4.17.2005
kenzaburo oe, nip the buds, shoot the kids
this week i read kenzaburo oe's nip the buds, shoot the kids...
it's pretty bleak stuff-- concerning a war-time plague in a japanese village, and the reform school adolescents who are left behind in it. the tone is atmospheric and somewhat allegorical, concerned more with its distinct sense of dread than with plot or even character development. which is fine in my book. oe was only 23 when the book was published, and his matter-of-fact handling of adolescence probably benefitted accordingly. the book thankfully avoids a too literal distinction between adult brutality and childhood innocence, even if that somewhat familiar idea is ultimately at its core.
the best way i can describe it is to compare it to similar texts i found less successful. for example, there is none of the gratuitous sadism and rural paranoia of jerzy kozinski's the painted bird, which is thematically similar. oe's accounts of extreme brutality (and there are quite a few) are far less carnivalesque than kosinski's, and far more convincing. the coolness of his prose has a great slowness to it. it's evenly written, and it's only in reflection that the real horror of his content fully sets in. oe opts more for mood than schematics, and accordingly avoids sadistic glee of any sort.
despite the namelessness of oe's village and its inhabitants, as well as a generally fable-like approach to subject matter, the novel does emerge as a statement of sorts. his emphasis on territory and exclusion, for example, are hard to seperate from the militaristic ideologies of japanese society prior to world war II (not that i have any real right to characterize them). in this sense i also found nip the buds more successful than michael haneke's recent apocalyptic film time of the wolf. in that film, a similar sense of anonymous suffering is conveyed, but it becomes almost too anonymous. haneke dares, rather admirably, to avoid the cliches of personal conflict, but never really finds anything to fill in its place. oe doesn't have that problem. nip the buds is effective as a story as well as an allegory. and i usually hate allegories.
still, i must confess that despite admiring this book, i didn't fully enjoy it. being fairly open to melancholia and dark subject matter, i usually enter such dreary realms with relative ease. but nip the buds is effectively miserable. at times i felt like i was a bit too close to its literary apocalypse. which i suppose is to its credit, in the end, but it certainly wasn't pleasant.
it's pretty bleak stuff-- concerning a war-time plague in a japanese village, and the reform school adolescents who are left behind in it. the tone is atmospheric and somewhat allegorical, concerned more with its distinct sense of dread than with plot or even character development. which is fine in my book. oe was only 23 when the book was published, and his matter-of-fact handling of adolescence probably benefitted accordingly. the book thankfully avoids a too literal distinction between adult brutality and childhood innocence, even if that somewhat familiar idea is ultimately at its core.
the best way i can describe it is to compare it to similar texts i found less successful. for example, there is none of the gratuitous sadism and rural paranoia of jerzy kozinski's the painted bird, which is thematically similar. oe's accounts of extreme brutality (and there are quite a few) are far less carnivalesque than kosinski's, and far more convincing. the coolness of his prose has a great slowness to it. it's evenly written, and it's only in reflection that the real horror of his content fully sets in. oe opts more for mood than schematics, and accordingly avoids sadistic glee of any sort.
despite the namelessness of oe's village and its inhabitants, as well as a generally fable-like approach to subject matter, the novel does emerge as a statement of sorts. his emphasis on territory and exclusion, for example, are hard to seperate from the militaristic ideologies of japanese society prior to world war II (not that i have any real right to characterize them). in this sense i also found nip the buds more successful than michael haneke's recent apocalyptic film time of the wolf. in that film, a similar sense of anonymous suffering is conveyed, but it becomes almost too anonymous. haneke dares, rather admirably, to avoid the cliches of personal conflict, but never really finds anything to fill in its place. oe doesn't have that problem. nip the buds is effective as a story as well as an allegory. and i usually hate allegories.
still, i must confess that despite admiring this book, i didn't fully enjoy it. being fairly open to melancholia and dark subject matter, i usually enter such dreary realms with relative ease. but nip the buds is effectively miserable. at times i felt like i was a bit too close to its literary apocalypse. which i suppose is to its credit, in the end, but it certainly wasn't pleasant.
