Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Mishima: A Vision of the Void by Marguerite Yourcenar, Alberto Manguel, Donald Richie ISBN: 0-226-96532-5 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: June, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 2 (2 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: A tepid effort yet covers the basic facts
Comment: Yukio Mishima is clearly an enigmatic, unique, bizarre, and interesting artist. I read many of his novels years ago but little of his personal history. This brief biography by Marguerite Yourcenor gives the basics of the author's life. Yourcenor's occasional self-referential comments do not really detract from this biography but neither do they add to it. Reading this biography certainly doesn't make me want to run out and buy any of Yourcenor's novels. In any case, the pace of the biography builds up nicely to the finale of Mishima's ritual suicide in an almost comic close to his life. The beauty and symbolism of Mishima's final act are layed bare in visceral physicality by Yourcenor. While the overall writing style of the biographer is tepid, the brief duration and fact filled chronology of this biography make it a fair source for those wanting exposure to the esential biographical facts of Yukio Mishima's life.
Rating: 1
Summary: Not very good.
Comment: This book is of little value to both Mishima fans and novices. The novices will want biographical information, of which Yourcenar gives precious little - sure, all the really important stuff is there, but it's outlined in a very sketchy, couldn't-be-bothered way - and certainly far less than either John Nathan or Henry Scott-Stokes. The fans will want information that isn't available anywhere else, of which there is none whatsoever in this book. So what does Yourcenar talk about? The literature, primarily. That would be good, if not for one thing - Yourcenar is an author herself, and she seems to be out to prove her own literary worth. Thus, the book is made of torturedly "sophisticated" sentences, bizarre assertions of the nature of "those who love life love death the most" (not an exact quote, but a very accurate paraphrase), and of course, some namedropping. Yourcenar mentions D'Annunzio, Cocteau, Lautreamont, and others, with very little cause. She also knocks down a few straw men here and there (randomly, in one footnote, she spontaneously accuses nameless people of accusing Mishima of being a snob, and proceeds to prove them wrong), and once proudly proclaims that Mishima was a reader of her own literary work. Bully for her, I guess.
The literary analysis really isn't that good, either. Admittedly, a cursory read may have the effect of helping people see why they like or dislike Mishima's writing, even if Yourcenar's own musings on the matter aren't very inspiring, but it really doesn't say anything. Some of the man's works are barely given a mention - the "discussions" of After the Banquet and The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea take up about a page, combined. Others are given whole chapters, but even then, there is little serious attempt at character analysis - for instance, Ying Chan, the doomed beauty of The Temple of Dawn, is described as "careless" or "thoughtless" or something to that effect, with no justification for this whatsoever, and no further attempt is made to understand her. The part dealing with The Decay of the Angel is effective, but only because it makes the reader remember that incredible novel - it is Mishima who is responsible for the effectiveness, and not Yourcenar.
So what's Yourcenar's point? Apparently, that Mishima had a special vision of a "Buddhist Void" unique to him that inscrutably exhorted him to commit suicide. That's about it. To this end, she gives probably a lot more attention than is necessary to some of Mishima's lesser, later political works - but almost none, paradoxically, to his essay Sun and Steel. This is why she glosses over biographical details - because in her opinion, they have little to no bearing on Mishima's life. A few anecdotes, such as the "green snake" incident, are related with much self-conscious weightiness, as if they held some kind of magical key to Mishima's work. All of these anecdotes are also related by either Nathan or Scott-Stokes in their respective biographies with much less sophomoric interpretations. Yourcenar continues with a rhapsodic summary of the story "Patriotism," which has no value to any reader who has read the source material, and only ends up conveying the impression that Yourcenar is far more fond of blood and death than Mishima ever was. She ends with a poetization of Mishima's last day, in which she waxes eloquent and ecstatic on the subject of ritual disembowelment and decapitation. This culminates in the last paragraph of the book, a completely unnecessary and grotesque extended metaphor that says nothing and isn't even worth reading.
When the book doesn't make goofy conclusions from its superficial collection of facts, it resorts to just praising Mishima's work. On this there is no argument from me, as I am a big fan of Mishima and agree wholeheartedly with Yourcenar's praise. However, her book contributes nothing new to the exciting field of praise, either. Truth be told, I have a hard time understanding why this book was even written. At 150 pages, it's barely even a book; it fails as a biography and as literary criticism. Even at its best, it just isn't very good; you'd do much, much better with either of the two primary Mishima biographies.
 |
Title: Mishima: A Biography by John Nathan ISBN: 030680977X Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: 04 April, 2000 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
 |
Title: The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima by Henry Scott-Stokes, Henry Scott Stokes ISBN: 0815410743 Publisher: Cooper Square Press Pub. Date: October, 2000 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
 |
Title: Fires (Phoenix Fiction) by Marguerite Yourcenar, Dori Katz ISBN: 0226965287 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: December, 1994 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
 |
Title: The Great Wave : Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan by Christopher Benfey ISBN: 0375503277 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 06 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
 |
Title: Collected Poems: Edited by Frank Bidart and David Gewanter; Introduction by Frank Bidart by Robert Lowell, Frank Bidart, David Gewanter ISBN: 0374126178 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: June, 2003 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
