Night Boat by Alan Spence
Posted in Reading Reviewed, Scottish Fiction, Scottish Literature at 12:00 on 7 September 2023
Canongate, 2013, 456 p
Spence’s previous novel The Pure Land in retrospect represents a pivot in his writing. Its novelisation of the life of Thomas Blake Glover, who helped the industrialisation of Japan in the nineteenth century, signalled his fascination with that country and a departure from writing prose using Scottish settings. A poet as well as a novelist, his interest in and composition of haiku are well suited to this present endeavour, an exploration of the life of the Zen Buddhist master who invented the koan “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” That monk was Hakuin Ekaku, who was born Nagasawa Iwajiro but was given – or took – the names Ekaku (Wise Crane) and Hakuin (Hidden-in-Whiteness) later in life. Spence’s latest novel Mister Timeless Blyth also deals with someone deeply involved with Japanese culture.
Night Boat is necessarily steeped in the Zen Buddhism practice of seeking enlightenment. We learn that Hakuin was initially inspired by his mother’s religious devotion but also that he was not immune to the attractions of the temporal world, only chose to ignore them. To that end he travelled through Japan seeking the most insightful teachers.
The ascetic lifestyle of a Zen Buddhist monk is a constant theme. Their frugality and distaste for waste even leads them to rinse their bowls and drink the liquid. That it also requires a form of begging, or at least reliance on charity, means it is actually a kind of parasitism. (Mind you, the same could be said of all religions and the ways they sustain themselves.)
Hakuin’s composure is illustrated by the incident when a young pregnant woman claimed he was the father of her child. Despite the loss to his reputation this represents he merely responded by saying “Is that so?” and took the child into his care. (The woman later relented and named the real father whereupon Hakuin relinquished the child and said he was glad the child now had a father.)
At a gathering of monks Hakuin relates the story of a country bumpkin who boasted about his visit to Kyoto before someone asked him about the Shirakawa River (which is nothing but a small stream) and he said it was night time when his boat sailed on it and he couldn’t really see it. In other words, his visit was a fabrication, a tale he’d made up. In that sense, all novels are night boats and it highlights the question of how much of this Night Boat is based on known facts about Hakuin and how much due to Spence’s novelistic imagination. This, of course, can be asked of any biographical novel but it is perhaps unwise of an author to draw attention to it as it tends to undermine the artifice, subvert the suspension of disbelief.
The text is sprinkled with haiku. As someone with no knowledge of the life and works of Hakuin, (he was also an artist, several references are made to his paintings, especially of Mount Fuji,) I have to assume that these haiku are translations of originals written by Hakuin rather than invented by Spence. Most of these depend for their effect on sparseness or else embody enigmas.
We also have the posing of several koans of which perhaps the most resonant is “What now?”
Spence’s writing here is always well more than adequate to the task and his research has obviously been formidable but there is something almost pointless about Hakuin’s search for meaning, something akin to considering the number of angels capable of dancing on the head of a pin. Beyond informing about his life and thought those of us who had little prior knowledge regarding Hakuin what utility does it have? Granted, it does illustrate a small part of the human condition but I doubt there are many larger lessons to be drawn from it.
The cover illustration’s a cracker though. (Fuji from the Ford at Kanaya, by Hokusai, Katsushika.)
Pedant’s corner:- “There was story” (there was a story,) Shotestu (elsewhere Shotatsu.) “‘You have showed one-pointed determination’” (You have shown,) sunk (sank,) can‘t (can’t.)
Tags: Alan Spence, Fuji from the Ford at Kanaya, haiku, Hakuin Ekaku, Hokusai, Night Boat, Zen Buddhism
Allan McDougall
5 October 2023 at 08:51
I am a lifelong admirer of Alan Spence’s work. I see his later works as an examination of his beliefs, a consideration of the source of how he lives now.
I’m still engaged with his work (his new novel is my reading queue) and rate it with his earlier, scottish-based novels and short stories.
jackdeighton
5 October 2023 at 19:10
Allan McDougall,
Thanks for looking in and commenting.
I have enjoyed reading Spence’s work and I still have a book of his short stories on my tbr pile.
Night Boat was as well written as usual but I just found its concentration on the life of Buddhist asceticism too estranging.
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29 January 2024 at 12:00
[…] ways these reminded me of the life of the Zen Buddhist, Hakuin Ekaku, as told in Alan Spence’s Night Boat. Then again the lives of religious ascetics are all probably very […]