic term on her part. And it's interesting because I agree with it. When you taste this manthea, it's purple. It's much more purple than red in color, even though it's got a lighter body. Like it's not a dense, chewy wine by any stretch of the imagination, but it is deep and dark in color. It's purplier, which always kind of is a suggestion that that acidity is gonna be on the lower end. of the spectrum. Now the acidity is there. It has a freshness, it has a lightness to it. But it is a quote unquote, soft acidity. It's not sharp. It's not tangy. It's not bright. In that in that attack way. It is very gentle and which surprised me I really expected this wine to be more acidic. And then when I saw the color, I was like, that's gonna be tannic too. And it's neither the tannic is very well Yes, there's definitely that purezine green pepper note that's in there. It's fresh and floral for sure. It's got that denseness, but it's also very smooth. Those tannins are integrated and silky. The acidity is soft. It's got a lot of white pepper notes to it that I would say almost more than green pepper, but then yes, that sort of purezine green quote unquote astringency. is in there a little bit again, not too powerful. There's nothing that attacks out of this wine. And then you've got but you've got the white pepper, you've got red current and plumbing notes to it. It also that that white pepper, it smells and tastes and this is a I mean this in a very good way, but it's like a hard boiled egg with pepper and salt on it. And it tastes like one too, where it's just but not sulfuric. Don't get me wrong, I'm not going into the sulfur stinky side, but if you think of a hard boiled egg that is very fresh, so not smelly in any way, and you sprinkle some salt and sprinkle some black table pepper on it, all that, the flavors that all combine into that really are close to this manthea, and then add on top of that the fruit flavors and some of the floral notes, and you have this manthea, which was, so this one was hand harvested on September 2nd. 20 this was a let's see the mantheya was a 2021 I want to say and the grapes were crushed by foot fermented 100 % whole cluster with native yeast then basket pressed and aged in five neutral oak barrels for nine months 12.3 % ABV So nice and low alcohol. Like I said, nothing attacks. Everything is very well integrated, very smooth on this. It's got a freshness, but it's also got a heaviness. It's got a certain density and fruitiness to it on top of everything else. So this really, I thought, matched what this novel does in terms of being lighter. It's not super, like the prose doesn't go too heavy handed on the poetry. on the wordiness, the like, it keeps things kind of simple and kind of very direct to the point while being about very heavy themes, but always being very like, this is the character, this is what they're thinking, this is what they're saying, and you've got to read between the lines to get more. And that this novel definitely takes that approach to everything. And I feel like this wine, this Minthea. So I got this bottle from K &L wines. I've been shouting them out a lot recently. And I've been doing that because I did a trip. I told Dallas about this trip and I mentioned this on social media where I went to K &L wines and I brought up this little collection of bottles and the guy working the counter said he was proud of me for this selection. And then one of the wines and it was this wine, this Manthea, he kind of looked at it. Then he like held it up to the light. And I think he was looking at a label that they stick on it that was like a K &L sticker. And he was like, where did you find this? And I was like, And I didn't really know what to tell him because it was just on the shelves. They had it wasn't hidden. It wasn't like a single bottle hidden behind other things. It was like they had a lot of them. So I think it was like a new arrival or something like that. And I was actually looking for more single varietal more Vedras from California. So was under their other red section. And they had the non such more Vedra. And then this non such men Thea. The Morvedra is the slightly pricier. I think it's a 2019. They age it for longer before releasing the Morvedra, but I'd never had a California Minthea before. It's not something you see a lot of. I can think of only one other winery that even does it. And I don't think we grow that much of it. So I was very intrigued. I brought it up. Even the K &L guy was like, where did we get this? He's like, from Alta Mesa? What is this wine? So he was like, I'm gonna go grab a bottle of this once you walk out the door, because I didn't know we had it and I've got to taste it now. So that's my story behind finding it. You can get it to KNL wines. I do think you probably aren't gonna find this one outside of California because of how little of it is made. It's a small winery. It's only five barrels produced every year. Or probably not even every year. So you can probably order it. Nonesuch has a website. You can probably order it online to ship to you. K &L will ship it to you and they still have it in stock. So take a look at it. I'll have a link to both the winery website and to the K &L listing of this wine and see if you can get your hands on it. Maybe the Morvedra as well. And again, they do Syrah, Gamay, Morvedra and this, Minthea. And that's my pairing. Thanks. Actually, I'm curious