Sunday with Books: The Key by Junichiro Tanizaki
I went off to college ready to study English literature assuming we’d burn through some classics, write papers on ‘em and I’d have a degree good for quoting Shakespeare and over-analyzing Jane Austen. Well, I got that, but thanks to a few professors at San Diego State, I got a lot more out of the deal as well.
Today’s read is Junichiro Tanizaki’s wildly explicit novella The Key. This was assigned to me by one of my favorite professors, William Nerriccio. His course descriptions were incredibly creative and his reading lists and lectures had a major impact on how I would approach my creative life.
He showed us how literature and art were connected as one. How Mann Ray photo books and Elvis Costello records connected to Ulysses and back around again. He also featured an unorthodox final exam that saw me standing on the roof of the English building toting a playlist and an essay on James Joyce’s Ulysses in one hand and a six pack of Stellas in the other. Needless to say, he opened my eyes to how we consume media and art.
If you crack open The Key, try to imagine this as one of your your first reading assignments in college. That should give you a chuckle. We’re not in High School anymore kids.
A quick synopsis: Middle-aged man and his wife are in a loveless and dying marriage. In alternating, darkly hilarious and provocative journal entries, they set one another up knowing they’re both reading each others’ diaries. We watch as the man strives for a revitalized sex life with his extremely unsatisfied wife through a series of rather twisted methods, while she begins a tactful response of her own that you have to read to believe in an effort to get what she wants.
Through all of this treachery, we lose track of who is dictating what and to who. A real strange and explicit book that illustrates the power and totality of art. Not bad for a boring old English major.—Travis Ferré
