EAN: 9780811232265

SELF-PORTRAITS - STORIES - OSAMU DAZAI RALPH MC...

"Art dies the moment it acquires authority." So said Japan's quintessential rebel writer Osamu
Dazai  who  disgusted with the hypocrisy of every kind of establishment  from the nation's
obsolete aristocracy to its posturing  warmongering generals  went his own way  even when that
meant his death-and the death of others. Faced with pressure to conform  he declared his
individuality to the world-in all its self-involved  self-conscious and self-hating glory.
"Art"  he wrote  "is 'I'."   In these short stories  collected and translated by Ralph McCarthy
we can see just how closely Dazai's life mirrored his art and vice versa  as the writer
narrator falls from grace  rises to fame and falls again. Addiction  debt  shame and despair
dogged Dazai until his self-inflicted death and yet despite all the lies and deception he
resorted to in life  there is an almost fanatical honesty to his writing. And that has made him
a hero to generations of readers who see laid bare  in his works  the painful  impossible
contradictions inherent in the universal commandment of social life- fit in and do as you are
told -as well as the possibility  however desperate  of defiance.    Long out of print  these
stories will be a revelation to the legions of new fans of No Longer Human  The Setting Sun and
The Flowers of Buffoonery. 

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