Junichiro Tanizaki (1886 – 1965) published prolifically in the 1920s and 1930s, and most of his novels have been translated either to English or to Spanish. Still, I never heard of him until I came across his name in Rafael Chirbes’s diaries. The discovery of Tanizaki has been added to a long list of things for which I am grateful to Chirbes. He is an exceptionally talented author. Naomi (1925) is a sort of a rewriting of Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage (1915) in a way that both honors the English author and makes the result completely Japanese. I haven’t had any time to research this, so I don’t know if Tanizaki’s indebtedness to Maugham is mentioned anywhere, but it’s very clear once you start reading Naomi.

The main character of Naomi is Jōji Kawai, an engineer and a dutiful son who is bored with his straitjacketed existence of idealized Japanese righteousness and wants to experience Western culture. He picks up Naomi, a fifteen-year-old girl from a miserable, neglectful family and projects onto her his fantasy of Western life. To Kawai, Western means dissipated, whorish, uncontrolled, wasteful, and utterly irresistible. The novel shows how he is demolished by his shuddering, painful love of this imaginary West.

I highly recommend this author, but I have to warn you that a new and very unpleasant phenomenon has arisen as a result of AI. Shitty, dishonest people publish AI summaries of Tanizaki’s novels on Kindle Unlimited. If you download such an AI version by mistake, please don’t think that the author is terrible. Tanizaki was seriously talented. His writing is irresistible. If you are reading something that claims to be by Tanizaki and it’s complete garbage, this means that you have stumbled upon one of those nasty AI retellings.

I love Somerset Maugham and it’s an extraordinary gift to read a book by a Japanese writer who was so inspired by one of Maugham’s novels that he based his own on it.

I have now been contacted from three different countries to congratulate me on Taylor Swift’s wedding. I feel painfully, deeply misunderstood.

You know what I don’t understand? Who is the target audience for the movie Supergirl? Girls are very rarely into superheroes. Superheroes are boy-coded, so girls make a point of despising the genre. I asked Klara if she’s interested in this movie, and she reacted with a wave of extreme fifth-grade sarcasm.

Yes, there are always outliers, but for a movie to be successful, there needs to be a large baked-in audience.

I’m really into sleepwear. Nightgowns. I have a collection of them. Different colors, patterns, lengths. Nightgowns become better, softer with age, so I keep them for a while.

In preparation for my Florida trip, I thought and strategized which part of the collection to bring with me. I did that so intensely that I ended up bringing everything except a single nightgown. Now I don’t have any at all. This is not the first time this is happening. It’s like a curse of the missing nightgown.

What am I supposed to sleep in now? Please don’t say a t-shirt. I’m not in possession of any such item. The most ridiculous thing is that this happened before. Every time I travel, I forget to bring either a house dress (another item of which I have a whole collection) or a nightgown.

On the positive side, the temperature in Florida is 20 degrees lower than at home. As usual, we are loving this wonderful state. I am very worried about what happens when DeSantis’s term runs out. Can he run again? Not now, but if he skips a term?

One of the most enjoyable aspects of the celebration is the gentle roasting Americans and Europeans inflict on each other:

Ukraine is celebrating America’s birthday:

There are so many wonderful images of celebrations from all over the world that it is impossible to post all of them.

What a great day.

It’s just so happened that today is also the day when I enter the final grades for my summer course and my sabbatical truly begins. So I have extra reasons to celebrate. Here is a little story that illustrates the importance of democracy.

As you know, I completed my second term as department chair and, in the spirit of a peaceful democratic transfer of power, stepped down from this role on June 30. It so happens that my department has to make an important decision in the first two weeks of July. We know what the right decision is, but we are also well aware that there are two people who are going to become very upset and litigious. I didn’t even want to imagine all of the drama they were going to generate. I told the new department chair that making the right decision was going to plunge her into a quagmire of grievances and complaints. But she’s fresh into the job, full of energy, and doesn’t really care. This is the energy I most definitely do not have after dealing with similar kinds of drama during my two terms in the position.

Transfer of power is important because people get jaded and low-energy.

I am being contacted for an interview to answer the question of why Trump doesn’t go to the World Cup soccer games, even though it would be an excellent PR opportunity.

My answer is that Trump’s popularity is largely the result of his sincerity. The guy is authentic. Whether you love or hate what he so authentically manifests is not the point. Politics is one of the fakest pursuits in existence. And here is a guy who goes and says whatever crap appears in his mind at any given point. That’s deeply refreshing.

Why would he go watch a sport that he normally doesn’t enjoy? As for PR, this World Cup has indeed proven to be a fantastic PR opportunity for our country. Trump doesn’t need to do anything to enhance that impression. The country is legitimately great. We thought for a while where to go on vacation this summer. We thought maybe Europe. France, Portugal, Italy. These are all great countries, but in the end we are going to spend our vacation here in the United States. Because these are excellent vacations.

A great country, and it’s wonderful that the World Cup visitors are discovering it for themselves.

P.S. Speaking about what’s authentic and what’s not, here’s a link to a hilarious video of Putin clumsily faking a visit to the frontlines.

https://x.com/i/status/2073342563797381264

Truly, the best country. Let’s all be worthy of its glorious history and extraordinary achievements.

I understand that everybody is tired of hearing me chirp about Chirbes. But bear up, my friends. I still have 460 pages left. I’m dragging it out at this point because I know what happens on the last page. The writer dies of lung cancer. I’m going to be bawling. I need to prepare myself for that.

To compensate, I will soon talk to you about a completely different writer from an unexpected country and era that I discovered thanks to Chirbes. A truly excellent writer that I didn’t even know existed.