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Title: A Quiet Life by Kenzaburo Oe, Kunioki Yangishita, William Wetherall, Kunioki Yanagishita ISBN: 0-8021-3546-3 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: January, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.12 (8 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Intellectually Interesting Introspection from a Nobel Winner
Comment: "A Quiet Life" is the first person narrative of Ma-chan, a twenty-year-old university student and the daughter of a famous Japanese author. When her father accepts a visiting professorship at the University of California, and her mother decides to accompany him abroad, Ma-chan is left at home in Japan to care for her older, brain-damaged brother Eeyore (like the character in "Winnie-the-Pooh") and her younger brother, Oh-chan, who is studying for his university entrance exams.
"A Quiet Life" is a slow-moving story with little action and a deeply realistic, human touch. Like much of Oe's writing, "A Quiet Life" is a fictional work that is powerfully marked by a real-life event--the birth of Oe's brain-damaged son in the mid-1960s. Thus, Ma-chan, the narrator, grapples throughout the narrative with her feelings about Eeyore, as well as her feelings about her intellectual and emotionally distant father.
Much of the novel is devoted to exploring Ma-chan's thoughts and feelings as she follows a mundane, day-to-day existence shepherding Eeyore to music lessons with Mr. Shegito, a professor and friend of her father, and to swimming lessons with Mr. Akai, a somewhat cold and sinister character of questionable motives. Along the way, Ma-chan continually realizes that Eeyore is, in many ways, a remarkably sensitive and gifted human being, despite his disability.
Oe's narrative is enigmatic and subtle in its suggestiveness. Oe, through the voice of his narrator, makes much of words that Ma-chan repeats in her narrative, words that are italicized in the text and linger in the reader's mind like ontological talismans. The text, too, reflects the intellectual groundings of Ma-chan's distant father-seemingly the author Oe himself-when it delves into extended discussions of Tarkovsky's film, "Stalker" (based on the classic, if somewhat obscure science fiction novel, "Roadside Picnic" written by the Strugatsky brothers), and the writings of Celine, notably "Rigadoon" (in a somewhat disturbingly sympathetic literary riff on a notorious, albeit fascinating, anti-semite).
While I am familiar with Oe's biography, this is the first novel I have read by him. He is an interesting and intellectually impressive writer who perhaps deserved the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature. I know I will read more of his work. However, as Ma-chan's mother comments when Ma-chan tells her of the title of the diary she has kept: "'Diary as Home' sounds bland and dull." She then elicits a different title from Eeyore, who suggests: "How about 'A Quiet Life'? That's what our life's all about." It is, indeed, the narrative of a quiet life, but Eeyore's title unfortunately does not save Oe's book from being bland and dull. While "A Quiet Life" is redeemed by the sensitivity, the enigmatic feeling and the profound intellect of its author, the story ultimately falters on a sometimes mind-numbing banality and what seems to be a stilted English translation. Thus, while I enjoyed reading "A Quite Life," I often had difficulty maintaining my interest in Oe's narrative.
Rating: 4
Summary: Quietly Poignant
Comment: The title is indeed a fitting summary of this loosely constructed novel's tone and impression. The stories told by Ma-chan are of seemingly ordinary, small incidents (with a few exceptions, notably at the book's end), but they are told with quiet grace. The compassionate view and portrait of Eeyore in particular is well-done, in which a mentally challenged person is not overly sentimentalized nor portrayed as somehow less than human. Clearly the autobiographical elements in Oe's novel have helped to fill out the rounded portraits of the children.
The diversions into the novels of Celine, the films of Tarkovsky, etc. are not irrelevant, but I think they might pose a barrier to readers unfamiliar with those references.
This novel is full of interesting philosophical and psychological insights into the lives of self-described "nobodies." Oe gives these "nobodies" a compelling voice, in the midst of a society that discriminates against the mentally handicapped. A worthy effort.
Rating: 3
Summary: Intellectually Interesting Introspection from A Nobel Winner
Comment: "A Quiet Life" is the first person narrative of Ma-chan, a twenty-year-old university student and the daughter of a famous Japanese author. When her father accepts a visiting professorship at the University of California, and her mother decides to accompany him abroad, Ma-chan is left at home in Japan to care for her older, brain-damaged brother Eeyore (like the character in "Winnie-the-Pooh") and her younger brother, Oh-chan, who is studying for his university entrance exams.
"A Quiet Life" is a slow-moving story with little action and a deeply realistic, human touch. Like much of Oe's writing, "A Quiet Life" is a fictional work that is powerfully marked by a real-life event--the birth of Oe's brain-damaged son in the mid-1960s. Thus, Ma-chan, the narrator, grapples throughout the narrative with her feelings about Eeyore, as well as her feelings about her intellectual and emotionally distant father.
Much of the novel is devoted to exploring Ma-chan's thoughts and feelings as she follows a mundane, day-to-day existence shepherding Eeyore to music lessons with Mr. Shegito, a professor and friend of her father, and to swimming lessons with Mr. Akai, a somewhat cold and sinister character of questionable motives. Along the way, Ma-chan continually realizes that Eeyore is, in many ways, a remarkably sensitive and gifted human being, despite his disability.
Oe's narrative is enigmatic and subtle in its suggestiveness. Oe, through the voice of his narrator, makes much of words that Ma-chan repeats in her narrative, words that are italicized in the text and linger in the reader's mind like ontological talismans. The text, too, reflects the intellectual groundings of Ma-chan's distant father-seemingly the author Oe himself-when it delves into extended discussions of Tarkovsky's film, "Stalker" (based on the classic, if somewhat obscure science fiction novel, "Roadside Picnic" written by the Strugatsky brothers), and the writings of Celine, notably "Rigadoon" (in a somewhat disturbingly sympathetic literary riff on a notorious, albeit fascinating, anti-semite).
While I am familiar with Oe's biography, this is the first novel I have read by him. He is an interesting and intellectually impressive writer who perhaps deserved the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature. I know I will read more of his work. However, as Ma-chan's mother comments when Ma-chan tells her of the title of the diary she has kept: "'Diary as Home' sounds bland and dull." She then elicits a different title from Eeyore, who suggests: "How about 'A Quiet Life'? That's what our life's all about." It is, indeed, the narrative of a quiet life, but Eeyore's title unfortunately does not save Oe's book from being bland and dull. While "A Quiet Life" is redeemed by the sensitivity, the enigmatic feeling and the profound intellect of its author, the story ultimately falters on a sometimes mind-numbing banality and what seems to be a stilted English translation. Thus, while I enjoyed reading "A Quite Life," I often had difficulty maintaining my interest in Oe's narrative.
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Title: A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oë, John Nathan ISBN: 0802150616 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: January, 1988 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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