Autumn light : season of fire and farewells /

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Returning to his longtime home in Japan after his father-in-law's sudden death, Pico Iyer picks up the steadying patterns of his everyday rites: going to the post office and engaging in furious games of ping-pong every evening. But in a country whose calendar is marked with occasions honoring the dead, he comes to reflect on changelessness in ways that anyone can relate to: parents age, children scatter, and Iyer and his wife turn to whatever can sustain them as everything falls away. As the maple leaves begin to turn and the heat begins to soften, Iyer shows us a Japan we have seldom seen before, where the transparent and the mysterious are held in a delicate balance, and where autumn reminds us to take nothing for granted.

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Excerpted from Autumn Light Now, as we head out into the sunshine--the northern hills of Kyoto are a blaze of russet, burnt umber, orange, under late-autumn skies of depthless blue--we're ushered into a backstage room of sorts, before an afternoon conversation between the Dalai Lama and a celebrated novelist. There are only four of us in the space: the Dalai Lama, Hiroko and myself, and a Californian monk from the Dalai Lama's temple who's also in our small traveling party. "So," says the Tibetan, "what is the point of art? What is the larger purpose?" Startled, I cite the Sixth Dalai Lama, famous for his poems and songs. The Dalai Lama doesn't look very interested. The monk mentions Milarepa, the mystic who composed poems in a cave. The Dalai Lama looks dissatisfied. In his way of thinking, looking closely at reality is the only thing that matters, not all the ways we make embroidered designs around it. I recall the November day two years ago when all of us traveled up with him to a fishing village north of Tokyo laid waste by the tsunami of eight months earlier. A few miles out of the city of Sendai, we began passing along clean, modern roads lined by nothing but compacted trash, block-long rectangles of smashed cars and refuse. Telephone poles listed at forty-five-degree angles; a solitary chair sat in the open skeleton of what had once been a living room. Buses bobbed on the water beside us. When we pulled up at Ishinomaki--hundreds had gathered along the road there, behind ropes, to greet the famous visitor--it was to see nothing but a flattened landscape, which looked like pictures I'd seen of Hiroshima after the atom bomb. More than three thousand had lost their lives in this village alone, many of them children; nineteen thou- sand had lost their homes. The Dalai Lama stepped out of his car and strode without hesitation to the people, mostly women, who had assembled in the street to see him. Many were sobbing, or calling out, in limited English, "Thank you, thank you." He held one person's head against his chest; he blessed another. He touched heads, shook hands, looked deep into one set of eyes, then another, asking, "What do you feel? . . . Are you still sad?" "Please, be brave," he told them, as the women sobbed and others pushed forwards. "Please, change your hearts. You cannot change what has happened. Please help everyone else, help others become okay." The crowd fell quiet; some of its members nodded. "Too many people died," he went on. "If you worry, it cannot help them. Please, work hard. That is the best offering you can make to the ones you lost. Rebuild your community as your country rebuilt itself after the war." It's the kind of advice that anyone might give, perhaps, but when he turned around, to walk towards the temple that had survived, gravestones in the foreground tilted crazily over or knocked down entirely, I saw the Dalai Lama take off his glasses and wipe away a tear himself. Suffering is the central fact of life, from his Buddhist viewpoint; it's what we do with it that defines our lives. Now, as he gathers his robes o stage, peering down to see how the theater's sound system works, I think of how, when we went into the temple in Ishinomaki, it was to see the bones of the lost, tidily gathered and placed in brightly colored boxes by the altar, under framed photographs, maybe fifty of them in all; in every case, Hiroko explained, there was no survivor to claim the remains, as Japanese custom decrees. "All lose parent," she told me of the five-year-old boys lined up cheerfully in uniform to shake the Dalai Lama's hand in the autumn sun. After taking his place in front of the altar, the Dalai Lama began to speak, recalling the afternoon he had been told, at the age of twenty-three, that he had to leave his home, as well as his homeland, that very evening, if both of them were not to be destroyed. No time to say goodbye to his friends, no chance to take his small dog. Two days later, as he was crossing the Himalayas towards exile, a new life, he heard that many of his friends were dead. At the end of today's session, we return with the Dalai Lama and his bodyguards and monks and secretaries to his hotel, hasten up in the elevator to the top floor and walk at high speed down the corridor with him to his room. His eyes are often red after a long day of events, but his pace never slackens. He's holding Hiroko's hand as he moves forwards; as in a physical expression of his teachings, he reflexively reaches for any set of hands to grasp between his own as he strides along. Just before we arrive at his door, Hiroko says, "Your Holiness, we must leave you now. But thank you for everything." He's on his way to Tokyo next day; we have obligations at home. "Also," she says--her voice falters just a little--"I want to tell you: my father passed away this year." Instantly the fast-stepping monk stops. He looks at her directly, deep into her eyes. "When?"
 "This year."
 "What cause?"
 "No cause. He was old. His body was tired."
 He steps forwards and holds her for a long, long time. Then he steps back and looks searchingly at her. "Remember: Only body gone. Spirit still there. Only cover gone." He heads into his room and, at the threshold, turns around to wave at us briskly. "Good night, thank you." And then is gone as we head back into the golden flares of late afternoon. Excerpted from Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells by Pico Iyer All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Aging, death, and family fracturing are seen through the lens of Japanese culture in this luminous memoir. Iyer (The Lady and the Monk), a British-Indian-American novelist and Time journalist who lives in Japan with his Japanese wife, Hiroko, recounts their efforts to cope with her father's death, her mother's entry into a nursing home, and her estrangement from her brother. He revisits Hiroko's family stories, explores Japan's mourning rituals as she tends relatives' graves and offers cups of tea to her father's spirit, and probes the feelings of guilt and betrayal-especially when her mother wants to live in their home-that rites can't assuage. Iyer weaves in sharp observations of a graying Japan, particularly of the vigorous but gradually faltering oldsters in his ping-pong club, and visits to the Dalai Lama, a family friend, who dispenses brisk wisdom on life's impermanence ("Only body gone," the Dalai Lama says reflecting on death. "Spirit still there"). The book is partly a love letter to the vibrant Hiroko, whose clipped English-"I have only one speed. Always fastball. But my brother not so straight. Only curveball"-unfolds like haiku, and it's partly an homage to the Japanese culture of delicate manners, self-restraint, and acceptance that "sadness lasts longer than mere pleasure." The result is an engrossing narrative, a moving meditation on loss, and an evocative, lyrical portrait of Japanese society. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