about that one. I'm have to see if I can hunt down a bottle of that or order it at least. Yes, yes, 100%. All right. So getting back to the novel, guys, let's talk about the author Mieko Kawakami. So Kawakami is from a single mother family from Osaka, which so is the narrator in this book. So is is very she's pulling a lot from her history. And I think she's very on record as saying, yeah, this is this is this is me. I'm putting a lot of myself into this novel. She worked in bars as a kid, just like our narrator did, much like the protagonist. And she worked there. She worked so much there wasn't any time to read literature or books at home, but she fell in love with textbooks at school. The other kids didn't want to read school books, but me, me, Meiko devoured them front to back while at school. She was almost never allowed to read when she was out of school because she always just had to work all the time. She then became a, believe it or not, a J-pop singer or a quote unquote failed singer in Kawakami's own words. This was at a time when J-pop was suffering a decline in popularity. She produced two albums under the name Mieko in 2004 and 2005. I will have a link down below to her Spotify. It's not the easiest thing to find. There's a lot of Mieko's out there and this did not pop up easily. I had to find someone who put her on a playlist to then all of her songs and whatnot are in Japanese titles only. Japanese characters. So they're also very hard to find, but I will put a link so you can go find her. It's just two albums and some singles. She discovered during this time that she liked writing the lyrics more than the music. The lyrics were like poetry. And she also discovered she liked working and creating by herself rather than in teams or as a group of any kind. And that really isn't the way J-pop or really any kind of pop music genres work. So now I do want to play a minute of one of her songs because I hugely appreciated this. And I think Dallas is going to too. This is from her 2005 album. Atamaran akato sekano kekon or I did not provide that. I'm doing my best here. I'm doing my best here. Or the English translation is marriage between my head and the world. Okay. And it's a song called bear with me here. Watashi no tame ni umarete kita no jenai nara. If you weren't born for me. All right. We're gonna play this and it's gonna be about one minute of music. Here we go. Why did me Kita Anja Ho All right. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. I love the squeaky, almost like creaky hinge use of the strings in the background. And that it even comes in at one point where it harmonizes with her, like in the notes she's hitting. And I'm just like, that's nifty. And then at one point, and then it almost like it's on tune and it goes right back to being squeaky and kind of like off again. And I'm just like, I can see why she did not thrive as a J-pop singer with music like this. But I love it. I really do. And now some of her other music, like some songs are a bit more virtuosic with her voice. She does. She can actually like that is her being very reserved with her voice, but she does have some pipes on her. You can't be a J-pop singer really without it. And some of the music is a little more poppy and streamlined, but a lot of it like you can see her pushing the boundaries in both of her albums. And I can see why she was like, yeah. this is the world. Like I like singing and I love creating but I can see why she's like, you know, when I write the lyrics, no one gives a shit. When I write the music, everyone's probably hands on and like telling me not to do what I want to do. And when it comes to the lyrics, I can do whatever I want. after in 2006, Kawakami quit music to become a poet and blogger and her first novel, My Ego, My Teeth and the World landed in 2007. At its peak, her blog received 200,000 hits per day. This was the peak of blogging, really. They were like, that's yeah. But her writing on her blog, which is where she was basically quote unquote publishing all of her work at the time, was very, very popular. The Japanese were eating it up. So in 2008, she won the Akutagawa prize for Chichi Toran, the novella version of Breasts and Eggs. Now, writer and then governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara. who himself won the Akutagawa Prize in 1955 and was a sitting member of its selection committee, criticized the selection of Kawakami's novel for the prize in a Bungai Shunju, which is a publication in Japan. He wrote, the egocentric self-absorbed rambling of the work is unpleasant and intolerable. Wow. I can see a man having that. And an older man, right? older man having that response to this novel. And this novel is very like it criticizes and pushes against the concept because in Japan as a culture even as bad and puritanical as American culture can sometimes be in with our history with with Puritans and religion and cultural mores and the way things are supposed to be in polite society and blah blah blah like man Japan's got nothing on them. It is all about doing what is expected. And if you want to do something unexpected, you are a hindrance on the rest of culture. Like you are doing things that are as as I think in Ishihara's own words, unpleasant and intolerable. in 2010, Kawakami's first full length novel, Heaven, won the Murasaki Shibuku Prize in literature in 2012. An English translation of her short