A Personal Matter

The Magic Flute is not Mozart's greatest opera. Do you catch my drift? "A Personal Matter" is not Kenzaburo Oe's greatest novel, but it is definitely great. Like many of Dickens's novels, the conclusion seems too deliberately conclusive and somewhat forced. Until the last chapter, however, this is a novel of such searing emotional terror that most readers will be grateful for its unexpected 'hopeful' ending."A Personal Matter" is easily Oe's most popular novel, outselling all others by a huge margin both in Japan and outside. That's easy to explain. It's his easiest, most traditional narrative, strictly chronological, told by an 'omniscient' narrator whose omniscience is obviously a mask for the author's projection of his own consciousness into his character named Bird. There is none of Oe's usual deliberate disorder and allusive/elusive obscurity. Plenty of 'shocking' scenes occur, but for Kenzaburo Oe this novel is almost chaste in its depictions of perversity and violence. If the reader is at all acquainted with Oe's other books, or with Oe's true 'personal matter' behind Bird's crisis, it's not hard to intuit that the author wanted and needed a simple structure, distanced from himself, to work out the anguish of his imagination.Oe's personal matter was the birth of his first child, a son, with severe brain damage. That was in 1963. In 1964, Oe wrote two 'accounts' of his experience, this novel "A Personal Matter" and the short story "Aghwee the Sky Monster". Prior to 1963, most of Oe's writings had focused on the catastrophes of recent Japanese history: the war, the collapse of the Japanese identity along with the de-deification of the Emperor, and the bombing of Hiroshima. Since 1963, Oe's most powerful writing has traced the evolution of his fatherhood, of his intense bonding with his unique son. Oe the man has been a difficult, eruptive, unmanageable person, whose identity-pains inflate to fill any space he enters. From so much pain, so much humanity!Oe would have been a great writer even if his son had been born in mediocre normalcy. Once in a while, I persuade myself that I can write, if not popularly at least honestly, but Oe's 'honesty' to his own craft as a writer and to his own humanity leaves me gasping in awe. This is the same honesty that I admire in the writings of WG Sebald. Neither Oe nor Sebald is bound to literal veracity, fact for fact, in their obviously autobiographical fictions. Both of them shape their lives imaginatively in their story-telling. But Oe's imagination comes closer to Reality than anyone else's 'swear-on-a-bible' truth. Think of the greatest autobiographers of the past -- Augustine, Rousseau, De Quincey, Lowell -- and get ready for an Oe who spills his guts more courageously than any of them.

A Personal Matter is more than an appropriate title for Oe's grim novel. It is fascinating to read through Oe's long descriptive phrases full of metaphors and imagery that keep the reader intently focused on the text. The writing style suits quite perfectly the depressing and self-deprecating nature of the story, as we watch the protagonist Bird attempt to deal with feelings of shame, inadequacy, and self-loathing after the defected birth of his ill son. If there is anyone who is caught within a permanent cycle of shallow pleasures and suffering, it is Bird. We see this in the man from the beginning. His perverse thoughts torment him as they reoccur, and most of them have the potential to easily shock the reader. Thoughts within the very opening of the novel include lying naked next to a transvestite or finding pleasure in fighting teenagers. The pleasures Bird pursues with Himiko also cause him to fall back into his perpetual cycle of pain. Although she often provides a wise perspective for Bird to take in, his relationship with her is a dishonest and immature one. Together, they both live for pleasure without the conscious consideration of what is going on around them. There is no sense of responsibility. There is no sense of discipline. And worse of all, there is no sense of sympathy for others. Much like his dream of travelling to Africa, Himiko and Bird's relationship is one that is purely an embodiment of Bird's need to run away. Bird is an insecure character who gives importance to many of the `shameful' things he does. Yet it seems that his understanding of their reason for being wrong is off. He becomes anxious due to his perverse thoughts or the pleasurable experience of sex, yet he lacks the reasoning behind why they may be considered wrong. The character of Bird through most of the story could have used Buddhism to arrive at the end. The practice of being able to detach from the world, to realize that what we experience on our daily lives is quite vain, would have done him very well. In this context, Bird's character is fascinating.

I wanted to give this five stars, but thought that was hypocritical since I would only do that knowing the author won the Nobel Prize. With all that said, this was an awfully good book, even if it was disturbing. Not a fun read by any means, but sometimes it is good to step away from what is comfortable and think differently. Big fun for the masochistic misanthropes out there. There were a few things that made up for the discomfort of following an unlikable character through some horrible behavior. This really could be read as a feminist rant as well, though I doubt this was the point.I loved the sex scenes, again disturbing, but they felt very raw and honest and it is so refreshing to read literary men who are not afraid to go there, and more than once! The next time someone says sex scenes can not be long and mean something I will point to this book.Also, some of the ugliness felt familiar, so again the author was incredibly brave to have been able to look that far into human ugliness (possibly his own) to come up with this story.The language was strange at times, though this is not surprising since this is a translation. A friend of mine read it in Japanese and said even there the vocabulary and diction read like an academic. One or two places I felt like the text was confusing for no good reason, or possibly even due to an error either by the author or the translator. This was slight, but again, a reason I couldn't give this five stars though I think this is an important book and despite how hard it was to read, it moved along at a good clip.

Not an easy read but definitely worth your time. Oe's prose is self-consciously disturbing, teetering on awkward at times - but as a stylistic choice, it works.Despite having nothing at all in common with the main character, this book resonated with me. Essentially this character spends the novel trying to escape the responsibility of caring for the disabled child his wife has just given birth to, amongst other things dreaming of escaping to Africa.Knowing that Oe had a disabled child himself makes the book feel uncomfortable at points, but I do not believe this is meant to be a comfortable read. I nonetheless enjoyed it greatly.If I were going to find fault with the book it would be the too-convenient ending for the main character which I shall not spoil... but that's nitpicking really.

This is a great book and feel like it could have been a real story. I highly recommend this book.

Very good!

This book would be unbearable if not written by Oe. What a talent with words and with the capacity to describe the characters psychological profile. Apart from the elegance of style and the immense culture of Oe, the story seems so banal and irrelevant that after page 300 i was still trying to understand what so dramatic had happened in the past of the main charachters. And i still did not get it…

I really enjoyed the book, the characters show complex emotions, make mistakes and are show the side of ourselves that we don't always like, but understand the temptation to follow the 'wrong' path. Nice to have a book that doesn't follow the typical formulas and delves into some deeper emotions and inner conflict.