AUTHOR: Yukio Mishima
READ: October
THOUGHTS: I thought this book was incredibly powerful; I really loved it. I haven't read Mishima in probably years now, and I had completly forgotten how he wrote, really. While I am never a fan of flowerlyness/sustained elevated diction, I found his writing here to be incredibly apt/forceful re: the emotional crux of the text, which is ritual suicide. The way that he subsumes the nexus of sex, pain, duty, humiliation, despair, etc under the idealogy of Japanese nationalism/patriotism is super intense, and almost mystifying -- I sort of felt like I was floating through a bizare folk tale the entire time. Really made me want to read (and reread) some more Mishima.
The short film he made of "Patriotism" is really good as well. It's only twenty five minutes long and probably one of the goriest movies I've ever seen. Despite his archeo-conservatism and fairly overt fascist leanings Mishima remains one of my favorite writers. I couldn't really tell you why; maybe it's that he comes off as very self-controlled where so much of the really good postwar American writing (Hubert Selby, Jr., DFW, Kerouac, Burroughs, the other Beats, Pynchon) which is mostly what I read is so wild and scattershot and Mishima so old fashioned and harmonious seeming in comparison. I dunno, it's kinda comforting in a way. Like knowing someone is out there fighting the good fight in search of beautiful sentences.
ReplyDeleteOne exception: in "Temple of the Golden Pavilion" there's a paragraph where he uses the word "adumbrate" probably eleven times at least, in various conjugations: adumbrate, adumbration, adumbrated, etc. I know it's a translation but c'mon, adumbrate has eight different definitions, each as poetic as the last, just kinda jumble them around. I don't think I've ever been that miffed by a paragraph before.
This has made me so happy that someone has actually left a thoughtful comment! I will have to search up that movie, I would definitely be interested in seeing a film translation of the story.
ReplyDeleteIt was a funny experience reading the book (re: Mishima's political background) because I was consistently making the assumption that Mishima was being ironic and/or at least morally ambiguous about what was going on, forgetting that ultimately this was not very far from something he ended up doing himself, which definitely complicates everything!
Mishima's prose style is definitely something to be envious of. I have never been, nor will I ever be (I don't think at least) a fan of like, uhh "pre-Modern" (??) prose style/sensibility, in as much as that dictates the narrator assuming this sort of forceful, overwhelming authority on the text that produces way too much emphasis on being overly detailed and flowery/decadent with the language/description. It just has always signaled something false and excessive to me. But with people who really know how to do it well (like Mishima, Nabokov, Proust etc.) the presumed authority sort of becomes something that slowly creeps up on you, and you find yourself in the cup of the hands of the author, who is nudging you in all these directions and you are willfully being strung along. (I hope that made sense somewhat!!...)
I think I am going to re-read The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, and then I will check out some other Mishima I haven't read yet (probably Golden Pavilion, Spring Snow, maybe some other stuff).
Also: what have you been up to man!! Have you been writing still? Reading anything interesting? It has kind of saddened me that those LJ days seem to be over and I never hear from anyone anymore.