JAPAN Celebration of Monkey Business Journals

This program, part of Litquake week presented a journal Monkey Business (based on a pop song by Chuck Berry )  launched a couple of years ago, in which Haruki Mirakami plays a role in providing a submission each issue, is very interesting as it introduces us to contemporary Japanese voices.  Paul Auster's two earliest penned stories, which have remained unpublished appear in one issue, along with a Charles Simic poem,   The Nippon Foundation supported the publication in the Nippon Foundation's Read Japan Programs.  The Japan Foundation sponsored the tour of the journal and the panel participants.

(  Note.  Chuck Berry: "Same thing every day -- gettin'-up, goin' to school/no need for me to complain - my objectiveions overruled, ahh!/Too much monkey business, too muchmonkey business/Too much monkey business, too much monkey business/Too much monkey business for me to be involved in!"  The editors say, "No other work of art that I know of deals with the aggravations we face every day so straighforwardly and with such liberating humor.  That is the guiding star we follow on this journey."

 Haruki Mirakami's lates book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage looks fascinating.  Riva Galchen writes a review, "The Monkey Did It" in Harpers magazine/October 2014. Haruki Mirakami has a short story in October 13, The New Yorker, "Scheherazade"  a play on an old theme.  pp 100-109  (Transl from the Japanese by Ted Goosen)  See : New Yorker.com  Haruki Murakami on "Scheherazade"


A young lady  Nazo Tazili who lives in NYC, but is from Japan, sat next to me; she works as  the assistant to the well known artist, Takashi   Miramaki  in NYC.   She was very interested in the program and I enjoyed meeting her.

John Wallace, Stanford PhD.  Formerly Religious Studies.  I took short course with him and haiga and haiku, painting and poetry.  SAA AAM 
Brooklyn Public Voice Project is partner, rep and writer and translator, Editor, Ted Goossen  for New Yorker.  
 Translator (Canada) and Poet 


Writer from Tokyo(bn Yosaka) and Department Chair 



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