story, March Yarn appeared in March. which is a collection of essays and stories about the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. From 2015 to 2017, Kawakami conducted a series of interviews with Haruki Murakami, which a lot of you, that's usually the Japanese author most Americans have heard of, in which she notably asked him about women and sexualization in his novels. The edited volume of these interviews titled, and I love this title, Haruki Murakami, A Long, Long Interview. was published in 2017. During the same period. Did you read that one? No. OK, I started reading it. It's it's yeah, you could tell like, OK, all right. So I I'm going to I'm going to go on record. I've never read her economy, which is I'm sorry, Murakami. It's a big blind spot in my book reading. Now I have his wind up bird chronicles here on my bookshelf behind me. So that's usually the one people are like, start with that one. I'm like, okay, great. That's my starting point. So that will probably make an appearance on this show, on this podcast in the near future, because that is one I'm chomping at the bit and I really need to read some Murakami, I so much. So during this same period, Kawakami was selected as the 2016 Granada Best of Young Japanese Novelist for a Short Story, Marie's Proof of Love. Kawakami's novel, Ms. Ice Sandwich, made the shortlist of the 2018 edition of the Grand Prix of Literary Associations. And then in 2019, Kawakami published Natsu Monogatari or Summer Stories, or as they called it in English, Breasts and Eggs, a considerably expanded version of her novella, Chichi Toran, and received the 73rd Menacee Publication Culture Award. As mentioned before, Breasts and Eggs was her first novel to be translated into English, I believe in 2019. but her previous two have since been translated as well. So can find all of them in English these days. And that is thus, thus, thus, and endeth the history lesson. Wow, I could not say that. I blame the wine. Blame the wine. I'm not drinking wine. I'm drinking coffee. Blame, blame the morning. So all right. What do we think about this novel, Dallas? We're down to just the opinions. let's see. I'll start. I'll start. Yeah, you want to start? No, go for it. All I'll say to start us off is the novel is divided into two parts. As mentioned before, the first part is all about the sister wanting to get breast implants and sort of the how what how what everyone thinks about this. We're really only inside the narrator's head as the younger sister. But the niece, we also get her diary entries and the niece is like. we learned that she's completely freaked out about this breast implant thing. Like she does not understand it. She's disgusted with it, mostly because she's going through puberty and is disgusted with her own body. And so everything about womanhood is just like, fuck this, fuck this life, fuck this lot in life and fuck everything I am. in part two, is 10 years older and seems like we don't really get a lot of the older sister in Denise in part two, but we get a little bit and they seem much more like she's grown up. You know, and she's she's much more like most people, like we all get out of our teen years and we're we're we're not as freaked out about any of this anymore. Do we love it? Probably not still. But do we talk about it all the time and think about it all the time? No. We've moved on and we're thinking about other concerns in life and just who we are and what our body is is just sort of like, yeah, it's there. Great. Moving on. What do we do with it? How do we take care of it? But beyond that, moving on and in part to. Part two is more my favorite section. Even though part one, think it's a great, part one is a rewritten version of the novella. And I did look up the novella and what it was about. And so for the novella, it's actually the... The narrator is the one wanting to get breast implants and the niece is her daughter in the novella. So it's seeing it from a slightly different POV where it's just those two characters kind of bouncing off each other. And for the novel version, she created the, essentially created the protagonist and to be an outside onlooker of this drama going on between the mother and the niece, the sister and the niece. and a counterpoint. And it's a good entry. And I love that it does just take place in a night, a day and a night. It is very, and it's about 150 pages. So it's about the first third of the novel and it is fairly short. And I do like that. It also doesn't give a lot of answers to everything. Like when the sister just disappears for that long protracted period. And you're like, I wonder what the story is going to be behind that. And then we don't find out. She just comes back. And it's like where we're and she's she's plainly been drunk off her ass all night. And it's like, what were you doing? Why did that need to happen? Why did you just leave me with your niece for 24 hours? Like completely? It's like, my phone died. And it's like, yeah, but where the fuck were you? You know, and it's just like, but it's amazing. And then she never says. And I'm like, I that's cool. I really appreciate that. Because I'm like, you just have to decide what that was really all about. In the end. And I do think as a short, the first third of the novel, it's a good entry point. But then the next two thirds of the novel, which is part two, which is a much longer and it's more