The Art of Vanishing

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I’m still coming to grips with fully appreciating the implications of Lynne Kutsukake’s The Art of Vanishing, a page-turner that explores the relationship of art to sense of self and community. The writing is as economical as it gets as Kutsukake follows, I think without resolution, main character Akemi’s journey. Akemi strikes me as a blank canvass, and her dispassionate observations on the events that transpire in the novel involving a cult and her friend/lover Sayako and her own efforts to find her sense of self can be jarring. Akemi’s canvass is never filled in as the story unfolds: the negative space in her life needs to be filled in by others. Art, in Vanishing seems to me to be a stand-in for connection. Meaning, to be be valid, is the result of community that never fully materializes for Akemi. Transcendence requires at least others’ gaze on us, and ideally meaningful connection.