This story reminds me of the author of Pulitzer Prize winning Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole. A brilliantly funny novel that he tried repeatedly to get published. After giving up his Mother found the draft in a box in her basement and worked tirelessly to find a publisher. With the help of another Southern writer, Walker Percy she succeeded and the next year Toole was awarded the Pulitzer. Still in print after decades. If you haven't read it, you might check it out. It's one of my all time favorite reads.
It would have been a fresher kind of novel back when it was published. This kind of personal account of a very alienated and self-pitying man who opines on society and human nature would just be taken as really cringe and cliche by most people now because that type of person became common decades ago, plus I think most people now in the west would sneer at Dazai/Yozo (It's autobiographical enough to refer to them interchangeably) and sneer at the idea of giving any time or thought to him and his novel due to him being a wealthy and privileged man of his time, I think most westerners would just have contempt for him and his novel. It's still one of the more significant to me personally out of the novels I've read because I do relate to it, vastly moreso than 95% of anything I've ever read. I'd say that the core of the book is the fake, veiled, facade nature of human social existence. Yozo interacts with people by adopting a persona, like almost everyone does, of a lighthearted class-clown, a jokester. The existence of social norms and morality means that people will conform to them, which calls the sincerity of any given person's words or actions into question. I myself doubt the sincerity of pretty much everyone I know, because your ability to live in society, with a job, and relationships, and opportunities, without being ostracized or punished, is predicated on your ability to adhere to social norms, which makes insincerity and fakery a built-in aspect of human existence, because a society without social norms and moral norms can't exist because it would quickly break down into chaos and conflict. I think that the ending, where the bartender says that she didn't cry upon reading Yozo's journals, that "When human beings get that way, they're no good for anything", but still concludes that Yozo was a "good boy, an angel" shows that even after Yozo did his best to try to make himself understood in his journals, he wasn't. Even when he gave up the fake facade, he still wasn't understood, in the way that he also didn't understand other people. As for the misogyny, even Yozo himself admits and recognizes the hypocrisy and contradiction within him when he acknowledges that women are the only people that have ever been kind to him despite his ambivalence towards them. Maybe you could simply explain it as stemming from his father's servant having molested him as a child, or maybe you could chalk it up to Dazai simply having been a Japanese man of the early 20th century. People now tend to expect fiction to have some kind of moral, ideological, or political point, but I don't think that any of that applies to No Longer Human. It's a very simple and direct expression of the experience and perspective of the author, trying to get his whole life experience out and give it permanence, like purging, or bloodletting. I don't think you can take an intended point from it. Any point you can take away from it is incidental to Dazai's motivations in writing it. Although, I will say that one thing that isn't a point of the novel is it being a moral judgement of the protagonist. Dazai isn't interested in condemning or defending himself. Dazai/Yozo was obviously not a good person, but that's probably the least interesting thing you could focus on. At least, he wasn't concerned with justifying himself. He did, after all, name the novel "Failure as a Human" or "Disqualified from Humanity".
I was terrified of reading this book for months but then my significant other got it for me so I felt like I should buckle up, and get through it. Once I started it carried me through somehow, and I really liked it! I can recommend Flowers of Buffoonery too, it's kindof an interquel. Also The Setting Sun. As to it being autobiographical, the more you read up on him, the more uncanny it gets, is all I'm saying😅
Have you read No Longer Human, or another book by Osamu Dazai? Do you mind reading dark or depressing novels? I’d love to know! 😊
This has been on my TBR for a while…it’s sounds interesting, but definitely intimidating 😅. Thanks for your thoughts!
I can see how it sounds intimidating, but it flows once you get into reading! I hope you enjoy the book whenever you read it 😄
This story reminds me of the author of Pulitzer Prize winning Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole. A brilliantly funny novel that he tried repeatedly to get published. After giving up his Mother found the draft in a box in her basement and worked tirelessly to find a publisher. With the help of another Southern writer, Walker Percy she succeeded and the next year Toole was awarded the Pulitzer. Still in print after decades. If you haven't read it, you might check it out. It's one of my all time favorite reads.
I’ve heard of Confederacy of Dunces, but didn’t know much about it! Thanks so much for sharing-I’ll definitely check it out 😊
It would have been a fresher kind of novel back when it was published. This kind of personal account of a very alienated and self-pitying man who opines on society and human nature would just be taken as really cringe and cliche by most people now because that type of person became common decades ago, plus I think most people now in the west would sneer at Dazai/Yozo (It's autobiographical enough to refer to them interchangeably) and sneer at the idea of giving any time or thought to him and his novel due to him being a wealthy and privileged man of his time, I think most westerners would just have contempt for him and his novel.
It's still one of the more significant to me personally out of the novels I've read because I do relate to it, vastly moreso than 95% of anything I've ever read. I'd say that the core of the book is the fake, veiled, facade nature of human social existence. Yozo interacts with people by adopting a persona, like almost everyone does, of a lighthearted class-clown, a jokester. The existence of social norms and morality means that people will conform to them, which calls the sincerity of any given person's words or actions into question. I myself doubt the sincerity of pretty much everyone I know, because your ability to live in society, with a job, and relationships, and opportunities, without being ostracized or punished, is predicated on your ability to adhere to social norms, which makes insincerity and fakery a built-in aspect of human existence, because a society without social norms and moral norms can't exist because it would quickly break down into chaos and conflict.
I think that the ending, where the bartender says that she didn't cry upon reading Yozo's journals, that "When human beings get that way, they're no good for anything", but still concludes that Yozo was a "good boy, an angel" shows that even after Yozo did his best to try to make himself understood in his journals, he wasn't. Even when he gave up the fake facade, he still wasn't understood, in the way that he also didn't understand other people. As for the misogyny, even Yozo himself admits and recognizes the hypocrisy and contradiction within him when he acknowledges that women are the only people that have ever been kind to him despite his ambivalence towards them. Maybe you could simply explain it as stemming from his father's servant having molested him as a child, or maybe you could chalk it up to Dazai simply having been a Japanese man of the early 20th century.
People now tend to expect fiction to have some kind of moral, ideological, or political point, but I don't think that any of that applies to No Longer Human. It's a very simple and direct expression of the experience and perspective of the author, trying to get his whole life experience out and give it permanence, like purging, or bloodletting. I don't think you can take an intended point from it. Any point you can take away from it is incidental to Dazai's motivations in writing it.
Although, I will say that one thing that isn't a point of the novel is it being a moral judgement of the protagonist. Dazai isn't interested in condemning or defending himself. Dazai/Yozo was obviously not a good person, but that's probably the least interesting thing you could focus on. At least, he wasn't concerned with justifying himself. He did, after all, name the novel "Failure as a Human" or "Disqualified from Humanity".
I was terrified of reading this book for months but then my significant other got it for me so I felt like I should buckle up, and get through it. Once I started it carried me through somehow, and I really liked it! I can recommend Flowers of Buffoonery too, it's kindof an interquel. Also The Setting Sun.
As to it being autobiographical, the more you read up on him, the more uncanny it gets, is all I'm saying😅