about our protagonist rather than an outside character. That's the one that really won me over. Like I went fairly slow through part one, but then part two I was into. I was all about it. So your general thoughts here? I think you're right. And I called. to the first section breast essentially sort of the reunion section, right? You know, where these characters are, you know, they're reuniting for lack of better term. you learn about their history and you learn about their history. gives you a nice on ramp to like this is who these people are. And then we'll start following the main story once you learn all this. Exactly. And I do think. I think what this is going to be a man speaking about his ideas of what this author may have been attempting to do. So they're probably completely wrong if they are someone just go ahead and just tell us we're full of shit in the comment section in your review of our review. But it seems as if the character was trying to take the idea of womanhood and have it witnessed. by three different versions of womanhood. Very much. to have that take place, as we say, basically in the span of a day. what's amazing, what is really well done, I think about this, is the movement. It really does move well. There is lots of philosophical meandering in a lot of the internal monologue. But as a person throughout the novel, it's a big piece of the style. Absolutely. But as a person who does that, and does a lot of it, you know, I've written entire plays and screenplays about monologues. So I love the art form. I love the meandering walks through consciousness and subconsciousness and philosophical kind of meandering. I love that. It Those moments did kind of pull me out of the movement and the motion of the piece. I don't think they necessarily detracted from it, but I will give credit where credit is due because this is clearly a philosophical kind of I won't say treatise, but it is a philosophical kind of rendering. I think from the author's point of view and. It honestly feels like an essay, if I'm honest, it feels like a protagonist is very much a film for the author. Like she has the author's backstory. I get so much and while not being there are certain things that are very different. The author is married with children in real life these days. And this protagonist takes a firm stance on being alone. Yeah, for the rest of the life. There are parts that are very antinatalist. know, they're one of the characters that even the character she meets from the other character she meets at the sperm donor in the sperm donor scene is severely acutely antinatalist. Right. And so it is there. There lots of great components kind of swirling around and moving around one another. And I do agree with you in that. In traditional parlance, sometimes things don't necessarily resolve or land. But as a person who enjoys that, that wasn't a problem for me. It's just that those sort of protracted, the philosophical kind of meanderings kind of pulled me out of the motion of the story, which again, isn't a detraction from her skill. It just seemed in terms of the storytelling. Either that was a a sort of byproduct of the translation. Or it's it's purely intentional. And yeah, doubtful because because that wouldn't the ebb and flow wouldn't really come down to the translation, right? Like what it's saying and how it's saying it, yes, but in terms of Now we go into a section where the protagonist is just gonna be thinking about this for five pages straight is like, nope, that had to have been written in that way, give or take. So I think that's very much the style, but I also think this book, there are certain cultural things. I think you can translate them to certain American cultural things, but it's heavily about how much, because one of the big frustrations, I think, with Japanese culture, reading about Japanese culture for me, was how little people communicated. Right. It's like it's pulling fucking teeth to get them to say anything straightforward to each other. It's all politeness. It's all dancing around topics. It's all. mean, that exists. I can already hear someone saying, like, we do that to you. it's like not to this level, Yeah. So I get it. To your relationship with Dallas, Dave, what are you talking about? Exactly. And it's like we have our version of that. But this is one. This is everybody. So it's not just like, you have that person. who's bad at it, this is like, this is the culture. And it's not even just like, well, you we're usually polite or like, we just talk over each other. And it's like, no, no, no, I get it. I get it. We do. But this is something where like people will go years without saying something directly. And then it's a revelation when they finally say it and it's like, I could say that. And it's like, holy shit. It's like, it's not even that like, yes, just fucking say it. But I think part of this novel is her challenging the Japanese norms, which are still to this day, very uptight, very, it's all performative. It's all, you know, there are, know, because the Japanese even has ways and I don't pretend to understand how their language works by any stretch of the imagination. But from what I've understand, there are certain ways of speaking depending on whether that person is higher up on the hierarchy or below you. and you use different tenses, you use different verbs to be like, am kowtowing to you or I am lording it over you. And