A fusion of memoir, family chronicle, and author’s commentary that provides a fascinating view into the lives and minds of two passionate scholars, and the rarefied and often treacherous universe in which they lived. Told with conviction and wry humor, Palimpsest of Consciousness traces the author’s life from his beginnings as a stateless Russian child in pre-World War II Japan through his eventual journey to the United States, his meeting and marriage to the Dante … More >>
#1 by Michael Shapiro on July 1, 2010 - 7:10 pm
Higher Learning, A Novel
My Wife the Metaphysician, or Lady Murasaki’s Revenge
Intended as a companion volume and reader’s guide to the author’s earlier book, My Wife the Metaphysician, or Lady Murasaki’s Revenge, this systematic set of annotations maps an extensive mental landscape by reifying the emotional force of lived experience and the cognitive wellsprings of literary creativity. Akin to uncovering a palimpsest in an ancient manuscript, the process painstakingly lays bare the strata of meaning beneath a fictional text’s surface by retracing the pathways of the author’s self-awareness and removing the veil from hidden references and allusions. What emerges is a specific pattern of images and ideas embedded in a writerly consciousness that are constituted by biographical and historical data. This stocktaking begins as a journey of “rememoration” that chronicles the migrations of the author’s unusual family from Russia to America via Germany, Palestine, China, and Japan. It is a fascinating account of how the author’s parents, Russian-Jewish refugees, managed to carve out a life as classical musicians for themselves and their sons, first in East Asia between the World Wars, then in America after World War II. The figured bass of the subsequent narrative is the catastrophe that befalls the author and his wife, their lives together poisoned forever, her cruel death brought on by the acts of criminals who hide behind the mask of academic respectability, shielded from condign punishment by corrupt university administrators and unscrupulous judges. A case is laid out, with its corpora delicti, showing in detail how the evil was perpetrated, then allowed to perdure over a span of more than thirty years. Towering above everything is the exemplum of the couple’s steadfast love for each other and for their magical daughter. Interleaved throughout the book are numerous photographs and illustrations, along with fragments of correspondence with an astute reader, the author’s faithful friend. These contemporaneous responses to successive drafts as the annotated book developed articulate a series of exegeses that here serve as a literary “guide for the perplexed.”
VISIT http://www.marianneandmichaelshapiro.com to download excerpts
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Shapiro was born in Yokohama and educated in Japan and the United States. He and his late wife, the medievalist and Renaissance scholar, Marianne Shapiro, are the authors of several books, including Figuration in Verbal Art. His latest book is My Wife the Metaphysician, or Lady Murasaki’s Revenge, a work of fiction inspired by the great Japanese literature of upper-class women writers in the mid-Heian period.
Rating: 5 / 5