Every reasonably successful writer has one work used by publishers to sell all the others. "If you liked _____, you'll love ______." I have no criticism for this technique in marketing because it has worked on me a number of times walking through aisles in the local bookstore. Whether or not this method is accurate depends largely on the author. Some writers stick to certain subject matter as their muse, delving deeper and deeper into previously traversed themes, but some authors are just too unpredictable to market this way. Kobo Abe is certainly one of the loose canons in surrealist literature. Printed in bold lettering on the cover of Secret Rendezvous is "Author of The Woman in the Dunes," but having read Woman in the Dunes I can confidently say it didn't prepare me for this.
The story starts out with a fairly easy to accept conflict. A husband and wife are sitting in bed when an ambulance stops at their front door. Two medics rush into their home, grab the woman, and strap her to a stretcher. The wife attempts to convince the medics that she is in perfect health and has no idea why she's being taken but they are under orders. The husband, seeing the proper paperwork allows his wife to be taken and decides to drive over to the hospital later on to pick her up. Unfortunately, when the husband arrives at the hospital his wife is nowhere to be found. She checked in, but was never assigned a room and the security guard has no idea where she could have gone.
The man begins a journey in search of his wife and from here the narrative devolves into absolute chaos. There's an on-call doctor who is found masturbating (for the purpose of donating to the fertility ward) and breaks his neck upon being discovered. There's an impotent hospital executive who wants nothing more than to be a horse and uses the bottom half of the injured doctor to achieve his goal. There's a nurse who was born in a test tube, and therefore has no basis for human intimacy, who thinks the only way to be close to someone is to watch them pleasure themselves. There's a girl with a particularly horrifying disease causing her bones to gradually dissolve into liquid. And all of these characters are preparing for the yearly anniversary of the hospital which is celebrated with a contest to pick the female patient that can have the most orgasms in a day. While all of this is going on, every detail is recorded on innumerable listening devices hidden around the hospital grounds, the tapes of which are sold in a sort of black market for people who take pleasure in overhearing others.
The obvious themes here are sexual disorder, identity disorder, and exhibitionism. And through it all the husband is a constant victim of the insanity surrounding him. He only wants to find his wife. None of these other characters are of any consequence to him, but in time it becomes obvious that his wife is there for a reason and so is he. The insatiable beast that is the hospital ensnares him, devours him, and, for continuity of the metaphor, shits him out.
I have no shame in saying I love books like this, books that explore the absurd, books that pay no mind to what might be socially acceptable to talk about. Highly recommended.
5/5
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