Friday, May 28, 2010

Japanese writers rock!


So I know... I'm still very slack with my reading but I have sooooooo much to do! I wish i had more time to read but at the moment my reading time is limited to my commute to uni 3 days a week which means about 2 hours of reading per week (that is pleasurable reading, not uni reading)...

So I have thought about authors and books I really liked and the Murakamis came to mind... so I browsed the Uni library for more Japanese authors and discovered: Kenzaburō Ōe!


(some might say wow a bit late for that... seeing that he has been writing for 50 years and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994... I know I am late... but then again I was 11 in 1994...)

Holy mother! I love it! well i only read one book half way through but what I have read is great! His depth in description and imagination is just amazing... every character. no matter how small his role, is sketched so completely not just in appearance but behavior and psyche as well...



Here are some of my favorite paragraphs so far:

"Four weeks later Bird had revived from an agonizing seven-hundred-hour drunk to discover in himself, wretchedly sober, the desolation of a city ravaged by the fires of war."

"From every window on the second floor and even from the balcony, just out of bed most likely, their fresh washed faces gleaming whitely in the morning sun, pregnant women were peering down at Bird. All of them wore flimsy nylon nightgowns, either red or shades of blue, and those on the balcony in particular, with the nightgowns billowing about their ankles, were like a host of angels dancing on the air. Bird read anxiety in their faces, and expectation, even glee; he lowered his eyes. The siren began to wail, and the ambulance lurched forward. Bird planted his feet on the floor to keep from slipping off the bench and thought: That siren! Until now, a siren had always been a moving object: it approached from a distance, hurtled by, moved away. Now a siren was attached to Bird like a disease he carried in his body: the siren would never recede."

Just magical...


Oh and the book by the way is "A personal matter"

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