Kenzaburo Oe passed away (Sorry, it has been a long time since he passed away. (Sorry, it has been a long time since he passed away. I thought I had uploaded this article, but I forgot about it as a draft.)
I have always tried to read at least one book by authors I see in bookstores, even if I don’t like to eat them.
I first read it when I was in high school (can’t remember the title), but the writing was too difficult (though fans say that his style is what makes it so good), and I failed miserably.
As Kobayashi Hideo said, “Writing can be poor, but not difficult,” and it was probably because my reading ability was childish.
However, human beings are strange creatures, and the first time we are frustrated by an author, we never pick up the book again. It is hard to get revenge.
So, some ten years have passed since then.
And then I picked it up again. But I failed (I dare not mention the title of the book).
I couldn’t read through it this time either.
I don’t know why… Since I was a high school student, I had read thousands of books (exaggeration) and my reading and comprehension skills must have increased dramatically, but I failed again.
And then I started reading Haruki Murakami’s “The Killing of the Knight Commander,” which was on the side of my bookshelf….
Why on earth?
I could say it was my taste, but it should be the duty of a literary person to read even beyond his/her taste. Still, I couldn’t even get ten pages in.
Suddenly, thinking about it in my own way, I realized that it was similar to when I read Kenji Nakagami’s novels.
In a word, it is true.
Just by reading a little, I could smell it from his writing style and every word he used.
My crappy inferiority instinct senses it,
The self-protective instinct is triggered to protect oneself from the deep self-loathing that comes from the fear of thinking, “I can never write something like this,” or “I want to write something like this, too, but I can never do it.
It is similar to not wanting to read the Wikipedia biography of a person who is too great. I can’t live this amazing life. I am mediocre. Reading it would only make me miserable….
So, for a fan of Kenzaburo Oe, what do you know about him if you haven’t read even one of his books? You may think, “But even if I have not read any of his books, I have seen his speeches, award-winning interviews, newspaper articles, and so on, so I fully understand his greatness.
At the end of it all, an imprint occurs that this person is on a different level from you, and you create an awe-inspiring attitude on your own.
Just like a high school baseball player who becomes rigid and unable to speak when he meets Mr. Otani, a major leaguer. It’s a bit of a strange metaphor, but they look up at him too much and fall over backwards. It’s just not logical.
In fact, I wish I could list my impressions of Kenzaburo Oe’s novels here, but to be honest, I haven’t read any of his novels, so I can’t do that.
I could only write about my feelings of respect and avoidance.
However, I have read several other books, so I would like to mention one that particularly impressed me.
That would be, after all, “Kenzaburo Oe: A Writer Speaks of Himself.
If I were asked what would be a good book for a prospective novelist to learn about the mindset (not the writing style) of a novelist,
Kenji Maruyama, “To the Writer Who Has Yet to See”; Haruki Murakami, “The Novelist as a Profession”; and Soseki Natsume, “The Philosophical Basis of Literature and Art.”
