Absurdia.Net

So it goes.

Category: Literature

August 6, 2015

Red


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After his brother had left, Daisuke sat without moving for some time. When Kadono came to clear the tea service, Dai­suke suddenly stood and said, “Kadono-san, I’m going out to look for a job.” Then he immediately put on his cap and flew out into the heat of the day without even taking a parasol.
Daisuke hurried in the heat, almost breaking into a run. The sun shone straight down upon his head. The dry dust covered his bare feet like powdered fire. He felt as if he were being scorched.
As he walked, he repeated to himself, “I’m burning, I’m burning.”
When he came to Iidabashi he got on a streetcar. The streetcar began to move straight ahead. Inside the car, Dai­suke said, “Oh, it’s moving, the world’s moving,” loudly enough to be heard by those around him. His head began to spin at the same speed as the car. The more it spun, the more flushed he became from the heat. If he could ride like this for half a day, he thought he could be burnt to ashes.
Suddenly, a red mailbox caught his eye. The red color immediately leaped into Daisuke’s head and began to spin around and around. An umbrella shop sign had four red umbrellas hanging one on top of the other. The color of these umbrel­las also leaped into Daisuke’s head and whirled around. At an intersection someone was selling bright red balloons. As the streetcar sharply turned the corner, the balloons followed and leaped in to Daisuke’s head. A red car carrying parcel post passed close by the streetcar in the opposite direction, and its color was also sucked in to Daisuke’s head. The tobacco shop curtain was red. A banner announcing a sale was also red. The telephone pole was red. One after another, there were signs painted in red. Finally, the whole world turned red. And with Daisuke’s head at the center, it began to spin round and round, breathing tongues of fire. Daisuke decided to go on riding until his head was completely burnt away.

And Then, Natsume Sōseki.

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September 2, 2009

What am I to do with you, Papa?


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I‘m torn in two everytime. I can’t share your passions and views, I can’t share your being a man with all these idiosyncrasies, though I can sense and understand them all, one by one; at the same time I do praise the grace, the precision, the art that forms and shapes the writing. The intelligence, the higher degree of humanity, the respect shown in it. I’m no blind to all of that. I can’t decide which aspect results as winner in this conflict. You make me frown. And you fill me with awe. But a reading soul isn’t a soul as a whole entity, so I can’t just ignore the frowning and the reproach even when entangled in the wonder. The fragility and the impotence that envelops your being, the very human fall toward the wrong side of the natural moral, the tragedy of extreme anthropocentrism but also the longing for all that’s sacred in the natural world, the hunger for Nature’s titanic stature. Which one of this is the real you? I assume it’s both. That’s why I’m so torn. Torn between revulsion and admiration. Because how am I supposed to form an opinion that will be coherent and solid and without cracks if I am to despise one thing and admire the other? If I can’t take you as a whole, I do have to forget about the complexity of your multiple facets. Look from a vantage point at the matter that forms your creation from one side only, ignoring the rest. Betraying your essence. You do that to me every single time I pick up one of these books. And the more I read the more amazed and confused I am, because I can’t stand on firm grounds. I can only go on and on until words are over. But the conflict remains.

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April 2, 2009

The revolting smell of literary cases


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Literary cases make me laugh. First of all, I’d like to know what makes a book a case. The number of copies or the quality of the work? Seems most of the times the quality has no connection with the notion of case.
Usually I tend to avoid these renowned cases. Every single time I was involved in one, I felt the urge of terminating and annihilating. I also desperately wanted to scoop the brain out of my skull. It’s not a question of being a snob as many think when you tell them this is your automatic behavior. I know, maybe part of it must be caused by my total lack of sense of humor. But what has sense of humor to do with bad literature, cheesy literature, mock literature, affected literature? I just can’t do that to my brain, that violence. Pretending you like something just because the rest of the planet is raving about it is not the question. I could never reach that point in any case. What’s worse is the insufferableness. Life’s brief, the wise people say, so why do I have to waste time on crap just because anybody else’s doing it? To be inside the trend instead of being booed because I’m outside of it? Like I care…
Fashionable books are often badly written or, more often, badly conceived. Writing correctly isn’t that difficult, but thinking correctly is definitely more. I mean badly according to a reasonable conception. If we’re talking about selling, most of those cases are perfect, so perfect it’s scary. But what about the actual need to say something significant? Not necessarily significant for the public, it could be the writer doesn’t give a damn about it. How to blame one that doesn’t consider the public? If the content is good, or at least if it says something, on whatever level – style, meaning, both – somebody will eventually get it and appreciate it. Probably it won’t be a whole mass of delirious people, but delirious people should be in asylums, not in bookstores… or libraries.
This to say I’m very mad. I’m mad at the fact I have this book labeled as “literary case of 2008”, this The Elegance of the Hedgehog, that I happened to receive as a present and that screwed up the purity of my intentions of starting some book I might have liked. It’s not that I didn’t consider avoiding reading it, but it seemed rude. Because well, other times I cowardly got rid of other cases, and iterations can become dangerous habits. But after the first 100 pages or so I feel I’m being deprived of my freedom and intellect. Such a shallow, pretentious, insincere book it is. It’s awful to have to read books that are offsprings of exhibitionists with huge egos, intellectuals with a washing machine instead of a heart. Makes me want to smear mud all over the place to regain contact with something that doesn’t smell of cheap conceit and zealous aridity. Apparently I don’t like the book for the wrong reasons, at least according to average criticism. Leaving apart the supporters for the reason we’re in different realities, I’m taking into consideration detractors: they don’t like this book for petty reasons. I can agree on the ineffable boredom, but its being complex? I was thinking it’s pretty much a corny and mediocre work, too stereotypical for something that aspires so much to the heights of philosophical speculation. What is that, philosophy for dummies? Apparently it is convoluted and arduous, though I don’t know which aspects or parts of it are. I assure I put some effort into it, I tried resisting the desire to cast that specimen of violation of human rights into a wastebasket and select something else from the nearest pile of books. My reading experience is turning into a snorting and frowning feast though. I don’t know if I can go on like this much longer.

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