Non mi restava altro che incollare la fronte al vetro e gettarmi dalla finestra. Sono la sola persona al mondo alla quale sia capitato un simile miracolo: è la defenestrazione che mi ha cambiato la vita. Brandelli del mio corpo devono essere ancora oggi sparsi per tutta la città.Finché esisteranno finestre, l'essere umano più umile della terra avrà la sua libertà.Balzac descriveva la pensione Vauquer come una piccola rappresentazione dell'intera società parigina. Amélie Nothomb cambia i termini dell'operazione, ma il risultato è analogo. L'intreccio si concentra sull'anno passato dalla Nothomb in Giappone come impiegata della Yumimoto, una multinazionale giapponese. Il mondo esterno viene spinto fuori dalla cornice. Le 128 pagine ci tengono imprigionati tra gli uffici e la gerarchia del mondo aziendale. In realtà, Amélie ci mostra la società giapponese degli anni '90 attraverso i suoi lavoratori. Ne smonta il funzionamento e dispone gli ingranaggi sul suo tavolo, li ricompone, diventa lei stessa una rotella. Tic, tac: sulla carta il Giappone potrà vedere la sua smorfia, più che il sorriso.Quando si pensa al Giappone, appare davanti ai nostri occhi la tecnologia. Poi arrivano i manga, le studentesse con la divisa, gli alberi di ciliegio in fiore. Un brainstorming che spesso include anche l'ordine e la precisione tipici dell'Impero del Sol Levante. Un ordine che ha le sue ombre, o per lo meno le aveva fino agli inizi degli anni '90. La donna è regolata come un pacco esplosivo: fino ai 18 anni studia, dai 18 ai 25 ha un margine di libertà in cui può immolarsi sull'altare della produttività. Se sfiora la soglia dei 25 senza uno straccio di marito, perde la faccia. Rimane imprigionata dentro il suo stesso meccanismo, per la dedizione al lavoro perde la possibilità di sposarsi, e da quel momento non c'è amore che tenga: deve afferrare il primo scapolo che le sguscia vicino, ignaro. La donna giapponese è rappresentata perfettamente dalla signorina Mori. Il suo nome, Fubuki, significa "tempesta di neve" e non poteva esser posto in modo più calzante: ha la bellezza della tempesta, ma anche la forza distruttrice del ghiaccio e del vento che ti sferzano il viso. Fubuki è una nuvola di rabbia e odio represso, svuotata dai propri sogni da una società spolpatrice. E non è la sola: quasi tutti, alla Yumimoto, sono trascinati volenti o nolenti in quella che si può chiaramente chiamare una lotta per la sopravvivenza: il superiore comanda l'inferiore, sempre, anche per sfogare rabbia e frustrazione.La Nothomb sa benissimo che il lettore la invita a fuggire da quella gabbia di matti il prima possibile, ma non rinuncia al suo tentativo di integrazione. E' nata in Giappone, si è sempre cullata nel dolce ricordo della sua terra, ha imparato alla perfezione la lingua, vuole riabbracciare le sue origini. Ma la società è cambiata. Paradossalmente l'occidente viene disprezzato. I "bianchi" sono quelli che sudano, che hanno sogni, che appena hanno una finestra ci si incollano con il muso per mimare un salto liberatorio sulla città. I giapponesi, al massimo, possono saltare davvero, suicidarsi per mantenere l'onore intatto tra le mani di chi resta. E se rimangono, devono rassegnarsi a perpetuare anche nei contesti quotidiani il sistema reverenziale ereditato dall'impero: l'imperatore si guarda con "stupore e tremore", solo così si può essere certi di sopravvivere alla mattanza.Lo stile della Nothomb mi piace. Ho amato i suoi ritratti degli impiegati, la sua ironia brillante anche nei momenti più tetri. Non mi ha rapito come avrei pensato, ma promette bene: voglio leggerla ancora.Spero che il Giappone negli ultimi vent'anni si sia scrollato di dosso questa disumanità produttiva.
