Interview with Michael Hoffman, author of Fuji, Sinai, Olympos

Inside the Book:

Title: Fuji, Sinai, Olympos

Author: Michael Hoffman

Publisher: Virtualbookworm.com

Genre: Essays

Format: Ecopy /Paperback

Travel companions on my journeys are four in number: Odysseus, Don Quixote, Huckleberry Finn and Basho.” (Travel) “He walked in priestly garb. Arriving towards evening at a town or village, he’d chant sutras until passersby gave him, or flung him, enough money for a flophouse bed, a little food, a bath and enough saké  to induce a measure of forgetfulness. ‘A beggar,’ he admonished himself, ‘has to learn to be an all-out beggar. Unless he can be that, he will never taste the happiness of being a beggar.’” (Walking) ‘“The pleasantest of all diversions,’ said the fourteenth-century Japanese priest Kenko,“ is to sit alone under the lamp, a book spread before you, and to make friends with people of a distant past you have never known.’ Reading is inseparable from reverie. ‘Sitting alone under the lamp,’ I was soon not alone at all, but hosting, I venture to say, as vivid and varied a company as ever gathered under one roof. (Genji, Myshkin and Jones) “Everest is nothing, mere seismology.” (Fuji, Sinai, Olympos) 

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INTERVIEW:

Could you please tell us about your book?

Fuji, Sinai, Olympos is a collection of 20 essays united by a common theme expressed by the title – the three sacred mountains in my life: Fuji because I’ve lived almost my entire adult life in Japan, Sinai and Olympos because they are the twin peaks of my native (as opposed to my adopted) civilization. Humankind from its earliest beginnings have stood in awe of mountains. In mountains we conceive our gods, lodge them, encounter them, worship them. “To ascend is human,” I write in the book. The book is therefore itself a kind of ascent – at least strives to be. The essays complement each other, and yet each is a whole in itself.

What is the inspiration behind your book?

Perhaps, most directly, Montaigne. It was reading his essays that I first thought to myself, “I’d like to try writing something like this.” What Montaigne seemed to be saying to me was, “Even the most humble subject can be an ascent.” Well, let’s try, I thought.

What cause are you most passionate about?

I am deeply suspicious of the turn human life has taken since the birth of virtual reality. I think it is slowly – actually not so slowly – robbing us of thought, of depth, of the withdrawal into one’s self that thought and depth demand. So in part this book was written as an exercise in thought – as an act, let’s say, or a gesture, towards preserving a specifically human trait that I fear is in danger of extinction.

Do you follow any rituals when you write?

No, I don’t think so…

Who has influenced you and your writing?

Dostoevsky, I think, most profoundly and over the longest time. I began reading him at 16 and never really stopped. Cervantes – my book is dedicated to his Don Quixote. Kafka. Melville. Many, many others. Among non-writers, I’ll mention Danny Gallivan for his love of language. If you know who he is, it’ll give you a smile. If (as is more likely) you don’t, he was the play-by-play announcer of NHL hockey games featuring the Montreal Canadiens throughout my childhood. What a vocabulary he had, and how he knew how to use it!

What are some of your long term goals?

Basically, to go on doing what I’m doing now – writing fiction, essays and journalism – and to do it, hopefully, better and better. I’ve been doing it for many years now, and I’m still a beginner. I hope to progress while remaining one.

MEET THE AUTHOR

Michael Hoffman has lived in Japan since 1982. His columns appear regularly in the Japan Times, irregularly elsewhere. His previous books include "In the Land of the Kami: A Journey into the Hearts of Japan;" "Other Worlds; Little Pieces: This Side of Japan;" and "The Coat that Covers Him and Other Stories."