>>Someone shot that duck with an arrow. No one knows why<<

Here's an excerpt from Randie Lipkin's novel Without (1998). This is a novel set in Japan. It's rather sui generis in its constant de-emphasisizing stance towards life's various dramas. Dramas emerge, but the prose deconstructs these into particulars, energy, vectors. The prose remains implacably objective, and even refuses the instrumentality of voice whereby novels generally unfold.

In this, the novel reminds me greatly of Japanese visual art, which often achieves a deeply moving spiritual minimalism by subtracting the fuzzier aspects of seeing.

Highly recommended since it was missed the first time around except for a few perceptive critics...

It's funny, because I just posted a drawing from Kim Kielhofner's Guide to the Legions of Horribles, and in one of the other drawings by her I was studying she had written this phrase: "an explanation will get in the way of the truth."

One could argue that liability is something of which Lipkin is keenly aware, since she refuses to offer explanations.

The book's supernally designed too, sized smaller than a slice of bread, and features a philosophically sympathetic two-fold screen ("Cypress Trees") by Ikeda Koson which wraps around from the front to back.

Here's an excerpt...

   Ako jumps up. Koji's down, pear in his hand and mouth, pear slice on his forehead. Setsuko's lax hands, eyes half-closed.
   Square aqua plastic box with riceballs inside. Waxwinged bird hopping, wings opening. Record-player stops.
   From this small rise, only seeing the top of Ako's head, Koji and Setsuko half-sitting, half-lying.
   Ako's hand waving--Koji and Setsuko wave. Ako's hand disappears, top of her head disappears. Seablue corners of plastic box refracting light broken by their waving.
   They lie together on this small hill. Ako's missing. Their breaths, this heat, rapid-flying bugs. Under his pear canopy, Koji's closed eyes. Slices of huge pear, its core on the cloth where Ako, now gone.
   >>In the dream it never occurred to me that we weren't still kids, I never questioned anything. The alley was so familiar and the way you used to have your hair with your bangs straight.<<
   >>I never dream about the past. I don't even know if I remember.>>