There is one crucial reproach which must be made to this book, and it is not a literary one. There is a Japan which has been invented in the West, which probably has a distant relation to the real Japan, which ontologically speaking, is not the same thing. This western (or foreign) view of Japan is made of a certain number of clichés, and one of the most pregnant clusters of clichés is the one related to the workplace. In the early 1990s, Japan was at the height of the bubble, and their corporations really seemed able to take over the world. All this collapsed, leading to what is referred to as the "lost decade" of the Japanese economy. I believe it is important to put the book in this context. The success of "Stupeur et Tremblements" might indeed have been a reaction by western readers to these seemingly all powerful corporations. Indeed, portraying Japanese culture in such a negative light sounds like an expression of resentment against something which is both foreign and mysteriously better than what we had at the time. What is this so called Japanese "corporate culture"? From my own personal experience, having worked in American, Australian and Swiss companies (banks), I struggle to see more than only one crucial difference between them and "Yumimoto". The only difference is that the Japanese culture has the decency of making the hierarchy explicit. I do not mean the simple distribution of titles, but the actual day to day functioning of a hierarchical organization. In the West there is a long lasting myth about flat hierarchies and meritocracies. But beyond this corporate (neo-liberal?) rhetoric, there is day to day work, and it just as brutally hierarchical in the west as it is in Japan. The rules are the same in any human organization: You cannot talk to such and such before having talked to such and such, you cannot take someone else's work from them and you certainly cannot take any kind of initiative without going through the right channels, let alone not mention it to your immediate boss. Prejudice, petty ambitions, jealousy are the same the world over. I can probably find an equivalent for pretty much all the experiences the narrator goes through in this book (except perhaps sitting naked on my boss's keyboard): being made to feel stupid and useless because she is new and "different", been made to repeat a task just because her boss wants to punish her, being talked down to just because her boss can talk down to her etc. All human organizations display the same brutality, and this is probably more pronounced in the more competitive sectors of the economy (I have often witnessed a inverse relation between competition and intelligence). I do not believe for a single moment that Japan is worse that our western corporations. It simply sounds like the corporate ideology is more explicit over there than here, which is difficult to believe when one listens to the amount of bullshit spewed out by my superiors and colleagues in the various banks I have worked for.Other than that I think the literary qualities of this book are undeniable, the images of Japanese forests and snow just make one want to book a flight to and visit Kansai or Tokyo. It is just a shame that Amélie Nothomb didn't manage to shake off this invented perception of Japan as "different" "excentric" and "medieval".
Do You like book Stupeur Et Tremblements (2001)?
( في اليابان الوجود هو - الشركة - )ببساطة نطق هذه الجملة أرست لنا إميلي نوثومب أركان وجودها ، آلهته وشياطينه و قرابينه ، معبوديه و عبيده، وكأنما أوصدت العالم الحقيقي يوم تعيينها في شركة يوميموتو اليابانية و نصّبتها وجود أصغر حتى وقت انتهاء عقدها مع الشركة ، لتقدم استقالتها بفارق أيام منه ، لا لشيء ، فقط لأنها قادرة على إثبات وجهة نظر ما لنفسها! القهر الوظيفي لم ينل من عزيمتها من نشر أطروحتها الشخصية هذه عما يدور في كواليس المهن اليابانية بتنظيمها و دقتها وفعاليتها و نجاحها، و قلمها الذي تعبر به هو علامة من علامات الجنون لو تعلمون، لا يعلم القارئ كيف تحصره في زاوية واحدة طيلة القراءة و توجد كل هذا التشويق من لاشيء ، كيف بمقدورها كموظفة بسيطة تنهار مهنيًا تحويل مساحة الشركة لمسرح نابض، لسجن مرح ، لا أعلم ما تملك من صفات لتشد انتباهك لحواراتها التي يتخللها ذكاء المساوم و سخرية الداهية و كظم غيض العاقل و صفاء الماء ! طول وقت القراءة و أنا مخطوفة لمعنى واحد .. هدف نشر هذه التفاصيل الدقيقة عن المجتمع الياباني ؟ التعقيد و الآلية في سلوكياتهم هل هما بهذا المستوى بالفعل؟ أهم يدفعون ثمن نجاحهم من جهة و تقاليدهم من جهة أخرى أم ماذا ؟ وتيرة عيشهم قبل انخراطهم في ملاحقة التطور هل تشبه ما بعد التطور؟ هذا النقد من إميلي التي تعتبر نفسها من أبناء هذا البلد بأي خانة سيصنفه القارئ؟ ثم ماذا أرادت القول على الصعيد الشخصي و كأن حرب باردة تحركها و تصفية الحسابات نزعة لا تستطيع التخلص منها! مخيفة بالفعل و كأن بركان خامد يسكنها هذه الإميلي .( ذهول و رعدة ) عنوان مثير للعجب، هكذا ترى نوثومب امتثال الموظف لرئيسه ، هذا الفيس المطلوب ليعلو سحنة الموظفين ، تحليلها بطبيعة الحال لم يأتي الفراغ، هذا التحليل لوجوه الموظفين يحتاج تأمل عقل أدبي بقدرة جامحة.بعد قراءة أكثر من عمل لها .. أتفهم الإعجاب الذي يكنّه لها الجميع فهي تلقي بشباكها على القراء .