it's like their language literally is built in with these ways of speaking. And then if you don't adhere to that, if you're just talking in this sort of like, they always mention how the Ossacan way of speaking is that sort of like a little too straightforward, a little too like you're not abiding by the rules. it can be. cutesy or endearing in its way, but it's also kind of like, God, where are you from? Like, why are you talking this way? And so there's a lot of things that I think are very specific to Japanese culture in terms of what it's taking or what it's exploring and what it's commenting on in regards to that and how our protagonist reacts and responds. I was surprised that even I mean, like one of the things that one of the things that I both liked and I'm still on the fence about is her sheer, like every character has this sort of like sheer commitment to a worldview or a belief, right? Like our main protagonist had a real like bad sexual experiences. And when I say bad, not even like abuse, just like was not with the right person, right? And so, but then she's like, I can't do sex. Like plainly, it just doesn't work for me. And I'm like, I mean, mean, maybe authentically, maybe that's true. Like you could, that could be true. but it was like one person. And then when a better person that you frankly liked better than that person and probably treated you better than that person arrives, she's like, okay, but it can't be that kind of relationship because that doesn't work for me. And I'm like, just for the rest of your life, you're just sticking to that gun with like, no, you don't want to try one other time to see if it doesn't work for you when you mix up who it's with. And she sticks to that gun so desperately. And really the the guy that even like he's the only one that sort of like changes a little bit, where he's like, okay, I'm exploring myself and what exactly I think about all these things. And I'm willing to change for the right person for the right circumstance. But everyone else the girl the woman he's with before, like you said, she's natalist in an almost insane degree, where she has like a nihilist, like an out view of that where it's like all birth is bad. all procreation is bad. Bringing someone into this world is an act of violence. And it's like, okay, right, right. It's like, yes and no, like, but it has to be bold. Like, what's the answer? much like, you know, qualify, but no asterisk, no asterisk and no version of it where it can be different. And then same for our protagonist, though, in her way, she's like, no version to what does this change for me? And you mentioned that real quick, we were talking about how stringent Japanese sort of archetypes and cultural strata can be. And particularly, I think even in the early 2000s, when you talk about the J pop movement, it's amazing how the women in J pop at that time that it could be cowlick. Yeah, let it go. I'm to a damn word I'm That's Dave Baxter, ladies and gentlemen, women in J pop. Sorry, now that I'm going all I can see is a fucking cowlick. I'm trying to get rid of it for that reason. Leave it alone. God damn it. Close enough. Close enough. The women in the roles for women in J-pop at that time were just so it was just they were so astringent. So so stringent and so well defined and so inflexible. You know, if you need a parallel, think about the boy bands of and the mill surrounding the boy bands of the US in the 90s. And if you read some of those stories, how just toxic and caustic the environment was. And I imagine for the women in J-pop at that time, it was even more so. But she also, she defines these characters so acutely again. And I think that's a product of the brevity of the piece, you know, because she jumps right in. She drops you into the reunion and you immediately need to know the kind of the perimeter and parameters of these characters. And that was another thing I kind of had a bit of an issue with. I was like, OK, alright, this is some. These are just really inflexible archetypes and character drawings, but as a product of. you know, the brevity of the piece and yeah, and mirroring the echoing the culture, it made sense. Right. So well, and there are things like, you know, our protagonist, I think the thing that I liked about the protagonist is she's a she's not just flawed in the way that all protagonists are, but like, she has things that she can't wrap like, think even to the point like her view of like, I have to be alone forever is meant to be a flaw. Yeah, like not a absolutely, absolutely. I mean, a strength of conviction and yes, I think the book is exploring like this is one way someone can turn out in the world and that's okay. If that's truly, if they stick to it and they want it and they're happy with it, we need to allow for it. You know, it's like there can't be one answer for all people, all couples, all anything. And, but then, you know, she had like, she struggles with the... gay couple that comes to the the hot springs right and she has this whole thing play out in her head where she's challenged on her own insecurity with the gay couple and it's just her playing out the thing it's a fantasy and she's like we wear the people call her out on like she knows it's a bad thought to have but she can't help but have the thought and then play out the whole thing and I'm like this is cool because it is like no one's no one's just a great yeah