In The Art of Stillness (2014), Iyer urged readers to find contentment by slowing down. This wisdom is reflected in the beloved travel writer and journalist's wistful and conscious memoir filled with musings about home, culture, family, and death. After the passing of his father-in-law, Iyer leaves his second home in California for Japan to comfort his wife, Hiroko. Returning to his two-room apartment in a Eurocentric neighborhood outside Kyoto, Iyer sees the familiar land of serenity and superstition as though through new eyes. He marvels at the mystical rituals his wife practices to ensure a happy afterlife for her father and explores why Hiroko's intellectual brother cut ties with the family. He recounts his daughter's battle with Hodgkin's disease and makes his case that Japan's reddening maple leaves are more iconic than the cherry blossoms. As in his previous work, the British-born Indian American also examines the role of the globalist. The funniest and most illuminating thread traces Iyer's blossoming ping-pong skills, as he competes against spry septuagenarians and witnesses the more passionate side of traditionally stoical Japanese men. With his trademark blend of amiability, lighthearted humor, and profound observations, Iyer celebrates emotional connection and personal expression, and he upholds death as an affirmation of life and all its seasons.--Jonathan Fullmer Copyright 2019 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

The acclaimed travel writer and journalist meditates on the impermanence of life.Like many others, Iyer (The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere, 2014, etc.) reveres the beauty and portent of autumn. Japan, he writes, wants the world to think of it as the land of cherry blossoms, "but it's the reddening of the maple leaves under a blaze of ceramic-blue skies that is the place's secret heart." Iyerwho divides his time between California, where he cares for his mother, and Japan with his wife, Hiroko, and her two adult children from a previous marriagewrites that autumn "poses the question we all have to live with: How to hold on to the things we love even though we know that we and they are dying." The author chronicles how Hiroko's nonagenarian father had recently died. Her mother, whose memory was failing, complained, "I have two childrenand I have to live in a nursing home. Until I die." The second child is Masahiro, who severed all contact with his family. Throughout the narrative, the author mixes musings on the ephemerality of existence with scenes of quotidian life, most notably his visits to the local ping-pong club for "maverick games on Saturday afternoons" with elderly club patrons with vivid memories of the war. Some readers may be put off by Iyer's decision to render Hiroko's English dialogue in fragmentse.g., "you remember last week, I go parent house little check my father thing?" Late in the book, he refers to her "homemade, ideogrammatic English," but the rendering will still strike some as insensitive. Otherwise, this is a thoughtful work with many poignant moments, as when Iyer and Hiroko take her mother on a drive past Kyoto's temples and, in a moment of clarity, she starts crying when she remembers visiting them with her husband."Bright though they are in color, blossoms fall," Iyer hears schoolchildren singing. "Which of us escapes the world of change?" This moving work reinforces the importance of finding beauty before disaster strikes. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Pico Iyer was born in Oxford, England to Indian parents, who immigrated to California in 1957. He received a B.A. and M.A. from Oxford University and a second masters degree from Harvard University. From 1982 to 1985, he was a writer for Time magazine. Following a leave of absence to visit Asia, Iyer wrote Video Nights in Katmandu: And Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East. In 1986 he returned to Time as a contributor. He also contributes regularly to Conde Nast Traveler magazine.

Pico Iyer has written several other travel books including The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto; Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places in the World; and Tropical Classical: Essays from Several Directions.

(Bowker Author Biography)