—Fatema Hassan , bahrain
تأتي قراءة هذه الرواية بعد قراءة رائعتها "بيوغرافيا الجوع" طبعا لابد أن نعي أن ما تكتبها آميلي من قبيل "التخييل السردي" أو لنقل السيرة الروائية أو أي تسمية أخرى، طبعا في الغرب تجاوزوا هذه الانشغالات بالتصنيف.. لا عليناآميلي تقرر أن تعمل في اليابان ويحدث هذا، لكن الأمر الغريب أنها لا ترتقي في وظيفتها بل تتردى وتنحدر إلى أن تصبح عاملة تنظف المراحيض، وأتوقع أن هذا الجزء من الرواية أي بعد المئة نشعر أننا أمام تجربة شيقة جديرة بالتأمل والغور في العمق أكثر بكثير من الأحداث التي مرت بنا في البداية.حيث يعود الإنسان لعقد تصالح مع ذاته ومع الآخرين، ربما هو نوع من القناعة والرضا، والتخفف من الشعور الحالم الذي ينتابنا دائما!تقول آميلي: "حينما نكلف بجلي المراحيض الملوثة فإننا تعيش نوع الطمأنينة أننا لا نخشى الانحدار إلى مرتبة أدنى" ويتصاعد هذا التصالح إلى درجة التحكم في الذاكرة "بدأت ذاكرتي تعمل مثل سيفون المرحاض، أجذبها في المساء، فتزيل فرشاة ذهنية آخر آثار القذارة"بل تجاوز الأمر أكثر من هذا، وبدأت تتحدث عن لحظات السعادة الطارئة بنوع من الحبور، إذ تقول: "عشت في تلك الأماكن أكثر الفترات مرحا في حياتي!" و حتى لا تبدو في مثالية زائدة، فقد اكتفت بتجربة السبعة أشهر، وبعد إيمانها بانتصارها على حظوظ الذات، أخبرتنا آميلي، بكل هدوء وبساطة، أنه آن لها أن تبحث عن تجربة جديدة عن فرصة أخرى، وهنا الجمال الآسر في هذه التجربة الإنسانية الباذخة.
—طاهر الزهراني
The only problem with criticising S&T is the question of where to start? Perhaps with the author herself. It takes a certain kind of individual to be so ludicrously self-absorbed that they put themselves on the cover of near every book that they publish, proceeding to write a book about themselves on a near yearly basis. One can understand the reasoning behind this, if, perhaps, the author were someone improbably interesting. But alas no; she is a self-promoting, mousy, emotional masochist from Belgium - you can imagine how fun she’d be at a rive gauche soirée! - whose most interesting asset is her parents’ career in diplomacy which assured that she moved around a bit. Including to Laos and Coventry. Smashing. But she’s amazingly dull despite this.Next - style. She has that kind of writing that makes one want to put one’s fingers in the toaster until medium brown. It is the kind of writing that you expect from a daughter of bureaucrats, dry, stuffed with useless grandiose terms and ridiculous allegories when simpler ones are clearer but rejected for pretenciousness’ sake. Her work has something of a cardboard-like quality. The way that she writes her characters reflects the horror of her lack of style - this, like most of her works, is all around Amélie Nothomb herself, and any supplementary characters, no matter how important they be to developing the tale, are little more than exaggerated, grossieres stereotypes, which strike me as racist mistruths with nary a glimmer of depth about them. It makes one wonder why Nothomb considers herself a japanophile when this is the best that she can represent her The only development in the tale is that of the titular character, and it is more of a hapless degeneration than anything else.But the aspect of the yarn that I most disliked, other than the cagy, claustrophobic atmosphere that Nothomb struggles but successfully reconstructs, is something more elementary and disturbing. Effectively, the novel reads like an S&M book, and not a good one at that. She tells a melodramatic tale of how she gets relegated from translating, to accounting, to making drinks and delivering mail, to, finally, performing the services of what commentators of the book have crassly called a ‘dame-pipi’ - a toilet attendant, or, to literally translate, ‘wee-wee-woman’. It is painful. But what is even worse is that it luxuriates in the continual degradement that the titular character receives. She stays there, humilation by humiliation, somewhat hoping for more.What is worse is that both the book and the film, appealing to general societal sadism, expect us to revel in her perverse suffering - with both effectively being marketed as something of a comedy, with the Library Journal describing the book as a ‘humorous tale,’ and Newsday calling it ’scathingly funny;’ as for the film, many commentators called it hilarious, funny and erotic, earning a 91% rating on RT, possibly because anything that is French has to be rated high by many critics.For me, I did not find it humorous, never mind erotic, in the least. Instead, it made me squirm, and I was left with a feeling of sadness and indignation. What worries me is that many people were brought to laughter, as well as probable pantaloon movements, by a book and film centred around lazy mental cruelty. What a sick world we live in.Lazy, distasteful, uninspired and painful. This deserves between an F and a U.
—Synesthésia
