Book #040: Kenzaburo Oe - Seventeen & J...*
Synopsis: "Seventeen is a novella in size. Its seventy-three pages may not be tedious
to read, but the concepts are overwhelming. Simply, the narrative consists of
a first person narrator taking the reader with him through a few months of his
life. The events can be broken into two phases: phase one is before he enters
the right wing party, and phase two consists of his life after he joins. Phase
one begins (and thus the entire narrative begins) with the narrator announcing,
"Today is my birthday." (1) And in this empty statement, the entire
novel is hashed out. "Seventeen," as is the only name for the speaker
throughout, has little interaction with anyone on an emotional level except
for the reader. We become a type of confidant as we witness his ritual masturbations,
his anger against his indifferent family and the alienation he feels from his
peers. His most intimate externally generated experience is with a cat named
Gangster who comes to visit him in the "ship" he has made in the shed,
a place where Seventeen can sleep, think and experience fear in private. Gangster
licks saliva from Seventeen's lips, but once he is done taking what he needs,
he'll dart off.
Although I can't say that I liked the dramatic conclusion of A Personal Matter, in truth what other realistic (or rational, I should say) alternative is there? In Seventeen, I just don't see the ending as making sense. Either Seventeen will die very young or... I don't know..that sort of life just can't be lived, I imagine.
J was perhaps the more interesting read. I was amused by the idea of a chikan club. The old man and J and the young man presented a sort of perverse trio of deviants. I didn't quite understand how the young man's death, the series of events leading to it, came about. When he coerced the young girl to follow him to the train tracks, did he change his mind at the last minute and try to save her and kill himself or did he fully intend to molest her and die the ultimate sinner/chikan along with her on the train rails. I wasn't quite sure. The old man, a politician, was a great addition to the troupe. Way to go Oe for putting in Japanese politics into such a scandalous area of society. J was much more a self-concious being than Seventeen, and pragmatic (or rational?), that for this reason his choice of being who he was and how he managed such a life was much more agreeable and understandable. Of course no life for any one person can be understood by any other one person in all instances, but for me this was the case.
Unfortunately I have almost exhausted all of what has yet been translated into English of Oe's works but I did just begin Somersault, and so far it is very interesting.
Rating: 3 of 5 stars.
The second day of the narrative begins as Seventeen is late for school. When he arrives, he finds that he is late for exams. He feels he has done poorly on the morning ones and winds up feeling defeated for the afternoon physical exam portion as well. He is required to run eight hundred meters and upon completion, urinates all over himself.The second phase of the narrative begins when a classmate, Shintoho, invites him to go to a right wing rally. He agrees to go, and winds up standing up to dissenting party opinions vocalized by some bystanders. This throws him into the world of the right and thus begins a new course of his life. Seventeen takes on the party identity, and while at first we see him as being fairly similar to his original characterization, over time a metamorphosis takes place. Seventeen becomes a confident, yet brutally violent young man. One decisive event in this transformation is his outing to a bathhouse where a young woman masturbates him, he ejaculates in her face and thereby feels power over her. From here, he beats down party antagonists without shame, guilt or weakness. To him, he has become a strong individual. The narrator finally tells us that he is, "...the one and only blissful Seventeen." (from http://www.willamette.edu/~rloftus/OePage.htm)
Impressions: I had had a different impression of what Oe's Seventeen & J would be about going into the book. I started reading it a long time ago and had actually only finished it just recently given enough free time. I didn't like Seventeen or J as much as Oe's later works after A Personal Matter. Even though Oe's use of the dark erotic-grotesque literature genre appeals to me, his much more confessional and mythical works later on rotating around mental dysfunction (vis a vis his son) and sexual perversion from a married life, or an adulterer, seems more... sincere(?)... than the confessions of Seventeen. I can understand the death threats that Oe received during the time of this publication, phew! I sure wouldn't have liked to have been in his situation at such a time.
In A Silent Cry it is the townsfolk and the grassroots community that provide the mysticism and history behind the character. In A Persoanl Matter, the mature protagonist must battle himself but he relies upon another woman to comfort him during the birth of his defected son. His weaknesses, when shared with another human being, strike me as more human than the approach that Seventeen had.J was perhaps the more interesting read. I was amused by the idea of a chikan club. The old man and J and the young man presented a sort of perverse trio of deviants. I didn't quite understand how the young man's death, the series of events leading to it, came about. When he coerced the young girl to follow him to the train tracks, did he change his mind at the last minute and try to save her and kill himself or did he fully intend to molest her and die the ultimate sinner/chikan along with her on the train rails. I wasn't quite sure. The old man, a politician, was a great addition to the troupe. Way to go Oe for putting in Japanese politics into such a scandalous area of society. J was much more a self-concious being than Seventeen, and pragmatic (or rational?), that for this reason his choice of being who he was and how he managed such a life was much more agreeable and understandable. Of course no life for any one person can be understood by any other one person in all instances, but for me this was the case.
Unfortunately I have almost exhausted all of what has yet been translated into English of Oe's works but I did just begin Somersault, and so far it is very interesting.
Rating: 3 of 5 stars.