like you know person who's got it like We're not just following them to see this is how things should be. Like every character is, they've got their strengths and they've got their very weak weaknesses. Even the breast implants and the older sister and her hostess and her sticking to that kind of job and not really wanting to go anywhere else with it. But, you know, not. she's doing well in life, but she could do better. And she's really not thinking through like what's going to happen when she ages out of this profession and things like that. And so like that's brought up and like, what are you going to do because this can't last forever forever. But then she's like, sure, Ken breast implants, right. So it's I think which is part of the thing. She's new. She's right. Exactly. So, yeah, but I do think the novel does very well at not making anyone the hero hero, even though we have a protagonist. but it is about look, there's all these personalities, all these ways of talking of thinking of conversing of thinking about things of approaching things. And I think especially for Japanese culture, this was a big conversation to have, because they are still far more than we are, I believe, much more stuck in mores and traditions. And this is how things like you know, the fact that sperm donation is not available for single women or gay couples because they're just like, yep, you got to be married. You got to end. Then we can give you this and everything else has to be completely unofficial, you know, back room type of dealings because no hospital can give it to you or will give it to you. And that's the thing. It's not even necessarily that it's outlawed. just doesn't happen. Right? Or I'm not sure one way or the other, but the novel is not clear. Anyone's out there who likes, who would like to add any cultural kind of, addendums or asterisks to anything we've been saying or anything that's changed since the novel was released, please feel free to rat us out in the comment section and we will. don't think much. The novel is not that old and the English translation is not old at all. It's about five years old. So. and one more thing. reading a lot of the reviews for this, it seems like a pretty a pretty clear line drawn in the sand. in relation to the male archetypes and characters in this piece. Universally, it seems like most men who read this piece, particularly Japanese men or Eastern men seem to think that the male characters are of course, one dimensional and it is really anti masculine anti man. It's funny because the main male character in part two is the most like We don't get inside his head the way we get inside the protagonist. Cause of course it's her voice. the turn. He makes the most. He makes the turn. He's the most dimensional. Right. And that is he changes the most in the novel. So it's fascinating that they're like all the men are one note and I'm like, not this guy. This guy's exactly the opposite. And the women tend to be more like they they've made a decision and they're on that path and nothing. Like, I mean, they doubt themselves, but nothing ever makes them truly waver or swerve onto a different thing. And the men seem to be, I mean, don't get me wrong, there's not a lot of male characters in this. In fact, one has not a single male character. Not a single one. of the point. It's all, and I thought maybe the novel was going to do this where it takes a while until the first male character actually appears. But when he does, he's the most fleshed out character and the most rounded character of the whole book. He's really the only, cause there's only the sperm donor and this guy are kind of the two, right? And so the sperm donor is a, you'll have to read the novel to find out, but he's something. He is a character and he is what he is. And then there is our main male character who, yeah, he's, and that's really, there's not. It's all the women. It's all about women. in general, it was just such a wonderfully feminist kind of take on this subject matter that most men, many men- Well, you know, it's funny. This book does fail the reverse bloodshill test. understand. Yeah. So it's like the men really come and only, they never talk to another man, never. It's always just talking to the women. And they're mostly talking about relationships and procreation and life and things like that. But it's fun because these novels barely exist that actually fail a reverse bledgel test. this is one of the rare ones that does. I don't think that because it's so rare to encounter a novel that does that or a story of any kind that does that, you cannot use that as a criticism. It's only a criticism because of how widespread the opposite is. and ever-present. So any final thoughts on this? you have, what was your least favorite thing about this novel? least favorite thing about this novel is probably as I said earlier, the the sort of philosophical meandering out of the world. I think those philosophical meanderings initially pulled me out of the inertia and the movement. Because, you know, as act one or breasts part one, part one. It is it's doing great character work. I'm really interested in where this is going where these characters are why they're so stringent why the the their blinders are up and so immovable and know the character interplay. But I think those philosophical kind of meanderings in that narrator voice. Again, this is coming from a person who