Ep. 204: An Old New Novel Caraculiambro

I made three books one of which is the Speaking & Eating Kanazawa guide and Japanese language assistance book. After photographing and talking about them in Episode 203, I started another book; a graph paper notebook. What I should have done instead was edit and write Giapan and Botchan’s Bartender, two of my Japan Pentalogy novels which should be finished before you can say Procrastination. However, I didn’t, so there you are.

In the photo, the book with the kimono cover on the right is the Speaking & Eating Kanazawa book. If you’re coming to Kanazawa and don’t speak Japanese but do sometimes get hungry, this is the book for you. The kimono-clad book on the left is a graph-paper blank notebook. The red one in the middle with the closing strap, is a graph-paper blank notebook on light brown paper.

In this episode, I read the first page of a novel I began hundreds of decades ago. Well, at least half a decade ago. Caraculiambro: A Giant Mystery.

Caraculiambro was a giant Don Quixote talked about in his eponymous novel. He is never actually seen, just put up by the knight as what would happen if he ever came across a giant. In Giapan, Caraculiambro appears as both a giant, mean, and helpful (eventually). In this book, he is a giant and a private detective. 

 

Page One of Caraculiambro: A Giant Mystery

Call me Caraculiambro. Some years ago, I forget how many, I was forced from my home in Olympia - home of the gods! - by intolerance. By the small minds of ordinarily-sized people, of which I can proudly state I am not. They called me names to my face, whispered behind their hands whenever they saw me, and the younger, more hot-headed ones would often chase me with baseball bats or tire irons. They always chased me in gangs of five or more for they knew fewer would not be able to subdue me.

The ordinarily-sized people called me names like Frankenstein or Quasimodo. They obviously did not know Hugo’s mythological creature was a short, misshapen hunchback and Frankenstein was the deranged medical student of Ingolstadt, not the poor hand-crafted creature of his insane experimentation. As if these poor people could read. If a comparison could be made I would dwarf Frankenstein’s nameless creature by more than two feet. And I would tower over Quasimodo like the spires of Notre Dame over-shadowed that poor misshapen man’s entire life.

My doctor hesitated using the word ‘giant’ around me but that is what I am. I am a giant. Twice the height of a normal man and twice everything else: weight, hand size, shoe size. Everything. It is for this reason and this reason only the people I encounter fear me. It is as if they believe if I were no longer on the planet, they would be better. A common misconception among ordinary people: if there were no differences between us, we would be happier. 

The most intolerant were the zealots of religion; any religion. I was, in their view and words, an abomination, like pork, lobsters, and homosexuals. I’m convinced the more zealous the zealot, the less they are able to read. If they had read Genesis, they would have discovered that I am a Nephilim, the offspring of female humans and the gods that roamed the earth after God created the day and night, stars, and life. They think I’m joking, of course. Perhaps I am. I must face my life with humor or my tears would be a river that will flood the earth anew.

After a group of thirty youths brandishing clubs and bats chased me out of town, into the woods at the base of Mt. R–, and through the night, I decided to fight back. Not against all thirty that night, of course, that would’ve been suicide. And not with my fists and muscle, which would have been easy, but counter-productive in the long run; violence and hatred only begets more violence and hatred. And I would probably have landed in jail. No, I decided to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, Siddartha, and Hester Prynne, she of the lettered stigma.

As intolerance forced me from Olympia, I fled to the city of S–, which I refuse to identify. I established myself in S–  as a private detective. I investigated mysteries that ordinary people could not understand. I was determined to be both the best detective and the most indispensable. I would, like Hester, who became the perfect Puritan woman, become the ideal businessman, and a run a very profitable business. Ordinary people would have to accept me because successful people can not be denigrated by the smaller people. At least, that was my goal. It worked out slightly differently.

After this, he gets involved in a land speculation conspiracy that leads to a murder and the disintegration of an extended family. Want to read more? Let me know.

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TDGB 015 Speaking Kanazawa

email: tedorigawa.bookmakers@gmail.com