Sayonara by James Michener

Title:
Sayonara

Author:
James Michener

Copywrite:
1954

Okay, so this is one of my absolute favorite books. It is not a recent book, I believe it was written in the fifties, actually. It is a romantic tragedy about an Airforce pilot named Lloyd Gruver. The story is set in Japan in the 1940's. At this time in our history, American soldiers were prohibited from marrying Japanese (or other "native girls") and even if they did manage to get permission to marry, their new brides were not legally allowed to move to the United States. Lloyd is completely baffled as to why an American boy would want to marry a Japanese girl, but nonetheless he is given the mission to escort a young man who has managed (through writing to his congressman) to get permission to marry his Japanese bride back to Japan. Once there, falls in love with a beautiful actress named Hana-Ogi and becomes entranced by Japan and Japanese culture.

This book covers a variety of topics including romance, tragedy, politics, class conflict, racism, and the Japanese/American culture clash. I'd reccommend reading it, wholeheartedly!

About the New Canon

I guess the most important way to start this is to explain why I have declared this blog "The New Canon". Do you know what the Canon is? Just in case you don't here's a brief description and an explanation of why I hate it.

About 50 years ago, a group of scholarly blokes at the most acclaimed universities in the United States sat down and decided what books were to be considered literature and what books were just . . . well books. They didn't have any literary value and were not even considered "literature". The books in this Canon are said to be those literary works which have defined American culture and thus are the only ones fit to be taught.

What you must understand is that these books are incredibly limited. They are essentially a list of books written by dead Eurpopean men. They were judged to be ideal books against which all other books are to be measured. I want to create here a list of great reads that aren't necessarily written by someone who could not imagine what life would be like for our generation. The value of the books included on the Canon cannot be ignored, but by limiting ourselves to a strict list of valuable books, we eliminate the voices of our current generation.

Here's a link to Wikipedia that has more information about the Canon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_canon