loves that generally, I think that pulls me out of the movement. Mostly because I suppose I developed an expectation of where the novel was going to go in the first few chapters, in the first few, you know, pages. And then when those sort of philosophical meanderings, as I like to say, popped up, I was like, damn it, a wall. Okay, fine. You know, so. Okay. Okay. What's your favorite part? I like that the characters aren't necessarily that open to changing. Okay. That's it. See, see, that's funny. That's my least favorite part of the novel. If I had to say, I think it's that for all the philosophical moments that outside of that one male character who does have a turn, everyone is because she has meetings, like she has her publisher. or editor that she meets with. that editor has like a way of dealing with everything that like you can tell they're not 100 % happy with it. And yet they go on with it. And to the bitter end, the one friend who's moving away or the one sort of friend who's moving away, then they have that one very drunken night where they meet together. And she's telling her all, she's basically like, I don't want to do this, but I can't see any other way. So this is what's happening and let's drink. And then I'm off. And I think I get the point, which is that all these women feel trapped in their lot. And it's like, are they happy, happy with it? Nope. Are they gonna deal with it? Yep. And are they gonna be, they'll get together with our protagonist and tell it right to their face and be like, look, this is kind of what's happening. This is why I needed to meet up and get plastered because this is where I'm going off to and I've committed to it. I'm doing it. nothing's gonna change my mind, but I'm not happy about it. And that is, a lot of life is like that. So there's no getting away from that. and I'm sure again, Japanese culture probably makes it even more likely that you get trapped in these things where again, the culture is not going to help you do anything differently, not even a little bit. Like, you know, there's no services, there's no like, you can't even really choose to have a child on your own. They're like, yeah, get married. It's like, find someone, then we'll help you have a child. So it's even more restrictive there than it is here in certain ways. Even though we have our version of that, it's like that's a couple of shades higher, darker in it. the lack of change is my least favorite, but I appreciate what it's doing and what it's saying there. And then I think my I do I then the see I yeah, I'm gonna inverse exactly what you just chose is your two things, then the philosophical because those are when they're exploring the possibility of thinking differently or changing or thinking deeper about it. And I'm like, I needed that to accept the lack of change. I think the two things had to go hand in hand. If it was like no one was changing, but we were not getting any deeper thought on the subjects. That would have made me pull my hair out. And the two things together, think work work very well for me. yeah. Yeah. I think in concert that the two things they're necessary. Like I said, the philosophical meandering, you know, I understand its necessity. I understand why it's there. It makes sense from, you know, a structure standpoint. But in terms of the inertia of reading it, it was like, OK, a wall. this is the sort of, ultimately, it's a great mechanism for exposition. For philosophical kind of, and I guess it could be also pacing, because like, I'm a slow reader, I like reading slow, like, I don't read a lot in one sitting. And for for a reason, like after 10 to 20 pages, absolute max in a single sitting, and it's like, it's time to just sort of walk away and come back to it. And so it could be that like, inertia and momentum don't even enter into it for me. Like it's not something I'm looking for. It's not something that might I don't think it's something I naturally do, even if it the book or prose allowed for it. But same thing with like binge watching and things like that. Like I just I just don't binge anything. Like nothing in a single go nothing in a big go. It's like it's just not something my brain handles well or wants to do or gravitates towards. It really needs to just pace itself and take things in small chunks and let it sit and percolate and then move on to next. So it could just be the style like works really well for that, but not so much if you're trying to blow through any bigger chunks at a time. All right. Well, folks, that has been Breast and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami, our very first novel by Pohl. The next one will be the Rick James autobiography, Glow. So expect that coming. My guess is we got to get through the holidays. If we don't do it in December, because this is going to drop in November, I believe, but we don't do it in December. It'll probably be January that we finally get around to that. So look for it right around then. And then it will be time for yet the next novel. That's right. So thanks so much for listening, everyone. Once again, go find us on Substack, wineman.substack.com. If you have a message for us, email us at winemanpod at gmail.com. And we will be back in one week. another wine and entertainment pairing for your entertainment. Until then, take care, drink something nice, read, watch, listen to something nice. Ciao for now, folks. Later, guys. you you you