What: UHM English Department's Fall 2009 Reading and Colloquium Series
When: Thursday, Oct. 29 at 3-4:30pm
Where: Kuykendall 410, UH (Manoa)

Todd and Linda Shimoda will read for their new book Oh!: A Mystery of \'Mono No Aware\'.

Synopsis:

Oh! A mystery of “mono no aware” follows Zack Hara, a young Japanese American from Los Angeles searching for an emotionally meaningful life while traveling in Japan. Zack finds an ally in a professor and underground poet who introduces him to the concept of mono no aware, roughly translated as the emotive essence of things, most often thought of as the sadness in beauty. Cherry blossoms are the prototypical mono no aware objects. They explode in beauty after winter’s doldrums, trumpeting life for only a few days before they die.

And M. Thomas Gammarino will be reading from his debut novel Big in Japan: A Ghost Story.

Synopsis:

While playing to lackluster crowds in their hometown of Philadelphia, progressive rock band Agenbite clings to the comforting half-truth that they’re doing better in Japan. When their manager agrees to send them on a shoestring tour of that country, however, they’re swiftly forced to give up their illusions and return Stateside.

All but one of them, that is.

Brain Tedesco, the band’s variously haunted chief composer, has fallen in love with a part-time sex worker—the first woman ever to have touched him—and his illusions have only just begun. What ensues is a Dantesque coming-of-age tale in which Brain must navigate the borderlands between fantasy and reality, past and present, sex and death—even as forces beyond his control conspire to undo him.

Tags: Chin Music Press, Japan, Linda Shimoda, M. Thomas Gammarino, mono no aware, Todd Shimoda

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