I did not find Convenience Store Woman bleak at all! On the contrary, I found it a refreshing take on how to live authentically in a world that regards you as a misfit. Keiko found her freedom in a job that everyone else looked down on and in a singlehood that everyone around her believed should make her miserable and unfulfilled, but it did not. It seems like you missed how subversive the book is.
Here is a quote from the post I wrote about this book:
"[I would contrast] Keiko’s attitude toward her job with a famous passage from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, in which he criticizes a waiter for identifying too closely with his occupation:
“Let us consider the waiter in the café. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes towards the customers with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the client… All his behavior seems to us a game… He is playing at being a waiter in a café.”
To Sartre, this exemplifies “bad faith,” an inauthentic attempt to evade the condition of actually always being more than a waiter, of being an individual who has agency and responsibility. Yet in Convenience Store Woman, Keiko exercises her inherent freedom by choosing to return to a role that others disparage. For her, embracing the role she enjoys is the authentic choice. It’s hard to imagine a more robust and persuasively ironic rejection of Sartre’s existentialist doctrine."
It is about a woman who is so desperate to be a normal member of society that she allows herself to be exploited by an objectively horrible man. Eventually she realizes that her own ambition (to be normal) can never be fulfilled, so she gives up on it. I agree the voice is charming, but it is a bleak story.
Part of the charm of the book is that she doesn't really look down on the guy. He is an absolute loser by any normal standards, but this is not a character who has normal standards. Her "ambition to be normal" is only ever depicted as a desire for less friction, it's not something she really wants. I think you're inappropriately inserting your own extraneous normative views into a book that's committed to a truly cockeyed view of social life.
I disagree. I am taking the character's actions at face value. If she was perfectly happy at the convenience store, the novel would be ten pages long. The whole novel exists because she has desires that are unmet by her employment. She pursues certain goals for a reason. She takes a boyfriend for a reason. Her boyfriend then mistreats her, displacing her from her own bathroom, in a way she finds uncomfortable. She obviously really wants to please people around her--a fact that is evident from an early age. It is tragic that she has this desire which can never really be fulfilled, except through the narrow vehicle of her employment at this convenience store.
And P.S.: You wrote: "In Convenience Store Woman, there was an air of tragedy, because she lacked friend / family relationships and sexual connection—an essential part of life—"
Again, I would say you missed that the book was showing that this is not true for everyone. She was happier when she was not trying to pretend that she would be happier with a love relationship. There are people like that! (I am not one of them, but still.) Those are probably some of the people who embrace this book and this genre that you did not like.
I'm going to go back and finish reading this article but I have to argue with you about My Year of Rest and Relaxation first! The story of her friendship with Reva is core to that book, and I find it among the most memorable and moving depictions of female friendship I've ever read. The protagonist doesn't want to care about Reva, especially when Reva's mom dies and that forces her to revisit her own grief. But something inside her, some part of her subconscious, makes her wake up on the LIRR with the appropriate clothes for the funeral (the long sequence of continuous action that follows blew me away). And Reva has no reason to care about this bitchy girl who always puts her down. But she's the only one who even tries to intervene in the protagonist's self destruction. The fact that these women barely understand how they feel about each other is tragic... but their expressions of that feeling are seared on my heart forever.
Reva needed the protagonist, but the need wasn't reciprocal. The protagonist ejected Reva from her life, locked herself in her room, purified herself, and was much happier after she emerged. Nor did she seek out Reva after she emerged.
I did not find Convenience Store Woman bleak at all! On the contrary, I found it a refreshing take on how to live authentically in a world that regards you as a misfit. Keiko found her freedom in a job that everyone else looked down on and in a singlehood that everyone around her believed should make her miserable and unfulfilled, but it did not. It seems like you missed how subversive the book is.
Here is a quote from the post I wrote about this book:
"[I would contrast] Keiko’s attitude toward her job with a famous passage from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, in which he criticizes a waiter for identifying too closely with his occupation:
“Let us consider the waiter in the café. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes towards the customers with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the client… All his behavior seems to us a game… He is playing at being a waiter in a café.”
To Sartre, this exemplifies “bad faith,” an inauthentic attempt to evade the condition of actually always being more than a waiter, of being an individual who has agency and responsibility. Yet in Convenience Store Woman, Keiko exercises her inherent freedom by choosing to return to a role that others disparage. For her, embracing the role she enjoys is the authentic choice. It’s hard to imagine a more robust and persuasively ironic rejection of Sartre’s existentialist doctrine."
The whole post is at https://www.introvertupthink.com/p/convenience-store-woman but it is paywalled, so I quoted from it extensively.
Agreed, a big part of the novel's charm is its joyfulness.
It is about a woman who is so desperate to be a normal member of society that she allows herself to be exploited by an objectively horrible man. Eventually she realizes that her own ambition (to be normal) can never be fulfilled, so she gives up on it. I agree the voice is charming, but it is a bleak story.
Part of the charm of the book is that she doesn't really look down on the guy. He is an absolute loser by any normal standards, but this is not a character who has normal standards. Her "ambition to be normal" is only ever depicted as a desire for less friction, it's not something she really wants. I think you're inappropriately inserting your own extraneous normative views into a book that's committed to a truly cockeyed view of social life.
I disagree. I am taking the character's actions at face value. If she was perfectly happy at the convenience store, the novel would be ten pages long. The whole novel exists because she has desires that are unmet by her employment. She pursues certain goals for a reason. She takes a boyfriend for a reason. Her boyfriend then mistreats her, displacing her from her own bathroom, in a way she finds uncomfortable. She obviously really wants to please people around her--a fact that is evident from an early age. It is tragic that she has this desire which can never really be fulfilled, except through the narrow vehicle of her employment at this convenience store.
And P.S.: You wrote: "In Convenience Store Woman, there was an air of tragedy, because she lacked friend / family relationships and sexual connection—an essential part of life—"
Again, I would say you missed that the book was showing that this is not true for everyone. She was happier when she was not trying to pretend that she would be happier with a love relationship. There are people like that! (I am not one of them, but still.) Those are probably some of the people who embrace this book and this genre that you did not like.
Excellent commentary. Thanks!
I'm going to go back and finish reading this article but I have to argue with you about My Year of Rest and Relaxation first! The story of her friendship with Reva is core to that book, and I find it among the most memorable and moving depictions of female friendship I've ever read. The protagonist doesn't want to care about Reva, especially when Reva's mom dies and that forces her to revisit her own grief. But something inside her, some part of her subconscious, makes her wake up on the LIRR with the appropriate clothes for the funeral (the long sequence of continuous action that follows blew me away). And Reva has no reason to care about this bitchy girl who always puts her down. But she's the only one who even tries to intervene in the protagonist's self destruction. The fact that these women barely understand how they feel about each other is tragic... but their expressions of that feeling are seared on my heart forever.
Reva needed the protagonist, but the need wasn't reciprocal. The protagonist ejected Reva from her life, locked herself in her room, purified herself, and was much happier after she emerged. Nor did she seek out Reva after she emerged.