Rouse Up, O Young Men of the New Age: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: floating
Review: As usual Mr. Oe's prose is sharp as a knife. As usual there is an odd humility (here in relation to the writings of William Blake). As usual we find ourselves thinking we are listening to the humble mumblings about some guy with a disabled child only to wake up somewhere quite different than we thought we were. As usual we read something entirely personal in its politic ...
What left me reeling was the way this novel floats between the fact of Mr. Oe's life and the fiction that the novel is.
Hmm.
Read it.

Rating:
Summary: floating
Review: As usual Mr. Oe's prose is sharp as a knife. As usual there is an odd humility (here in relation to the writings of William Blake). As usual we find ourselves thinking we are listening to the humble mumblings about some guy with a disabled child only to wake up somewhere quite different than we thought we were. As usual we read something entirely personal in its politic ...
What left me reeling was the way this novel floats between the fact of Mr. Oe's life and the fiction that the novel is.
Hmm.
Read it.

Rating:
Summary: A.B.C.D. Encirclement
Review: Oe lachrymosely indulges every anti-Japanese propagandist in the american media conglomerate (Ingram) with ample opportunity to smack their lips over the "moral failings" of Japan. The fact that this ineffectual moralist won the Noble prize while it was denied to Mishima speaks volumes on what supine expectations the american propaganda industry expects from Japan. Both left and right. Writer like Oe and Murakami (who deserted his own country for no nobler reason then to make more money after making a sickening porno film popular in the us) are parasites getting fat by preening all the morbid phobias of a degenerate american elite, allowing them to wallow in self-adulation. What would Mr. Oe have done during the war? Sheepishly meet the demands of an expansionist american navy? Allowed China to invade the country so as not to offend their sensitivities? ... Japan chose WAR rightfully, even with the foreknowledge that it was a lost cause. And Japan would not even exist today if Mr. Oe were around then.

Instead of Oe or Murakami or Bannana Yoshimoto's insipid writing for privileged sectors in the american market (The Nanny Diaries) feeding that markets endless appetite for peeling scabs and self-abasement try and find a video of the Shunya Ito film Pride, which angered ALL the right people in the world and was one of the most popular films in recent Japanese cinema. Or any of the great Yukio Mishima's books, who was indeed what he described himself to be "the conscience of post war Japan".

Rating:
Summary: Over My Head
Review: This book has a lot of references to the works by William Blake, which makes it a difficult read. Additionally, Oe explains the writings of Blake and combines it with how it teaches him to understand his handicapped child. I felt like the novel was more autobiographical than fiction. Too deep for me at this point in my reading skill level. A good message though all throughout the novel.

Rating:
Summary: Over My Head
Review: This book has a lot of references to the works by William Blake, which makes it a difficult read. Additionally, Oe explains the writings of Blake and combines it with how it teaches him to understand his handicapped child. I felt like the novel was more autobiographical than fiction. Too deep for me at this point in my reading skill level. A good message though all throughout the novel.

Rating:
Summary: As much about poetic imagination as postwar Japan
Review: torn between a redemptive vision of culture and a globalizing hegemony of the right, this is a splendid and pithy novel that unlocks the sublime visionary power of William Blake (as revolutionary figure) to do global work inside post-imperial Japan and the US/Anglo hegemony. The son is caught between Blake the father and Los the son, and figures a way forward for all: Mutual Forgiveness is the Path to Eternity, said Blake to real politik. I love this novel, it taught me more about Blake and poetry than most poems I read, odd for a Japanese novelist to be tutoring this way!